"We're all Callistans now," Birkerod repeated. "I wonder, Nick. How did you happen to leave Callisto in the first place? Just felt like visiting good old Saskatchewan? I doubt it. Let's see—you left before that business started with the Beldens, didn't you?"
Pappas licked his lips nervously. Garcia answered for him: "Yes, about ten months before, according to what they told us on Venus."
"Yeah," Birkerod mused. "You know the Beldens, of course."
"Yes," said Pappas, "of course. I came to Earth on their freighter."
"Not their freighter," Garcia put in. "Callisto's freighter, which they were operating. It's only more recently that it's become their freighter."
Birkerod smiled and went on, "It's interesting, Mr. Pappas, that you left Callisto about the time the Beldens' plans must have been taking shape. I wonder why you did?"
Pappas ignored the question. A moment before, the red signal light had flashed on above the calculator set in the opposite bulkhead. The computations had been finished on Garcia and Birkerod's "little conjecture."
Garcia, who was closest to the machine, filled in the silence. "Let's find out what the calculator has to say. It may clear things up a little."
There was a row of spring-clamps set in the bulkhead next to him for holding objects stationary while the ship was in free fall. Garcia put his gun in one of these, slipped out of the "safety belt" that had held him in the pilot's seat in spite of the lack of gravity, and turned to the calculator.
Pappas sprang. Not toward Garcia—but toward the side of the cabin that would have been the ceiling if there had been an "up." He snatched his gun from his jacket.