to write, so I went to bed, as I should have done in the first place.
But tired as I was, I lay there and thought of how big the silo was and tried to estimate how many sticks might be cached away there. I got up into the trillions and I saw it was no use; there was no way to keep the figures straight.
The whole deal was big?bigger than anything we'd ever found before. It would take a group of men like us at least five lifetimes of steady hauling to empty the silo. We'd have to set up a corporation and get a legal staff (preferably one with the lowest kind of ethics) and file a claim on this planet and go through a lot of other red tape to be sure we had it all sewed up.
We couldn't take a chance of letting it slip through our fingers because of any lack of foresight. We'd have to get it all doped out before we went ahead.
I don't know about the rest of them, but I dreamed that night of wading knee-deep through a sea of crisp, crinkly banknotes.
When morning came, Doc failed to show up for breakfast. I went hunting him and found he hadn't even gone to bed. He was sprawled in his rickety old chair in the dispensary and there was one empty bottle on the floor and he trailed another, almost empty, alongside the chair, keeping a rather flimsy hold upon its neck. He still was conscious, which was about the most that could be said of him.
I was plenty sore. Doc knew the rules. He could get paralysed as soon or as often or as long as he wanted to when we were in space, but when we were grounded and there was work to do and planet ailments to keep an eye out for, he was expected to stay sober.
I kicked the bottle out of his fist and I took him by the collar with one hand and by the scat of his britches with the other and frog-walked him to the galley.
Plunking him down in a chair, I yelled for Pancake to get another pot of coffee going.
'I want you sobered up,' I told Doc, 'so you can go out with us on the second trip. We need all the manpower we have.'
Hutch had rounded up his gang and Frost had got the crew together and had rigged up a block and tackle so we could start loading. Everyone was ready to begin bringing in the cargo except Doc and I swore to myself that, before the day was over, I'd work the tail right off him.
As soon as we had breakfast, we started out. We planned to get aboard as many of the machines as we could handle and to fill in the space between them with all the sticks we could find room for.
We went down the corridors to the room that held the machines and we paired off, two men to the machine and started out.
Everything went fine until we were more than halfway across the stretch of ground between the building and the ship. Hutch and I were in the lead and suddenly there was an explosion in the ground about fifty feet ahead of us. We skidded to a halt.
'It's Doc!' yelled Hutch, grabbing for his belt-gun.
I stopped him just in time. 'Take it easy, Hutch.'
Doc stood up in the port and waved a rifle at us.
'I could pick him off,' Hutch said.
'Put back that gun,' I ordered.
I walked out alone to where Doc had placed his bullet. He lifted his rifle and I stopped dead still. He'd probably miss, but even so, the kind of explosive charge he was firing could cut a man in two if it struck ten feet away.
'I'm going to throw away my gun,' I called out to him. 'I want to talk with you.'
Doc hesitated for a moment. 'All right. Tell the rest of them to pull back a way.'
I spoke to Hutch over my shoulder. 'Get out of here. Take the others with you.'
'He's crazy drunk,' said Hutch. 'No telling what he'll do.'
'I can handle him,' I said, sounding surer than I felt.
Doc let loose another bullet off to one side of us.
'Get moving, Hutch.' I didn't dare look back. I had to keep an eye on Doc.
'All right,' Doc finally yelled at me. 'They're back. Throw away your gun.'
Moving slow so he wouldn't think I was trying to draw on him, I unfastened the buckle of the gun belt and let it fall to the ground. I walked forward, keeping my eyes on Doc, and all the time my skin kept trying to crawl up my back.
'That's far enough,' Doc said when I'd almost reached the ship. 'We can talk from here.'
'You're drunk,' I told him. 'I don't know what this is all about, but I know you're drunk.'
'Not nearly drunk enough. Not drunk enough by half. If I were drunk enough, I simply wouldn't care.'
'What's eating you?'
'Decency,' said Doc, in that hammy way of his. 'I've told you many times that I can stomach looting when it involves no more than uranium and gems and other trash like that. I can even shut my eyes when you gut a culture, because you can't steal a culture?even when you get through looting it, the culture still is there and can build back again. But I balk at robbing knowledge. I will not let you do it, Captain.'
'I still say you're drunk.'
'You don't even know what you've found. You are so blind and greedy that you don't recognize it.'
'Okay, Doc,' I said, trying to smooth his feathers, 'tell me what we've found.'
'A library. Perhaps the greatest, most comprehensive library in all the Galaxy. Some race spent untold years compiling the knowledge that is in that building and you plan to take it and sell it and scatter it. If that happens, in time it will be lost and what little of it may be left will be so out of context that half its meaning will be lost. It doesn't belong to us. It doesn't even belong to the human race alone. A library like that can belong only to all the peoples of the Galaxy.'
'Look, Doc,' I pleaded, 'we've worked for years, you and I and all the rest of them. We've bled and sweated and been disappointed time and time again. This is our chance to make a killing. And that means you as well as the rest of us. Think of it, Doc?more money than you can ever spend?enough to keep you drunk the rest of your life!'
Doc swung the rifle around at me and I thought my goose was cooked. But I never moved a muscle. I stood and bluffed it out.
At last he lowered the gun. 'We're barbarians. History is full of the likes of us. Back on Earth, the barbarians stalled human progress for a thousand years when they burned and scattered the libraries and the learning of the Greeks and Romans. To them, books were just something to start a fire with or wipe their weapons on. To you, this great cache of accumulated knowledge means nothing more than something to make a quick buck on. You'll take a scholarly study of a vital social problem and retail it as a year's vacation that can be experienced in six hours' time and you'll take…'
'Spare me the lecture, Doc,' I said wearily. 'Tell me what you want.'
'Go back and report this find to the Galactic Commission. It will help wipe out a lot of things we've done.'
'So help me, Doc, you've gone religious on us.'
'Not religious. Just decent.'
'And if we don't?'
'I've got the ship,' said Doe. 'I have the food and water.'
'You'll have to sleep.'
'I'll close the port. Just try getting in.'
He had us and he knew he did. Unless we could figure out a way to grab him, he had us good and proper.
I was scared, but mostly I was burned. For years, we'd listened to him run off at the mouth and never for a moment had any of us thought he meant a word of it. And now suddenly he did?he meant every word of it.
I knew there was no way to talk him out of it. And there was no compromise. When it came right down to it, there was no agreement possible, for any agreement or compromise would have to be based on honour and we had no honour?not a one of us, not even among ourselves. It was stalemate, but Doc didn't know that yet. He'd realize it once he got a little sober and thought about it some. What he had done had been done on alcoholic impulse, but that didn't mean he wouldn't see it through.
One thing was certain: As it stood, he could outlast us.
