“Right away, sir,” said Gene, taking his own seat. He attended to various dials and incoming signals.
Zimbardo stood up and walked over to the great window that overlooked the huge rocket pad outside. There were seven ships left—six belonging to the independent smugglers, Jeff Jenner, Lorry, and Captain Kimball, and his own personal ship, the Tartarus. Even the Silver Spear had been taken by Lorry. The asteroid was nearly empty of men; only his support crew, the smugglers and their crews, and a few others remained.
“Sir,” spoke up Gene. His voice trembled. He spoke as one apologizing. “Mr. Zimbardo. Mr. Lather sent in a frantic message that all eighteen ships were under attack. The transmission was cut off in mid-sentence. I scanned their location, sir, and detected three large Space Command ships approaching our convoy. They are about to be captured, sir.”
Zimbardo turned slowly and looked at Gene without a change in expression. “And?” he said. “There’s more, I can tell. And...”
“And there is a large fleet of ships belonging to Space Command and Starlight Enterprise converging on our location. In less than three hours, fourteen ships will be arriving within minutes of each other. Approximately the same number again will join them over the next twenty-four hour period.” Gene hesitated, then decided to deliver the last sentence. “Even if we are sheathed, sir, with that many ships so close, they will be able to find us before long.”
Lurton Zimbardo turned his eyes obliquely to the floor and joined his hands behind his back. He rocked for a moment on his feet, almost as if pondering a challenging philosophical question.
“I see,” he said at last. He walked quietly over to his console, sat for a moment without moving, then began to move dials and enter numbers into the navigational program. He consulted various tables of information and referred to a number of measuring devices whose sensitive detectors were on the surface of the asteroid.
Minutes passed. Zimbardo grew increasingly agitated as he worked. His men had stopped their own work and watched him. Where his hands had begun to move gently and carefully, they began to exhibit higher and higher degrees of animation. Soon he was pressing his keyboard vehemently and muttering under his breath. Once in a while he chortled.
Finally he shouted, “Hah! That will do it! I won’t be outsmarted!” He pressed the “Enter” button and then roared, “Yes! I win!” He leaped from his chair and lifted up both arms. “I win!” he screamed.
As the program Zimbardo had activated was engaged, the power it required began draining the emergency resources of the asteroid. The lights dimmed and the usual hum of the atmosphere recycler began to stutter.