Checkpoint Lambda

CHAPTER 6

There was another small whining sound from a tape reel on the control room wall. A passing ship had picked up the mechanical checkpoint call and had sent its taped log for Lambda to record and the Space Patrol to examine in case of need. That ship had gone back into overdrive and away before its broadcast reached the buoy. Such recordings were useful because, if that ship were to fail to reach its destination, an examination of its log to the last checkpoint might reveal the reason for its vanishing and help prevent another case of the same kind. But the system had other virtues, too. At least one meteor stream spanning the distance between two stars had been guessed at from such records. It had been hunted for and found, and was now a charted space-hazard which all ships avoided. And at least one totally disabled ship was found against all probability when its overdrive blew. But its log revealed some questionable instrument-readings and most of its crew was still alive when a Patrol ship found it.

But there was no record anywhere off Lambda of what might be the trouble there, now. If Lambda disappeared, the liner that had delivered Scott to it would report some irregularities. If the Golconda Ship picked up Scott’s message—which it might, or it might not—there would be more information. But there would still be too little to amount to definite knowledge. The record would show only that Lieutenant Scott, Space Patrol, had gone aboard Lambda to take command. It was his first command. And Lambda had vanished shortly afterward, like two robot checkpoints before it. Therefore it would be considered wise to avoid the Canis Lambda system, where two checkpoints and a manned buoy had vanished. So six space lanes would be shifted because it was not practical to avoid the dangers of this solar system—or perhaps because Lieutenant Scott was incompetent. There’d be no evidence for any other conclusion except the possibly garbled message to the Golconda Ship.

Scott didn’t like the idea. As a professional spaceman and an officer in the Patrol he felt that any disaster to anything he commanded should be reported and explained so it need never happen again. But as a man he considered that there were circumstances overriding even that obligation.

It was now time to act for the preservation of the space buoy. It no longer had any operating space drive, of course. Not even a hopelessly inadequate solar system drive unit. Used early enough, even that could have taken care of the comet problem. It should have been used. But Lieutenant Thrums had been murdered six days before Scott’s arrival and before it was time to use it. Now it was too late. The rest of the buoy’s crew had been murdered at the same time, so they couldn’t tell Chenery or Bugsy of the coming need to drive ten to twenty thousand miles out of orbit—even thirty thousand—to avoid the comet-crossing. When Scott came aboard it was quite too late for any such commonsense proceeding.

But there was another method of escape that could be tried. Scott had devised it nearly at once. It had never been done, but there’d never been the need or the circumstances existing here. Without overdrive or even solar system propulsion Scott proposed to prevent the buoy’s destruction.

But he didn’t intend to try it if Janet fell into the hands of Bugsy’s men.

Janet could be tortured until Scott obeyed all of Bugsy’s commands. If he let himself be killed, though that would make further violence useless, it wouldn’t keep Bugsy from trying to take senseless revenge upon Janet for his own inevitable doom. Bugsy’s instinct was to violence, but not necessarily to quick murder. If his purpose was to make someone suffer for hindering his plans, he wouldn’t be impatient for the kill. It wouldn’t be the death of his victim that he wanted.

Bugsy wouldn’t be a desirable person to hold Janet captive.

Scott found his blaster in his hand. He raged. He even took a step toward the control room door. But that would be playing Bugsy’s game. Scott had seen eleven men on the buoy, and far down in the stern near the hospital he’d heard the voices of more. He could guess at fifteen to twenty. Probably a score, altogether. And whatever the adventure tape-dramas portrayed, one man against twenty was bad odds. If Scott could cut it down—good. But he couldn’t throw away his life. It had to be saved for Janet’s protection—even if protection could be no more than a merciful blaster-shot. He had to stay alive long enough for that!

There was a scratching at the control room door. Scott opened it. He had his blaster ready, but it was Chenery, in a teary panic and gasping for breath.

“Lieutenant!” he panted. “Bugsy says—do somethin’ to protect—the buoy or—”

“What’s the deal?” asked Scott. His voice was full of rage and sarcasm and, it seemed to him, despair. “What’s he offering? To commit suicide? That’ll be helpful!”

“It’s—Janet!” panted Chenery. Tears finally did roll down his cheeks; He was terrified beyond description, humiliated past endurance. All his cleverness had brought him to the realization that he wasn’t smart. He faced destruction with the buoy. If Scott didn’t yield, he had less than an hour to live. But if he were spared destruction now, he was certain to be killed later because Bugsy would see no need to share the treasure of the Golconda Ship. He’d learned it the hard way. Now he had no possible excuse for hope, even if all his most desperate desires were met. If Bugsy won in this incredible contest with Scott, Chenery would be killed. If Scott should win, Chenery would die in a gas-chamber. And the only other alternative was that he’d die when all the rest aboard the Lambda did.

“What’s the proposition?” demanded Scott, again.

“Janet—” gasped Chenery. “Bugsy’s got his men huntin’ her. He’s got a good idea where to look. He’ll take the ship apart, if he has to, and he’ll find her! And when he does, unless you—”

Chenery choked. Scott’s eyes were furious. Chenery felt that he was nearer to dying than he’d ever been before.

“Tell Bugsy,” said Scott in a voice that crackled, “tell Bugsy to take his men out of my way and keep them that way! I’m going to get Janet and bring her back here. If he tries to stop me he’ll have no chance to live! I’ll get the buoy to safety—for the time being! But only after I’ve got Janet with me! Not before! And then, when we’re through the comets, I’ll tell him what he has to do next!”

“You’ll—dodge the comets?”

“The comets won’t touch the Lambda,” said Scott. His voice grated. “Not if Bugsy does what I tell him! Get his men out of my way!”

Such a warning wasn’t enough for security while he got to Janet and brought her to a place beside him. For that matter, a place beside him would be the least safe place in the galaxy. Yet nobody would dare to kill him. Not yet. Not even after Lambda emerged from the swarming, miles-per-second rushing masses of stone and nickel-steel that plunged to meet it. There was still the Golconda Ship, and after that Bugsy’s absolute need for an astrogator.

“I’ll—tell him,” panted Chenery. “I’ll tell him!”

He went away, catching his breath in gasps like a panic-stricken child. Scott closed the door again. Seconds later he was speaking very softly into the microphone that would communicate with any lifeboat up to the instant of its launching, “If you have the switch on, listening,” he murmured, “stay where you are! I’m not coming for you! I’m playing for time. It’s the timing that will settle everything!”

He heard an indistinct response. He looked at his watch and again at the comets. They filled four vision-screens now. They were a monstrous, featureless shining vapor which had no surface. Their identities were lost because of their nearness. Conceivably, if one knew exactly where to look, and at what rate to move one’s eyes in which direction, some of the larger solid masses in the mist could have been seen. But there were not many such giants. The shining portion of the comets was very nearly a vacuum. It was probably true that a comet’s tail, compressed to the density of breathing air, could be put into something not much larger than a hat. It was of such unthinkable tenuity that the pressure of sunlight itself—to be measured only in tons over the whole face of a planet—pushed the separate gas-ions of the mist away from Canis Lambda to make comets’ tails of it. Each of the Five Comets sported a tail, most of it invisible because Lambda was so close. But it was the solid parts that meant destruction.

Scott glanced at the marker-asteroid, floating less than two miles from the buoy. As he looked there was a lurid flash of blue-white flame. Something solid had hit at the marker’s edge. Some tiny member of the comets’ swarms had made impact on the mile-thick mass of steel. It had been traveling at miles per second. When it struck, the shock of its arrival could not travel fast enough to let the miniature thing act as a solid body. It telescoped upon its own substance, like a railroad train in a collision. The metal of the asteroid could not yield. Flying object and asteroid-surface exploded in a flame out of hell, and there would be a minute, new hollow pit in the substance of the marker. Anything this size wouldn’t puncture the steel hull of Lambda, of course. This might be half the size of a pea. But anything as big as a marble would go through a three-eighths-inch plate. A meteor the size of a baseball could blast a hole by its explosion that would empty a deck level in seconds.

He threw on the GC phone. He spoke measuredly into its microphone.

“Calling Bugsy,” he said icily. “Calling Bugsy. This is to confirm what Chenery will tell you. You’re looking for Janet. But I’m going after her. Keep out of my way! If I’m killed, you’ll die in forty-some minutes. When she’s with me, if you try anything you’ll have to kill me first. And then you’ll die in the hell-fire this ship will become!” Then he said even more coldly, “Get your men out of my way. If I see one I’ll kill him and you don’t dare kill me back!”

Inwardly, he knew a bitter pessimism. He’d almost gotten Janet to relative safety, at least to the point where she’d have a chance in a hundred of surviving until the Golconda Ship picked her up, if it tried. Her chance would be less but still real if the Golconda Ship withdrew discreetly to safety for itself and only reported his message to the Patrol. A ship would come here to investigate, and somebody aboard it might understand how he’d expected her to survive. But she’d have an infinitely better chance if Lambda survived too. And if he did.

The checkpoint at that moment, though, seemed as helpless as anything in space could be. It was a derelict without a drive. Its velocity toward the crossing-point of the comets was unalterable. Chenery blindly believed Scott could do something, but Chenery didn’t try to guess what. He’d ceased, though, to believe in his own cleverness. Bugsy might believe in the danger from the comets, but he hadn’t stopped believing in violence. And because of that he could still convince himself that Scott was only bluffing. It was touch and go. Bugsy was frustrated to the point where at any instant he could convince himself of anything that allowed him to take violent action. He could reason that there was only Scott’s word, for the existence of danger and ignore a spreading luminous mist on the vision-screens, and the terror that had sobered a drunken space engineer when he stared at the comets from the control room. This was evidence enough, but Bugsy could reject it and react, like a madman.

So this was the crucial moment. Out of pure fury Bugsy could destroy Scott and everybody else—including himself—by acting on the idea that Scott must be lying.

But he wasn’t. Not even about the possibility of survival. He should and he would be able to get the checkpoint-buoy through the thickest and most irresistible of rushing meteoric swarms, provided that it was here and now and under the current conditions. If Bugsy would believe it. But he couldn’t be told how it should be done. He wouldn’t believe that!

So Scott went out of the control room to act out a lie. The one necessary thing was Janet’s safety for the next forty-five minutes. He couldn’t demand that the search for her stop. Bugsy wouldn’t honor it and Scott couldn’t enforce agreement. He had to make sure she wouldn’t be found. That Bugsy’s men would only search where they wouldn’t find her. Given forty-five minutes more, he could put the ship in a position of relative safety. It wouldn’t be wise to do it earlier. Then, given panic—which he should be able to contrive—he might join her. And then, given unlimited good fortune, he’d have Lambda safe. He could have reasonable hope of survival for Janet and himself. And he might have Bugsy and Chenery and their followers set up for a final, painless journey into official gas-chambers. It was Scott’s duty to arrange that. But he almost regretted Chenery.

Such a sequence of events was possible. The outline of actions to produce it was complete in Scott’s mind. But when he tried to envision carrying it out, pessimism arose. He couldn’t believe he’d make it. But he had to try.

He went down the stairs to the hotel level. The hotel space was totally empty, yet Scott couldn’t believe he hadn’t been seen.

Bugsy would scatter his men, fast, to find out which direction Scott moved to take Janet out of hiding. He’d have his followers search desperately ahead of Scott. If they found her, Bugsy would hold the whip hand from that moment on.

Scott reached the bottom of the grand stairway to the three cabin levels. He heard rustlings nearby. Once he heard what seemed to be furtive, hurrying footsteps. He was definitely being watched, though there weren’t eyes upon him every second. But when he wasn’t seen, his footfalls were heard. He went down to the baggage level. The three decks of hydroponic garden. To the freight warehouse level. On down to the engine room. All was empty, or seemed to be except the last.

In the engine room there were two figures, close by the useless solar system drive unit. One was Chenery. He plainly had desperately tried to get the still-drunken engineer roused to sobering panic again, so he could make the drive unit work again. If he succeeded, and if the engineer accomplished it, it would spoil Scott’s intended maneuver. Chenery, of course, couldn’t imagine that.

“Chenery,” said Scott grimly, “I’ll tell you a secret. That’s hopeless. The engine can’t be made to work. It’s a big job.”

He heard sounds of movement. He’d outstripped some of the men who’d accompanied him this far. Chenery turned harried eyes upon him.

“I disabled it,” said Scott. “It can’t be made to work. I need it not to work. It’s necessary if I’m to get the buoy through the comets.”

Chenery, staring at him, seemed astonished. Scott said, more grimly than before, “And I’ll tell you another secret. Bugsy’s got men trying to find out where I’m going. I’m going after Janet. I don’t want to be followed. So I’m doing something about it.”

He turned. He’d come down a straight-line stairway with a right-angled turn at the top. It was strictly utilitarian. Scott deliberately threw a hand grenade. It was one of those he’d taken from baggage on the luggage level. It barely skimmed over the top step of the stairway. Curving down, it hit the wall beyond. It exploded. There was flame and a racking detonation and the top of the stairway was bent and twisted. It was not a practical stairway from that moment on. There were howlings, above.

Scott went on. He left Chenery making vague gestures to himself, as if he were not quite able to control his hands. The engineer remained semi-comatose. He’d been roused for a moment at the shock of the explosion and had gazed dazedly about. Then he went to sleep again.

There were more levels going down. Scott descended in a cold fury. Normally the tradition of the Patrol was that it had its work to do, and its members chose to join the Patrol to do that work. It dealt to some extent with criminals, who chose their profession with the same freedom. Ordinarily a Patrol man didn’t hate a criminal as a man, however sternly he dealt with what a criminal did. But this was where men only are involved. Had there been only men on Lambda, Scott could have dealt with Chenery and Bugsy without emotion—and would probably have done a better job. But there had been women passengers murdered only to prepare for another crime. Janet was hunted now for further atrocity.

He raged. But he’d learned painfully to distrust all emotion-motivated thinking. He tried again to examine his reasons for doing what he did now. He was heading for the lifeboat’s stern. Janet was not hidden there. She was in a lifeboat up near the bow. But no less than twice she’d been seen in the stern, with Scott. It should look as if some special hiding-place had been chosen for her there.

And Scott’s present armed foray, on top of his savage command that everybody get out of his way, ought to make it look as if he were going to get her out of that hiding-place.

The reasoning checked. It made sense. But it didn’t feel right. He had another grenade ready for demonstration purposes, when he heard patterings behind hun. He stopped his descent instantly. The following, rushing footfalls continued. Then a wheezing, anguished voice panted, “Lieutenant! Lieutenant!”

It was Chenery, sounding as if he dreaded equally that Scott wouldn’t hear him and that someone else would. He came desperately down the stairs.

Scott said, “Hold it!”

Chenery stopped short so abruptly that he almost fell forward. He clung to the stairway handrail, panting.

“Lieutenant—”

“Well?”

“You said you’d smashed the drive-engine!”

“I disabled it,” said Scott coldly. “There’s only one way to get the Lambda through the next few hours. A fool using the drive could spoil that way.”

“Are you—goin’ to get through yourself? Honest, Lieutenant?”

Scott shrugged.

“I’m betting on it. A big bet. My life.”

“Listen!” panted Chenery. “I—I don’t want to die, Lieutenant! But I—I didn’t mean this job to be worked this way! It was goin’ to be smooth an’ crisp an’ smart! Nobody hurt, and the biggest job ever, pulled off like a—like a masterpiece! See?”

“I haven’t much time,” said Scott impatiently.

“L-look! If Bugsy gets away with the Golconda Ship, he’s goin’ to kill me anyhow! I know it! So I got nothing to lose. But—I’ve been a fool! And—I got a public. There’s people that admire me! But—I’ll have brought him here an’ planned everything an’ he’ll—”

“I said I haven’t much time!” said Scott sharply.

“Let me—throw in with you!” pleaded Chenery. “I haven’t got a chance anyhow! If the comets don’t kill everybody, Bugsy’ll kill me an’ he’ll brag about it! So nobody can track him, but he’ll brag! About makin’ me a fool! Let me throw in with you! Maybe I can help! I know that won’t keep me from the gas-chamber, but if I got to die I don’t want to look like a fool!”

Scott hesitated for a moment. But it was quite possibly true. Chenery’s vanity had been crushed and shredded, but he had protected Janet and attempted futile apology for the murders he’d unintentionally brought about. Moreover, Scott believed that he wouldn’t live to divide anything with Bugsy, and that he knew it. Whether or not he could be of any real use was a question, but now was no time to debate it.

“Can you get back to the control room?” he asked.

“I—I think so!” ”

“Go there,” ordered Scott. “There’s an automatic meteor-watch instrument. Do you know it?”

“N-no. But I—”

Scott stopped him. He told exactly where the instrument was on the control room wall. It was a variant of a very ancient device, a proximity-fuse, which had been devised for use in war on ancient Earth. As used now, it gave warning of the approach of objects in space. It ignored all but approaching ones. It ignored micrometeorites. Linkage with a radar-scanner cut off reports of those whose lateral change of bearing indicated that they’d pass well to one side or another. In effect, it gave warning of objects above a minimum size approaching on collision or near-collision courses.

“It’s set for one hundred miles sensitivity,” said Scott. “There’s a pointer to change it. Set it for four hundred miles. Then watch it. If the dial shows probability above five per cent, make sure the alarm-gongs ring, even if you have to turn them on by hand. Understand?”

Chenery said agitatedly, “Yes. But I’m throwing in with you—”

“And I’m giving you orders,” Scott told him. “Carry them out or don’t. But for now, don’t follow me. Move!”

He gestured. Chenery turned around and trudged up the steps again.

Scott continued his descent. His purpose here was to convince Bugsy that Janet was somewhere in these parts of the buoy. To do that, he had to keep attention focussed on himself. The way to do that was to keep in action, even though he acted only to keep attention on himself. And the best action he could take was to vanish.

He did. In the simplest possible fashion. Between the engine room and the hospital and crew’s quarters deck, there was a half-level,—a space with only half the usual ceiling height. When Lambda had been a liner, by standard spacecraft regulations, she had to carry emergency food supplies for not less than one full standard year for a maximum ship’s company. Ship owners protested bitterly against this deadhead cargo. It cut down the paying freight a ship could take aboard. But the requirement was fixed. This half-deck was the space in which those emergency rations had been carried. The practical result of carrying them, of course, was that if a ship were disabled in space, and if repairs by her crew were impossible—why—since there was no real chance of any other ship finding it, a year’s supply of food meant that those aboard would have so much extra time in which to go mad from despair before they died.

Scott reached this storage area. It was long since three-quarters empty. There were only a few big crates of now undoubtedly unusable rations remaining. The section was dark and the air in it stale. Scott stepped off the stairway and vanished in its obscurity. Then he simply waited.

Again he had bitter doubts. Now he had forty minutes or less before the Lambda would arrive near the estimated point where her destruction might be expected to begin. His guess could be wrong. There might be stray stones or steel objects. They’d become more concentrated near the coma’s center. At any instant even now there could be the final event,—an impact no one aboard Lambda would feel, because all would be dead before they could experience dying. But it might be delayed…

All this was chance, and chance would have to decide it. But Scott had to think of other things. If he should get the buoy through the comets, it would have to be because he wasn’t interfered with. He couldn’t do it with panicky jitters clamoring that they must be made instantly safe in a fashion they could understand. He couldn’t have Bugsy’s high-pitched and frantic commands that he do something right away or be burned down. He’d need to do what had to be done with absolute precision and without disturbance. He couldn’t handle the buoy and at the same time reassure blaster-men who might kill him any instant because they couldn’t understand that he was saving them.

There were, then, two actions to be performed. One would keep Janet from being found. The other would keep Bugsy’s crew of murderers from being able to hinder the preservation of their lives for, of course, gas-chambers.

Scott was now performing the first action by taking no action at all. He sat in the emergency-supplies half-deck, breathing stale air and watching the minute hand of his watch. He’d been followed down from the hotel restaurant level by Bugsy’s men. They had orders not to let themselves be seen, but to find out where Scott would find Janet. They were now wildly wrong in their guess because he’d made them so. But now they’d no idea where he was.

Minutes passed. Slowly. With a horrible deliberation. There was no noise for a long time. Then somebody dashed down the stairway, going through and past the half-deck. Scott watched him, blaster in hand, as he ran past the darkness of the storage space. If he’d stopped to look, he might have seen Scott as his eyes adjusted to the darkness. If he had, Scott would have needed to blast him. But he rushed by. Bugsy’s orders, now, were to find Janet. To follow Scott. Everything depended on it. Now there was confusion. Scott had disappeared.

Scott gave him two minutes in which to spread dismay and to rouse Bugsy to foaming fury. They were very long minutes indeed.

Then he went on to the stairway himself. He followed the same route as the man who’d rushed down. One more level and he listened. He emerged on the very last level of all. There was babbling somewhere. Scott shifted his blaster to his left hand. He weighed a less-than-fist-sized grenade in his right. He threw it. It exploded. Flames and smoke and fumes spread an incredible distance. The door of the crew’s cabin disappeared. The door-frame partly crumpled and partly vanished. There was a crater in the floor. There were cries. Scott had indicated for the second time that he did not want to be followed. And nobody would make any haste at all to disobey him. Inside the crew’s quarters men were dazed and bewildered by the wholly unexpected explosion almost in their midst. Before any of them dared to look outside, Scott was gone on past the hospital—the remaining patient was there no longer—and through another door under a sign, Lifeboat. Do Not Enter.

He closed and jammed it behind him. He went along the brief passage from that doorway to a metal, airtight door. It was closed and locked, of course. Lifeboats could be entered only when an officer made it possible. Only especially trained men could make good use of a space boat.

But Scott had a key for it. He’d let Janet into another lifeboat, far up near the bow. He now used the same key—it was practically part of an officer’s uniform—to enter this lifeboat blister. But he didn’t enter the boat itself. He locked the blister-door behind him and turned to that closet within the blister which holds space suits ready but protects them from pilfering or souvenir-hunting crewmembers and travelers. There was only one suit there. He laid out certain of the things in his pockets. The air-lock key. Grenades. His blaster and its holster.

With strict method, he checked the space suit. Air. Batteries. Signs of wear. Space cord. He put it on and transferred the items from his pockets to the suit.

He was putting on the helmet when a clanging, clamorous gong sounded stridently and persistently in the blister, as it did in every other part of Lambda, where a human being could be.

He knew what it was, a meteor-alarm giving notice of some sizable object approaching the Lambda on a collision or a near-miss course. Its sound was distinctive and jangling. Bugsy’s men would know!

Scott settled his helmet with a professional twist rare even to the men of the Patrol. He opened the small side port that work-parties used when a ship was aground, but very rarely in space.

He stepped out on the outer surface of the buoy.

There were nearly no stars. The Lambda was already within the mist, the infinitely thin shining stuff which was the visible part of a comet. Nothing but that luminous haze could be seen in the direction toward which the Lambda moved. The glittering marker-buoy, only a mile and a half from Lambda, was utterly distinct. But perhaps fifty stars out of billions could still be seen in the direction from which the buoy had come.

It went on toward destruction as Scott stood clumsily in magnetic-soled shoes on the buoy’s hull.