Joe went to the Major’s house in the officers’-quarters area. The Major looked even more tired than before, but he nodded approvingly at Joe. Sally was there too, and she regarded Joe with a look which was a good deal warmer than her father’s.
“You did very well,” said the Major detachedly. “I don’t have too high an opinion of the brains of anybody your age, Joe. When you are my age, you won’t either. But whether you have brains or simply luck, you are turning out to be very useful.”
Joe said: “I’m getting security conscious, sir. I want to stay alive.”
The Major regarded him with irony.
“I was thinking of the fact that when you worked out the matter of the doctored pushpot fuel, you did not try to be a hero and prove it yourself. You referred it to me. That was the proper procedure. You could have been killed, investigating—it’s clear that the saboteurs would be pleased to have a good chance to murder you—and your suspicions might never have reached me. They were correct, by the way. One storage tank underground was half-full of doctored fuel. Rather more important, another was full, not yet drawn on.”
The Major went on, without apparent cordiality: “It seems probable that if this particular sabotage trick had not been detected—it seems likely that on the Platform’s take-off, all or most of the pushpots would have been fueled to explode at some time after the Platform was aloft, and before it could possibly get out to space.”
Joe felt queer. The Major was telling him, in effect, that he might have kept the Platform from crashing on take-off. It was a good but upsetting sensation. It was still more important to Joe that the Platform get out to space than that he be credited with saving it. And it was not reassuring to hear that it might have been wrecked.
“Your reasoning,” added the Major coldly, “was soundly based. It seems certain that there is not one central authority directing all the sabotage against the Platform. There are probably several sabotage organizations, all acting independently and probably hating each other, but all hating the Platform more.”
Joe blinked. He hadn’t thought of that. It was disheartening.
“It will really be bad,” said the Major, “if they ever co-operate!”