"Now what?"
"We can't turn back or they'd nab us, sure," gritted Ramey. "Our only chance is to outrun them. Maybe we can get to Singapore or—"
"On what?" queried Barrett. "Marsh-gas from passing swamps? This crate's only fueled for a thousand miles, keed. We've used half of that. And Singapore's a good nine hundred south."
"We might make Bangkok—"
"Or Australia," suggested Barrett drily, "or Hawaii? All right, chum—pull the cork. You ain't kidding me. This is the payoff, huh?"
Ramey, glancing up from the panel, met his comrade's calm, untroubled eyes levelly for a moment. In that instant, it occurred to him that Red Barrett was a hell of a fine guy. He wanted to say so, but men can't say such things. Sometimes they don't have to. He just nodded.
"I guess so, redhead."
"I won four bucks from Jimmy Larkin yesterday," said Red irrelevantly, "playing rummy. I should have collected it then." Again his eyes sought the machine-gun hopefully. "As long as we're in for it, we might just as well use up our old ammunition, huh, Ramey? We—" he hinted virtuously—"don't want to let no matériel fall into enemy hands—"
Ramey shook his head decisively.
"We won't fire on them. Not even if they fire on us first. Not even if they shoot us down. We can't risk causing the 'incident' they want. Our only chance is to outrun them, Red."