It was only reasonable. He couldn't let Pop live to tell the Guard that Ron Carnavon had had a hypnosurgical metamorphosis. Even a fortune in sapphires couldn't buy the High Space Guard. It was far too well-heeled with Holcomb Foundation money, and it took its duties to the inhabitants of the Earth-Mars-Venus Triangle seriously. A cautious man would realize this and take the proper steps. In this case the proper steps would be the elimination of Pop Wills when his job was done.
But everyone makes mistakes. Carnavon made one when he selected Pop and the Carefree. With all the rusty hulks dotting the ramps of Yakki, and with all the even rustier skippers there, he should have hired someone else. Anyone else. Ron Carnavon should have connected Pop Wills with the twelve-year-old cabin boy of the Thunderbird. The youngster's name had been Wills, too. But of course, Carnavon couldn't have been expected to remember everything. Just coincidence—but those things do happen.
So these two lifted from Mars together. A captain who had wrecked his own ship and a gin-soaked old man whose only son had died because of it. And neither knew the other for what he was. To Carnavon, Pop was just a fall-guy doing his job in proper sucker fashion. And to Pop Wills, Carnavon was just John Smith who wanted to go to Grid M332254-89OK off Triton and was willing to pay well for the privilege.
The wrecker ordered the course and Pop set it. Mars began to dwindle and the Belt loomed up ahead. The Carefree threaded her way through the rocky maze and on past Saturn and Uranus in a free-falling arc. She was slow, but in space "slow" is a relative term. The Outer Planets were in triple conjunction and with their help, the old boat made time. Carnavon checked the course daily, and Pop accepted the corrections without protest. After all, John Smith was paying for the trip and he seemed to know what he was doing. No questions asked. Carnavon liked that. No questions, no trouble. He couldn't have been more wrong.
It's hard to say in mere words what old Pop must have felt when he picked up the wreck of the Thunderbird on the radar. He recognized the image, of course. The Thunderbird was unique among spacers. Then he checked her position against the chart that Carnavon had marked and realized why they had come. He realized too who this John Smith was, and hate pulsed through him in sickening waves. Pop wasn't a brave man, and he was past his prime, but he could still hate.
Almost without conscious thought, Pop broke out the Ultra-Wave and began calling the Guard. He broadcast full particulars, co-ordinates, descriptions, everything. He was at it when Carnavon found him and sent him crashing against the control panels with a smashing overhand right to the mouth.
Pop sprawled on the metal decking and watched the wrecker carefully smash every communicating device on the ship's panel. There was a throbbing pain in his head where he had struck the shabbily padded control console, and the thick taste of blood was in his bruised mouth. He watched Carnavon like an animal, a hurt, impotently raging beast. And he began to be afraid. Even his hate couldn't spare him that, for Pop was afraid to die and he knew just what his chances were now.
Carnavon, on the other hand, didn't waste time hating. He didn't know why Pop had called copper, and he didn't really care. Pop wasn't important. The sapphires in the Thunderbird's vault. They were important. He'd come too far to abandon them now.
It would take nine minutes for Pop's radio appeal to reach the nearest Guard base, Carnavon calculated. And it would take six hours for the fastest Guard ship to reach them after that. He could board the Thunderbird and loot her in not more than two hours. That would still give the Carefree a four hour start on the Guard, and in deep space four hours were as good as four thousand. Carnavon still wasn't worried. The wrecking of the Thunderbird had been the work of months, and he wasn't going to panic now. Ron Carnavon wasn't that sort of a criminal.