An idea came into Lon's mind. He surveyed it worriedly. He knew that he would have to tell what he knew and then he would be killed. The Cetis Gamma Trading Company wanted his inventions, and it would need him dead after it had them.
The idea was hopeless, but he had to try it. They knew he'd made gadgets which did remarkable things. If he made something now and persuaded them that it was a weapon....
His flesh crawled with horror. Not for himself, but for Cathy. He fumbled in his pockets. A pocket knife. A key chain. String. His face was completely gray. He ripped an upholstered seat. There were coiled springs under the foamite. He pulled away a piece of decorative molding. He knew it wouldn't work, but there wasn't anything else to do. His hands moved awkwardly, with the handcuffs limiting their movements.
Time passed. He had something finished. It was a bit of wood with a coil spring from the chair, with his key chain wrapped around it and his pocket knife set in it so that the blade would seem to make a contact. But it would achieve nothing whatever.
Cathy stared at him. Her eyes were desperate, but she believed. She'd seen three equally improbable devices perform wonders. While Lon made something that looked like the nightmare of an ultimatist sculptor, she watched in terrified hope.
He had it in his hand when the door opened again and the skipper came back into the saloon. He said prosaically, "Shall I call in the scientist guys to listen, or the persuader guys to work on her?"
"Neither. I've made another gadget," Lon said from a dry throat. "It will kill you. It'll kill everybody on the ship—from here. You're going to put us back down on the planet below."
The skipper did not look at the gadget, but at Lon's face. Then he called. The four men of the crew and the two uneasy scientists came in.
"We got to persuade," the skipper said sardonically. "He just told me he's made a new gadget that'll kill us all."