“Any luck there?”
“Not a word. He’s playing hard to get.”
“Maybe he doesn’t know anything. Doc made a bad mistake when he blasted the other one. Suppose he was the only one who knew.”
“All right, it was a mistake,” Tawney snapped. “What was Doc supposed to do? Let the boy get back to Mars? We’ve got a good front there, but it’s not that good. If the United Nations gets a toe hold out here, the whole belt will go into their pocket; you realize that. They’re waiting for us to make one slip.” He paused, and Tom heard him pacing the compartment. “But I think we’ve got our boy. This one knows. We’ve been spoiling him so far, that’s all. Well, now we start digging. When I get through with him, he’ll be begging us to let him tell. You just watch me, as soon as the okay comes through.”
Tom drew back from the grill, moving on in the darkness. So far he had not rushed his exploration. If there was a chance to use the ducts for escape, he wanted to know them well. But now he knew the hour was getting late. So far Greg and Johnny had been stalling Tawney, but Tawney was getting impatient.
He moved quickly, stopping at each compartment only long enough to identify it. Crew’s quarters, the executive suite, officers’ quarters—nowhere was there a sign of the prisoners. He found himself retracing his steps, listening more closely. Unless he could locate them, he was helpless.
But he thought again of what Tawney had said. Tawney was right about one thing. There was no way that Dad could have hidden a big strike so nobody could find it. It had to be there. ,
And yet it wasn’t. He and Greg hadn’t found it. Tawney’s men hadn’t found it, either. Why not? There must be a reason. But he could not put his finger on it.
Half an hour later he was seriously worried. Half the compartments in the area he was exploring were deserted, the men leaving for the cafeteria. The thought reminded Tom how hungry he was, and thirsty. His small emergency ration kit was empty. He toyed with the thought of sneaking into a food storage compartment, then thrust it out of his mind as too risky. He had to find Greg and Johnny before doing anything else.
He passed a grill, and heard a murmur of voices. Something in the deep bass rumble caught his ear. He stopped, listened.
The voices stopped also.
He waited for them to begin, pressing against the grill. Johnny Coombs was not the only man with a deep bass voice. Tom might have been mistaken. He listened, but there was no sound. He heard the whir of a fan begin. Still no sound, not even footsteps.
And then it happened, so fast he was taken competely off guard. The grill suddenly gave way, pitching him forward into the compartment. Something struck him behind the ear as he fell; there was a grunt, a sharp command, and he was pinned to the floor in the semidarkness of the compartment.
He heard a gasp and opened his eyes. He was staring into his brother’s unbelieving, startled face. Greg was pinning his shoulders to the carpeted deck, and behind him Johnny Coombs had a fist raised.
But they had stopped in mid-air, like a tableau of puppets. Greg gaped, his jaw falling open, and Tom heard himself saying, “What are you trying to do, kill a guy? Seems to me one time is enough.”
He had found them.
Chapter Ten
Tom Pulls The Trigger
In the first instant of recognition Greg and Johnny were speechless. Later, Tom said it was the first time in his life that he had ever seen Greg totally without words. His brother jumped back as if he had seen a ghost. His mouth worked, but no sounds came out.
“Don’t worry, it’s me all right,” Tom said, “and I’m mighty hungry.”
Greg and Johnny stared at the black hole behind the grill, and then Greg was pummeling him, pounding him on the back, so excited he couldn’t get a word out. And Johnny was hovering over them, incredulous, but forced to believe his eyes, like a father overwhelmed by the impossible behavior of a pair of unpredictable children. It was a jubilant reunion all around. They ransacked the cabinets and refrigerator in the back of the lounge and pulled out surro-ham and rolls, while Johnny got some coffee going. Tom was so famished he could hardly wait to make sandwiches of the ham. Finally he slowed up and got his mouth empty enough to talk.
“All right, let’s have the story,” Greg said, still looking as though he couldn’t believe his eyes. “The last we saw, you were blown into atoms out there in that Scavenger. You’ve got some nerve turning up now and scaring us half out of our skins.”
“You want me to go back in my hole?”
“Just sit still and talk!”
Tom talked, starting from the beginning: his realization that the battle for their father’s orbit ship was a lost cause; his reasoning that if all three were captured, there would be little chance for escape; his determination to “play dead”, to make the raiders think he had been destroyed—there was nothing he left out. “I only hoped I got the autopilot set right, and the shell-evasion mechanism,” he said. “But I didn’t have much time to study up on navigation at the time.”
“Don’t worry, it was realistic enough,” Greg said grimly. “The way that little ship went dodging those shells was enough to convince anybody.”
“Well, then the trick was to get back here with you.” Tom told them about his terrifying ride on the hull of the Ranger, his near-encounter with the guard once he had come aboard the Jupiter Equilateral orbit ship, and his idea of using the ventilation ducts for both concealment and movement. Through it all Greg stared in admiration. “We’ve got a genius among us, that’s all,” he said finally. “And I always thought you were the timid one.”
“But what else could I do?” Tom asked. “You know what they say about grabbing a tiger by the tail. Once you get hold, you’ve got to hold on.”
“Okay,” Greg said, “but the next time I make a crack about your retiring nature, remind me to stick my foot in my mouth.”
“I’ll do it for him,” Johnny Coombs rumbled.
Tom nodded toward the open grill. “The only thing I don’t see is how you knew I was back there.”
Johnny grinned. “We were busy taking down the grill when you came along. We’d found a microphone in this place, and figured they might have one behind the grill. And then we heard somebody breathing. We thought they’d posted a guard back there, just to snoop on us.”
“Well, I’m glad you didn’t hit him any harder.”
Johnny started to say something and stopped, his head cocked toward the door. Footsteps sounded in the corridor outside; they came closer, stopped by the door. “Quick,” Johnny whispered. “Back inside!”
There was no time to look for other concealment. Tom leaped across the room, jumped up into the shaft again, and Greg slammed the grate up into place just as the hatchway door swung open.
Merrill Tawney walked into the room, with two burly guards behind him;
For the first few seconds, Greg was certain that they were lost. He stood with his back to the ventilator grill, frozen in his tracks as the fat little company man came into the room. He tried to keep his face blank, but he knew he wasn’t succeeding. He saw the puzzled frown on Tawney’s face.
The company man motioned the guards into the room, peered suspiciously at Greg and Johnny. “Am I interrupting something, by any chance?”
“Nothing at all,” Johnny blurted. “We were just talking.”
“Talking.” Tawney repeated the word as if it were in some strange language he didn’t quite understand. He looked at the guard. “Let’s just check them.”