"Yes," agreed McCauley with irony, "you could. So you want to throw in with me, eh?"
"Y-yes."
"All right," said McCauley. "You're in. You share in everything I do and everything I get out of it. It's a bargain."
"F-fine," said Fallon in a voice like a croak.
He'd try to believe it, but he wouldn't be able to be sure. He left. McCauley knew that he would quake and be terrified, and he would not believe in McCauley's intention to make him a partner in crime. But in his own view he couldn't do anything but try to bargain for his own life if—but he thought of it as when—McCauley murdered or abandoned the others in emptiness.
McCauley told Randy the whole business, of course. As second-in-command Randy needed to know everything.
"He's a swine," Randy said distastefully. "But it took nerve to try to bluff through our training period, with the voyage out here to follow it."
"He's in bad shape," said McCauley. "However he got started that way, he chose to be a crook at some time or another. He probably thought it was smart. It wasn't, but now he can't think the way a non-crook thinks."
Randy frowned, thinking.
"I believe," Randy said slowly, "that I'll explain to the others. He's with us and the way he thinks has to be allowed for. They won't let him know they're on to him.... I feel sorry for the poor devil. You will, too, when you think it over. They'll feel the same way."