While one guard patted down their clothes, the other withdrew a stunner, held it on ready. Tawney prowled the lounge. He glanced at the food on the table, then reached under the chair cushion and withdrew the disconnected microphone, looked at the loose wires, and tossed it aside.
“They’re clean,” the guard said.
Tawney’s face was a study of uneasiness, but he clearly could not pinpoint what the trouble was. Finally he shrugged and turned on the smile again, although his eyes remained watchful. “Well, maybe you won’t mind if I join in the talking for a while,” he said. “You’ve been comfortable? No complaints?”
“No complaints,” Greg said.
“Then I presume we’re ready to talk business.” He looked at Greg.
“You said you were ready to bargain,” Greg said, “but I haven’t heard any terms yet.”
“Terms? Very simple. You direct us to the lode, we give you half of everything we realize from it,” Tawney said, smiling.
“You mean you’ll write us a contract? With a U.N. witness to it?”
“Well, hardly, under the “circumstances. I’m afraid you’ll have to take our word.”
Greg looked at the company man and shook his head. “Not that I don’t trust you,” he said, “but I’m afraid I can’t give you what you want.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t know where Dad made his strike.”
The company man’s face darkened. “Somebody knows where it is. Your father would never have found something like that without telling his own sons.”
“Sorry,” Greg said. “Of course, I can tell you where you might find out, if you want to go look.”
“We’ve already searched his records.”
“Some of his records,” Greg said. “Not all of them. There was a compartment behind the main control panel in Dad’s orbit ship. Dad used it to store deeds, claims, and other important papers. There was a packet of notes in there before your men fired on the ship. But, of course, maybe you searched more thoroughly, the second time.”
Tawney stared at him for a moment, then turned to Johnny. Johnny shrugged his shoulders solemnly and shook his head. Without a word, the little company man walked to the intercom speaker on the wall. He spoke sharply into it, waited, then had a brief, pungent conversation with someone. Then he turned back to Greg, his face heavy with suspicion. “You saw these papers?”
“Certainly I saw them. I didn’t have time to read them through, but what else could they be?”
“Let me warn you,” Tawney said coldly. “If I send a crew out there on a wild goose chase, the party will be over when they get back, do you understand? You’ve been given every consideration. If this is a fool’s errand, you’ll pay for it very dearly.” He turned on his heel, snarled at one of the guards, “I want them watched every minute. One of you stay with them constantly. It won’t take long to find out if this is a stall.”
He stalked out, and the hatchway clanged behind him. One guard went along; the big one with the stunner stayed behind, eyeing his prisoners unpleasantly. The stunner was in his hand, the safety off.
Johnny Coombs started across the room toward the kitchenette, passing close to the guard. Suddenly he turned, swung his fist heavily down on the guard’s neck. The stunner crackled, but Greg had jumped aside. Another blow from Johnny’s fist sent the gun flying. Another blow, and the guard’s legs slid out from under him. He fell unconscious to the floor.
In an instant they were across the room, lifting down the grill, helping Tom out of his hiding place. “Okay, boy,” Johnny said to Greg, “I guess you pulled the trigger with that story of yours.”
“Not me,” Greg said. “Tom did. He’s the one that showed us the way out—the same way he came in.”
The guard would be out for a while, they made sure of that first. Then there was a hasty consultation. “The airlocks are guarded,” Johnny said, “and if they tumble on to the ventilator shafts, they can smoke us out in no time. How are we going to get a scout ship without showing ourselves? For that matter, how are we going to get a scout ship away from here without being blown up the way the Scavenger was blown up?”
“I think I know a way,” Tom said. “We have to have something to keep a lot of the crew busy. If we could get to the ship’s generators and put them out of commission somehow, it might do it.”
“Why?” Greg wanted to know.
“Because of the air supply,” Tom said. “Without the generators, the fans won’t run. They’ll have to get a crew to fix them or they’ll suffocate.”
“But that would only take a few men,” Johnny said. “As soon as the generators went out, they’d look for us, and if we were missing, well, they’d have a whole crew beatin’ the bushes for us. It wouldn’t be long before somebody thought of the ventilators.”
“But we’ve got to do something, and do it fast,” Tom said.
“I know.” Johnny chewed his lip. “It’s a good idea, but we need more than just the generators. We’ve got to disable the ship, throw so many things at them so fast from so many different directions that they won’t know which way to turn. That means well need to split up, and we’ll need weapons.” He hefted the guard’s Markheim. “One stunner for the three of us isn’t enough.”
“Well, we have this.” Tom unbuckled the gun case from his belt. “Dad’s revolver. It’s not a stunner, but it might help.” He tossed the case to Johnny. “I can give you both a rundown on how the shafts go. We could plan to meet at a certain spot in a certain length of time—”
He broke off, looking at Johnny. The big miner had taken Roger Hunter’s gun from the case and hefted it in his hand, starting to check it automatically as Tom talked. But now his hand froze as he stared at the weapon.
“What’s wrong?” Tom asked.
“This gun is wrong,” Johnny said. “All wrong. Where did you get this thing?”
“From Dad’s spacer pack, the one the patrol brought back. The major gave it to us in Sun Lake City.” Tom peered at the gun. “Is it broken or something? It’s just Dad’s revolver.”
“It is, eh?” Johnny turned the gun over in his hand. “Who ever told you about guns?”
“What’s wrong with it?”
There was an odd expression on Johnny’s face as he handed the weapon back to Tom. “Take a look at it,” he said. “Tell me whether it’s loaded or not.”
Tom looked at it. Except for a few hours on the firing range, he had had no experience with guns; he couldn’t have taken apart a Markheim and reassembled it if his life depended on it. But he had seen his- father take the old revolver out of the leather case many times before.
Now Tom could see that this was not the same gun.
The thing in his hand was large and awkward. The handgrips didn’t fit; there was no trigger guard, and no trigger. Several inches along the gleaming metal barrel was a shiny stud, and below it a dial with notches on it.
“That’s funny,” Tom said. “I’ve never seen anything like this thing before.”
Greg took it from him, balanced it in his hand. “Doesn’t feel right,” he said. “All out of balance.”
“Look at the barrel,” Johnny said quietly.
Greg looked. There was no hole in the end of the barrel. “This thing’s crazy,” he said.
“And then some,” Johnny said. “You haven’t had this out of the case since you took it from the pack?”
“Just once,” said Tom, “and I put it right back. I hardly looked at it. Say, maybe it’s just a new model Dad got.”
“It’s no new model. I’m not even sure it’s a gun,” Johnny said. “Doesn’t feel like a gun.”