"Go ahead and say it," I told him.
He looked up, and his mouth twisted into a cynical smile.
"We all fall for happy accordion music and an Irish brogue. All fall
for a guy because he appeals to what there is inside people like us
that says some guys you can always trust. Maybe, Ken, we deserve to be
second-raters."
"Maybe," I said. Only I was thinking about men like Kolomar. About
right and wrong, success and failure, always in terms of physical
size, physical strength. Whomp me and I'll whomp you back harder.
Twenty-first century civilization--still the spoiled brats of a half
century ago. "Maybe we do," I said, and wondered if we always would.
"What was it McGinty was always saying?" Loftus asked quietly.
"Something about--'the further out y'go, the more th' edge y'got--an'
leave all the other dir-rty business behind besides.'"
"Your brogue smells, kid. But that's about the way it went."
"Somehow, I never thought he meant it, this way. Thought he had
something else in mind. The way he always looked out the port when he
played. At the stars."
"I know, I know," I snapped. "Can it, can it."
Loftus shut up, but I knew what he meant, had known it before he said
it, because I'd felt that way about McGinty for a long time, myself.
McGinty played accordion music because it was something a little better
than the canned stuff we could get on our radios. He had tried for that
science degree because he'd wanted to make himself a little better, if
he could. He griped about how "slow" the scientists were, griped about
the "misers" we had in our politics. Just as a reaction against a state
of affairs that he thought might be made a little better. It had always
seemed to me that in McGinty's simple philosophy, if you could just get
started making things a little better here and there, pretty soon, a
lot of things would be a lot better everywhere. Not second-rate.
I drummed my fingers on the communications panel, watching Loftus and
waiting for either Knight or Haliburton to buzz me that things were
set. I started to get up and that was when my video signal started its
nervous blinking. In a single movement I had it switched on. It framed
McGinty's big red face.
He was drunk, and his blue eyes were blazing the way they always
blazed, drunk or sober.
"Y'been a'callin' me, Colonel? Well here I am! Lookin' fer these,
I'll bet!" He waved a huge gauntleted paw in front of the screen. It
clutched the thin plastisheen envelope that contained the microstats.
Loftus was out of his chair in an instant, crowding the video next to
me and triggering a desk recorder into action at the same time.
"Look, you crazy fool," I bellowed. "I'm not going to ask you what or
why, McGinty, not now. But we're coming out after you, and you'd better
be turned around and headed back this way by the time we've started."
"Yi, yi, Colonel! Kolomar's a-burnin' is 'e? Ha!" McGinty's red beard
bristled, and brick-red hair straggled down into snapping eyes. "He's a
slow-poke like a-a-ll the rest of 'em! Only I've got me a deal, Kenny
me b'y!"
"McGinty, for God's sake! Kolomar'll hunt you to the end of Time!"
"Will 'e, now!"
"There's nothing he won't do or can't get done to see you in the death
chamber, McGinty. No matter where you go or whom you meet--"
"Sure, an' y'wouldn't be a'kiddin' now, Colonel, would ye? No,
y'wouldn't kid McGinty! Ye're not the blarneyin' type, Colonel! Well,
come along, then. You take the high road an' I'll take the low--"
Singing, suddenly, singing like a drunken madman, and then the screen
went blank.
As it did, Haliburton buzzed.
"Ready Ken," he said.
And Loftus and I headed for the landing nets and a taxi berth.
* * * * *
Because he was blasting all the way, it would take McGinty slightly
more than twenty-two hours to get from the satellite into an orbit
around the Moon. The regular way, blast and drift, it takes about
seventy-one. But McGinty was in a hurry.
There was no knowing how soon before that twenty-two hours he would
be meeting the Comrades. Nor was there any way of knowing if McGinty
intended to break his orbit when he neared the Moon and head on out
into Space. That way he'd end up a derelict with his fuel exhausted,
smothered when his air was used up, and lost forever. Something began
picking at the back of my mind, but I didn't have time to play with it.
With the extra rocket motor Knight had had jury-rigged to the stern of
our L-8, there was a chance we could overtake McGinty an hour or so
before he entered a lunar orbit, if that's what he was going to do. And
if we'd been able to crowd on enough fuel.
Or, if he just kept on going, we were certain to overhaul him--and that
was why neither of those two angles made much sense. From a practical
point of view, anyway.
"It's a rendezvous set-up for certain," Knight said. He was strapped in
the bow astrodome seat, working with the L-8's two-inch refractor.
Earth and our satellite rolled some twenty hours and two hundred
twenty thousand miles behind us; we were tired, we were apprehensive
and edgy. We'd been power-on all the way instead of blasting and
drifting. But so had McGinty.
Knight had had McGinty's L-8 in his lenses almost from the hour we'd
blasted out. There were just three of us--myself, Knight and Loftus.
I'd left Haliburton behind as second-in-command and to take care of
Kolomar when he came up, as he had. Right now, he was only a couple of
hours behind us in the L-8 I'd ordered Haliburton to have ready and
waiting for him.
There hadn't been anything else from McGinty. Not a flicker. And not a
word either from the Comrades. Things should've been crackling about
now. Their satellite had just rounded Earth's illumination an hour or
so before, and they should be throwing cover-up messages at us by the
barrel, wanting to know what was the meaning of an uncleared orbital
flight, and why hadn't they been notified.
But not a word. At least not that Loftus had picked up on our own H-F.
Maybe they were just going to play it straight--
"Hey, hey, here they are after all," Loftus said suddenly. "All
translated and everything. Give a listen." He turned up the volume.
It was good cover-up, all right. Just as though they hadn't known a
thing about it. Just discovered it and wanted a fast explanation.