Then in another room a bright light shone, and when they walked in, they found a sealed lock and an inner hatch. They moved curiously into the lock, and sealed the door behind them, heard the automatic pumps whir, until the inner hatchway sprang open, and they walked into a brilliant flare of lights. It was a large room, lined with mercury vapor lamps and carbon arcs, a room so damp and hot that their cold suits were drenched with water, and they stood in little individual rainstorms, until they could peer through their dripping helmets at the row upon row of green things, growing plants in huge tanks. The hydroponic tanks—to provide growing food, to cleanse the great ship of carbon dioxide and to replenish the feeble stores of oxygen the ship could carry for five hundred people. They wiped the water from their suits in sheets, and moved back through the lock. Out once again in the icy corridor the water froze in solid sheets upon them, and tinkled and crashed to the floor as they broke it off. But still they moved to the rear, on toward the wonderful engines that lay in the bowels of the ship.
Tuck knew the layout of the ship; he had explored the Earth ship in minute detail during the passage out to Titan, and was familiar with what to expect of such ships. But David had never before traveled on a rocket ship; his acquaintance had been confined to a brief visit now and then, and he followed Tuck with open mouth and wide eyes, finding amazement in every turn of the passageway, excitement in every compartment. And when they opened the hatch that led to the engine rooms and generators David could hardly believe that a single ship could carry propelling engines so huge.
But Tuck didn’t wait for his friend. In an instant he was down among the generators, examining the engines, moving swiftly from one great pile of machinery to another, eyes growing wider, more incredulous by the minute. And when David finally caught up with him, he found the Earth boy sitting stunned on an auxiliary generator, staring about in bewilderment. “What’s wrong, boy? Are you sick?”
“Sick? No—no. I’m—I’m fine. I—I just can’t understand it—”
David glanced around nervously. “Understand what?”
Tuck stared up at him, hollow-eyed. “The engines!”
“What’s wrong with the engines?”
“There’s nothing wrong with them. They’re perfectly good, common, ordinary, everyday interplanetary atomics. There isn’t any interstellar drive on this ship!”
David sat down heavily. “I thought not. Because if there were, it would be easy for them to escape. And my father thought it would be suicide for them—”
Tuck nodded, speaking almost as if he were in an unbelievable dream. “It would be suicide. They would have to make this ship a colony—a permanent colony, drifting endlessly in space. They would have to take their bearings, and head out into deep space until their power gave out—and then they would have to drift. They would keep going, and they would reach their star—someday. But it would take three hundred years.” He looked up at David. “Do you realize what that would mean? That would be twelve generations to live and die aboard this ship before it reached its destination! And what might they find, even if they reached it? A planet they could live on? Who knows? There might not be any planets in the system they reached—or there might not be any oxygen, any food. They would never know until they got there—and they might never even survive to reach it—it would be almost hopeless to try and support five hundred people, and their children, and their children’s children, on a ship like this for three hundred years.”
David nodded. “But there would be a chance.”
“A chance? What kind of a chance? A billion to one?”
“More chance than staying here. Because at least the colony would be free.”
Tuck stared at the engines about them. “Do you think that they would actually try it?”
David nodded, very slowly. “I know my people,” he said. “Even a billion-to-one chance at freedom would be better, to them. But only if there was no hope here.”
“But Cortell is urging them into it now!”
“Cortell is a fool. He wants to lead, and he hates Earth—more than anything else in his life, he hates Earth. He wants to stop the mines, destroy Earth’s power, no matter what the cost. And this is the way he can do it.”
They sat in silence for a few minutes. Then Tuck said, “There’s still time to stop him. The ship isn’t loaded completely; there is still the whole colony and their clothes and supplies to load. We’ve still got a little time.” He started up the ladder to the corridor. “Come on—we can go out where we came in. We can get the Snooper and go get dad at the Earth ship. And then we can get your father, and they’ll have to listen to reason.” He stopped suddenly, cocking his ear. “Listen! Do you hear something?”
David listened, and his face went white. The sound was clear now, a thin, high whistling note, with a strange throbbing undertone. “That’s a pump,” David whispered. “We’d better hurry!”
They rushed upward, reaching the port completely out of breath. The whine was louder now, and the throbbing had become a clearly distinguishable pom-pom-pom of pumping pistons. They scanned the outside of the ship carefully, then slipped down the gangway, dousing their lights as they went. Once back in the tunnel they walked slowly, flicking their lights briefly every ten steps or so. “We’ll have to dodge the Murexide,” David whispered, “but it sounds like the pumps are nearby. That cave-in must have been very recent. It may have been the thing that was holding Cortell up all along.”
“But how would they get to this side of the cave-in to set the pumps in motion?”
“They must have tunneled around the cave-in. It would have taken them two or three days, and that’s about right—” He stopped short, and stepped gingerly across the deadly gray strips in their path, then moved quickly along. They reached the Y, and still saw no one, but the sound of the pumps was imminent now. Carefully they crept along the wall, keeping the curve of the wall between them and the pumps—and then, almost on top of them, they heard voices, and froze against the wall—
“—still think there’s something fishy about it,” a voice was shouting above the pumps. “Don’t have cave-ins like this just out of a clear blue sky. Especially when we’re ready to get going—”
“Come on, get the bags in there and shut up,” another voice snarled. “We got enough to do without crying about everything.”
“Yeah, but why do they gotta make us do it?” There was a dull thump as another sandbag was slammed into place. “Who do they think we are, anyway? And it couldn’t be a little break, nothin’ like that. Oh, no. Gotta be four feet high—”
“All right, all right. Stop whining! Did you bring the sealer?”
There were more sounds, interspersed with grunts, and a hiss of the sealer pump as one of the men squirted the airtight plastic caulking over the sandbags. Tuck poked David, eyes wide with alarm. “They’re closing up the opening!” he whispered hoarsely.
“I know it. Think I’m blind?”
“But the Snooper! It’s outside! How’ll we get back?”
David waved him to silence. One of the men was walking down the tunnel toward them. They shrank against the wall, hardly daring to breathe—
“Now where are you going, for the love of mike?”
The footsteps halted. “I thought I heard something—”