Chapter III

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."