“No,” said Hiskey. “It will be at least five days before they have everything arranged. They’re playing this very quietly. We don’t want to alert anybody before you and your boys are set up and ready to go into action.”
McNulty nodded. “I understand.”
“Now here’s what’s happened,” Hiskey went on. “This station we’ve stopped at is a branch of Space U. The navigator shuttled over to it half an hour ago to find out where he can get in touch with his sister. She’s connected with Space U—a student, I suppose—and, of course, he hasn’t seen her for the past eight years.”
“She is what is known as a graduate student,” said McNulty, who disliked vagueness. “Her name is Elisabeth and she is three Earth years younger than Gage. I heard him discuss the matter with you yesterday, and he mentioned those things specifically.”
“I guess he did, at that,” said Hiskey. “Anyway, he was told on the Space U station that she’s a guest on a private asteroid at present, and he contacted her there by transmitter. The asteroid people offered to pick him up so he could spend a few days with his sister as their guest. Gage called me and I told him to say we’d deliver him to the asteroid’s lock in the Prideful Sue, since we’ve got time to kill before we can get scheduled through the System check stations anyway. So that’s been arranged. And when we get there, I’ll see to it that I’m invited down to the asteroid with Gage.”
“That is the good news?” McNulty asked blankly.
Hiskey grinned. “There’s a little more to it than that. Did your tapes tell you anything about Earthsystem’s asteroid estates?”
“Yes. They were mentioned briefly twice,” McNulty said. “I gathered their inhabitants retain only tenuous connections with the planetary culture and do not engage in belligerent projects. I concluded that they were of no interest to us.”
“Well, start getting interested,” Hiskey told him. “Each of those asteroids is a little world to itself. They’re completely independent of both Earthplanet and Earthsystem. They got an arrangement with Earthsystem which guarantees their independent status as long as they meet certain conditions. From what Gage’s sister told him, the asteroid she’s on is a kind of deluxe spacegoing ranch. It belongs to a Professor Alston . . . a handful of people, some fancy livestock, plenty of supplies.”
“And what business could we have with such people?” inquired McNulty.
“I think they’ll be useful. I told you the one thing that might bug our plans right now is to have the System Police get too curious about the Prideful Sue while we’re hanging around here for the next five or six days.”
“So you did,” said McNulty. “And I now have a question about that. According to these tapes, Earthsystem has no jurisdiction over Earthplanet. Why then should the System Police attempt to control or investigate what Earth imports?”
Hiskey shrugged. “For my money they’re busybodies. The SP got kicked off Earth for good, something like forty years ago, but it still acts like it’s responsible for what happens there. And it’s got muscle enough to control the space of the system. Earth doesn’t like that but can’t do much about it. If the System Police got an idea of why we’re bringing in a shipload of Rilfs to Earth, they’d never let us go down. As long as we do nothing to make them suspicious, they probably won’t bother us—but we can’t really count on it. However, if we move the Prideful Sue down beneath the force fields around Professor Alston’s asteroid, she’ll be out of sight and out of the SP’s jurisdiction. By Earthsystem’s own ruling, they can’t bother us even if they have reason to think we’re there.”
“You believe Professor Alston will permit you to land the ship?”
“No, I doubt he’d extend his hospitality that far. But it’ll be difficult for him to avoid inviting me down for an hour or so, as Harold Gage’s captain. When I mention we have a very interesting alien on board—first representative of his kind to reach Earthsystem, who has an intellectual curiosity about the human private asteroids—he’ll invite you down. Half the crew can crowd into the skiff with you then and stay hidden in it till we want them.”
McNulty gurgled interestedly. “You mentioned a handful of people—”
“From all I’ve heard, there’d be at most fifty even on a really big estate. Probably no more than half that. They don’t like to be crowded on the asteroids—one reason most of them got off Earth to start with was that they wanted privacy and one place they could still buy it, if they had money enough, was in space.”
“There should be then,” said McNulty, “a most efficient and compact system of controls.”
“You get the idea, McNulty. Those asteroids are set up like ships. That’s what they’ve been turned into—big ships. Mostly they coast on solar orbit, but they can maneuver to some extent on their own.”
“Then, as on a ship,” McNulty continued, “the main controls will be concentrated for maximum efficiency within a limited area. It should take us at most an hour or two to gain a practical understanding of their use and operation.”
“Might take you less than that,” said Hiskey. Perhaps because of a congenital deficiency in inventive imagination, Rilf technology was at a primitive level as compared with the human one. But there was nothing wrong with their ability to learn, and McNulty, like most of them, was intensely interested in human gadgetry and very quick to grasp its function and principles. There wasn’t much about the Prideful Sue’s working innards he didn’t know by now. “We needn’t make any final decisions before you and I have checked the situation,” Hiskey pointed out. “But it should be a cinch. We take over the control section, block the communication system, and we have the asteroid.”
“That part of it may well be easy,” McNulty agreed. “However, I would expect serious problems to follow.”
“What kind of problems?”
“These asteroid people obviously do not isolate themselves completely from Earthsystem. They converse by transmitter. They receive guests. If these activities suddenly stop and no response is obtained from the asteroid, the System Police certainly should grow suspicious. With or without jurisdiction, they will investigate.”
Hiskey shook his head. “No, they won’t, McNulty. That’s what makes this easy for us.”
“Please explain,” said McNulty.
“A private asteroid—any private asteroid—is expected to go out of communication from time to time. They’re one of Solar U’s science projects. They seal their force field locks, shut off their transmitters; and when they open up again is entirely up to them. I’ve heard some have stayed incommunicado for up to ten years, and the minimum shutoff period’s supposed to be not less than one month out of every year. What they’re out to prove I don’t know. But nobody’s going to be upset if they discover suddenly that they’re not able to get through to Professor Alston and his asteroid. They’ll just settle back to wait until he’s open to contact again.”
McNulty reflected for a considerable time. “That does indeed sound like a favorable situation,” he stated abruptly then. “Excuse us, Jake.” He went on, without shifting his eyes from Hiskey’s face, in the Rilf speech which sounded more like heavy sloshings of water than anything else. When he paused, Barnes’s voice responded in kind from a wall speaker. The exchange continued for a minute or two. Then McNulty nodded ponderously at Hiskey.
“Barnes agrees that your plan is an excellent one, Jake. The elimination of the humans now in possession of the asteroid should present no great difficulty.”
Hiskey looked startled. “I hadn’t planned on killing them unless they try to give us a fight.”
“Oh, but killing them is quite necessary,” McNulty said.
“Why? We’ll need the place only a few days.”
“Jake, consider! On the ship which has trailed yours to Earthsystem and is now stationed outside it beyond the patrol range of the System Police are fifty-five Rilfs and their equipment—our army. Four of them have been humanized in appearance as Barnes and I are. The others are obviously not human. The System Police must not be permitted to encounter them.”
“Of course not,” Hiskey agreed. “But if we’re prepared to whisk them down to Earth as soon as they move into the system, the SP isn’t going to have time to encounter them.”
“I understand,” McNulty said. “However, your plan gives us the opportunity to cover ourselves against any deceit or treachery which might be considered by our Earth employers. With perhaps a third of our army left waiting in space, prepared to act, nobody will attempt to renege on contracted payments. And where could a better concealed base be found for our reserve and their ship than such an asteroid, only a few hours from Earth? And we can’t afford to have prisoners on that base who would have to be constantly and closely guarded to make sure they cause no trouble. There is too much at stake.”