For a few moments I pondered the advisability of making good my threat to clap Spinelli into irons, but I decided against it. In the first place I couldn't prove he had told Zaleski about the gold and in the second place I needed Spinelli to help run the Maid.
I felt that the Third Officer and Zaleski were planning something, and I was just as sure that Spinelli was watching Zaleski to see to it that there was no double-cross.
I figured that I could handle the Third Officer alone so I assigned the rest, Marvin and Chelly, to accompany Cohn and Zaleski onto the hulk. That way Zaleski would be outnumbered if he tried to skip with the treasure ship. But, of course, I couldn't risk telling them that they were to be handling a vessel practically made of gold.
I was in agony. I didn't want to let anyone get out of my sight with that starship, and at the same time I couldn't leave the Maid. Finally I had to let Cohn take command of the prize crew, but not before I had set the radar finder on the Maid's prow squarely on the derelict.
Together, Spinelli and I watched the Maid's crew vanish into the maw of the alien ship and get her under way. There was a flicker of bluish fire from her jury-rigged tubes astern, and then she was vanishing in a great arc toward the bright gleam of Jupiter, far below us. The Maid followed under a steady one G of acceleration with most of her controls on automatic.
Boats of the Martian Maid's class, you may remember, carried a six inch supersonic projector abaft the astrogation turret. These were nasty weapons for use against organic life only. They would reduce a man to jelly at fifty thousand yards. Let it be said to my credit that it wasn't I who thought of hooking the gun into the radar finder and keeping it aimed dead at the derelict. That was Spinelli's insurance against Zaleski.
When I discovered it I felt the rage mount in me. He was willing to blast every one of his shipmates into pulp should the hulk vary from the orbit we'd laid out for her. He wasn't letting anything come between him and that mountain of gold.
Then I began thinking about it. Suppose now, just suppose, that Zaleski told the rest of the crew about the gold. It wouldn't be too hard for the derelict to break away from the Maid, and there were plenty of places in the EMV Triangle where a renegade crew with a thousand tons of gold would be welcomed with open arms and no questions asked. Suspicion began to eat at me. Could Zaleski and Cohn have dreamed up a little switch to keep the treasure ship for themselves? It hadn't seemed likely before, but now—
The gun-pointer remained as it was.