“We’re zeroing in on you, Curmudgeon. You have one minute to abandon ship.” The yacht was growing brighter every second, as if stagehands were switching kliegs on it from some invisible rafters. “Jump off on the far side,” Hake added. “Our aim might not be too good.”
The one-legged man scowled and motioned fiercely for Hake to turn off the transmitter. “Watch what you say to them!” he snapped. “They might still get away from the beam—” He stared anxiously out the darkened slit, then began to smile. “I think they missed their chance,” he said. “That ship’s as good as sunk.”
The receiver was rattling with Curmudgeon’s voice. “Hake, I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but if you think you’re going to—”
“Not going to, Curmudgeon. It’s already done. You have maybe thirty seconds, then I think your hydrogen tank may blow.” The sunbeam was contracting and brightening now. Individual shafts of merged beams dipped and wobbled across the surface of the sea, and a palest plume of steam shimmered off some wave-tops. “Fifteen seconds!”
From the corner where he was roped to a chair came Yosper’s voice, turgid with rage, “Hake, you little bastard, you’re going to wish you were never born.”
There was a confused babble of voices from the radio, and then it clicked off again. Even through the grayed glass it was becoming painful to look at the ship. Smoke rose from its side. The paint scorched away. Glass was shattering in the portholes, and the gay line of flags at its masts blew away as ash. The ninety-percent concentration disk shrank to a thousand milliradians, five hundred, three hundred—
The globe of liquid hydrogen on the afterdeck never did blow. It did not have time. Before the heat of its shell boiled off enough of the LH2 within to shatter the valves, the ninety-percent disk had shrunk away from it, narrowing in on the center of the hull, just above the waterline. Hake could not see that the metal was glowing. The reflectance from the dot of light far overpowered the mere incandescence of steel. But suddenly a dollop of softened metal slid away and splashed into the sea, with an immense production of steam. The vessel rocked wildly and began to settle in the water.
Standing at the darkened window, Hake had a sudden stab of concern. “When it sinks, what’ll happen to the people in the water?”
Robling grinned and pointed to the hologram monitor. Already the purple crosshairs were climbing the sky, up and away from the ship itself, and the spot was defocusing again. “Anyway, they’re in the shadow. It won’t go down for half an hour,” he said.
The woman at the control board snapped, “And about time! Do you know what this little game is costing? We do fifteen million dollars a day, and we’ve already lost an hour’s production—”
“Cheap at the price,” said the one-legged man. “Let’s call the cavalry in.”
“I already have,” she said. The long-range screen picked them up first, but as soon as Hake’s eyes recovered from staring at the bright spot on the side of the dying ship he could see them. A destroyer and two gunboats of the A1 Halwani “navy”—probably they were the A1 Halwani navy —coming in over the horizon, with white bow-waves to show their racing speed.
Hake put his arm around Leota, beside him at the window, and said wonderingly, “We’ve done it.”
“Not quite,” said Rama Reddi, cradling a machine-pistol in his arm; and from the other side of the control room, his brother said: “That is so, Hake. You have still to settle with us.”
There was more happening than Hake understood. It was not a new situation; he had been living under those conditions for months, but familiarity did not make it easier. Leota rescued him. “Of course,” she said, pressing against his arm. “Horny knows. We promised to give you the codes and the keys, and we wilL”
Yosper yelped venomously, “Slut! You’re fooling around with the most muscle in the world!”
“We’ll just have to take that chance,” said Leota, “although your friends don’t really look that dangerous right now.” And they were not. They were doing the best they could, and even in rubber boats or struggling in the water itself they were far from toothless. There were half a dozen separate struggles going on in the tiny view of the CRT display. A1 Halwani’s naval might was up to the challenge. They lobbed vomit-gas grenades at the Team members in the water, and power launches fished them out, one by one, some still struggling, some without fight, scooped out of the water like guppies in a breeding tank.
“We are still waiting,” hissed Rama Reddi, meaning that they did not want to wait at all.
“As soon as we get this nailed down,” Leota promised. One of the launches was coming in to beach itself before them, and a group of sloppy-looking, but quite efficient, A1 Halwani sailors dragged two bound figures into the dugout.
“Now we’re getting somewhere,” said Leota with satisfaction. “This one I know—” she touched the contemptuously angry Sheik Hassabou with the toe of her shoe—“but who’s this other creep?”
“Why, that is one of our leading American sabotage specialists,” Hake said. “Good to see you again, Curmudgeon.”
The spy was in no position to act, lying on his belly, hands cuffed behind him, one side of his bristly beard slicked down with his own blood. But he could talk. “Every one of you,” he said, “is dead. You won’t see another sun rise.”
Estimating the odds, Hake was not very sure Curmudgeon was wrong. Tied and helpless as he was, there was behind him the immense mastodon strength of the Team, and if Curmudgeon thought it capable of squashing all these impromptu opponents Hake could see no good reason to disagree.
Robling and the hologram operator were trying to get everyone out of the way while they got to the serious business of getting the thermal tower back into production. The Reddis did not want to be out of the way. They had not relinquished their machine-pistols, and they were whispering to each other in their own language, eyes taking in everything that was going on. It would not be possible to stall them very long. But then what?
Hake’s head was beginning to clear. It didn’t help. He was playing in a game whose rules had never been explained; worse, he couldn’t tell which team the players were on. Once upon a time he had thought his life as a clergyman was unbearably complex. Here in this strange-looking room on the Persian Gulf complexity was cubed, muddle was confounded, a simple soul like himself could not tell friend from foe. Ranting Yosper, blustering Curmudgeon, silent and deadly Hassabou were easy to diagnose as enemies. But were the Reddis friends? Unthinkable! Robling, the hologram operator Omaya, the other strangers? Apparently they were. And Leota, encouraging him to fulfill his bargain with the Reddis, surely she was a friend? Of course she was, Hake assured himself firmly, at least a friend; but that was the only “of course” he could find.
Leota, at least, seemed to know exactly what to do. “Let’s get on with it,” she said, smiling cheerfully at the Hydro Fuels crew.
“About time,” grunted Robling, his eyes on the screen where the purple hologram was sliding back to where it belonged. “I think we’re okay now. As far as I’m concerned, you people can get on with your private business.”
“Here? At this place, with all these witnesses?” Subirama Reddi demanded. “Are you trying to cheat us?”
Leota said firmly, “The deal was that Hake would give you the information, that’s all. Said nothing about when or where.”
“But—these men are from the Team! In one minute they can change all the codes, and it will be worthless!”
Leota shook her head. “Tell you what. As soon as you’ve got what you want you can take off. Nobody else will leave here for an hour. Anyway, the prisoners aren’t going to be talking to anyone for a while—they’ll be in jail in A1 Halwani, and I don’t think they’ll have any visitors.”