Morna struggled and kicked the spacesuits while Vicenzo tied her next
to Henry. Aziz said, "You think there's really a chance of us fallin'?
I'd hate to plop in all that methane."
"No," said Vicenzo. "Old man, where's the control room? We're moving
this whole station with the two ships clamped on."
"Hadn't we oughta put some water in our tanks, in case we gotta scram
quick?" Aziz asked. "They're about empty."
Ranjit chuckled. "You'll have to wait four hours to tank up. I just
got the heater going a while ago. There's an SG ship due in soon. You
better give up."
"You're lying in strings!" Vicenzo said. "You must have fuel for the
sweeper's motors. Where's the control room?"
"I ain't saying."
"He'll tell," Aziz gloated, raising his knife.
"We can find it quicker," Vicenzo said and turned away. Aziz followed
him through the door.
"What?" Joachim muttered. "Where? The gangsters!" He stared around the
compartment and cried, "There is one! Henry is a gangster! You are
also, Ranjit! I have long suspected that the destruction of the Rings
of Saturn could only be the work of gangsters! No one--Morna! Are you
injured?"
"No," Morna blubbered. "Stay away from me, Henry!" One of her wings of
black and yellow hair had fallen over her face.
"Sorry," Henry said, blushing and moving his legs. "I didn't notice
which way I was drifting."
Joachim said, "Where are the other gangsters? Have they gone to steal
my ship? It is rented! The SPRS would never recover if we had to pay
for the ship!"
"Let's figure some way to get loose," Ranjit suggested. "Those fellows
won't find the control room out there. No motors, anyhow, but all
they've got to do is wait till enough fuel melts and use their ship to
move the sweeper. Think how that'd look on my record."
"You said an SG ship would be here in a few minutes," Morna objected.
"I was just telling them that. There's no ship due for two days."
"You actually told a falsehood?" Morna gasped.
Ranjit said, "When you get to be my age, you'll find you can do lots
of things they didn't teach in school. How'd you clinch up with two
fellows like them, Henry? They're space happy, both of them. Didn't you
have no education?"
"Not much," Henry said. "Me and my parents were shipwrecked in the
Asteroids when I was only ten. Mother tried to teach me Honesty, and
Morality, and all the rest, but it didn't take very well. We were there
eight years before we were picked up. They put me in school, then, with
a bunch of kids. I didn't like it, so I skipped and worked in the mines
on Titan. Then I got mixed up with Vicenzo and Aziz. This is the first
job I've pulled with them."
"At least you changed your mind and tried to stop it," Ranjit said,
tugging at his bonds.
"The snips!" Henry exclaimed. "There's a pair of snips in my side
pocket. Maybe you can reach them, Ranjit, if I--No, they're on the
wrong side. Morna, will you try to get them if I can put my, uh, pocket
next to your hand?"
"Stay away from me," Morna said.
"You've got to." Henry braced his feet against the deck and pushed,
bending his knees as his weightless body flew into the air. He twisted,
and the side of his left leg struck the ceiling. Shoving with his toe,
he forced his contorted body back toward the pipe. "There!" he grunted.
"Can you reach them?"
Morna said, "I don't know. My wrists are tied so tight." Her hand
touched Henry's hip and sent him swinging in the opposite direction.
His legs stopped across Ranjit's chest. The old man lowered his head
and butted Henry back toward Morna.
"Oh, get out of my face!" Morna complained.
* * * * *
Henry lay against the ceiling with his legs bent, his back bowed, and
his left elbow pressed against his lower ribs. Morna's hand fluttered
at his pocket. "I've got--No, it's a screwdriver," she said. "Now, I've
got the snips!"
"Don't drop them," Henry pleaded. He thrust his feet back to the deck.
"Try to cut the line around my wrist. Ow! That's my hand!"
"Be brave!" Morna jeered nervously. "Now it's under the cord. I cut
one!"
Henry twisted his wrist in the loosened cord and pulled his left hand
free. He said, "Thanks. Give me the snips."
Morna said, "Promise to cut me down first. I don't want to be tied with
you loose."
Henry snatched the snips from her and cut the line binding his right
hand. Morna said, "Gangster trick."
"Hurry up, Henry," Ranjit said. "Those fellows will be coming back."
Henry released Ranjit and Joachim. "Cut me loose!" Morna yelled.
"Not so loud," Henry said, freeing her. "Go up in the control room,
Ranjit. You told me you still had flywheel steering. If it won't hurt
you, you can make them think you're decelerating. It'll confuse them,
at least."
"Yeah," Ranjit chuckled, "that's a bright idea. I was about to think of
it myself."
Henry said, "Morna, you go with Ranjit. Joachim, you stay with me, and
we'll waylay them. We'll find something for weapons."
Ranjit pulled the sandwich bunk down on its rods, crouched on the bunk,
and pushed open the overhead hatch. Joachim said, "I do not intend to
engage in a brawl with gangsters. Come, Morna, let us take our chances
in our own ship. We--"
"I hear them out there!" Henry said.
Joachim squeaked, bounded to the bunk, and sprang through the hatch.
"Bet he bumped his head," Ranjit hoped. "Up you go, Morna. Strap
yourself to a couch."
Morna climbed on the bunk and through the hatch. Ranjit followed, "It's
a trick," Morna said. "He'll be alone with his gangster friends."
"There's a set of spanner wrenches right there in the net," Ranjit
said, pointing. "There's a roll of wire over yonder." He closed the
hatch.
* * * * *
Henry raised the bunk back to the ceiling. He fumbled in the
accumulation behind the netting, throwing out a case of canned beans,
a one-volume encyclopedia, a bundle of papers, and a broken clock.
He found the wrenches and selected a large one half a meter long. He
searched again, pulled out a coil of electric cable, and stuffed it
under his belt. Jumping across the compartment, he clung to the net
above the door.
Vicenzo and Aziz had not turned off their loudspeakers. "Nothing but
tanks and ladderchutes," Vicenzo was saying. "There has to be a control
room somewhere."
Aziz said, "Maybe there's another door behind all the junk in there.
I'll get it outta the old man."
As Vicenzo's spacesuited figure appeared below in the doorway, Henry
swung his arm. The spanner clanged against the back of Vicenzo's
helmet. The man tumbled across the compartment into the netting. The
rocket launcher whirled from his hands, struck the ceiling, and bounced
to the deck.
Slashing upward with his knife, Aziz twisted into the compartment.
Henry met the thrust with the spanner and knocked the knife from the
squat man's hand. Aziz bellowed, "Ya greasy cube! I'll squash ya!"
Aziz swung his gauntleted fist. Henry struck Aziz across the arm with
the spanner, denting the metal of the spacesuit. Vicenzo jerked his
head from a box and roared, "Get him! He busted my skull!"
Henry jumped from the net to the corner beside the desk. The two men
slowly stalked him. Vicenzo had his knife, and Aziz experimentally
flexed his metal-sheathed hands.
"We're going to fix you, Henry," Vicenzo promised. "You're just a
little smarter than you should be."
"He ain't smart atall," Aziz growled. "What for did ya want to turn
cube, Henry? I told ya yer name'd be in ever' yap, if ya stuck with us.
Now, nobody'll know ya when I get done."
Henry debated with himself, trying to decide if the situation justified
a falsehood. He said, "Get away while you can! Ranjit says he'll crash
this sweeper before he'll let you steal it! He's in the control room
now."
Aziz stopped and glanced around. "Ya think he will?" he asked.
"No," Vicenzo said. He circled to Henry's left.
Henry raised the spanner and kept his eyes on Vicenzo's knife. Aziz
moved to Henry's right. The deck seemed to tilt. Henry clutched a leg
of the desk to keep from falling.
Vicenzo and Aziz, waving their arms, leaned at an increasingly acute
angle. Their boots broke from the magnetic deck. They fell slowly,
accelerating at about two meters per second, and dropped into the
netted wall which had become the floor.
Henry dangled below what was now the ceiling. Objects fell from the
net beside him. Tools, machine parts, books, and canned food slowly
showered down on Vicenzo and Aziz, who thrashed and swore in the
growing junk heap.
"We're deceleratin'!" Aziz yelled. "That old man really is gonna kill
us! We'll crash on Saturn!"
"That hatch over the bunk!" Vicenzo said as he tried to stand. "That's
where they went! The control room!" A box of cans emptied over his
helmet.
"We're fallin'!" Aziz yelled. "It's forcin' us to the front of the
station! Let's get out!" He stumbled through the litter toward the
airvalve which was now up one wall.
Vicenzo said, "Look out that window! The stars are streaking! He's just
spinning the sweeper! It's centrifugal force!"
"It's deceleration!" Aziz insisted, jumping at the airvalve. The
dismantled teletype slipped from its clamps and fell on the man's head.
He slid back down the wall.
Beside Henry, the net broke loose. A slow, miscellaneous rain,
including two sandwich bunks and part of a spaceship landing leg, fell
on Vicenzo and Aziz. Henry felt the desk slipping. He dropped on his
feet in the clutter. The desk clattered down beside him.
* * * * *
Stumbling and staggering, Henry reached Vicenzo, who struggled under a
bunk, a plastic packing case, part of a pump, and a bundle of tubing.
Henry took the electric cable from his belt and formed a loop. He drew
the loop tight around Vicenzo's arms. Vicenzo pushed the case off his
legs and tried to stand. Henry flipped the cable around and around
Vicenzo and bound his arms to his sides.
"Get him, Aziz!" Vicenzo called in rage. Henry tied Vicenzo's feet
together and cut off the remaining cable with his snips.
Aziz had grasped the frame of the airvalve and was trying to slide the
door open. Henry selected a battered oxygen tank from the heap, lifted
it in both hands, and hurled it. The missile caught Aziz across the
back of his spacesuit. He fell into the jumbled equipment on the floor.
Quickly, Henry repeated his looping and tying operations. Then he sat
on an empty trunk and tried to slow his rapid breathing.
"Le'me go, Henry!" Aziz demanded, somewhat dazed. "We're fallin'!"
Henry opened the switch on the spacesuit's loudspeaker.
The bunk in the wall that had been the ceiling unfolded, and Ranjit's
wrinkled face peeped through the exposed hatch. "What a mess!" he
chuckled. "Things wasn't fastened down like they should of been. Of
course, it never needed to be before. I never knowed--"
"How are you standing the gravity?" Henry panted.
"It's just two-tenths G," Ranjit said. "Hang on, and I'll take us back
to no weight. This old sweeper's spinning like a top."
Ranjit's head withdrew. Henry tried to find a handhold in the pile of
material. His feet left the tangle. Accompanied by assorted items,
including the bound figures of Vicenzo and Aziz, he floated in the air.
Twisting, Henry placed his feet on the magnetized deck. Objects
containing steel settled around him. He pulled Vicenzo and Aziz
down, and, as Vicenzo began to curse in ancient terms, silenced his
loudspeaker also.
Joachim appeared clutching his stomach. "I shall wait in my ship
for the fuel," he gagged, dodging a floating chest, "away from this
criminal madhouse!"
Morna and Ranjit dropped into the compartment. Ranjit kicked aside
a crate and said, "Good, Henry. I guess you saved our lives, or
mine anyhow. Those fellows would have passed me beyond if they had
accelerated the sweeper, and you sure kept them from stealing it."
"He did all right for a gangster," said Morna on her way to the door.
"Wait, Morna, please," said Henry. He blushed a bright red. "Won't,
won't I ever see you again?"
"Why would I want to see a gangster again?"
Ranjit said, "He's not much of a gangster, and he changed his mind. Of
course, those two will tell about his part in this, and Joachim's sure
to report it. SG will ship you to Earth, Henry, for Revision, but that
won't be too bad, just a sort of school, and you're good as Revised
already, the way you acted."
Henry looked at Morna. "I'd like to go to Earth," he said.
"Tell you what," Ranjit said. "It'll be three hours before there's
enough fuel for Joachim's ship. Why don't you two go up to the dome and
see the sights, and forget all this? We'll be passing into the Shadow
in about ten minutes, and you'll see one of the prettiest things there
is, Saturn from the dark side. The atmosphere looks like a gold rainbow
above the Rings."
Morna stared at the deck. The corners of her mouth curved upward. She
said, "I'm sorry I slapped you, Henry."