Checkpoint Lambda

CHAPTER 7

A class in nature study on Trent looked fascinatedly through transparent panels at carefully preserved specimens of the fauna and flora of that now long-settled world. Earth organisms brought by the early colonists had long since crowded out the native types everywhere that they were not especially guarded. On another world, the planet Tambu, the chains of volcanos that so impressed the first exploring parties were now tamed, and vast industrial complexes operated on the unlimited power they produced. The watery world of Glair had seemed to defy humanity to subdue its single, limitless brackish sea for merely human uses. But there were colonies on its floating ice-caps now, and processing ships used electric currents to herd marine creatures into motor-driven nets, while electrolyctic plants continually extracted rare-metal elements from the semi-salt seawater. And there was Fourney, and Glamis, and Krail. On Fourney, colonists prepared exportable planetary specialties from the hides of the largest carnivores in the galaxy. On Glamis useful and profitable products were made from the half-animal vegetation whose various species devoured each other and tried to kill men. And even the murderously poisonous Krailian trees called upas—from an Earth tradition—were now confined to special forests, and from their venom, men extracted a cure for indigestion.

All through the galaxy it seemed that there was defiance of mankind. And all through the galaxy men complacently made profit out of things designed to frustrate them. They didn’t often destroy the inimical things they encountered. Usually they diverted them from the purposes which were their own, and turned them to use for the purposes of mankind.

But Canis Lambda seemed for a long time to have won a single, isolated victory over men.

Man began to search for planets on which to deposit its ever-growing population. It had found and settled worlds so rapidly, though, that there was now no planet anywhere which did not clamor for more inhabitants. And still new worlds appeared. But Canis Lambda, burning fiercely in emptiness, still defied men.

Eons since, when humans first blinked astonished eyes at the miracle of fire, in the First System, Canis Lambda had taken measures. Then it had four planets which men might eventually desire. So Canis Lambda destroyed them—shattered them and turned them into jagged, ragged scraps and lumps of broken stone and steel. It left specimens large enough to mock the men who would some day arrive. There were a few asteroids not less than forty miles in diameter. Smaller bits couldn’t be counted or even estimated. But none could be of any conceivable use to mankind. And Canis Lambda flamed sullen triumph at its victory for hundreds of thousands of years.

When men did come to it, there was nothing for them to live on or mine or make any use of at all. But they’d have liked to find a planet there. There wasn’t one. So they made a robot checkpoint there to do part of what their plans required.

Canis Lambda destroyed it. Men built another. Canis Lambda destroyed that. So then men drove out an ancient space liner which otherwise would have been made into scrap. They put it into orbit around Canis Lambda. And as if for insult, they paired it with a merely mile-thick lump of metal to mark the place where it should be when they wanted to find it. And then ships could make use of Canis Lambda. It was a checkpoint which could be seen and used for aiming from very far away. Ships steered for it. They broke out of overdrive and were assured of clear space to the next checkpoint on this space lane or that by a tinny voice from the buoy saying; “Checkpoint Lambda. Checkpoint Lambda. Report. Report.” And then the man-made ships went on, having made use of Canis Lambda despite itself.

But now this would end. The space buoy would be destroyed by four of the Five Comets acting together, with the fifth coming along a little later to make sure. And then men wouldn’t try to use Canis Lambda again.

Scott didn’t think of the situation in those terms, of course, but the universe as he saw it from the hull plates of Lambda did not look warm or comforting or hospitable. Where he stood he was in unshielded sunshine from the knees up. His space suit glittered. Over his head the marker-asteroid loomed,—menacingly, it seemed. Behind him, the curve of Lambda’s hull showed the sunlight forming a slightly wavery terminator between the utter darkness of shadow and the intolerable glare of the sun. But after a moment the shadow was not absolute black. There was some light reflected from the marker-asteroid, like moonlight on Earth and earthlight on the moon. In it he could see the edges of the plating. But the contrast between the lower parts of his legs on the side from which the sunlight came and the blazing brightness of the rest was extraordinary.

The mist which was the visible part of the comets was lighted by the sun, but it cast no shade. It was too thin. Scott could see to the farthest forward part of Lambda’s hull with complete clarity. Even a mile or two miles of distance showed no change. There was no fogging of any detail of the marker-asteroids’ surface. He could see the same scars he’d noted from the control room now hours ago. They were proof that like the planet Mercury of the First System, the asteroid always turned the same face toward its sun. Its day and night were endless.

All this was normal enough. The truly daunting thing was the total extinction of all but a very few of the brightest stars, and those stars ones that Lambda left behind. The buoy was partly into the misty mass which was the head of the first of the Five Comets. The mist wouldn’t blur the stars in scores of miles, but in thousands it would extinguish them. It had before. Yet it offered no resistance to the buoy’s motion along its orbit. Scott’s body penetrated it at the same orbital speed, but he felt no wind. There was none. Even though the mist was present and visible in a vast volume of space, it was nevertheless more nearly a vacuum than physics laboratories could produce.

He turned and plodded toward the buoy’s bow. He was infinitely alone—a small, glittering homunculus on a shining golden shape, which itself was minute compared to the very minor asteroid under two miles away. And the asteroid itself was an inconsiderable speck in a planetless solar system.

His magnetic-soled shoes felt sticky. Each shoe-sole had to be separated from adhesion to the steel by a process most painfully learned in space. There must be no jerk, or the other foot might be jolted loose, too. To walk an actually straight line was proof of great skill and much experience. The sounds of his footsteps were loud, because there was no other sound at all—at least, not for some minutes.

Then there came a snapping noise. A micrometeorite. His shoe-soles had picked up the sound from the plating. It didn’t mean much. He passed an air-lock door, a small one for personnel. Even on liners such air-locks were used with extraordinary reluctance. They were convenient in space ports aground, but not many merchant spacemen would go to their ship’s outer skin in space suits. For painting or inspection or possible repairs, yes. But aground. Not in space itself.

Another snapping, and almost immediately another. The second made a microscopic blue-white flame in the shadowed part of the hull. It wouldn’t have punctured Scott’s suit, and if he felt it at all it would have been the tiniest of tappings. He went on.

Then there was a harsher sound, equally sharp but many times louder. Something considerable, perhaps as large as a grain of sand, had hit the buoy. The metal rang. The impact flare was visible even in the sunlight, brighter than the sunlight.

More noises, some of them mere cracklings—impalpable particles called cosmic dust—but some ominously violent. At least one was violent enough to mean a possible puncture of a hull plate, and such encounters were to be avoided. But there’d be no loss of air from within the ship. Plastic bubbles, formed into foam and shrunken by pressure, lay behind each hull plate. A puncture released the pressure and the foam crowded into the opening and sealed it. It would handle only punctures, of course, of not too large a size. But there were relatively very few large objects in space.

More cracklings. More snaps. They were becoming more frequent. But this wouldn’t mean that Lambda was nearing the comets’ central masses. The frequency of the impacts was increasing too suddenly. It was probably a minor globular cluster of tiny meteoric objects floating about some larger object and that in turn circling the comet-mass itself. Such a cluster might be fifty or a hundred miles across, and it might consist of tens of thousands of rushing rocky morsels, and still contain no more than ten or fifteen to the cubic mile. But near the center of the cluster they’d be denser. And larger.

Scott plodded heavily, alone in a vast emptiness with mist to wall away the stars. To his right, a spout of flame. Twenty yards ahead, another. They were massive enough to kill a man. They were larger than pinheads.

There were four such impacts almost simultaneously. Lambda was plainly nearing whatever the meteor alarm had told of. It could be something no larger than a baseball, or something as big as a house. It need not be on an actual collision course. It could be headed for a near miss which could be anywhere within a radius of ten miles of Lambda.

In any case there was nothing to be done. If it hit, it hit. If it destroyed Lambda, it destroyed Lambda. The number of cracklings and louder sounds grew greater, plus one or two harsh detonations that would probably test the puncture-sealing qualities of the plastic foam. Scott headed for an air-lock door. He wore space armor and could live where there was no air for a certain period of time. But outside the buoy he could be killed by particles which the buoy’s plating would stop or seal off.

He used the key that made lifeboats available and unlocked air-lock doors. He pulled out the small personnel port. He was in the act of entering when the number of crackles and snappings increased to a roar. Even through his space gloves he could feel the tappings and harsher impacts of sand grain morsels. But the pulled-out metal port protected him, and downstream, as it were, he could see the sunlit plating spouting venomous spots of incandescence. It was oddly like the still surface of water in a rain. And then something went by overhead. It went much too swiftly for him to look at it, but it was the size of a hogshead.

The roaring of innumerable impacts diminished as rapidly as it had begun. In seconds the frequency of small tappings decreased. Presently it was only one now and then. The stray cluster of racing missiles had gone by.

Scott went all the way into the air-lock. He put his helmet against the inner wall. By solid conduction he heard what noises there were inside. The meteor alarm had stopped, but he heard sounds which could have been shoutings. He heard something which could have been an explosion. He was sure that he heard a blaster. All of which could add up to pure insanity from terror, or could have been equally insane obliviousness while wreaking destruction upon places where someone suspected Janet or Scott might be hid.

Either event could produce a highly useful state of affairs. Scott went back to the outside of the hull again. Automatically, he tried to look at his watch. It wasn’t possible through the sleeves and gloves of his space suit.

He tried to move faster. He estimated that he was just about as far from the stern as the engine room. He’d performed the elaborate maneuvers of which this walk in emptiness was a part, to convince Bugsy that he’d gone to Janet’s hiding-place, which supposed to be somewhere near the stern. The idea was to have Bugsy kept busy searching for it—and him. Bugsy was sure he was near the buoy’s bottom level. It would never occur to anyone but a spaceman to put on a space suit and return to the control room by the outside plating of the hull. While Bugsy was busy tearing the stern apart to find him—and Janet—he might get back to the control room with time to spare for what needed to be done there.

He was a small and lonely figure trudging forward on Lambda’s outer plating. He seemed to wade in darkness up to his thighs, while the upper part of his space suit glittered in the malevolent glare of Canis Lambda.

That blazing monster flung up prominences and flares. It produced spots and faculae of enormous size. It was a sun, and it would not be defied and made use of by minute creatures like men! One man in a space suit, trudging on the gilded hull of a derelict without drives, floating to destruction in empty space … one man in a space suit was a wholly contemptible antagonist for the sun Canis Lambda. But that yellow star waited impatiently to see the buoy turn to flame; burst into incandescence, become mere droplets of metal and shreds of ionized gases and even ultimately a short-lived comet itself, which would dissipate to nothingness and be gone forever.

Scott reached his destination, the air-lock through which he’d first entered the space buoy. He opened the outer door and went in. A spouting blue-white flame leaped upward from a place he’d just vacated. It vanished. He closed the outer door behind him. He opened the inner door and entered the ship.

He heard Thallian mood music when he opened his helmet’s face plate. It startled him. But it was only hours since he’d boarded Lambda, and it was custom for spacecraft to have some sound produced continually. One didn’t notice the sound, and the total silence of space would be nerve-racking. Here where there should be passengers there was music. Elsewhere there was random noise at the very threshold of audibility. Here solidograph films ran continuously in the tiny theatre, whether anyone watched or not. Scott, though, had been hearing quite other sounds for some time now, and music seemed very strange.

He went across the lobby and up the stairs to the control room. He opened the door and Chenery started up with a gasp. He’d been staring at the meteor-watch dial with fascinated, frightened eyes. The indicator needle quivered and swayed. It summed up the reports of all the meteor watch antennae at their different positions outside.

But it reacted only to approaching objects. Departing ones or those not coming nearer did not affect it. The dial needle indicated the moment-to-moment probability that a nearing meteor of sufficient size to be dangerous would pass within ten miles of the buoy. A five per cent probability was negligible. But a globular cluster could be bad! It had just been proven. Chenery watched. He quivered almost in unison with the needle of the meteor watch instrument. But the danger Scott anticipated wouldn’t lie in the lower percentages of probable close passings. He knew grimly that presently the instrument would tell of plunging masses of the comets’ cores rushing toward Lambda with a total impact-probability of one, when destruction would be inevitable and at hand.

He moved to the instrument board. Chenery said shakily, “You got a space suit on. Where’ve you been?”

“Out for a walk,” said Scott shortly. “I heard noises just now. What were they?”

“M-my men,” said Chenery. He swallowed. “I—used the GC phone and told them wherever they were that I was throwin’ in with you. I said not to do anything that’d make things worse for ‘em. I brought them into this,” he added miserably. “They were my kind of men. They liked things smart and smooth and—no trouble. I figured if you—make out, you could make things easier for them.”

“If I make out,” said Scott.

He was at the control board. He reached out and touched a control. Delicately. He moved it an absolute minimum of distance. He seemed to wait.

“Then after a little,” said Chenery unhappily, “I heard a racket. Some blaster-shots. Yells. Somebody screamed, I think.”

Scott had heard the same tumult by solid conduction, when he was in an air-lock while a fire-storm of micrometeorites went past him. He touched the control again. He waited.

“One of your men?”

“Y-yeah,” said Chenery. He licked his lips. “A good fella with a pen. He did some good jobs, workin’ with me. He had on a uniform when you came here.”

Scott again moved a control. Absolutely nothing seemed to happen. It appeared that he was trying to begin the use of whatever the control governed with a minimum of noticeable effect. But he watched the edge of a screen, where the image of the marker asteroid was divided, with a part appearing on the stern port-quarter screen and another part on the next screen forward. It wouldn’t have been possible for Chenery to know if the marker asteroid moved. But Scott could tell.

He shifted a control he hadn’t touched before. By a hair’s-breadth only.

“You think he’s been killed? By Bugsy?”

“A-all four of them,” said Chenery. There was bitterness in his voice. “Bugsy couldn’t get at me right away. So it’d be like him to—take it out on them.”

“And now?”

“He’ll still be mad,” said Chenery, without hope. “He’ll come after me. There—there’s no place to go. So I just stayed here.”

“That just might be a good idea,” said Scott. He took an exhaustive look at the vision-screens. They showed no stars now, only an indefinite, surfaceless lighted mist which was the coma of the first of the Five Planets they must pass through. He seemed satisfied. “But I think we should discourage him from coming here. But one thing first.”

He looked sharply at Chenery. Chenery gazed at the meteor-watch instrument. The needle swayed wildly! He licked his lips. It was odd that he could be despairingly resigned to being killed by Bugsy, and yet be frightened by the waverings of an indicator needle which could be expected to report the coming of destruction for everybody in the buoy.

Scott threw a switch on the control room’s back wall. He said curtly into a transmitter just above it, “Things are going along all right so far. But if I don’t call you in twenty minutes, do what I told you. What I showed you how to do. Don’t act earlier unless you must. Don’t wait after twenty minutes in any case. Otherwise, your situation’s taken care of. But don’t try to call me.”

He turned to Chenery.

“Where’s your blaster?”

Chenery brought it out.

“Good shot?”

“N-no,” admitted Chenery. “I—we didn’t really use guns. Only for show. But we pulled off some jobs you’d hardly believe!” Then he said, “Morale-effect grenades worked better than blasters. I’ve got some in my luggage.”

“I know,” said Scott with extreme dryness. “Come on.”

He led the way down to the hotel level. He showed Chenery the way to get behind the curiously old fashioned room clerk’s desk with its counter and quaint draperies. It would be a very good place in which to await events.

“Bugsy thinks I’m hidden out somewhere in the stern,” Scott observed, “and getting me or Janet, he thinks, will end all his problems. So he’s not going to give up the hunt down there simply to come up and murder you. Or he may just send up a couple of blaster-men to do it. I doubt that he has much respect for you.”

Chenery swallowed.

“And if you started all this business with only four men you could count on,” added Scott savagely, “and called in a man like Bugsy for the others you’d need, you invited everything that’s happened!”

He listened. The plaintive, slightly monotonous Thallian mood music was the only sound, except for a crackling noise out on the hull plates. But it was hardly noticeable. He turned back to Chenery.

“Now, I’ve got something to attend to,” he said shortly. “From here, you command that stair with your blaster. When Bugsy’s men come into sight, drive them back. Or kill them. They won’t expect to run into an ambush. When I hear shooting I’ll come out and take part if necessary. But I’d rather Bugsy kept busy hunting me astern. I don’t want him interrupting what I’ve got to do. So—be practical! Try to hit something. When your friends come up the stairs to kill you, you can turn your blaster to rapid fire and wave it at them and you’ll probably do all right. But don’t warn them to go back! Start shooting!”

Chenery swallowed again. Trembling, he took up his post. Scott went back to the control room. He checked the vision-screens. They showed the same pale radiance all about. One marker asteroid was startlingly distinct, but it was the only thing visible on any of the screens.

Once more he moved controls, two of them. He touched them delicately. Once there was a clicking behind him, and he reached over swiftly and prevented the meteor alarm from sounding. The situation had changed since he’d given orders to Chenery to make sure it rang. Then he’d been on his way to try and fool Bugsy as to Janet’s whereabouts. Now, he was anxious for Bugsy to be directing a hunt for the two of them. He didn’t want to disturb him by putting any new ideas in his head. Which was why he hardly moved the controls—to keep Bugsy from knowing that anything was being attempted.

He had the controls on full power and feverishly watched the marker asteroid. There’d be changes needed in the control adjustments presently, but he had Chenery on guard against men coming up from below. Meanwhile, he had to get Lambda and the marker asteroid pointing in exactly the same direction. Exactly! Lambda had to shift—

He looked at the control room clock. He grimaced. Time was running very short.

He heard the roar of a blaster on the next deck level down. He hesitated for an instant, because what he was doing was of so much greater importance than anything else. He was attempting to prevent the destruction of Lambda, and his success would depend on how accurately it was done. Interruption, even to use a blaster on Bugsy’s followers, was more irritating than exciting. He didn’t want to interrupt his work to have a fire-fight with professional killers. But—he had to.

He started down the stairway to the hotel level, a blaster in his hand. He realized distastefully that if he were recognized and word got back to Bugsy, that the continuation of what was to be an extremely critical operation might not take place. Nobody could do delicate work with a space buoy while defending himself against Bugsy.

These things ran through his mind as he was going to join Chenery in combat against the blaster-men Bugsy had sent to kill Chenery.

He reached the landing where the stairway turned. From it he could see very nearly all the lobby. He saw smoke. A blaster-bolt had hit the floor and the floor covering smoked. There were two men near the top of the grand stairway. They had the air of professionals undertaking a familiar task.

The blaster-bolt—neither of them had fired it—was not even a near miss. Chenery had let off his weapon in gasping panic. It had done nothing but make smoke. Scott saw him. The two men on the grand stairway couldn’t. Chenery shook as if with the ague. He wrestled with the weapon he’d carried. He was trying to turn it on rapid-fire. He was obviously in the last stages of desperation.

The men on the stair saw a very badly-placed blaster-shot hitting the floor a good fifteen feet from them. It was a strictly amateur shot, and it made only strangling smoke. One of them spoke curtly. The two of them dashed up the rest of the stairway. Scott lifted his blaster with much grimness, and then the totally unexpected happened.

Chenery pulled the trigger of his weapon with the rapid-fire stud pushed in. The blaster made an intolerably harsh and discordant outcry. It seemed to pour out a lancelike white-hot flame which swept crazily across the lobby. It swerved jerkily back. More white smoke billowed up. Then there was an unbearable flash. A blaster-bolt had hit a blaster in the act of swinging to bear upon Chenery. The blaster blew apart. A man screamed. Then another blaster flamed momentarily and the seemingly continuous streak of fire lashed through the smoke toward it.

A man fled down the grand stairway, howling. Another man crawled down it, making noises like a suffering animal.

Chenery came out of the smoke, shaking.

“They—they’re both gone,” he said stupidly. He spoke to himself. He wasn’t aware that Scott had come to help him.

“One won’t come back,” said Scott coldly, from his position on the stair near the lobby ceiling. “The other may. You’ll have to stick it out a while longer, but I don’t think they’ll hurry. Bugsy’s still hunting me. He won’t bother with you until he gives up on that.”

He went back to the control room. The position of the marker asteroid had visibly changed. The buoy, of course, had been turned about by the shock-sobered engineer, and it was not likely that he’d neutralized its turning motion exactly. Once started on the slowest and most sedate of spins, Lambda would keep it up forever or as long as it remained a solid object. Under present circumstances, that last might not be a long time. But after one glance Scott ceased to look at the screens. Now he absorbed himself in the readings of the meteor-watch instrument. Its needle quivered. It made a sudden wild swing, almost to unity reading. Then it swung back and quivered again. That swing meant a big object approaching the checkpoint buoy from some four hundred miles away, and its return meant that it had an independent motion which had just barely urged it put of the line to make it pass dangerously close to Lambda.

Scott cursed to himself. If Janet could handle a space boat competently, now would be the time to tell her to take the boat out of its blister and go to the place and take the measures he’d instructed her in. But she wasn’t experienced. Her chances wouldn’t be improved by such an attempt. Not yet.

Chenery came in. “Lieutenant,” he said, agitated. “Did you see it? I fought those fellas! I got one of ‘em! Maybe I hurt the other! Me! I fought those fellas!”

“No doubt,” said Scott acidly. “Can you do it again? They’ll be back eventually with some others. Not yet, but presently.”

He turned the meteor-watch instrument back to the instrument board. Painstakingly, he cut down the power handled by one of the controls and watched for results. He glanced at the clock with its sweeping second hand.

“I think I can do it again,” said Chenery, urgently. Then suddenly he said, “Yeah. I can! I always thought a blaster was something you let off one shot at a time. But like you said, I pushed down that stud and it was like playin’ a hose! I got ‘em, that way!”

“A blaster,” said Scott grimly, “holds two hundred and fifty charges. With the continuous-fire stud down, it empties itself in five seconds. Then you haven’t got a blaster.”

He examined all the screens in turn. The marker asteroid looked subtly different. Chenery’s eyes fell upon it, but he was absorbed in the remarkable discovery of his own prowess.

The meteor watch instrument clicked. Scott had turned off the warning gong, but his eyes flicked to the dial. The needle quivered and shook. It showed a high-probability approach of solid objects. A single large mass would have given a steady indication. This quivering of the needle meant many objects. In all likelihood another cluster of meteorites traveled together, perhaps with the larger members well separated, yet with innumerable sand grains and pebbles rushing with them to cross the buoy’s orbit. The approach was swift. Seconds after the first warning, there was a faint cracking sound. Whatever it was, it would be larger than a pinhead, but its impact was muffled on the way in. Seconds later, two more. There was a snapping noise, probably a minute puncture. More crackings. Another snap. A possible second puncture. But there was no notice of air pressure dropping anywhere on the buoy. Punctures, if there were any, were being sealed off by the pressure-foam inside the hull plates. But the number of extremely minute particles increased.

Another snapping noise. It was distinct.

A buzzing, from the back wall of the control room. Scott’s hand flashed forward. He said harshly, “Janet, what—?”

Her voice in the phone-speaker was not quite steady.

“Something broke through the blister and punctured a viewport of the boat. I thought you should know. I’m saying thanks and goodbye.”

He was out of the control room before she finished speaking. He flung himself down the stairway. He smelled the acrid smoke of the burning Chenery’s blaster had produced. He reached the alcove once used by stewards for service to the lobby. The door under the Lifeboat. Do Not Enter sign. The metal inner door of the blister. He unlocked and dragged at it. It took all his strength to open it. But it opened a crack and air rushed in, and it banged wide. He heard the shrill whistling sound of escaping air. He wrenched at the space boat’s port. Janet released it. He dragged her out while the ominous whistling continued.

He slammed the inner door shut and panted with relief. It occurred to him absurdly that he’d told Janet he was setting up a gamble with fate, to gain for her an extension of time in which to breathe and an outside chance of ultimate survival. Now he felt that the bet had been refused. A deep and bitter anger filled him. But this was no time for anger. Air can pass fast through an opening to space. It hadn’t been three minutes since the impact of a pebble spoiled his special plan for a better chance for Janet. Now she’d have to take the same chance he had—nearly! But not quite. Now the air-leak from the lifeboat blister was sealed off by the inner lock door. He’d gotten to Janet in time. But he began to feel a deep indignation. It seemed to him that fate was cheating.

“You’re all right?” he demanded.

“Quite all right.” She moistened her lips and said, “I—couldn’t possibly have gotten that door open.”

“I’m not sure you’ve gained much because I could,” he told her. “Things aren’t going as well as I hoped.”

There was the faint, mournful Thallian mood music in the lobby, as they crossed it to reach the control room. In addition to that sound there were cracklings, tappings, and now and again louder impacts.

They reached the control room. Chenery stared. Scott’s dash out and now his return with Janet made him blink. But he knew nothing of where Janet had been. Scott had said she was resting and, he hoped, asleep.

She looked at Scott. He was back at the instrument board. He looked at the screens. The marker asteroid had moved still more. It looked nearer, now. Much nearer.

She said uneasily, “Is Bugsy—?”

“He’s still with us,” said Scott. “He sent me a message. I’d been so indiscreet as to say I’d found a place where you wouldn’t be disturbed. He thought he knew where it was. He wants to have me where I can’t refuse to do anything he commands. I think he’s getting a little skeptical about the Comets. They haven’t destroyed us yet. So he began to hunt for you and sent me word to do something right away, or else. The implication was that you’d suffer for it.”

“Then what?”

“I still need fifteen minutes,” said Scott grimly. “They could be denied me by the comets. But Bugsy’s more likely to cut them short. With just fifteen minutes more—maybe twenty—I can make the buoy relatively safe. Then I can try another trick to make you safer. But I’m beginning to doubt I’ll have the time.”

Chenery drew a deep breath. Then he said, “I’ll make sure you get it.”

Scott did not turn his head. Janet continued to look at Scott.

Chenery said, “You don’t believe it? Look! I just handled two of ‘em! And what’ve I got to lose? I’m in a bad fix! Bugsy’s men did the killings, but I get part of the blame. Bugsy’s killed my men and they were good fellas. He’s goin’ to kill me, unless I kill him. And if you need fifteen minutes or the Comets’ll kill all of us—why not?”

Janet looked at him. He believed it was approvingly. And he’d protected her on the buoy until Scott arrived. He obviously felt that he was obligated to help her.

Scott made measurements on the screen. Chenery said proudly, “He don’t think much of me, Bugsy don’t. I got the two men he sent to kill me because they didn’t think much of me, either. Bugsy’ll never think I came huntin’ him!”

Scott said shortly, “Ambush is your bet.”

“Yeah,” said Chenery, nodding complacently. “They run into me here. They’ll never think I’ll go to meet them! So I meet ‘em as far down as I can, and they’ll run into me before they could imagine it. And they won’t believe its me until they start dyin’!”

Scott compressed his lips.

“Your blaster—?”

“Grenades,” said Chenery zestfully. “You know where they are! I used them for moral effect on jobs. They stop people chasin’ you. I got a reputation for plannin’ things. I got this all planned. Even if I get killed, this way I won’t look like a fool. And I got a public.”

He nodded grandly. Scott was skeptical. But Chenery walked out of the control room and down the stairs. Scott suddenly believed him. And Scott’s own expression became embittered. He had to stay here in the control room. Unless he handled certain small control levers exactly right, making them do specific things with specific energy at exactly the proper times, there was no hope for the buoy or any of its occupants. But it was humiliation to stay here, twiddling levers, while Chenery went to what certainly would be his death.

A tapping sounded somewhere on Lambda’s hull. It was an isolated meteoric particle. The noise was muffled by the pressure-foam that could seal off punctures sometimes more than an inch in diameter.

Then the meteor-watch instrument clicked. Scott glanced sharply at it. The needle seemed frozen at maximum indication. It wasn’t reporting a small and blindly rushing globular cluster of tiny missiles now. Not this time! Its sensitive point was four hundred miles away, farther from the sun, in the line of the center and the heaviest concentration of celestial debris. But by the action of the needle Scott knew that it wasn’t reacting to even close clusters of relatively small missiles, such as had passed Lambda before.

This was the main group of the main masses of the first of the Five Comets. It was more than four hundred miles away, but it was incomparably larger than anything experienced up to now. The meteor-watch instrument registered just about what about it would record if a giant planet plunged headlong to obliterate and utterly destroy the completely helpless Checkpoint Lambda.