Free Lucky Starr and the Big Sun of Mercury by Isaac Asimov Page A

him and Bigman was staring into the muzzle of his own blaster.
    "I have one of my own," said Urteil, grimly, "but I think I'd rather use yours. Don't move. Stay that way. On hands and knees. That's right."
    Never in his life had Bigman so hated himself. To be tricked and hoodwinked this way. He almost deserved death. He would almost rather die than ever have to face Lucky and say, "He looked behind me and said you were coming so I turned… "
    He said in a strangled voice, "Shoot, if you have the nerve for it. Shoot, and Lucky will track you down and see to it that you spend the rest of your life chained to the smallest, coldest asteroid ever used as a prison."
    "Lucky will do that? Where is he?"
    "Find him."
    "I will because you'll tell me where he is. And tell me, too, why he came down to the mines in the first place. What's he doing here?"
    "To find Sirians. You heard him."
    "To find comet gas," growled Urteil. "That senile fool, Peverale, may talk Sirians, but your friend never believed any of it. Not even if he only has the brains you do. He came down for another reason. You tell me."
    "Why should I?"
    "To save your miserable life."
    "That's not enough reason for me," said Bigman, and he rose to his feet and took a step forward.
    Urteil moved backward till he was leaning against the wall of the tunnel. "One more motion and I'll blast you with pleasure. I don't need your information very badly. It will save time, but not much. If I spend more than five minutes with you, it's a waste.
    "Now let me tell you exactly what I think. Maybe it will teach you that you and your tin hero, Starr, are fooling nobody. Neither one of you is good for anything more than tricks with force-knives against an unarmed man."
    Bigman thought gloomily:
That's
what's griping the cobber. I made him look like a jackass in front of the boys, and he's waiting for me to crawl.
    "If you're going to do all that talking," he said, squeezing as much contempt into his voice as he could manage, "you might as well shoot. I'd rather be blasted than talked to death."
    "Don't race for it, little fellow, don't race for it. In the first place, Senator Swenson is breaking the Council of Science. You're just an item, a tiny one. Your friend Starr is just another item, and not a much bigger one. I'm the one who's going to do the breaking. We've got the Council where we want it. The people of Earth know it's riddled with corruption, that its officers waste the taxpayers' money and line their own pockets- "
    "That's a filthy lie," broke in Bigman.
    "We'll let the people decide that. Once we puncture the phony propaganda the Council puts out, we'll see what the people think."
    "You try that. Go ahead and try!"
    "We intend to. We'll succeed too. And this will be exhibit number one: you two in the mines. I know why you're here. The Sirians! Huh! Starr either put Peverale up to telling the story, or he just took advantage of it. I'll tell you what you two are doing down here. You're faking the Sirians. You're setting up a Sirian camp to show people.
    " 'I chased them off singlehanded,' Starr will say. 'I, Lucky Starr, big hero.' The sub-etherics make a big deal out of it and the Council calls off its Project Light on the sly. They've milked it for all it's worth, and they're getting out with their skins__ Except that they won't be because I'll catch Starr in the act and he'll be so much mud under shoe and so will the Council."
    Bigman was sick with fury. He longed to tear at the other with his bare hands, but somehow he managed to hold himself in leash. He knew why Urteil was talking as he was. It was because he man
didn't
know as much as he pretended. He was trying to get more out of Bigman by making him blind-mad.
    In a low voice, Bigman tried to turn the tables. "You know, you putrid cobber, if anyone ever punctured you and let out the comet gas, your peanut-sized soul would show itself clear. Once they let the rot out of you, you'd collapse to nothing but a loose sack