Checkpoint Lambda

CHAPTER 5

The Golconda Ship broke out to normal space again. Once more it was light-years from the nearest trace of solidity. The pilot of the ship—the astrogator—was highly expert. It was not too difficult to take a spacecraft from one planet to another in a solar system. There were orbital motions and meteor streams and sometimes solar flares to complicate the problem, but it wasn’t really difficult. It was even simpler to take a ship from one solar system to another, with all the quantities of distance and of speed worked out—provided the distance wasn’t too great. At six or seven light-years the pilot would aim accurately and go into overdrive for a specific period, with an allowance for the fact that the star he was aiming for had been moving for six or seven years since it emitted the light he could see. Breakout was usually within a light-week and often much closer than that. The pilot would drive for the nearby sun in one or more short overdrive jumps. Then he would recognize the planetary system and know what to look for. Between nearby systems, astrogation was no great matter.

But the Golconda Ship leaped light-centuries and not for the neighborhood of suns. In such cases, at breakout the pilot wouldn’t know exactly where he was. The identity of nearby stars couldn’t be easily established. Unless there was an ultra-short-period Cepheid close by, he could spend days trying to locate himself while errors mounted up.

So ships normally used space lanes, duly surveyed and the stars along it fully described, with checkpoints and other aids to astrogation. But the Golconda Ship could make no use of them without revealing at least approximately where it had come from and roughly where it was bound. At this last breakout for observation it was where no other ships ever appeared at all, and it went through a long, complicated procedure to locate itself. Then it refined those results until it knew exactly where it was. But nobody else in the galaxy did. Then, suddenly, the Golconda Ship vanished.

It was still in the blackness and isolation of overdrive when Scott moved toward a corner of Lambda’s control room. An inconspicuous door there opened on a narrow stairway that led down to the next level and opened in the kitchen of the hotel restaurant. When Lambda was a liner, this stair was used to carry coffee and such items to the astrogators, without marching it through the hotel lobby. Having studied its plans, Scott knew even such details about the lobby.

He led Janet down. As they reached the bottom of the stair, she said, “You haven’t any real hope, have you?”

“I don’t know,” said Scott. “I’ve been too busy getting things lined up. I haven’t had time either to hope or despair.”

“I haven’t had any hope from the beginning,” said Janet quietly. “From the first moment I’ve known there wasn’t the faintest chance that I wouldn’t be—murdered. But one can only stay terrified so long. The emotion wears out.”

They reached the bottom of the stair.

“Then unwear it,” commanded Scott. “I need you to take care of a situation for me. Come along!”

He led the way, through the kitchen and past plastic-topped tables where food was prepared. He headed for a corner where there was another doorway. It had been provided for the serving of drinks and snacks in the hotel lobby area. It wouldn’t be conspicuous from there.

“This will be a bet,” he said over his shoulder, “I’m going to set up a gamble with fate or chance or destiny,—all of which have been known to cheat. But I’m going to ask you to try it.”

“What’s the gamble?”

“An extension of the privilege of breathing,” Scott told her. They neared this other door, now. “And a long-odds-against, outside-chance of ultimate survival, that’s what you gamble for. What I have to put up is simply getting the buoy through the comets. If I can manage that—and I should—you will be temporarily safe and can attend to something for me.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You will shortly,” he assured her. “For now, we want to be quiet.”

They went out into an alcove of the lobby. It opened almost opposite a door over which there was a lighted panel showing the words: Lifeboat. Do Not Enter. From here all the lobby could be surveyed. It was empty. There was the tiny theater, and the wide doorway to the restaurant, and the counter and hotel desk space which made this part of Lambda look so much like an old fashioned hostelry. There were upholstered chairs and carpets. There was reading matter on a table or two. And there was that visible film of dust which silently testified that something was wrong.

It occurred to Scott, absurdly, that if someone did mean to deceive the crewmen of the Golconda Ship before their slaughter, a beginning would have to be made by turning the blaster-men aboard into housemaids, dusting and cleaning and polishing to make these surroundings seem lived in.

But he opened the door under the panel announcing that it led to a lifeboat. He closed it with care to make no noise. There was a short passageway and another metal door. Scott unlocked it. Beyond, there was a lifeboat blister, and the lifeboat itself, and beyond that the great mussel-shell valves that would open out to let the boat emerge. He adjusted the warning device which so much impressed passengers when it was showed to them. If there were need for the lifeboats, the standard explanation said, and if a lifeboat was about to open the blister-valves and leave the ship, and if anybody was late getting to the boat, their attempt to open the inner door would be made known to the lifeboat. So nobody would be left behind. And there was a telephone to the control room, too, in case of a need for last-second instructions.

Passengers were much encouraged by these proofs that everything had been thought of for their safety.

Scott led Janet inside the spaceboat and showed her how to close and dog the port.

“Here’s what you’ve got to know,” he told Janet professionally. “You unlock this—” he demonstrated it—“and the boat’s ready to leave. Only certified spacemen carry a key to release the boats. Then if you throw this lever—” he showed her—“you’ll be out of the blister. You’re only to do any of this or anything else I show you when there’s nothing else to be done. It won’t be suicide, of course, but it’s definitely a last resort. Understand?”

She nodded. He went on curtly, “This is the drive. You want to remember that in a space boat you use a drive to get going, and you use reverse drive to stop, but you don’t use drive to keep going. You don’t stop! If you want to drive to another boat, or a ship, or whatever, don’t aim straight at it. You could crash. Instead, aim to pass it close by. As you pass, you brake with reverse drive. That’s the way to become still in relation to the object and close.”

He lectured precisely, lucidly. He gave details. He made explanations. Once or twice he drew diagrams in the dust that lay thinly over the interior of the spaceboat.

He made no attempt to instruct her in anything but the use of the lifeboat as a survival device while awaiting rescue. But in that context he did explain, over and over, how to approach an object in space and make fast to it with the space boat’s magnetic grapples. All the while, though, he was aware that the usefulness of this instruction would depend entirely on what he managed to do elsewhere.

Presently Janet said quietly, “Only a ship’s officer is supposed to handle a space boat. You’re teaching me, though you’re Patrol. While I’m doing it, what will you be doing?”

It was a matter of interest only to Janet. The galaxy as a whole was interested in other matters. On a large scale suns blazed in emptiness and novas flamed and comets—including the Five Comets of Canis Lambda—rushed furiously through space upon errands that seemed pure futility. On lesser scales, cargo carriers were lifted from spaceports to where they vanished like burst bubbles, and passenger ships landed, and life went on… But practically nobody thought about Checkpoint Lambda.

Even the space buoy’s present population didn’t think about it especially. Bugsy’s men, and the few who had followed Chenery, were gambling in the crew’s quarters. They were concerned with how cards ran and dice rolled. Chenery was an exception. He craved to be smarter than anybody else. He’d designed this enterprise. He hadn’t wanted violence to be used, but only the threat of it, because that would make him smarter and cleverer and more certain to be admired. He was concerned with the future of the buoy. He was on it. Also, if it wasn’t destroyed within the next few hours, he had some claim on the yet-to-be-secured treasure of the Golconda Ship.

Bugsy’s thoughts about the buoy were more confused. It was part of his character that he counted on one kind of solution for all possible problems. He had a violent mind. Where Chenery saw an obstacle as something to be outwitted, Bugsy searched among possible forms of violence for one with which to smash it. Because the capture of the space buoy might have been hampered by someone getting suspicious while it was being done cleverly, he turned that capture into a massacre. Because the Golconda Ship might avoid even the cleverest of deceits, he intended to make its seizure butchery. And he didn’t quite believe in danger from the Five Comets because human violence simply couldn’t be applied to them. But, within limits, he thought of Checkpoint Lambda.

Janet appeared to think of it, and yet not to. Scott explained what he would be doing while he tried to make it unnecessary for her to drive a lifeboat out of its blister and upon the errand he’d assigned her. If she had to do that, and kept her head, and remembered all of his instructions, she still wouldn’t be safe. But her danger would be impersonal. And if she didn’t live through it she’d lose relatively little compared to dying in Lambda.

“I’ll try it,” she said soberly, “but I wish you were going to handle the space boat.”

“I’m going back to the control room,” he said. “And for the time being I’ll do nothing, if possible. But Chenery or Bugsy may do something. So I have to be ready for anything.”

He moved to leave the space boat. Janet said gravely, “Thank you.”

He shrugged.

“It’s not a very good chance. But there aren’t many women who could make it a chance at all. I think you can.”

He went out. He listened painstakingly at the door beneath the sign that said: Lifeboat. Do Not Enter. He heard nothing. A little later he went into the lobby, as a steward might have done serving drinks to passengers.

A little later still, he heard noises down the grand stairway to the three levels of passenger cabins. They were voices. They were coming up the stairs. There was Bugsy’s voice, and Chenery’s and the voice of a third man Scott hadn’t heard before. The third voice said confusedly, “Wha’ th’ hellsh th’ matter? Why’n’t you let a fella shleep? Le’me alone!”

There was the sound of a blow and a cry, “Ow!” Then Bugsy’s voice, rasping horribly: “Come out of it! Or—”

Chenery protested, “Let me handle him, Bugsy!” Then he said encouragingly, “Not much more, Joey! Then you can sit down. You got to sober up, and fast, but you can do it! Come on, now, up the steps…”

Chenery and Bugsy appeared at the top of the staircase. Between them they had pulled and half carried a disheveled man whose head lolled to one side. They got him up to the hotel level floor. When they reached it, Scott was sitting in an upholstered chair as if he’d been there for some time. He put down a magazine, with his finger in it as if to keep a place.

“What’s this?” he asked mildly.

Bugsy glared at him. Chenery struggled to hold the sagging third man upright. His attitude toward Scott was ambiguous. Scott was Patrol, and he knew that Chenery was ultimately responsible for the murders on Lambda. But Scott had left him armed, and Chenery believed what he said about the nature and constitution of comets.

“He’s the engineer we brought,” said Chenery with some difficulty. “He was a spaceman, but he lost his ticket. Bugsy wants to check on what you say about the comets. He’s stayed drunk since—you know when.”

“A good idea!” said Scott. “I’ll let you into the control room.”

He crossed the lobby and went ahead up to that part of the ship in the buoy, which was Space Patrol territory because it was where observations were made. From it, too, all communication was handled, even the purely mechanical checkpoint call for ships to report, and the high-speed recordings and call elicited.

He unlocked the door in a manner suggesting cordiality. He helped Chenery get the stumbling, still intoxicated man inside and to a seat.

Chenery mumbled anxiously, “Where’s Janet?”

“Resting,” said Scott. “I hope she’s sleeping. I found a place for her where she wont be disturbed. She’s pretty well worn out. She hasn’t had an easy time of it.”

The seated man seemed to be about to go off to sleep again. Scott rocked his head back and forth between his hands. It wasn’t painful, but it couldn’t be endured. The disheveled engineer struggled to escape. He started up confusedly, half way out of the chair.

“Look!” said Scott sharply, holding his face toward the screens. “Look! Comets! We’re running into them! We’re going to smash into them!”

The engineer’s eyes were bleary, but they cleared as he looked. And then Scott had the unusual experience of seeing a drunken man go cold sober before his eyes.

The first sign of it was that his drink-flushed face lost color. His hands, which had pushed vaguely to escape Scott’s and Chenery’s grasp, now steadied and closed into fists. His pose lost its slackness. He straightened. And all the time the color continued to drain from his face until all that was left was a terrified grayish tint.

“God!” he gasped. “Are we runnin’ into—that?”

Chenery said anxiously, “They’re bigger than they were, Bugsy! They’re bigger! You can see! We’re nearer—”

“You!” Bugsy started. He was so enraged that he made inarticulate sounds before he could say furiously, “They’re comets, yeah! We’re runnin’ into ‘em! Yeah! What are they? Gas or what?”

The unnaturally sobered engineer trembled.

“They’re rocks,” he said, shaking. “The size of your fist. The size of houses! Mountains! They’re all sizes! We got to miss ‘em somehow!”

Scott said coldly, but approvingly, “You’re a spaceman, anyhow! It’s up to you. Bugsy wants to miss them as much as you do!”

Bugsy beat his fists together. He had a violent mind, and to him the answer to any emergency was violence. But even he knew that nothing men could do would conceivably destroy or injure the comets. The nearest of all was a glowing globe some tens of thousands of miles in diameter. There was a smaller one, perhaps not more than a fifth of that size. Then there were the twin comets, almost as big as the first, and the fifth one closing in from an angle which showed its incredible shining tail reaching out toward infinity.

“Then do somethin’!” shrilled Bugsy. But even in panic he raged. “Do somethin’ fast!”

“We’ve got probably an hour and a half,” said Scott calmly. “More or less, of course. Have you thought up a deal to offer me, Bugsy?”

“Do somethin’!” shouted Bugsy at the engineer. “You do somethin’ or I’ll burn you down!”

The sobered engineer reached out his hands to the control board. He turned a handle. There was an infinitely small lurching sensation. He turned another, and it repeated.

And the objects on the vision-screens moved visibly as groups to one side. The seemingly stationary areas of mist—doubled in size since Scott came aboard—appeared to flow sedately to the right until they showed on the starboard bow-quarter screen. The masses of stars and portions of comets on the port bow-quarter screen flowed onto the dead-ahead screen. A curious sensation of suspense developed as the ship continued to swing. Presently a portion of the Milky Way appeared where only a little time ago there had been only the Five Comets.

Lambda, obviously, was turning in space. But it was not driving. It stayed in its orbit, traveling at what would have seemed incredible speed had there been any stationary object to measure by. But the marker-asteroid shared the buoy’s velocity. It was less than two miles away. It had no gravitational field to speak of. If it drew the buoy to itself, it was by fractions of an inch in weeks of time. Market and space buoy went on together in a sort of blind companionship toward the meteor-storm, meteor-hurricane, meteor-typhoon which was flinging missiles like some cosmic rapid-fire gun aimed like a hunter’s shotgun at its target to secure a perfect, destructive hit.

The buoy was only turning. It had four steering units in its bow, and four by its stern. The shaking, sickened, unnaturally sobered engineer had a steering unit thrusting the bow of the ship to the left. Another steering unit pushed the stern to the right. Still others could lift the bow or depress the stern, and it was possible for both bow and stern to be urged in the same direction, so the buoy could be made to shift crabwise. But that was for use only when a liner made delicate, painstaking contact with the buoy to put on or take off heavy freight. Now the buoy simply turned until it faced almost exactly away from the spot among the Five Comets at which it had been aimed. The engineer fumblingly reversed the turning controls to stop the swinging.

Bugsy cried fiercely, “Now get goin’! Get goin’ away from them comets! There’s the marker! Get movin’! Away from it! We got to leave it!”

Beads of sweat stood out on the face of the engineer. He’d kept himself in a drunken stupor from the time of the murders to the time a little while since when he’d been roused forcibly to have a miracle demanded of him. Maybe he’d wanted to forget what he’d seen when the buoy was taken over. Maybe he’d wanted to forget what he’d done. He’d been sobered, but it could only be temporary. Any spaceman knew something about handling a ship, but when a man has been frightened sober, his sobriety doesn’t last.

He wobbled at the control board. He lurched. With an enormous drunken deliberation he put his hand on the solar system drive control.

“This-sh,” he pronounced drunkenly, “is the drive. The only drive we got. But it’ll take ush away—”

He threw over the control.

And nothing happened. The engineer beamed triumphantly around him, waving a hand as though acknowledging applause. Then he collapsed. He lay on the floor and snored.

The marker buoy continued to float in emptiness nearby. The Lambda certainly wasn’t towing it. It wasn’t leaving it. It wasn’t doing anything at all. Nothing was doing anything. Even the solar system drive—which in any case couldn’t have built up counter-orbital velocity in time to keep the buoy from destruction,—even the solar-system drive wasn’t even trying.

Chenery said anxiously, “Lieutenant! The engines ain’t doing anything!”

“I’d suggest,” said Scott in a reasonable tone, “that you take this man down to the engine room, try to rouse him again and see if he can find out what’s wrong. He’s an engineer. He’s your man!”

Then Bugsy found a use for violence. His eyes glittered. His teeth showed.

“Where’s the girl?” he demanded abruptly.

“Asleep, I hope,” said Scott. “She needs it. I found her a place where she won’t be disturbed.”

“How long have we got?” Bugsy demanded ferociously. “How long have we got?”

“We’re reasonably safe for an hour,” Scott told him. “With luck. But we’ll be where we can look for punctures of the hull in an hour and-a-half. In two hours there shouldn’t be any compartment in Lambda that hasn’t been riddled and the air lost. In three hours there shouldn’t be any Lambda. It’ll be part vapor and part scrap-metal and most of it will be going with the comets around the sun.”

“An’ y’ won’t,” panted Bugsy, “y’ won’t make a deal?”

“You haven’t offered me anything I can take seriously,” said Scott.

Bugsy spat at him. He went out of the control room, staggering as he walked. He made jerky, uncoordinated gestures, then he disappeared from sight.

Chenery wrung his hands. There were tears in his eyes. Scott regarded him curiously. It was Chenery who’d contrived the enterprise which now was falling apart all around him. He was breaking up with it.

Chenery had wanted to be smart and to be clever, and he’d possessed a cunning which he considered genius. He had a gift for trickery and the devising of pitfalls, and for the victimizing of his fellows. He’d planned thefts that were clever and unique and he’d prospered. He’d risen to the masterminding of robberies, and he had put a smooth and brilliant polish on their details, In certain quarters he became famous. And he’d developed an impassioned ambition to pull off the biggest and cleverest robbery of all time.

Now he was to die of it. He’d contrived the seizure of the Golconda Ship from information he’d gotten by pure accident. He’d drawn Bugsy into the scheme to get the extra needed manpower for his masterpiece. He’d worked out in detail how the crewmen of the Lambda were to be seized one-by-one, to bear witness later to the superlative brilliance of his planning.

And if Bugsy had remained subordinate, he might have brought it off, even considering the Five Comets. Because crewmen who were prisoners instead of corpses would have warned him of the need to leave the Lambda’s normal orbit and the asteroid which was the buoy’s orbit-companion. But Bugsy had taken over, and now Chenery wanted to cry because his pride was gone and his vanity shattered. What should have been the most brilliant and spectacular robbery since men had possessions to be robbed of, was now turned into a mere brutal, sordid, murder-filled fiasco. The brilliance and the genius were drained away. If the galaxy ever did learn what had happened here, it wouldn’t be a romantic Robin Hood-like tale of wit and daring, but one of footpads and killers who’d murdered their way into a space buoy to wait for a treasure ship and by sheer stupidity rode it into the Five Comets. Which riddled it, shattered it, vaporized it, and left all the killers astonished corpses in emptiness.

So Chenery wept. Something on the control room wall made a distinctive clicking noise. And another. And another. Scott’s jaws tensed.

“Take him down to the engine room, Chenery,” he commanded. “I don’t think it will do any good, but try it.”

Chenery said thinly, catching his breath, “Lieutenant—”

“Here,” said Scott. “I’ll help you get him on your back. Like this! Hold that arm and get your other arm under his leg, like this! That’s right! You can carry him now.”

Chenery swallowed. He was a small man, and the helpless and sodden engineer was not. Chenery was almost hidden under his burden. But he said unsteadily, “Lieutenant, I’m sorry! I’m sorry you came—and Janet. But I didn’t mean to get everybody killed! It was going to be a swell—a swell job! Only I needed some extra men. And it’s turned out like this!”

Scott said nothing as Chenery went down the stairs, one foot and leg of the engineer bumping on each step, then across the floor-space below, with the engineer’s foot and leg still dragging.

Scott closed the control room door. He locked it. Swiftly he went to the place from which a clicking had come. It came again. It was a tape reel which should be spinning quickly receiving the ultra-fast broadcast of a ship’s log which would sound like a rather shrill whine. But this one wasn’t. There was another ship out yonder, far from the path of the Five Comets. It had picked up the monotonous checkpoint signal which never ceased to be broadcast. “Checkpoint Lambda,” it said tinnily. “Checkpoint Lambda. Report. Report.”

On any ship but one, that signal would actuate the log broadcast. But not on the Golconda Ship. It would send a signal composed of a thousand makings and breakings of the log broadcast frequency. It would make clickings instead of whines come from the recorder reel. They would mean nothing to anybody, anywhere, except the Patrol officer in command of Lambda. He’d know they signaled the arrival of the Golconda Ship.

The clicks continued. They said—unintelligibly to anyone but Scott—that the Golconda Ship was ready to make port on Lambda. Actually, it was ahead of schedule because of unusual good fortune in locating itself in the enormous void between the stars. It had fabulous treasure aboard. It had a crew of no-longer-young multi-multi-millionaires, grown bored with riches and finding adventure only in their quadrennial voyages to grow richer still. And now, after six months of this one, they were bored with it.

Scott threw a switch, built into the automatic checkpoint equipment for emergencies. No emergency like this had happened before, but the switch was ready. It cut off the checkpoint taping of its call for ships to send their logs. It substituted Scott’s voice on the call frequency.

“Calling ship,” said Scott sharply. “Calling ship!”

He didn’t name the ship he was calling. Another passing vessel might pick up the name. He couldn’t know when his voice would reach the Golconda Ship. It could be seconds. It was more likely to be minutes. But checkpoint signals were expected to be fairly clear, even light-hours from the sun, and log broadcasts were received from distances nearly as great.

“Warning,” said Scott into the transmitter. “Do not make freight contact with this checkpoint at this time. I am Lieutenant Scott, appointed to command it. When I arrived here a few hours ago I found its original crew murdered and the checkpoint in the hands of blaster-men waiting for you to arrive—object, more murders. It was seized some six days ago. At this moment we are about to drive into the Five Comets, which are crossing our orbital path. When we emerge on the other side of the comets, you may reopen communication. I believe the situation will have changed. I urge extreme caution.”

He paused again.

“There is one passenger, a girl, who survived the murder of the other passengers and the legitimate crew. I very urgently request that you make an effort—taking whatever precautions you please—to pick her up. If you do not do this, please inform the Space Patrol of her predicament.”

He gave explicit instructions for the rescue of Janet. Nobody would be monitoring the checkpoint’s repetitious message: “Checkpoint Lambda. Report. Report.”

When he finished, he felt the first moment of actual relief since he’d boarded Lambda. He’d made the first crack in the situation that faced him when he came to take command. Now he had only to get through the comets, prevent his own murder, and then take real command of the buoy. After that there’d only be the matter of handling Bugsy and Chenery and their followers—he felt reasonably assured about handling Chenery, though—and then somehow manage to keep Checkpoint Lambda in operation all by himself until some sort of relief arrived.

He didn’t try to make plans for all these operations at once. In the nature of things some of them would have to be played by ear when the time came. But he had improved Janet’s chances of living out her life as she had the right to do. And he had warned the Golconda Ship.

He wasn’t too sure about the Golconda Ship, though. He was more or less skeptical—more skeptical as he thought it over. There is a point where money does things to the people who own it. Unpleasant things. The multi-multi-millionaires who were the Golconda Ship’s crew did not lead normal lives. Because they were rich they were lied to by people who hoped to gain by flattering them. They were schemed against by people who would cheat them. They were cajoled by people who would tempt them to dishonesty and provide accomplices to crimes to make a profit out of them. They had to hire guards lest they or their families be kidnaped or murdered if they did not pay blackmail. Men whose lives were filled with the feverish attempts of other people to get money from them were not likely to stay unaffected by those attempts. They might be poisoned by suspicion and Warped by the constant need to be wary.

In short, the men on the Golconda Ship might act like other men. But it wasn’t too likely. Warned by Scott, they might act like rich men; see to their own always precarious safety, go cautiously away, and politely tell the Space Patrol about Janet and Scott in their predicament in the space buoy circling Cards Lambda.

And if they did, Scott couldn’t really blame them.

But for the moment he felt relieved. And then he realized that to relax too early might be dangerous. There was Bugsy. He was probably convinced about the Five Comets now. But he had one single answer to all problems—violence. He hadn’t been able to threaten Scott before. But there was a way.

Scott suddenly realized that there was an exquisitely monstrous kind of violence Bugsy could practice, of which the mere threat would subdue Scott completely. There was a way by which he could be forced to take Lambda through the Five Comets, and afterward work desperately to bring the Golconda Ship alongside—contriving explanations for his broadcast as they were needed—so Bugsy could bloodily massacre its crew, while he astrogated that ship where-ever Bugsy pleased. And then be killed.

Scott found himself growing tense again. He tried to thrust away the idea that it could happen. But he suddenly berated himself bitterly for not having been more careful, more intelligent, more resourceful. Even that he hadn’t killed Bugsy in cold blood when it was possible.

Because Bugsy had gone away from the control room in such horrible fury that he staggered and stumbled as he walked. And only a little earlier he’d asked where Janet was.

Sweat came out on Scott’s face as he realized how helpless he was. Bugsy couldn’t be stopped from having his men search for Janet. Even now they might be hunting over the Lambda—exploring every nook and cranny; every compartment however small; looking even into every cupboard…

Sooner or later they’d think of the lifeboats.

He seemed to hear noises. He wasn’t sure, but he believed it. The search was beginning…