The Sentinel - Arthur C. Clarke [73]
“Professor!” I gasped, “You can’t possibly do this!”
“Shut up!” he barked. “Well, Miss Mitchell, what about it?”
Marianne was staring at him with mingled horror and disbelief.
“You’re simply bluffing!” she cried. “I don’t believe you’d do anything of the kind! Your crew won’t let you!”
The Professor sighed.
“Too bad,” he said. “Captain Searle—Mr. Groves—will you take the prisoner and proceed as instructed.”
“Aye-aye, sir,” replied Searle with great solemnity.
Mays looked frightened but stubborn.
“What are you going to do now?” he said, as his suit was handed back to him.
Searle unholstered his reaction pistols. “Just climb in,” he said. “We’re going for a walk.”
I realized then what the Professor hoped to do. The whole thing was a colossal bluff: of course he wouldn’t really have Mays thrown into Jupiter; and in any case Searle and Groves wouldn’t do it. Yet surely Marianne would see through the bluff, and then we’d be left looking mighty foolish.
Mays couldn’t run away; without his reaction pistols he was quite helpless. Grasping his arms and towing him along like a captive balloon, his escorts set off toward the horizon—and towards Jupiter.
I could see, looking across the space to the other ship, that Marianne was staring out through the observation windows at the departing trio. Professor Forster noticed it too.
“I hope you’re convinced, Miss Mitchell, that my men aren’t carrying along an empty space-suit. Might I suggest that you follow the proceedings with a telescope? They’ll be over the horizon in a minute, but you’ll be able to see Mr. Mays when he starts to—er—ascend.”
There was a stubborn silence from the loudspeaker. The period of suspense seemed to last for a very long time. Was Marianne waiting to see how far the Professor really would go?
By this time I had got hold of a pair of binoculars and was sweeping the sky beyond the ridiculously close horizon. Suddenly I saw it—a tiny flare of light against the vast yellow back-cloth of Jupiter. I focused quickly, and could just make out the three figures rising into space. As I watched, they separated: two of them decelerated with their pistols and started to fall back toward Five. The other went on ascending helplessly toward the ominous bulk of Jupiter.
I turned on the Professor in horror and disbelief.
“They’ve really done it!” I cried. “I thought you were only bluffing!”
“So did Miss Mitchell, I’ve no doubt,” said the Professor calmly, for the benefit of the listening microphone. “I hope I don’t need to impress upon you the urgency of the situation. As I’ve remarked once or twice before, the time of fall from our orbit to Jupiter’s surface is ninety-five minutes. But, of course, if one waited even half that time, it would be much too late . . . ”
He let that sink in. There was no reply from the other ship.
“And now,” he continued, “I’m going to switch off our receiver so we can’t have any more arguments. We’ll wait until you’ve unloaded that statue—and the other items Mr. Mays was careless enough to mention—before we’ll talk to you again. Goodbye.”
It was a very uncomfortable ten minutes. I’d lost track of Mays, and was seriously wondering if we’d better overpower the Professor and go after him before we had a murder on our hands. But the people who could fly the ship were the ones who had actually carried out the crime. I didn’t know what to think.
Then the airlock of the “Henry Luce” slowly opened. A couple of space-suited figures emerged, floating the cause of all the trouble between them.
“Unconditional surrender,” murmured the Professor with a sigh of satisfaction. “Get it into our ship,” he called over the radio. “I’ll open up the airlock for you.”
He seemed in no hurry at all. I kept looking anxiously at the clock; fifteen minutes had already gone by. Presently there was a clanking and banging in the airlock, the inner