"What about the dark side?" Greg asked.
"If we want to see anything there, we'll either have to rig up lights or turn the rock around," Johnny said. "Let's cover this side first and see what we come up with."
He turned and leaped from the airlock, moving gracefully down toward the surface, using the bumper unit to guide himself with short bursts of compressed CO2, from the nozzle. Greg followed, pushing off harder and passing Johnny halfway down. Tom hesitated. It looked easy enough ... but he remembered the violent nausea of his first few hours of free fall.
Finally he gritted his teeth and jumped off after Greg. Instantly he knew that he had jumped too hard. He shot away from the orbit-ship like a bullet; the jagged asteroid surface leaped up at him. Frantically he grabbed for the bumper nozzle and pulled the trigger, trying to break his fall.
He felt the nozzle jerk in his hand, and then, abruptly, he was spinning off at a wild tangent from the asteroid, head over heels. For a moment it seemed that asteroid, orbit-ship and stars were all wheeling crazily around him. Then he realized what had happened. He fired the bumper again, and went spinning twice as fast. The third time he timed the blast, aiming the nozzle carefully, and the spinning almost stopped.
He fought down nausea, trying to get his bearings. He was three hundred yards out from the asteroid, almost twice as far from the orbit-ship. He stared down at the rock as he moved slowly away from it. Before, from the orbit-ship, he had been able to see only the bright side of the huge rock; now he could see the sharp line of darkness across one side.
But there was something else....
He fired the bumper again to steady himself, peering into the blackness beyond the light-line on the rock. He snapped on his helmet lamp, aimed the spotlight beam down to the dark rock surface. Greg and Johnny were landing now on the bright side, with Greg almost out of sight over the "horizon" ... but Tom's attention was focussed on something he could see only now as he moved away from the asteroid surface.
His spotlight caught it ... something bright and metallic, completely hidden on the dark side, lying in close to the surface but not quite on the surface. Then suddenly Tom knew what it was ... the braking jets of a Class I Ranger, crouching beyond the reach of sunlight in the shadow of the asteroid....
Swiftly he fired the bumper again, turning back toward the orbit-ship. His hand went to the speaker-switch, but he caught himself in time. Any warning shouted to Greg and Johnny would certainly be picked up by the ship. But he had to give warning somehow.
He tumbled into the airlock, searching for a flare in his web belt. It was a risk ... the Ranger ship might pick up the flash ... but he had to take it. He was unscrewing the fuse cap from the flare when he saw Greg and Johnny leap up from the asteroid surface.
Then he saw what had alarmed them. Slowly, the Ranger was moving out from its hiding place behind the rock. Tom reached out to catch Greg as he came plummeting into the lock. There was a flash from the Ranger's side, and Johnny Coombs' voice boomed in his earphones: "Get inside! Get the lock closed, fast ... hurry up, can't waste a second."
Johnny caught the lip of the lock, dragged himself inside frantically. They were spinning the airlock door closed when they heard the thundering explosion, felt the ship lurch under their feet, and all three of them went crashing to the deck.
For a stunned moment they were helpless as they struggled to pick themselves up. The stable airlock deck was suddenly no longer stable ... it was lurching back and forth like a rowboat on a heavy sea, and they grabbed the shock-bars along the bulkheads to steady themselves. "What happened?" Greg yelped. "I saw a ship...."
As if in answer there was another crash belowdecks, and the lurching became worse. "They're firing on us, that's what happened," Johnny Coombs growled.
"Well, they're shaking us loose at the seams," Greg said. "We've got to get this crate out of here." He reached for his helmet, began unsnapping his pressure suit.
"Leave it on," Johnny snapped.
"But we can't move fast enough in these things...."
"Leave it on all the same. If they split the hull open, you'll be dead in ten seconds without a suit."
Somewhere below they heard the steadyclang-clang-clangof the emergency-station's bell ... already one of the compartments somewhere had been breached, and was pouring its air out into the vacuum of space. "But what can we do?" Greg said. "They could tear us apart!"
"First, we see what they've already done," Johnny said, spinning the wheel on the inner lock. "If they plan to tear us apart, we're done for, but they may want to try to board us.... We'll wait and see."
An orbit-ship under fire was completely vulnerable. One well-placed shell could rip it open like a balloon.
Tom and Greg followed Johnny to where the control cabin was located. In control they found alarm lights flashing in three places on the instrument panel. Another muffled crash roared through the ship, and a new row of lights sprang on along the panel.
"How are the engines?" Greg said, staring at the flickering lights.
"Can't tell. Looks like they're firing at the main jets, but they've ripped open three storage holds, too. They're trying to disable us...."
"What about theScavenger?"
Johnny checked a gauge. "The airlock compartment is all right, so the scout ships haven't been touched. They couldn't fire on them without splitting the whole ship down the middle." Johnny leaned forward, flipped on the viewscreen, and an image came into focus.
It was a Class I Ranger, and there was no doubt of its origin. Like the one they had seen berthing at the Sun Lake City racks, this ship had a glossy black hull, with the golden triangle-and-J insignia standing out in sharp relief in the dim sunlight.
"It's our friends, all right," Johnny said.
"But what are they trying to do?" Tom said.
Even as they watched, a pair of scooters broke from the side of the Ranger and slid down toward the sun side of the asteroid. "I don't know," Johnny said. "I think they intended to stay hidden, until Tom lost control of his bumper, and got far enough around there to spot them." He frowned as the first scooter touched down on the asteroid surface.
"Can't we fire on them?" Greg said angrily.
"Not the way this tub is lurching around. They've got our main gyros, and the auxilliaries aren't powerful enough to steady us. Another blast or two could send us spinning like a top, and we'd have nothing to stabilize us...."
There was another flash from the Ranger's hull, and the ship jerked under their feet. "Well, we're a sitting duck here," Greg said. "Maybe those engines will still work." He slid into the control seat, flipped the drive switches to fire the side jets in opposite pairs. They fired, steadying the lurching of the ship somewhat, but there was no response from the main engines. "No good. We couldn't begin to run from them. We're stuck here."
"They could outrun us anyway," Tom said, watching the viewscreen. "And they're moving in closer now."
"They're going to board us," Tom said.
Johnny nodded, his eyes suddenly bright. "I think you're right. And if they do, we may have a chance. But we've got to split up.... Greg, you take the control cabin here, try to keep them out if you can. Tom can cover the main corridor to the storage holds, and I'll take the engine room section. That will sew up the entrances to control, here, and give us a chance to stop them."
"They may have a dozen men," Tom said. "They could just shoot us down."
"I don't think so," Johnny said. "They wantus, not the ship, or they wouldn't bother to board us. We may not be able to hold them off, but we can try."
"What about making a run for it in theScavenger?" Greg said.
Johnny chuckled grimly. "It'd be a mighty short run. That Ranger's got homing shells that could blow theScavengerto splinters if we tried it. Our best bet is to put up such a brawl that they think twice about taking us."
They parted in the corridor outside control, Johnny heading down for the engine room corridors, while Tom ran up toward the main outer-shell corridor, a Markheim stunner in his hand. The entire outer shell of the ship was storage space, each compartment separately sealed and connected with the two main corridors that circled the ship. On each side these corridors came together to join the short entry corridors from the scout-ship airlocks.
Tom knew that the only way the ship could be boarded was through those locks; a man stationed at the place where the main corridors joined could block any entry from the locks ... as long as he could hold his position. Tom reached the junction of the corridors, and crouched close to the wall. By peering around the corner, he had a good view of the airlock corridor.
Tom gripped the Markheim tightly, and he dialed it down to a narrow beam. Nobody had ever been killed by a stunner ... but a direct hit with a narrow beam could paralyze a man for three days.
There was movement at the far end of the airlock corridor. A helmeted head peered around the turn in the corridor; then two men in pressure suits moved into view, walking cautiously, weapons in hand. Tom shrank back against the wall, certain they had not seen him. He waited until they were almost to the junction with the main corridor; then he took aim and pressed the trigger stud on his Markheim. There was an ugly ripping sound as the gun jerked in his hand. The two men dropped as though they had been pole-axed.
A shout, a scrape of metal against metal, and a shot ripped back at him from the end of the corridor. Tom jerked back fast, but not quite fast enough. He felt a sledge-hammer blow on his shoulder, felt his arm jerk in a cramping spasm while the corridor echoed the low rumble of sub-sonics. He flexed his arm to work out the spasm ... they were using a wide beam, hardly strong enough to stun a man. His heart pounded. They were being careful, very careful....
Two more men rounded the bend in the corridor. Tom fired, but they hit the deck fast, and the beam missed. The first one jerked to his feet, charged up the corridor toward him, dodging and sliding. Tom followed him in his sights, fired three times as the Markheim heated up in his hand. The beam hit the man's leg, dumping him to the deck, and bounced off to catch the second one.
But now there was another sound, coming from the corridor behind him. Voices, shouts, clanging of boots. He pressed against the wall, listening. The sounds were from below. They must have gotten past Johnny ... probably the men on the scooters. Tom looked around helplessly. If they came up behind him, he was trapped in a crossfire. But if he left his position, more men could come in through the airlock. Even now two more came around the bend, starting up the corridor for him....
Quite suddenly, the lights went out.
The men stopped. Sound stopped. The corridor was pitch black. Tom fired wildly down the corridor, heard shouts and oaths from the men, but he could see nothing. Then, ahead, a flicker of light as a headlamp went on. The men from the airlock were close, moving in on him, and from behind he saw light bouncing off the corridor walls....
He jerked open the hatch to a storage hold, ducked inside, and slammed the hatch behind him. He pressed against the wall, panting.
He waited.
Suddenly an idea flickered in Tom's mind.
It was a chance ... a long chance ... but it was something. If they were going to be captured in spite of anything they could do, even a long chance would be worth trying....
He waited in the darkness, tried to think it through. It was a wild idea, an utterly impossible idea, he had never heard of it being tried before ... butanychance was better than none. He remembered what Johnny had said in the control cabin. The Ranger ship would have homing shells. An attempt to make a run with theScavengermight be disastrous.
He thought about it, trying to reason it out. The Jupiter Equilateral men obviously wanted them alive. They did not dare to kill Roger Hunter's sons, because Roger Hunter might have told them where the bonanza was. And Jupiter Equilateral would not dare let anyone of them break away. If one of them got back to Mars, the whole U.N. Patrol would be out in the Belt....
The plan became clear in his mind, but he had to let Greg know. He fingered the control of his helmet radio. The boarding party would have a snooper, but if he was quick, they wouldn't have time to nail him. He buzzed an attention code. "Greg? Can you hear me?"
Silence. He buzzed again, and waited. What was wrong? Had they already broken through to the control cabin and taken Greg? He buzzed again. "Greg! Sound off if you can hear me."
More silence. Then a click. "Tom?"
"Here. Are you all right?"
"So far. You?"
"They got past me, but they didn't hit me. How's Johnny?"
"I don't know," Greg said. "I think he's been hurt. Tom, you'd better get off, they'll have snoopers...."
"All right, listen," Tom said. "How does it look to you?"
"Bad. We're outnumbered, they'll be through to here any minute."
"All right, I've got an idea. It's risky, but it might let us pull something out of this mess. I'll need some time, though."
"How much?"
"Ten, fifteen minutes."
There was an edge to Greg's voice. "What are you planning?"
"I can't tell you, they're listening in. But if it works...."
"Look, don't do anything stupid."
"I can't hear you," Tom said. "You try to hold them for fifteen minutes ... and don't worry. Take care of yourself."
Tom snapped off the speaker and moved to the hatchway. The corridor was empty, and pitch black. He started down toward the airlock, then stopped short at the sound of voices and the flicker of headlamps up ahead.
He crouched back, but the lights were not moving. Guards at the lock, making certain that nobody tried to board their own ship. Tom grinned to himself. They weren't missing any bets, he thought.
Except one. There was one bet they wouldn't even think of.
He backtracked to the storage hold, crossed through it, and out into the far corridor. He followed the gentle curve of the deck a quarter of the way around the ship. Twice along the way he stumbled in the darkness, but saw no sign of the raiders. At last he reached the far side, and the corridor leading to No. 2 airlock. Again he could see the lamps of the guards around the bend; they were stationed directly inside their own lock.
Inching forward, he peered into blackness. Each step made a muffled clang on the deck plates. He edged his boots along as quietly as possible, reaching along the wall with his hand until he felt the lip of a hatchway.
The lights and voices seemed nearer now. In the dim reflected light he saw the sign on the door of the hatchway:
No. 2 AirlockBE SURE PRESSURE GAUGE IS AT ZERO BEFORE OPENING HATCH
No. 2 Airlock
BE SURE PRESSURE GAUGE IS AT ZERO BEFORE OPENING HATCH
He checked the gauge, silently spun the wheel. There was apingas the seals broke. He pulled the hatch open just enough to squeeze into the lock, then closed it behind him. Then he switched on the pumps, waiting impatiently until the red "all clear" signal flashed on. Then he opened the outside lock.
Just beyond, he could see the sleek silvery lines of theScavenger.
It was their only chance.
He took a deep breath, and jumped across the gap to the open lock of theScavenger.
To Greg Hunter the siege of the orbit-ship had been a nerve-wracking game of listening and waiting for something to happen.
In the darkness of the control cabin he stretched his fingers, cramped from gripping the heavy Markheim stunner, and checked the corridor outside again. There was no sound in the darkness there, no sign of movement. Somewhere far below he heard metal banging on metal; minutes before he thought he had heard the sharp ripping sound of a stunner blast overhead, but he wasn't sure. Wherever the fighting was going on, it was not here.
He shook his head as his uneasiness mounted. Why hadn't Johnny come back? He'd gone off to try and disable the Ranger ship leaving Greg to guard the control cabin. Why no sign of the marauders in the control cabin corridor? This should have been the first place they would head for, if they planned to take the ship, but there had been nothing but silence and darkness. Johnny had been gone near 15 minutes already. Greg became more uneasy.
He waited. Suddenly, bitterly, he realized the hopelessness of it. Even if Johnny did manage to damage the Ranger ship, what difference would it make? They had been fools to come out here, idiots to ignore Tawney's warning, the three of them. Tawney had told them in so many words that there would be trouble, and they had come out anyway, just begging for it.
Well, now they had what they'd begged for. Greg slammed his fist into his palm angrily. What had they expected? That the big company would step humbly aside for them, with a fortune hanging in the balance? If they had even begun to think it through before they started....
But they hadn't, and now it was too late. They were under attack; Johnny was off on a fool's errand, gone too long for comfort, and Tom ... Greg glanced at his watch. It had been ten minutes since Tom's call. What had he meant by it? A plan, he said. A long chance.
He couldn't shake off the cold feeling in his chest when he thought about Tom. What if something happened to him....
Greg remembered how he had grown to resent his brother. The time when they were very young and Tom had been struck by the sickness, a native Martian virus they called it. He remembered the endless nights of attention given to Tom alone. From then on somehow they weren't friends any more. But now all that seemed to disappear and Greg only wished that Tom would appear down the corridor....
A sound startled him. He tensed, gripping the stunner, peering into the darkness. Had he heard something? Or was it his own foot scraping on the deck plate? He held his breath, listening, and the sound came again, louder.
Someone was moving stealthily up the corridor.
Greg waited, covered by the edge of the hatchway. It might be Johnny returning, or maybe even Tom ... but there was no sign of recognition. Whoever it was was coming silently....
Then a beam of light flared from a headlamp, and he saw the blue crackle of a stunner. He jerked back as the beam bounced off the metal walls. Then he was firing point blank down the corridor, his stunner on a tight beam, a deadly pencil of violent energy. He heard a muffled scream and a bulk loomed up in front of him, crashed to the deck at his feet.
He fired again. Another crash, a shout, and then the sound of footsteps retreating. He waited, his heart pounding, but there was nothing more.
The first attempt on the control cabin had failed.
Five minutes later the second attempt began. This time there was no warning sound. A sudden, ear-splitting crash, a groan of tortured metal, and the barricaded hatchway glowed dull red. Another crash followed. The edge of the hatch split open, pouring acrid Murexide fumes into the cabin. A third explosion breached the door six inches; Greg could see headlamps in the corridor beyond.
He fired through the crack, pressing down the stud until the stunner scorched his hand. Then he heard boots clanging up the other corridor. He pressed back against the wall, waited until the sounds were near, then threw open the hatch. For an instant he made a perfect target, but the raiders did not fire. The stunner buzzed in his hand, and once again the footfalls retreated.
Theywerebeing careful!
Silence then, and blackness. Minutes passed ... five, ten.... Greg checked the time again. It was over twenty minutes since Tom had talked to him. What had happened? Whatever Tom had planned must have misfired, or something would have happened by now. For a moment he considered leaving his post and starting down the dark corridor to search ... but where to search? There was nothing to do but wait and hope for a miracle.
Then suddenly the lights blazed on in the control cabin and the corridor outside. An attention signal buzzed in Greg's earphones. "All right, Hunter, it's all over," a voice grated. "You've got five minutes to get down to No. 3 lock. If you make us come get you, you'll get hurt."
"I'll chance it," Greg snapped back. "Come on up."
"We're through fooling," the voice said. "You'd better get down here. And bring your brother with you."
"Sure," Greg said. "Start holding your breath."
The contact broke for a moment, then clicked on again. This time it was another voice. "We've got Johnny Coombs down here," it said. "You want him to stay alive, you start moving. Without your stunner."
Greg chewed his lip. They could be bluffing ... but they might not be. "I want to see Johnny," he said.
On the control panel a viewscreen flickered to life. "Take a look, then," the voice said in his earphones.
They had Johnny, all right. A burly guard was holding his good arm behind his back. Greg could see the speaker wires jerked loose from his helmet.
"It's up to you," the voice said. "You've got three minutes. If you're not down here by then, this helmet comes off and your friend goes out the lock. It's quick that way, but it's not very pleasant."
Johnny was shaking his head violently; the guard wrenched at his arm, and the miner's face twisted in pain. "Two minutes," the voice said.
"Okay," Greg said. "I'm coming down."
"Drop the stunner right there."
He dropped the weapon onto the deck. Three steps out into the corridor, and two guards were there to meet him, stunners raised. They marched him up the ramp to the outer level corridor and around to No. 3 lock.
They were waiting there with Johnny. A moment later the guards herded them through the lock and into the hold of the Ranger ship, stripped off their suits, and searched them.
A big man with a heavy face and coarse black hair came into the cabin. He looked at Johnny and Greg and grunted. "You must be Hunter," he said to Greg. "Where's the other one?"
"What other one?" Greg said.
"Your brother. Where is he?"
"How would I know?" Greg said.
The man's face darkened. "You'd be smart to watch your tongue," he said. "We know there were three of you, we want the other one."
The man turned to a guard. "What about it?"
"Don't know, Doc. Nobody's reported him."
"Then take a crew and search the ship. We were due back hours ago. He's in there somewhere."
"Sure, Doc." The guard disappeared through the lock. The man called Doc motioned Greg and Johnny through into the main cabin.
"What are you planning to do with us?" Greg demanded.
"You'll find out soon enough." Doc's mouth twisted angrily.
A guard burst into the cabin. "Doc, there's just nobody there! We've scoured the ship."
"You think he just floated away in his space suit?" Doc growled. "Find him.Tawney only needs one of them, but we can't take a chance on the other one getting back...." He broke off, his eyes on the viewscreen. "Did you check those scout ships?"
"No, I thought...."
"Get down there and check them." Doc turned back to the viewscreen impatiently.
Greg caught Johnny's eye, saw the big miner's worried frown. "Where is he?" he whispered.
"I don't know. Thought you did...."
"All I know is that he had some kind of scheme in mind."
"Shut up," Doc said to them. "If you're smart, you'll be strapping down before we...." He broke off in mid sentence, listening.
Quite suddenly, the Ranger ship had begun to vibrate. Somewhere, far away, there was the muffled rumble of engines.
Doc whirled to the viewscreen. Greg and Johnny looked at the same instant, and Johnny groaned.
Below them, theScavenger's jets were flaring. First the pale starter flame, then a long stream of fire, growing longer as the engines developed thrust.
Doc slammed down a switch, roared into a speaker. "That scout ship ... stop it! He's trying to make a break!"
Two guards appeared at the lock almost instantly, but it was too late. Already she was straining at her magnetic cable moorings; then the exhaust flared, and the little scout ship leaped away from the orbit-ship, moving out at a tangent to the asteroid's orbit, picking up speed, moving faster and faster....
In toward the orbit of Mars.
The man called Doc had gone pale. Now he snapped on the speaker again. "Frank? Stand by on missile control. He's asking for it."
"Right," the voice came back. "I'm sighting in."
TheScavengerwas moving fast now, dwindling in the viewscreen. One panel of the screen went telescopic to track her. "All right," Doc said. "Fire one and two."
From both sides of the Ranger, tiny rockets flared. Like twin bullets the homing shells moved out, side by side, in the track of the escapingScavenger. With a strangled cry, Greg leaped forward, but Johnny caught his arm.
"Johnny,Tom's on ... that thing...."
"I know. But he's got a chance."
Already the homing shells were out of sight; only the twin flares were visible. Greg stared helplessly at the tiny light-spot of theScavenger. At first she had been moving straight, but now she was dodging and twisting, her side-jets flaring at irregular intervals. The twin pursuit shells mimicked each change in course, drawing closer to her every second.
And then there was a flash, so brilliant it nearly blinded them, and theScavengerburst apart in space. The second shell struck a fragment; there was another flash. Then there was nothing but a nebulous powdering of tiny metal fragments.
The last run of theScavengerhad ended.
Dazed, Greg turned away from the screen, and somewhere, as if in a dream, he heard Doc saying, "All right, boys, strap this pair down. We've got a lot of work to do before we can get out of here."
Wherever they were planning to take them, the captors took great pains to make sure that their two prisoners did not escape before they were underway. Greg and Johnny were strapped down securely into accelleration cots. Two burly guards were assigned to them, and the guards were taking their job seriously. One of the two was watching them at all times, and both men held their stunners on ready.
Meanwhile, under Doc's orders, the crew of the Jupiter Equilateral ship began a systematic looting of the orbit-ship they had disabled. Earlier they had merely searched the cabins and compartments. Now a steady stream of pressure-suited men crossed through the airlocks into the crippled vessel, marched back with packing cases full of tape records, microfilm spools, stored computer data ... anything that might conceivably contain information. The control cabin was literally torn apart. Every storage hold was ransacked.
A team of six men was dispatched to the asteroid surface, searching for any sign of mining or prospecting activity. They came back an hour later, long-faced and empty handed. Doc took their reports, his scowl growing deeper and deeper.
Finally the last of the searchers reported in. "Doc, we'd scraped it clean, and there's nothing there. Not one thing that we didn't check before."
"There'sgotto be something there," Doc said.
"You tell me where else to look, and I'll do it."
Doc shook his head ominously. "Tawney's not going to like it," he said. "There's no other place it could be...."
"Well, at least we have this pair," the other said, jerking a thumb at Greg and Johnny. "They'll know."
Doc looked at them darkly. "Yes, and they'll tell, too, or I don't know Tawney."
Greg watched it all happening, heard the noises, saw the packing-cases come through the cabin, and still he could not quite believe it. He caught Johnny's eye, then turned away, suddenly sick. Johnny shook his head. "Take it easy, boy."
"He didn't even have a chance," Greg said.
"I know that. He must have known it too."
"But why? What was he thinking of?"
"Maybe he thought he could make it. Maybe he thought it was the only chance...."
There was no other answer that Greg could see, and the ache in his chest was deeper.
There was no way to bring Tom back now. However things had been between them, they could never be changed now. But he knew that as long as he was still breathing, somebody somehow was going to answer for that last desperate run of theScavenger....
It had been an excellent idea, Tom Hunter thought to himself, and it had worked perfectly, exactly as he had planned it ... so far. But now, as he clung to his precarious perch, he wondered if it had not worked out a little too well. The first flush of excitement that he had felt when he saw theScavengerblow apart in space had begun to die down now; on its heels came the unpleasant truth, the realization that only the easy part lay behind him so far. The hard part was yet to come, and if that were to fail....
He realized, suddenly, that he was afraid. He was well enough concealed at the moment, clinging tightly against the outside hull of the Ranger ship, hidden behind the open airlock door. But soon the airlock would be pulled closed, and then the real test would come.
Carefully, he ran through the plan again in his mind. He was certain now that his reasoning was right. There had been two dozen men on the raider ship; there had been no question, even from the start, that they would succeed in boarding the orbit-ship and taking its occupants prisoners. The Jupiter Equilateral ship had not appeared there by coincidence. They had come looking for something that they had not found.
And the only source of information left was Roger Hunter's sons. The three of them together might have held the ship for hours, or even days ... but with engines and radios smashed, there had been no hope of contacting Mars for help. Ultimately, they would have been taken.
As he had crouched in the dark storage hold in the orbit-ship, Tom had realized this. He had also realized that, once captured, they would never have been freed and allowed to return to Mars.
If the three of them were taken, they were finished. But what if only two were taken? He had pushed it aside as a foolish idea, at first. The boarding party would never rest until they had accounted for all three. They wouldn't dare go back to their headquarters leaving one live man behind to tell the story....
Unless they thought the third man was dead. If they were sure of that ...certainof it ... they would not hesitate to take the remaining two away. And if, by chance, the third man wasn't as dead as they thought he was, and could find a way to follow them home, there might still be a chance to free the other two.
It was then that he thought of theScavenger, and knew that he had found a way.
In the cabin of the little scout ship he had worked swiftly, fearful that at any minute one of the marauders might come aboard to search it. Tom was no rocket pilot, but he did know that the count-down was automatic, and that every ship could run on an autopilot, as a drone, following a prescribed course until it ran out of fuel. Even the shell-evasion mechanism could be set on automatic....
Quickly he set the autopilot, plotted a simple high school math course for the ship, a course the Ranger ship would be certain to see, and to fire upon. He set the count-down clock to give himself plenty of time for the next step.
Both the airlock to theScavengerand to the orbit-ship worked on electric motors. TheScavengerwas grappled to the orbit-ship's hull by magnetic cables. Tom dug into the ship's repair locker, found the wires and fuses that he needed, and swiftly started to work.
It was an ingenious device. The inner airlock door in the orbit-ship was triggered to a fuse. He had left it ajar; the moment it was closed, by anyone intending to board theScavenger, the fuse would burn, a circuit would open, and the little ship's autopilot would go on active. The ship would blast away from its moorings, head out toward Mars....
And the fireworks would begin. All that he would have to worry about then would be getting himself aboard the Ranger ship without being detected.
Which was almost impossible. But he knew there was a way. There was one place no one would think to look for him, if he could manage to keep out of range of the viewscreen lenses ... the outer hull of the ship. If he could clamp himself to the hull, somehow, and manage to cling there during blastoff, he could follow Greg and Johnny right home.
He checked the fuse on the airlock once again to make certain it would work. Then he waited, hidden behind the little scout ship's hull, until the orbit-ship swung around into shadow. He checked his suit dials ... oxygen for twenty-two hours, heater pack fully charged, soda-ash only half saturated ... it would do. Above him he could see the rear jets of the Ranger. He swung out onto the orbit-ship's hull, and began crawling up toward the enemy ship.
It was slow going. Every pressure suit had magnetic boots and hand-pads to enable crewmen to go outside and make repairs on the hull of a ship in transit. Tom clung, and moved, and clung again, trying to reach the protecting hull of the Ranger before the orbit-ship swung him around to the sun-side again....
He couldn't move fast enough. He saw the line of sunlight coming around the ship as it swung full into the sun. He froze, crouching motionless. If somebody on the Ranger spotted him now, it was all over. He was exposed like a lizard on a rock. He waited, hardly daring to breathe, as the ship spun ponderously around, carrying him into shadow again.
And nothing happened. He started crawling upward again, reached up to grab the mooring cable, and swung himself across to the hull of the Ranger. The airlock hung open; he scuttled behind it, clinging to the hull in its shadow just as Greg and Johnny were herded across by the Jupiter Equilateral guards.
Then he waited. There was no sound, no sign of life. After a while the Ranger's inner lock opened, and a group of men hurried across to the orbit-ship. Probably a searching party, Tom thought. Soon the men came back, then returned to the orbit-ship. After another minute, he felt the vibration of theScavenger's motors, and he knew that his snare had been triggered.
He saw the little ship break free and streak out in its curving trajectory. He saw the homing shells burst from the Ranger's tubes. TheScavengervanished from his range of vision, but moments later he saw the sudden flare of light reflected against the hull of the orbit-ship, and he knew his plan had worked, but the ordeal lay ahead.
And at the end of it, he might really be a dead man.
Hours later, the last group of looters left the orbit-ship, and the airlock to the Ranger clanged shut. Tom heard the sucking sound of the air-tight seals, then silence. The orbit-ship was empty, its insides gutted, its engines no longer operable. The Ranger hung like a long splinter of silver alongside her hull, poised and ready to move on.
He knew that the time had come. Very soon the blastoff and the accelleration would begin. He had a few moments to find a position of safety, no more.
Quickly, he began scrambling toward the rear of the Ranger's hull, hugging the metal sides, moving sideways like a crab. Ahead, he knew, the viewscreen lenses would be active; if one of them picked him up, it would be quite a jolt to the men inside the ship ... but it would be the end of his free ride.
But the major peril was the blastoff. Once the engines cut off, the ship would be in free fall. Then he could cling easily to the hull, walk all over it if he chose to, with the aid of his boots and hand-pads. But unless he found a way to anchor himself firmly to the hull during blastoff, he could be flung off like a pebble.
He heard a whirring sound, and saw the magnetic mooring cables jerk. The ship was preparing for blastoff. Automatic motors were drawing the cables and grappling plates into the hull. Moving quickly, Tom reached the rear cable. Here was his anchor, something to hold him tight to the hull! With one hand he loosened the web belt of his suit, looped it over a corner of the grappling plate as it pulled in to the hull.
The plate pulled tight against the belt. Each plate fit into a shallow excavation in the hull, fitting so tightly that the plates were all but invisible when they were in place. Tom felt himself pulled in tightly as the plate gripped the belt against the metal, and the whirring of the motor stopped.
For an instant it looked like the answer. The belt was wedged tight ... he couldn't possibly pull loose without ripping the nylon webbing of the belt. But a moment later the motor started whirring again. The plate pushed out from the hull a few inches, then started back, again pulling in the belt....
A good idea that just wouldn't work. The automatic machinery on a spaceship was built to perfection; nothing could be permitted to half-work. Tom realized what was happening. Unless the plate fit perfectly in its place, the cable motor could not shut off, and presently an alarm signal would start flashing on the control panel.
He pulled the belt loose, reluctantly. He would have to count on his boots and his hand-pads alone.
He searched the rear hull, looking for some break in the polished metal that might serve as a toehold. To the rear the fins flared out, supported by heavy struts. He made his way back, crouching close to the hull, and straddled one of the struts. He jammed his magnetic boots down against the hull, and wrapped his arms around the strut with all his strength.
Clinging there, he waited.
It wasn't a good position. The metal of the strut was polished and slick, but it was better than trying to cling to the open hull. He tensed now, not daring to relax for fear that the blastoff accelleration would slam him when he was unprepared.
Deep in the ship, the engines began to rumble. He felt it rather than heard it, a low-pitched vibration that grew stronger and stronger. The Ranger would not need a great thrust to move away from the orbit-ship ... but if they were in a hurry, they might start out at nearly Mars-escape....
The jets flared, and something slammed him down against the fin strut. The Ranger moved out, its engines roaring, accellerating hard. Tom felt as though he had been hit by a ton of rock. The strut seemed to press in against his chest; he could not breathe. His hands were sliding, and he felt the pull on his boots. He tightened his grip desperately. This was it. He had to hang on,hadto hang on....
He saw his boot on the hull surface, sliding slowly, creeping back and stretching his leg, suddenly it broke loose; he lurched to one side, and the other boot began sliding. There was a terrible ache in his arms, as though some malignant giant were tearing at him, trying to wrench him loose as he fought for his hold.
There was one black instant when he knew he could not hold on another second. He could see the blue flame of the jet streaming behind him, the cold blackness of space beyond that. It had been a fool's idea, he thought in despair, a million-to-one shot that he had taken, and lost....
And then the pressure stopped. His boots clanged down on the hull, and he almost lost his hand-grip. He stretched an arm, shook himself, took a great painful breath, and then clung to the strut, almost sobbing, hardly daring to move.
The ordeal was over. Somewhere, far ahead, an orbit-ship was waiting for the Ranger to return. He would have to be ready for the braking thrust and the side-maneuvering thrusts, but he would manage to hold on. Crouching against the fin, he would be invisible to viewers on the orbit-ship ... and who would be looking for a man clinging to the outside of a scout-ship?
Tom sighed, and waited. Jupiter Equilateral would have its prisoners, all right. He wished now that he had not discarded the stunner, but those extra pounds might have made the difference between life and death during the blastoff. And at least he was not completely unarmed. He still had Dad's revolver at his side.
He smiled to himself. The pirates would have their prisoners, indeed ... but they would have one factor to deal with that they had not counted on.
For Greg it was a bitter, lonely trip.
After ten hours they saw the huge Jupiter Equilateral orbit-ship looming up in the viewscreen like a minor planet. Skilfully Doc maneuvered the ship into the launching rack. The guards unstrapped the prisoners, and handed them pressure suits.
Moments later they were in a section in crews' quarters where they stripped off their suits. This orbit-ship was much larger than Roger Hunter's; the gravity was almost Mars-normal, and it was comforting just to stretch and relax their cramped muscles.
As long as they didn't think of what was ahead.
Finally Johnny grinned and slapped Greg's shoulder. "Cheer up," he said. "We'll be honored guests for a while, you can bet on that."
"For a while," Greg said bitterly.
Just then the hatchway opened. "Well, who do we have here?" a familiar voice said. "Returning a call, you might say. And maybe this time you'll be ready for a bit of bargaining."
They turned to see the heavy face and angry eyes of Merrill Tawney.
The casual observer might have been fooled. Tawney's guard was down only for an instant; then the expression of cold fury and determination on his face dropped away as though the shutter of a camera had clicked, and he was all smiles and affability. They were honored guests here, one would have thought, and this pudgy agent of the Jupiter Equilateral combine was their genial host, anxious for their welfare, eager to do anything he could for their comfort....
They were amazed by the luxuriousness of the ship. For the next few hours they received the best treatment, sumptuous accommodations, excellent food.
They were finishing their second cup of coffee when Tawney asked, "Feeling better, gentlemen?"
"You do things in a big way," Johnny said. "This is real coffee, made from grounds. Must have cost a fortune to ship it out here."
Tawney spread his hands. "We keep it for special occasions. Like when we have special visitors."
"Even when the visits aren't voluntary," Greg added sourly.
"We have to be realistic," Tawney said. "Would you have come if we invited you? Of course not. You gentlemen chose to come out to the Belt in spite of my warnings. You thus made things very awkward for us, upset certain of our plans." He looked at Greg. "We don't ordinarily allow people to upset our plans, but now we find that we're forced to include you in our plans, whether you happen to like the idea or not."
"You're doing a lot of talking," Greg said. "Why don't you come to the point?"
Tawney was no longer smiling. "We happen to know that your father struck a rich lode on one of his claims."
"That's interesting," Greg said. "Did Dad tell you that?"
"He didn't have to. A man can't keep a secret like that, not for very long. Ask your friend here, if you don't believe me. And we make it our business to know what's going on out here. We have to, in order to survive."
"Well, suppose you heard right. The law says that what a man finds on his own claim is his."
"Certainly," Tawney said. "Nobody would think of claim-jumping, these days. But when a man happens to die before he can bring in his bonanza, then it's a question of who gets there first, wouldn't you think?"
"Not when the man is murdered," Greg said hotly, "not by a long shot."
"But you can't prove that your father was murdered."
"If I could, I wouldn't be here."
"Then I think we'll stick to the law," Tawney said, "and call it an accident."
"And what about my brother? Was that an accident?"
"Ah, yes, your brother." Tawney's eyes hardened. "Quite a different matter, that. Sometimes Doc tends to be over-zealous in carrying out his assigned duties. I can assure you that he has been ... disciplined."
"That's not going to help Tom very much."
"Unfortunately not," Tawney said. "Your brother made a very foolish move, under the circumstances. But from a practical point of view, perhaps it's not entirely a tragedy."
"What do you mean by that?"
"From what I've heard," Tawney said, "you didn't have much use for your twin brother. And now you certainly won't have to share your father's legacy...."
It was too much. With a roar Greg swung at the little fat man. The blow caught Tawney full in the jaw, jerked his head back. Greg threw his shoulder into a hard left, slamming Tawney back against the wall. The guard charged across the room, dragging them apart as Tawney blubbered and tried to cover his face. Greg dug his elbow into the guard's stomach, twisted away and started for Tawney again. Then Johnny caught his arm and spun him around. "Stop it," he snapped. "Use your head, boy...."
Greg stopped, glaring at Tawney and gasping for breath. The company man picked himself up, rubbing his hand across his mouth. For a moment he trembled with rage. Then he gripped the table with one hand, forcibly regaining his control. He even managed a sickly smile. "Just like your father," he said, "too hot-headed for your own good. But we'll let it pass. I brought you here to make you an offer, a very generous offer, and I'll still make it. I'm a businessman, when I want something I want I bargain for it. If I have to share a profit to get it, I share the profit. All right ... you know where your father's strike is. We want it. We can't find it, so you've got us over a barrel. We're ready to bargain."
Greg started forward. "I wouldn't bargain with you for...."
"Shut up, Greg," Johnny said.
Greg stared at him. The big miner's voice had cracked like a whip; now he was drawing Merrill Tawney aside, speaking rapidly into his ear. Tawney listened, shot a venomous glance across at Greg, and finally nodded. "All right," he said, "but I can't wait forever...."
"You won't have to."
Tawney turned to the guard. "You have your orders," he said. "They're to have these quarters, and the freedom of the ship, except for the outer level. They're not to be harmed, and they're not to be out of your sight except when they're locked in here. Is that clear?"
The guard nodded. Tawney looked at Johnny, and started for the door, still rubbing his jaw. "We'll talk again later," he said, and then he was gone.
When the guard had left, and the lock buzzed in the door, Johnny looked at Greg and shook his head sadly. "You just about fixed things, boy, you really did. You've got to use your head if you want to stay alive a while, that's all. Look, there isn't going to be any bargaining with Tawney, he just doesn't work that way. It's heads he wins, tails we lose. Once he has what he wants we won't last six minutes. All right, then there's just one thing that can keep us alive ... stalling him. We've got to make him think you'll give in if he plays his cards right."
Greg was silent for a minute. "I hadn't thought of it that way."
"And we've got to use the time we have to find some way to break for it." Johnny stood up, staring around the luxurious lounge. "If you want my opinion, it's going to take some pretty fancy footwork to get out of here with our skins."
True to his word, Tawney had given them the freedom of the ship. Greg and Johnny discovered that their guard was also an excellent guide. All day he had been leading them through the ship, chatting and answering their questions about asteroid mining, until they almost forgot that they were really prisoners here. And the guard's obvious pride in the scope and skill of his company's mining operations was strangely infectious.
Watching the Jupiter Equilateral ship in operation, Greg felt his heart sink. Here was a huge, powerful organization, with all the equipment and men and know-how they could ever need. How could one man, or two or three in a team, hope to compete with them? For the independent miner, the only hope was the Big Strike, the single lode that could make him rich. He might work all his life without finding it, and then stumble upon it by sheer chance....
But if he couldn't keep it when he found it, then what? What if the great mining company became so strong that they could be their own law in the Belt? What if they grew strong enough and powerful enough to challenge the United Nations on Mars itself, and gain control of the entire mining industry? What chance would the independent miner have then?
It was a frightening picture. Suddenly something began to make sense to Greg; he realized something about his father that he had never known before.
Roger Hunter had been a miner, yes. But he had been something else too, something far more important than just a miner.
Roger Hunter had been a fighter, fighting to the end for something he believed in....
Tawney interrupted Greg's thought.
"Quite an operation," he said.
Greg looked at him. "So I see."
"And very efficient, too. Our men have everything they need to work with. We can mine at far less cost than anyone else."
"But you still can't stand the idea of independent miners working the Belt," Greg said.
Tawney's eyebrows went up. "But why not? There's lots of room out here. Our operation with Jupiter Equilateral is no different from an independent miner's operation. We aren't different kinds of people." Tawney smiled. "When you get right down to it, we're both exactly the same thing ... scavengers in space, vultures picking over the dead remains to see what we can find. We come out to the asteroids, and we bring back what we want and leave the rest behind. And it doesn't matter whether we've got one ship working or four hundred ... we're still just scavengers."
"With just one difference," Greg said, turning away from the viewscreen.
"Difference?"
Greg nodded. "Even vultures don't kill their own," he said.
Later, when they were alone in their quarters again, Greg and Johnny stared at each other gloomily.
"Didn't you seeanythingthat might help us?" Greg said.
"Not much. For an orbit-ship, this place is a fortress. I got a good look at that scout ship coming in ... it was armed to the teeth. Probably they all are. And they're keeping a guard now at every airlock."
"So we're sewed up tight," Greg said.
"Looks that way. They've got us, boy, and I think Tawney's patience is wearing thin, too. We're either going to have to produce or else."
"But what can we do?"
"Start bluffing."
"It seems to me we're just about bluffed out."
"I mean talk business," Johnny said. "Tell Tawney what he wants to know."
"When we don't know any more than he does? How?"
Johnny Coombs scratched his jaw. "I've been thinking about that," he said slowly, "and I wonder if we don't know a whole lot more than we think we do."
"Like what?" Greg said.
"We've all been looking for the same thing ... a Big Strike, a bonanza lode. Tawney's men have raked over every one of your Dad's claims, and they haven't turned up a thing." Johnny looked at Greg. "Makes you wonder a little, doesn't it? Your Dad was smart, but he was no magician. And how does a man go about hiding something like a vein of ore?"
"I don't know," Greg said. "It doesn't seem possible."
"It isn't possible," Johnny said flatly. "There's only one possible explanation, and we've been missing it all along. Whatever he found,it wasn't an ore strike. It was something else, something far different from anything we've been thinking of."
Greg stared at him. "But if it wasn't an ore strike, what was it?"
"I don't know," Johnny said. "But I'm sure of one thing ... it was something important enough that he was ready to die before he'd reveal it. And that means it was important enough that Tawney won't dare kill us until he finds out what it was."
Crouching back into the shadow, Tom Hunter waited as the heavy footsteps moved up the corridor, then back down, then up and down again. He peered around the corner for a moment, looking quickly up and down the curving corridor. The guard was twenty yards away, moving toward him in a slow measured pace. Tom jerked his head back, then peered out again as the footsteps receded.
The guard was a big man, with a heavy-duty stunner resting in the crook of his elbow. He paused, scratched himself, and resumed his pacing. Tom waited, hoping that something might distract the big man, but he moved stolidly back and forth, not too alert, but far too alert to risk breaking out into the main corridor.
Tom moved back into the darkened corridor where he was standing, trying to decide what to do. It was a side corridor, and a blind alley; it ended in a large hatchway marked HYDROPONICS, and there were no branching corridors. If he were discovered here, there would be no place to hide.
But he knew that he could never hope to accomplish his purpose here....
A hatch clanged open, and there were more footsteps down the main corridor as a change of guards hurried by. There was a rumble of voices, and Tom listened to catch the words.
"... don't care what you think, the boss says tighten it up...."
"But they got them locked in...."
"So tell it to the boss. We're supposed to check every compartment in the section every hour. Now get moving...."
The footsteps moved up and down the corridor then, and Tom heard hatches clanging open. If they sent a light down this spur ... he turned to the hatch, spun the big wheel on the door, and slipped inside just as the footsteps came closer.
The stench inside was almost overpowering. The big, darkened room was extremely warm, the air damp with vapor. The plastic-coated walls streamed with moisture. Against the walls Tom could see the great hydroponic vats that held the yeast and algae cultures that fed the crew of the ship. Water was splashing in one of the vats, and there was a gurgling sound as nutrient broth drained out, to be replaced with fresh.
He moved swiftly across the compartment, into a darkened area behind the rows of vats, and crouched down. He heard footsteps, and the ring of metal as the hatchway came open. One of the guards walked in, peered into the gloom, wrinkled his nose, and walked out again, closing the hatchway behind him.
It would do for a while ... if he didn't suffocate ... but if this ship was organized like smaller ones, it would be a blind alley. Modern hydroponic tanks did not require much servicing, once the cultures were growing; the broth was drained automatically and sluiced through a series of pipes to the rendering plant where the yeasts could be flavored and pressed into surrogate steaks and other items for spaceship cuisine. There would be no other entrances, no way to leave except the way he had come in.
And with the guards on duty, that was out of the question. He waited, listening, as the check-down continued in nearby compartments. Then silence fell again. The heavy yeast aroma had grown more and more oppressive; now suddenly a fan went on with a whir, and a cool draft of freshened reprocessed air poured down from the ventilator shaft above his head.
Getting into the orbit-ship had been easier than he had hoped. In the excitement as the new prisoners were brought aboard, security measures had been lax. No one had expected a third visitor; in consequence, no one looked for one. Huge as it was, the Jupiter Equilateral ship had never been planned as a prison, and it had taken time to stake out the guards in a security system that was at all effective. In addition, every man who served as a guard had been taken from duty somewhere else on the ship.
So there had been no guard at the airlock in the first few moments after the prisoners were taken off the Ranger ship. Tom had waited until the ship was moored, clinging to the fin strut. He watched Greg and Johnny taken through the lock, and soon the last of the crew had crossed over after securing the ship. Presently the orbit-ship airlock had gone dark, and only then had he ventured from his place of concealment, creeping along the dark hull of the Ranger ship and leaping across to the airlock.
A momentary risk, then, as he opened the lock. In the control room, he knew, a signal light would blink on a panel as the lock was opened. Tom moved as quickly as he could, hoping that in the excitement of the new visitors, the signal would go unnoticed ... or if spotted, that the spotter would assume it was only a crewman making a final trip across to the Ranger ship.
But once inside, he began to realize the magnitude of his problem. This was not a tiny independent orbit-ship with a few corridors and compartments. This was a huge ship, a vast complex of corridors and compartments and holds. There was probably a crew of a thousand men on this ship ... and there was no sign where Greg and Johnny might have been taken.
He moved forward, trying to keep to side corridors and darkened areas. In the airlock he had wrapped up his pressure suit and stored it on a rack; no one would notice it there, and it might be handy later. He had strapped his father's gun case to his side, some comfort, but a small one.
Now, crouching behind the yeast vat, he lifted out the gun, hefted it idly in his hand. It was a weapon, at least. He was not well acquainted with guns, and in the shadowy light it seemed to him that this one looked odd for a revolver; it even felt wrong, out of balance in his hand. He slipped it back in the case. After all, it had been fitted to Dad's hand, not his. And Johnny or Greg would know how to use it better than he would.
If he could find them. But to do that, he would have to search the ship. He would have to move about, he couldn't just wait in a storage hold. And with all the guards that were posted, he would certainly stumble into one of them sooner or later if he tried leaving this spot....
He shook his head, and started for the hatch. He would have to chance it. There was no way to tell how much time he had, but it was a sure bet that he didn't have very long.
In the spur corridor again, he waited until the guard's footsteps were muffled and distant. Then he darted out into the main corridor, moving swiftly and silently away from the guard. At the first hatchway he ducked inside, waited in the darkness, panting....
The guard had stopped walking. Then his footsteps resumed, but more quickly, coming down the corridor. He stopped, almost outside the hatchway door. "Funny," Tom heard him mutter. "I'd have sworn...."
Tom held his breath, waiting. This was a storage hold, but he didn't dare to move, even to take cover. The guard stood motionless for a moment, then grunted, and resumed his slow pacing.
When he had moved away Tom caught his breath in huge gasps, his heart beating in his throat. It was no use, he thought in despair. Once or twice he might get away with it, but sooner or later a guard would be alert enough to investigate an obscure noise, a flicker of movement in the corner of his eye....
There had to be another way. His eye probed the storage hold, hopelessly, and then stopped on a metal grill in the wall.
For a moment, he didn't recognize what it was. Then there was awhoosh-whoosh-whooshas a fan went on, and he felt cool air against his cheek. He held out his hand to the grill, found the air coming from there.
A ventilation shaft. Every space craft had to have reconditioning units for the air inside the ship; the men inside needed a constant supply of fresh oxygen, but even more, without pumps to move the air in each compartment they would soon suffocate from the accumulation of carbon dioxide in the air they breathed out, or bake from the heat their bodies radiated. On the other hand, the yeasts and algae required carbon dioxide and yielded copious amounts of oxygen as they grew.
In Roger Hunter's little orbit-ship the ventilation shafts were small, a loose network of foot-square ducts leading from the central pumps and air-reconditioning units to every compartment in the ship. But in a ship of this size....
The grill was over a yard wide, four feet tall. It started about shoulder height and ran up to the overhead. The ducts would network the ship, opening into every compartment, and no one would ever open them unless something went wrong.
And then he was laughing out loud, working the grill out of the slots that held it to the wall, trying to make his hands work in his excitement.
He knew he had found his answer.
The grill came loose, lifted down in a piece. He stopped short as footsteps approached in the corridor, paused, and went on. Then he peered into the black gaping hole behind the grill. It was big enough for a man to crawl in. He shinned up into the hole, and pulled the grill back into its slot behind him.
Somewhere far away he heard a throbbing of giant pumps. There was a rush of cool fresh air past his cheek, cold when it contacted the sweat pouring down his forehead. He could not quite stand up, but there was plenty of room for him to crouch and move.
Ahead of him was a black tunnel, broken only by a patch of light coming through the grill that opened into the next compartment. He started into the blackness, his heart racing.
Somewhere in the ship Johnny Coombs and Greg Hunter were prisoners ... but now, Tom knew, there was a way to escape.
It was a completely different world, a world within a world, a world of darkness and silence, of a thousand curving and intersecting tunnels, some large, some small. For hours it seemed to him that he had been wandering through a tomb, moving through the corridors of a dead ship, the lone surviving crewman. There was some contact with the other world, of course, the world of the spaceship outside ... each compartment had its metal grill, and he passed many of them. But there were like doors that only he knew existed. He met no one inthesecorridors, there was no danger of sudden discovery and arrest in these dark alleys....
His boots had made too much noise as he started out, so he had slipped them off, hanging them from his belt and moving on in his stocking feet. As he went from duct to duct, he had an almost ridiculous feeling of freedom and power. In every sense, he was an invisible man. Not one soul on this great ship knew he was here, or even suspected. He had the run of the ship, complete freedom to go wherever he chose. He could move from compartment to compartment as silently and invisibly as if he had no substance at all.
He knew the first job was to learn the pattern of the ducts, and orientation was a problem. He had heard stories of men getting lost in the deep underground mining tunnels on Mars, wandering in circles for days until their food gave out and they starved. And there was that hazard here, for every duct looked like every other one.
But there was a difference here, because the ducts curved just as the main ship's corridors did. He could always identify the center of the ship by the force of false gravity pulling the other way. Furthermore, as the ducts drew closer to the pumps and reconditioning units, they opened into larger vents, and the noise of the pumps thundered in his ears. After an hour of exploration, Tom was certain that from any place in the ship he could at least find his way to the outer layer, and from there to one of the scout-ship airlocks.
Finding Greg and Johnny was quite a different matter.
He could not see enough through the compartment grills to identify just what the compartments were; he was forced to rely on what he could hear. The engine rooms were easily identified. In one area he heard the banging of pots and pans, the steaming of kettles ... obviously the galley. He found the control area. He could hear the clatter of typing instruments, theclick-click-clickof the computers working out the orbits and trajectories for the scout-ships as they moved out from the orbit-ship or came back in. In another compartment he heard a dispatcher chattering his own special code-language into a microphone in a low-pitched voice. He passed another grill, and then stopped short as a familiar voice drifted through.
Merrill Tawney's voice.
Tom hugged the grill, straining to catch the words. The company man sounded angry; the man he was talking to sounded even angrier. "I can't help what you want or don't want, Merrill, I can only report what we've found, and that's nothing at all. Every one of those claims has been searched twice over. Doc and his boys went over them, and we didn't find anything they missed. I think you're barking up the wrong tree."
"There'sgotto be something," Tawney said, his voice tight with anger. "Hunter couldn't have taken anything away from there, he didn't have a chance to. You read the reports..."
"I know," the other said wearily, "I know what the reports said."
"Then what he found is still there. There's no other possibility," Tawney said.
"We went over that rock with a microscope. We blew it to shreds. Assay has gone through the fragments literally piece by piece. They found low grade iron, a trace of nickel, a little tin, and lots of granite. If we never found anything richer than that, we'd have been out of business ten years ago."
There was a long silence. Tom pressed closer to the grill. Then he heard Tawney slam his fist into his palm. "You know what Roger Hunter's doing, don't you?" he said. "He's making fools of us, that's what! The man's dead, and he's making us look like idiots. If we hadn't been so sure we had the lode spotted ..." He broke off. "Well, that's done, we can't undo it. But this brat of his...."
"Any luck there?"
"Not a word. He's playing coy."
"Maybe he doesn't know anything. Doc made a bad mistake when he blasted the other one ... supposehewas the only one that knew."
"All right, it was a mistake," Tawney snapped. "What was he supposed to do, let him get back to Mars? We've got a good front there, but it's not that good. If the United Nations gets a toehold 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...."