She was right. I knew that even if I had carried the idea around in my head, I couldn't kill in cold blood. If Spartan tried to kill me and I had to stop him, it would be a different matter. But even though I knew he had no intention of letting me live, had already tried to kill me once, I couldn't deliberately plan his death.
"But we can restrain him," I said. "Take him prisoner."
"That would be mutiny," she said.
"No. We have evidence that he murdered Morrie Grover," I said. "We'd be putting him under arrest."
"But the mission!"
"The rest of us could do what has to be done. The main thing is to prevent more killings. Arrest would make it unnecessary to kill Spartan."
She sighed and said nothing.
"Axel will help," I said. "Joel won't interfere, either way; there's even a possibility that he might join us once he's made to understand what's been going on."
She sank down on a packing case we'd been using as a chair. "All right, Bill Drake. But please be careful," she said.
That night Spartan called us by radio. He and Axel had run into a terrific storm just as they left Lacus Minor. Red dust had practically overwhelmed them, and winds up to 75 miles an hour had thrown the Mars-car into a marsh. However, there had been no serious damage and they'd return the following day.