The Sentinel - Arthur C. Clarke [70]
“The beauty of this plan,” explained Groves to me as we stood watching, “is that they can’t do anything to stop us, unless they come outside and uncouple our line. We can drain them dry in five minutes, and it will take them half that time to wake up and get into their spacesuits.”
A sudden horrid fear smote me.
“Suppose they turned on their rockets and tried to get away?”
“Then we’d both be smashed up. No, they’ll just have to come outside and see what’s going on. Ah, there go the pumps.”
The pipeline had stiffened like a fire-hose under pressure, and I knew that the fuel was pouring into our tanks. Any moment now the lights would go on in the “Henry Luce” and her startled occupants would come scuttling out.
It was something of an anticlimax when they didn’t. They must have been sleeping very soundly not to have felt the vibration from the pumps, but when it was all over nothing had happened and we just stood round looking rather foolish. Searle and Fulton carefully uncoupled the pipeline and put it back into the airlock.
“Well?” we asked the Professor.
He thought things over for a minute.
“Let’s get back into the ship,” he said.
When we had climbed out of our suits and were gathered together in the control room, or as far in as we could get, the Professor sat down at the radio and punched out the “Emergency” signal. Our sleeping neighbors would be awake in a couple of seconds as their automatic receiver sounded the alarm.
The TV screen glimmered into life. There, looking rather frightened, was Randolph Mays.
“Hello, Forster,” he snapped. “What’s the trouble?”
“Nothing wrong here,” replied the Professor in his best deadpan manner, “but you’ve lost something important. Look at your fuel gauges.”
The screen emptied, and for a moment there was a confused mumbling and shouting from the speaker. Then Mays was back, annoyance and alarm competing for possession of his features.
“What’s going on?” he demanded angrily. “Do you know anything about this?”
The Prof let him sizzle for a moment before he replied.
“I think you’d better come across and talk things over,” he said. “You won’t have far to walk.”
Mays glared back at him uncertainly, then retorted, “You bet I will!” The screen went blank.
“He’ll have to climb down now!” said Bill gleefully. “There’s nothing else he can do!”
“It’s not so simple as you think,” warned Fulton. “If he really wanted to be awkward, he could just sit tight and radio Ganymede for a tanker.”
“What good would that do him? It would waste days and cost a fortune.”
“Yes, but he’d still have the statue, if he wanted it that badly. And he’d get his money back when he sued us.”
The airlock light flashed on and Mays stumped into the room. He was in a surprisingly conciliatory mood; on the way over, he must have had second thoughts.
“Well, well,” he said affably. “What’s all this nonsense in aid of?”
“You know perfectly well,” the Professor retorted coldly. “I made it quite clear that nothing was to be taken off Five. You’ve been stealing property that doesn’t belong to you.”
“Now, let’s be reasonable. Who does it belong to? You can’t claim everything on this planet as your personal property.”
“This is not a planet—it’s a ship and the laws of salvage operate.”
“Frankly, that’s a very debatable point. Don’t you think you should wait until you get a ruling from the lawyers?”
The Professor was being icily polite, but I could see that the strain was terrific and an explosion might occur at any moment.
“Listen, Mr. Mays,” he said with ominous calm. “What you’ve taken is the most important single find we’ve made here. I will make allowances for the fact that you don’t appreciate what you’ve done, and don’t understand the viewpoint of an archaeologist like myself. Return that statue, and we’ll pump your fuel back and say no more.”
Mays rubbed his chin thoughtfully.
“I really don’t see why you should make such a fuss about one statue, when you consider all the stuff that