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Why he had selected a bulky semifreighter like the Queen for a mineralogical survey jaunt to a lifeless little sun system far beyond the outposts of civilization was a point he didn't discuss. Gefty, needing the charter money, had restrained his curiosity. If Maulbow wanted only a pilot and preferred to do all the rest of the work himself, that was certainly Maulbow's affair.
"After we got hauled into that time current," he said hoarsely, "I tried to find out which way in space we were headed. The direction indicators over there seemed to show we were trying to go everywhere at once. You remember Maulbow's control unit wasn't working right, needed adjustments. Well, all those little impulses must have pretty well canceled out because we weren't taken really far.
Kerim Ruse, Maulbow's secretary, knelt beside her employer, checking his pulse. She looked anxiously up at Gefty. "What did you find out?" she asked in a voice that was not very steady. Gefty shrugged. "Nothing definite as yet. The ship hasn't been damaged she's a tough tub. That's one good point. Otherwise ... well, I climbed into a suit and took a look out the escape hatch.
The deck shook below him. He came stumbling out from behind the wall. Maulbow's machine and its stand of instruments had vanished. Where it had stood was a dark circular hole. Nothing else seemed to have happened. Gefty clumped hurriedly over to the mining cutter, swung it around, started more cautiously back towards the hole.
But no sound came from the sack. Gefty called angrily, "Maulbow " "Don't excite yourself, Rammer." There was a suggestion of what might be contempt in Maulbow's tone now. "The girl hasn't been harmed. She can breathe easily through the restrainer. And you can remove it by pulling at the material from outside." Gefty's mouth tightened. "I'll keep my gun on the passage while I do it "
The smell's coming through the ventilation system, so the thing's moving around in the port section. We'll go the other way." Kerim whispered, "What will we do?" "Get ourselves into spacesuits first, and then get Maulbow's control unit out of the ship. The janandra may be looking around for him. If it is, it won't bother us."
He was hurrying up the main deck's central passage when Maulbow's voice addressed him sharply from a door he'd just passed. "Stop right there, Rammer! Don't dare to move! The voice ended on a note of surprise. Gefty's reaction had not been too rational, but it was prompt. Maulbow's tone and phrasing implied he was armed. Gefty wasn't, but he kept a gun in the instrument room for emergencies.
It means that the vault doors have been opened since then." He saw the same half-superstitious fear appear in her face that had touched him. "You think he did it?" "I don't know." Maulbow's control of the guns had seemed uncanny enough. But that was a different matter. The guns were a product of his own time and science. But the vault door mechanisms?
He had drawn a twenty-five foot circle around Maulbow's battered control unit and the instruments attached to it, well outside the fragile-looking safety field. The circle was broken at four points where he would plant explosives. The explosives, going off together, should shatter the connecting links with the hull and throw the machine clear.
But so long as that ugly and formidable shipmate of Maulbow's stayed in the cargo lock, the lock couldn't be used to get rid of the control unit in the vault.
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