"The next thing was to divert the fuel from the Tang's tanks to the lifeboat's, and take off yourself in the lifeboat. That would have left us in a collision orbit, with no fuel to pull ourselves out of it.
"Not such a good plan, Nick. You should have planned just to kill us both as soon as the Tang was in space; you'd have had a better chance that way. Your overeagerness to compute our orbit just didn't look natural."
"No, listen," Pappas protested feebly. "I didn't calculate a collision orbit. I—"
"Sorry," said Garcia. "That's what the machine just finished checking for us. The orbit we're on meets Earth dead center, and it wouldn't take us to Callisto even if Earth wasn't there. Arne—what'll we do with this character?"
Birkerod smiled. "I like the suggestion you made when we discussed it before."
"I was just joking!"
"No, I think it's the best idea." He turned to Pappas, who flinched in spite of himself. "Look, Nick, the Beldens have no chance of winning on Callisto. No chance. Men had to learn to cooperate before they could get to the planets at all, and by this time they've learned good and thoroughly. The individual who's out for himself is an anachronism. You and the Beldens—a hundred years ago you'd have felt right at home. Then everybody was 'out for a fast buck,' as they used to say. In this century everybody works together, and darn near everybody likes it that way.
"But, Nick, the Beldens are still dangerous. They can't win; but they can hold up the development of Callisto for years, and make the Callistans plenty miserable in the process. The inner planets won't interfere. Their policy for years has been this: Callisto is so far away that it's their concern how they run things; we'll send them supplies, they'll send us minerals, and that's that.
"So the people of Callisto have got to lick the Beldens. This ship is absolutely essential, because it's the means of breaking the Beldens' monopoly. We have to get to Callisto, and when we get there we'll be in the middle of a pretty critical situation; the Tang will be just as essential to the Beldens as to us, for the opposite reason."
"Therefore," Garcia put in, "we can't afford to have you around."