The Sentinel - Arthur C. Clarke [48]
Slowly, Grant’s heart resumed its interrupted work. He did not trust himself to speak, but managed a noncommittal nod. McNeil parked the cup carefully in the air, a few inches away from his face.
He seemed very thoughtful, as if weighing his words for some important remark. Grant cursed himself for having made the drink so hot—that was just the sort of detail that hanged murderers. If McNeil waited much longer he would probably betray himself through nervousness.
“I suppose,” said McNeil in a quietly conversational sort of way, “it has occurred to you that there’s still enough air to last one of us to Venus?”
Grant forced his jangling nerves under control and tore his eyes away from that hypnotic cup. His throat seemed very dry as he answered, “It—it had crossed my mind.”
McNeil touched his coffee cup, found it still too hot and continued thoughtfully, “Then wouldn’t it be more sensible if one of us decided to walk out of the airlock, say—or to take some of the poison in there?” He jerked his thumb toward the medicine chest, just visible from where they were sitting.
Grant nodded.
“The only trouble, of course,” added the engineer, “is to decide which of us will be the unlucky one. I suppose it would have to be picking a card or in some other quite arbitrary way.”
Grant stared at McNeil with fascination that almost outweighed his nervousness. He had never believed that the engineer could discuss the subject so calmly. Grant was sure he suspected nothing. Obviously McNeil’s thoughts had been running on parallel lines to his own and it was scarcely even a coincidence that he had chosen this time, of all times, to raise the matter.
McNeil was watching him intently, as if judging his reactions.
“You’re right,” Grant heard himself say. “We must talk it over.”
“Yes,” said McNeil quite impassively. “We must.” Then he reached for his cup again, put the drinking tube to his lips and sucked slowly.
Grant could not wait until he had finished. To his surprise the relief he had been expecting did not come. He felt a stab of regret, though it was not quite remorse. It was a little late to think of it now, but he suddenly remembered that he would be alone in the Star Queen, haunted by his own thoughts, for more than three weeks before the rescue came.
He did not wish to see McNeil die, and he felt rather sick. Without another glance at his victim he launched himself toward the exit.
Immovably fixed, the fierce sun and the unwinking stars looked upon the Star Queen, which seemed as motionless as they. There was no way of telling that the tiny dumbell of the ship had now almost reached her maximum speed and that millions of horsepower were claimed within the small sphere, waiting for the moment of its release. There was no way of telling, indeed, that she carried any life at all.
An airlock on the night-side of the ship slowly opened, letting a blaze of light escape from the interior. The brilliant circle looked very strange hanging there in the darkness. Then it was abruptly eclipsed as two figures floated out of the ship.
One was much bulkier than the other, and for a rather important reason—it was wearing a space-suit. Now there are some forms of apparel that may be worn or discarded as the fancy pleases with no other ill-effects than a possible loss of social prestige. But space-suits are not among them.
Something not easy to follow was happening in the darkness. Then the smaller figure began to move, slowly at first but with rapidly mounting speed. It swept out of the shadow of the ship into the full blast of the sun, and now one could see that strapped to its back was a small gas-cylinder from which a mist was jetting to vanish almost instantly into space.
It was a crude but effective rocket. There was no danger in that the ship’s minute gravitational pull would drag the body back into it again.
Rotating slightly, the corpse dwindled against the stars and vanished from sight in less than a minute. Quite motionless, the figure in the airlock watched it go. Then