Checkpoint Lambda

CHAPTER 3

The Five Comets moved in toward the sun Canis Lambda. They moved with a seeming deliberation, each in its own individual fashion and from its individual direction. There was one which was very large. Its nucleus—its coma—its head—was the center of a misty brightness scores of thousands of miles across. The actual heart of it, of course, was something else. The substance of the comet was an enormous aggregation of rocks and metal masses floating about each other as they plunged toward the sun. By the effect of sunlight upon them, minute quantities of occluded gases were boiled off into emptiness. Sunlight striking them ionized them and made them into a mist; by another process it drove them away from itself toward remoteness in the form of a long and shining tail.

Another comet was very small. It came from very, very far out in space. It was speeding furiously to overtake the companions it knew only rarely and then for a relatively short time—a few weeks every so many years. It would rush with them around the yellow sun and then speed grandly away into the lonely and dimly lighted void. At the perihelion of this comet, Canis Lambda would be only a star, and not the brightest in the heavens at that. But now it rushed sunward.

Then there were two comets like twins, identical in size and pushing sturdily together toward the rendezvous of their tribe. Astronomers had likened them to Bella’s Comet in the First System, which was observed to have twinned itself somewhere out in the far darkness where comets spend most of their lives. Bella’s Comet appeared several times as twins. Then it appeared no more as if one of the twins had died far from the sight of men and the other would not survive its brother. Neither one was ever heard of again.

And there was a fifth comet, quite commonplace as comets go.

They drove in toward Canis Lambda, and in observing them Scott had a privilege many astronomers might have envied. Not many men saw any of the Five Comets. Mostly they were invisible in remoteness. Sometimes one or three or two appeared. Not many ships happened along the space lanes to break out of overdrive when they were visible, and few spacemen stopped to marvel at the wonders of the heavens. When Scott took his first observations in Lambda’s control room, all five could be viewed.

He was making his notes when a ship broke out of overdrive two light-hours away—a thousand million miles or so—and it received the metallic-voiced message that Lambda sent monotonously toward the stars. “Checkpoint Lambda. Checkpoint Lambda. Report. Report.” Scott heard the whining, whistling sound which was that ship’s log broadcast to be recorded in the checkpoint files. Actually, the unseen ship had broken out, picked up the checkpoint call, automatically responded to it, and was gone again long before its log reached Lambda. But Scott went on with his observations.

He verified the state of things from the control board. It required only the simplest of observations to make sure of Lambda’s position in its orbit. It took only looking to see that if the Five Comets were on schedule—and they were—they would fill all space ahead for a completely unbelievable distance with plunging meteors which were really stray fragments of steel and stone. In a way, the hurtling objects would be like so many charges of buckshot fired at one target. They could penetrate each other without noticeable results. But any object moving across their course or in their way would be torn to shreds. And the Lambda would pass through four of the Five Planets’ heads. It seemed unimaginable that the buoy could survive.

Chenery saw disaster of another sort. “You don’t know what you done then, Lieutenant!” he said frantically. “You don’t know what you done! Those were Bugsy’s men! You got me in bad trouble! Bad trouble!”

Scott said impatiently, “You’re in worse trouble than I could put you in! Do you realize that we’re headed on a collision-course with a good many millions of bits of scrap iron and rock?”

“How’d I know that?” demanded Chenery fretfully. “Look, Lieutenant! I cooked up this whole idea that’s happening here. I hadda get some help. I got Bugsy to come in on it. But he’s a hard man to get along with. Now he’s tryin’ to take over! But I had the idea to start with and he’d’ve played along, him and the guys he’s got, but—”

Scott turned to the girl. He offered her the blaster he’d picked off the floor in the hospital area.

“Have you got one of these? No? Then take it.”

He turned back to Chenery.

“I’ve got to shift this buoy out of its present place,” he said reasonably. “I’ve got to put it where it won’t be running into certain destruction. We can’t run away from it on solar system drive, and I need cooperation! You can’t be such an idiot as not to have an engineer and an astrogator to handle the Golconda Ship when you take it! I want—”

But Chenery jumped. He clawed at his garments for a weapon.

“Drop it!” said Scott sharply.

A blaster had appeared in his hand as if by magic. Chenery froze. Then he panted, “What—what was that you said?”

“I named the Golconda Ship,” said Scott. “You’re here to seize it when it arrives. And you’ve got to have an astrogator and an engineer to run it if you succeed. Now, I need those men to take my orders for the time being—the engineer, anyhow. And now! Else in a certain number of hours and minutes—”

Chenery panted, “Why d’you think we’re after the Golconda Ship? What makes you think that?”

“Because it’s coming here!” Scott fumed. “There’s nothing else you could be after! But you’ve got to scrap that scheme and let me try to save what can be saved out of the mess you’ve made!”

Chenery stared at him, at once aghast and bewildered.

“Look, Lieutenant! You done me a favor, once. What’s this? How’d you know—Why’d you come aboard if you knew? You coulda spoiled everything just keepin’ that liner hangin’ around here, an’ warnin’ the Golconda Ship when it come. Are you crazy?”

“I obey orders,” Scott told him.

It would be useless to try to convince Chenery that he’d come aboard the Lambda because, as a Patrol officer, it was his duty to attempt the impossible. The Lambda was his command, and his first independent one. It should not be here where the liner had found it, with the Five Comets due to cross its path. No matter how wrong or how fatal or how abnormal matters appeared to be aboard it, it was his duty to come aboard and take over. Chenery wouldn’t understand that. Chenery was, obviously, a professional criminal. Quite likely he’d never thought of any other profession. His gratitude to Scott for something Scott didn’t remember might be genuine enough, but still he’d only see things from his own standpoint.

“But you’re tellin’ me—”

“I thought you were running things,” said Scott. “Bring on your astrogator and I’ll show him the state of affairs. He’ll check what I’ve told you.”

“He—ain’t available, He’s Bugsy’s man. Bugsy’d have to tell him, and…”

“That could waste time,” said Scott. “All right, bring me your engineer. Not the man you told me was an engineer! He thinks a space ship’s steered by a rudder! Get me your engineer!”

“The engineer we got is one of Bugsy’s men too,” said Chenery unhappily. “And he’s drunk right now. You heard him snore. I hadda have some help, y’see, and I called on Bugsy. But he’s turnin’ out a hard man to get along with. His engineer—”

“Get Bugsy, whoever he may be!” snapped Scott. “Look at that screen! That’s what we’re heading for!”

He pointed. And the Five Comets of Canis Lambda appeared with appalling distinctness on three of the control room’s vision screens. There was a very large glowing against the Milky Way that filled, all by itself, a space fifteen degrees across. Behind it, to one side and even brighter—shining through the misty glow of the first comet’s head—there was a similar patch of glowing gas. Separated a little from them were the twin comets, closing in to join the others. And one could see the last, whose tail was more visible than the others because of the angle at which it drove to join the rest.

The matter—the mass, the actual substance—of the comets was hordes and multitudes and countless swarms of stones and metal lumps rushing through emptiness with impassioned energy to no purpose that human minds could fathom. All comets were made that way. Their solid part was composed of particles ranging in size from sand-grains to houses to mountains. These particles had every possible form and size and meaningless shape. But they were never seen. They rode in an eerie misty luminescence. Unless they hit something. Then what they hit was destroyed.

In the control room. Chenery seemed about to cry.

“You’re sayin’ ”—his voice had gone up a halftone toward shrillness—“You’re sayin’ we can’t take the Golconda Ship because the Five Comets are goin’ to get us! But you could be lyin’! You’re Patrol! It’s your job to stop guys like me from doin’ our stuff! But we’ started on this one! We almost got it made! We can’t stop now!”

“Get Bugsy,” commanded Scott. “Maybe he’s got some sense!”

Chenery hesitated in apparent soul-racking indecision. Then he went stumbling toward the control room door. He went out. Janet moistened her lips. Scott noticed it.

“Would you want,” he asked politely, “to tell me about the taking of the buoy? How it happened?”

She said unsteadily, “I was asleep. I awakened when I heard a scream somewhere and then a blaster-shot. I heard doors banging. Sometimes there were shots and—other noises. Then I heard men running. They came along the corridor my cabin was on, banging open doors as they came. Two cabins away there was a fat man. They kicked open his door and I heard him say, ‘What’s the matter? What’s happening?’ And there was a blaster-shot and he cried out—terribly. They opened the door next to mine. I stood—paralyzed. I couldn’t believe—And then somebody fired a blaster down the corridor. It hit one of the men who’d been opening doors—almost in front of mine.” She swallowed. “They fired at the man who’d shot at them. They rushed toward him. Wh-when they came back, the man who’d been shot in front of my door had crawled blindly a little way. So they skipped my door without knowing it. Down the corridor a woman peered out. I heard her asking anxiously what was the matter, and a blaster fired and—that was all. They went on. To other levels. And there were other shots, some far away.”

Her voice stopped abruptly. She made a gesture.

“That—that’s all…”

Scott said, “But somebody found you later.”

“Y-yes. It was—Chenery.” Her throat sounded dry. “I think—anybody else would have killed me. But he found me and he was—upset. He told me he hadn’t meant for the buoy to be taken that way. He was apologetic. Apologetic! He explained that he’d meant to call for the crewmen, one by one, and make prisoners of them, not kill them. Then he’d meant to capture the passengers the same way. He seemed quite miserable about it! They’d have told afterward, he said, that it was a beautifully handled robbery, the cleverest, biggest trick ever done! You see the Golconda Ship—”

“He didn’t expect to take it without fighting!” said Scott.

“But he did! He’d planned to have a banquet ready for the Golconda Ship’s crew, to celebrate their return. He’d lead them to tables set with luxuries they’d have missed—”

“The Golconda Ship didn’t carry regular crew’s rations,” said Scott sardonically. “Every man aboard’s a multi-millionaire. They wouldn’t have missed any luxuries!”

“He thought,” said Janet, “that they’d stuff themselves. And there’d be—knockout drops, and they’d wake up to find the Golconda Ship gone, and the passenger-prisoners would tell them how they’d been fooled. Chenery was terribly proud of that plan! He’d have been known as pulling off the biggest robbery in the smartest way in all history. But Bugsy took over.”

“Chenery’s idea wasn’t practical,” said Scott. “It wouldn’t have worked.”

“Anyhow—now he’ll be known as a butcher. And he said he’d save my life, or try to, so I could explain that he’d only meant the robbery to be the smartest and cleverest ever.”

She added helplessly, “I thought he was crazy! P-people killed and he talking like that … But he did keep the others from—harming me. He told them I was a nurse and two of them were—wounded. I’d cure them, he said. So I’ve pretended to be a nurse. I have kept them alive. Maybe.”

“Two wounded,” said Scott. “Their men, of course. But there was some fighting. That’s good.”

He rubbed his chin. His expression was wry. Now he began to see something like a complete picture of what the situation in the buoy was—at least the part which made least sense and was the kind that gave the Patrol so many unpleasant problems. It helped to solve them, too, because planetary police and the Patrol together knew that most crimes weren’t committed for money. The professional criminal did not practice his profession to get rich. Chenery had the motivation of many members of his craft. He wanted to be known as a genius.

With half of humanity envying the Golconda Ship’s crew, and the other half trying to guess their secret, Chenery had planned a robbery which would be not only the most stupendous one known, but one in which he would outsmart all the rest of the human race. His vanity wouldn’t be satisfied with the Golconda Ship’s treasure. He craved to be admired for his cleverness. So he had really wanted to have as many witnesses as possible, to relate how clever he’d been and how brilliantly he’d worked out his plan.

Scott shrugged. Chenery’s ambition had cost lives. It was silliness, but still the fact. Similar silliness has caused wars and cost lives throughout all history. It was still highly likely that Scott’s own life would be among those lost in this affair, and it was no comfort at all to reflect that Chenery himself would eventually be killed through the essential silliness of crime as a profession.

The control room was silent. The checkpoint’s identifying signal, though, still went out to emptiness in every direction. It continued to call upon all passing ships to report. It would record their reportings. As Scott moved restlessly about the control room a tape-spool on the wall began to turn. A ship had come and gone, out somewhere, and the whine recorded was its log. Perhaps a dozen to three dozen ships passed Checkpoint Lambda daily, but very few opened communication directly.

Footsteps. The control door opened. Scott turned, aware of Janet’s fright. Chenery came in. He looked less scared, less uneasy. He had color in his cheeks again.

“Ho-ya!” he said cheerily. “I talked to Bugsy, Lieutenant! Things look better. Bugsy’s agreeable. He’ll listen. We’re goin’ to have lunch together!”

It was preposterous. Scott almost did not believe his ears. Chenery turned exuberantly to Janet, “You’ll fix it, Janet? We got to work things out. You’ll fix something to eat, and Bugsy and the Lieutenant and me, we’ll have lunch together and talk things over reasonable. We’ll cook up some kinda businesslike deal.”

Scott listened unbelievingly. When he’d forced himself aboard the space buoy, it had been with a reasonable expectation of being killed. There’d be some hesitation, to be sure, because then the liner still lay nearby and could spoil the whole intended robbery. But he’d been used to test the intended deception of the Golconda Ship’s crew. Now Chenery was aware that he knew of the purpose of the buoy’s seizure, and more than guessed at the way it was done. And that meant that for Chenery’s and Bugsy’s safety, and that of every other living man on the ship, Scott had to be killed sooner or later.

On the face of it, then, to lunch with men who intended to kill him was out of all reason. Chenery spoke of a deal to be arranged over a businessman-like luncheon table: Only Chenery would think of such a thing. He might have some incredible proposal in mind that would salvage some part of what he’d lost. And that, naturally, would be the splendid gratification of his vanity. He might have contrived some trick to gain information; perhaps a bargain for Janet’s and Scott’s escape. But there were too many murders in the past, and too many more in prospect, to make any bargain plausible.

“Lunch, eh?” he said drily. “Why not?” Chenery grandly led the way out of the control room. If he hadn’t gone first, Scott would have put him there. But they went, and three of them, down to the next level below.

They found Bugsy in the lobby of what looked like a hotel. He was seated in an elaborately upholstered chair and smoking a very black cigar. Where Chenery was short and plump, Bugsy was short and square. He was hard-featured, as a man needs to be when he has more blaster-men than specialists among his followers. He regarded them coldly from under thick eyebrows.

“Here’s the Lieutenant, Bugsy,” said Chenery brightly.

Bugsy said, “Huh!”

He waved a hand at chairs nearby. Scott held one for Janet. This was a situation so near to lunacy that Scott still felt that it was unreal. He was Patrol, and ignoring the past he was obligated to prevent the monster crime now in plain prospect. Chenery was the one who’d found out the destination of the Golconda Ship. Janet was a passenger who knew too much, destined to join the other murdered passengers. Bugsy was the man who’d been recruited by Chenery to make up the force of blaster-men needed for the capture of the checkpoint and the following seizure of the Golconda Ship. And Bugsy was now the man who decided things because he had the most men with the most blasters on the spot.

In a peculiar way, this was another case of something found in all history and all over the galaxy. Always there were men who started things, and other men who took over what someone else had begun. They always assumed that possession meant not only ownership but competence to manage the enterprises they had seized. Very often it meant the total failure of the thing taken over. But these men couldn’t understand that. It was an inevitable stupidity of the violent mind.

“Chenery says,” said Bugsy in a flat voice, “that you caught on fast to what’s happened here.”

“What was wrong?” asked Bugsy in the same flat voice.

“Everything,” Scott told him without cordiality. “Your men in Patrol uniforms didn’t know how to salute. Your freight-handlers didn’t know how to play Fali. Your engineer thought space ships used rudders. The guards in the hospital were too smart. Much too smart!”

“No good, eh?” said Bugsy.

“No good!” said Scott coldly. “You should’ve known it. But I knew something was very wrong before I came aboard.”

Bugsy considered, regarding Scott unblinkingly.

“How?”

Scott told him scornfully. The buoy remaining in its proper orbit a mile or two from its marker-asteroid when the Five Comets were approaching and were already closer than any professional spaceman would have waited for. Before that, the buoy’s spokesman’s insistence that there was nothing to leave it for other destinations, and that it would receive no freight. The arbitrary behavior of its supposed Patrol commander.

“If you’re going to pretend that you’re a normal space installation,” said Scott coldly, “you should know how one acts! Your men didn’t. They don’t know now.”

“So this ain’t normal,” observed Bugsy. “Chenery here don’t run the hotel. The Patrol guys aren’t Patrol guys. The engineer—Nobody’s what he says. You figure it that way?”

“Naturally! Do you think I’m an idiot?” demanded Scott.

“Yeah,” said Bugsy. He paused. “You came on board.”

He looked at the ash of his cigar.

“I could use you,” he said flatly, after a moment. “You could fix things so nobody else’d think there was anything wrong. You could be useful, that way. But I’d be a fool to let you try it.”

“He says,” interposed Chenery uneasily, “that we got to do something about some comets that are headin’ into the sun, here. We’re headed to run into ‘em.”

“Yeah,” said Bugsy. “I seen a comet. It’s got a long tail. Shines in the sky. A scientist fella said the tail was so thin you could gather it up and put it in your hat.”

“Not these comets,” said Scott. “And it’s not the tail we have to dodge. It’s the heads. They’re masses of hunks of rock and metal. They give off gas that shines.”

“Forget the comets!” rasped Bugsy. “There’s something else I want to know! You came on board. You say you knew there was something wrong before you did come. Why’d you do it?”

“Partly because of the comets,” said Scott “In order to find out why the buoy hadn’t gotten out of danger when it should have, since it’s on a collision course. Partly to find out if there were any passengers left alive. Now that I’m here, I don’t think there are.”

“Just why’d you think the passengers stopped livin’?”

Scott shrugged again.

“You came here to take the Golconda Ship,” he said. “You took over the buoy as a start. There was some fighting. There are two wounded men in the hospital. Your men. No wounded passengers. No wounded crewmen. Where are the passengers and crew?”

“There’s her,” said Bugsy, indicating Janet. “She’s a passenger and she’s all right!”

“I’d like to talk to the others,” said Scott.

He heard Janet draw in her breath sharply.

“Oh!” said Bugsy, his tone pure irony. “When d’you want to talk to them?”

“Any time after there’ve been measures taken about the comets,” said Scott evenly. “There’s no use talking to passengers or anything else unless something’s done about that!”

Bugsy’s features twisted into something that should have been a grin.

“D’you want to know why I don’t buy that?” He paused. “When Chenery propositioned me about this bit—takin’ the Golconda Ship and all—I looked things up. How a Golconda Ship landin’ has been managed. They hire guards. They buy flatfeet! They set up a security force that costs millions, and they don’t care. Nobody gets in miles of that ship while it’s aground. They guard it like it was a planetary president!”

Scott frowned, but waited.

“You’re no Patrol man!” rasped Bugsy. “You took a chance. Sure! Get rid of us and the Golconda Ship’ll pay you a million or two or ten if you wipe us out protectin’ them! They ain’t stingy that way! You get us outa the way and tell them what you done for ‘em.”

Scott shrugged his shoulders.

“You sound to me,” he said, “like somebody working himself up to use a blaster.”

Bugsy said, “I am!”

He made a sudden, violent movement. Chenery gasped. Then there was stillness. Bugsy’s hand was halfway into a shoulder-holster, and there it seemed frozen. Scott had a blaster all the way out.

“You were,” agreed Scott. “And if you’d been a little more skilful, Bugsy, I’d have had to kill you to save my own life. But there’s a Patrol regulation against killing anybody if it can be helped. If I were a private guard for the Golconda Ship’s crew that regulation wouldn’t apply. So maybe you’ll believe I am Patrol now.”

He paused.

“You can take your hand away—if it’s empty,” he added. “Think things over.” Bugsy’s hand came slowly and very carefully away from the holster. “It’s quite a problem, working out a way to handle this situation. Everything I’ve been able to think of so far works out making you a corpse. Sometimes a pretty messy one. So think! Bend your massive brain to the job, Bugsy. And when you’ve an idea how to adjust matters considering the comets and the Golconda Ship and the fix you’re in now, let me know! But there isn’t much time!”

He stood up, and gestured to Janet. He took her to the stairway leading up to the control room. He nodded, and went up the stairs behind her. In the control room as the door closed she said unsteadily, “You took a terrible chance!”

“Not as much as Bugsy,” he said briefly, “and what I did may be useful. Now I want to look at the comets again.”

He pointed to a chair. He busied himself about the instruments as she sat down. It wasn’t necessary to squint into eyepieces of the instruments, they gave their readings on the vision-screens. He punched them into the board-computer. Presently he pressed the integrator-stud. There was a little click. He looked at the slip of paper slid out from a slot in the computer.

“Two hours, thirty-seven minutes, forty seconds,” he said in a tone indicating no particular rejoicing. “That’s the most probable time for us to hit the first cometary mass.”

Janet said, “But is that really a danger? I thought—I hoped—” Then she said in a suddenly level voice, “Absurd! I didn’t have any hope.”

“I didn’t have any lunch,” said Scott “and after accepting an invitation for it, too! Seriously, yes. There is hope for the buoy, if that means anything. If Bugsy gives up the idea of interfering—which he probably won’t—we can almost certainly manage to get by the comets. We—”

“We?” asked Janet.

“The buoy,” Scott agreed. “You and I and our prospects are something else entirely. I think you’d better stay with me. I’ve something to do. Chenery isn’t what you’d call a strong character, and I think he’s going to get weaker. Yes. Come along!”

He led the way. His air was purposeful, though there was no apparent utility in anything he might do. If the buoy wasn’t somehow moved to safety, it would be smashed by the swarms of stones and metal masses which constituted the real substance of the comets. If it was moved away, the Golconda Ship might not find it, and Scott and Janet would be marooned in space with the buoy’s present company. If the Golconda Ship made contact and was captured, the men who’d captured the buoy before would feel it necessary to kill them. They’d know too much. Because every man aboard the buoy had earned a seat in a gas-chamber by the murder of the Lambda’s original crew and passengers.

Scott went along a corridor and opened a door with the confidence of a man who, having been appointed to the command of a space station, has carefully studied the hull-plans and deck-plans and installation diagrams. Such a study would not be enough for a thorough acquaintance, of course. But it was likely to be useful.

The door closed behind them. There was a peculiar singing stillness. This was a service area, so arranged that stewards and chambermaids on a luxury liner could give good service. There was no particular secret about it, any more than there was about the kitchen of the restaurant of a hotel. But passengers didn’t see or use such places. Nor would men waiting for the Golconda Ship bother with them.

Scott led the way down a circular iron staircase.

Janet said uneasily, “Where are we going? What do you have to do?”

“I’ve already done some of it,” Scott told her, “under Chenery’s guidance. But I’m supposed, technically, to be in command here. As commanding officer, I naturally want to make an inspection of what I command. Without knowing it, Chenery showed me some things I want to know more about.”

“But do you really expect—”

“Expect, no,” he admitted. “But I think things will eventually be fairly well in hand. That is, if I don’t happen to get killed first.”

He went on down the stairs. Then he said vexedly, “That’s the ticklish part—not getting killed. The odds against that aren’t too good.”