CHAPTER IVA Burn on a Martian Arm
I didnot appear at that morning meal. I was exhausted and drugged with lack of sleep. I had a moment with Snap, to tell him what had occurred. Then I sought out Carter. He had his little chart-room insulated. And we were cautious. I told him what Snap and I had learned: the Gamma rays from the moon, proving that Grantline had concentrated a considerable ore-body. I also told him the message from Grantline.
“We’ll stop on the way back, as he directs, Gregg.” He bent closer to me. “At Ferrok-Shahn I’m going to bring back a cordon of Interplanetary Police. The secret will be out, of course, when once we stop at the moon. We have no right, even now, to be flying this vessel as unguarded as it is.”
He was very solemn. And he was grim when I told him of the invisible eavesdropper.
“You think he overheard Grantline’s message?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Who was it? You seem to feel it was George Prince?”
“Yes.”
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I was convinced that the prowler had gone into A 20. When I mentioned the purser, who seemed to have been watching me earlier in the night, and again was sitting in the smoking room when theeavesdropperfled past, Carter looked startled.
“Johnson is all right, Gregg.”
“Is he? Does he know anything about this Grantline affair?”
“No––no,” said the captain hastily. “You haven’t mentioned it, have you?”
“Of course I haven’t. I’ve been wondering why Johnson didn’t hear that eavesdropper. I could hear him when I was chasing him. But Johnson sat perfectly unmoved and let him go by. What was he sitting there for, anyway, at that hour of the morning?”
“You’re too suspicious, Gregg. Overwrought. But you’re right––we can’t be too careful. I’m going to have that Prince suite searched when I catch it unoccupied. Passengers don’t ordinarily travel with invisible cloaks. Go to bed, Gregg––you need a rest.”
I wentto my cabin. It was located aft, on the stern deck-space, near the stern watch-tower. A small metal room, with a desk, a chair and bunk. I made sure no one was in it. I sealed the lattice grill and the door, set the alarm trigger against any opening of them, and went to bed.
The siren for the mid-day meal awakened me. I had slept heavily. I felt refreshed. And hungry.
I found the passengers already assembled at my table when I arrived in the dining salon. It was a low-vaulted metal room of blue and yellow tube-lights. At the sides its oval windows showed the deck, with its ports of the dome-side, through which a vista of the starry firmament was visible. We were well on our course to Mars. The moon had dwindled to a pin-point of light beside the crescent earth. And behind them our sun blazed, visually the largest orb in the heavens. It was some sixty-eight million miles from the earth to Mars, this voyage. A flight, under ordinary circumstances, of some ten days.
There were five tables in the dining salon, each with eight seats. Snap and I had one of the tables. We sat at the ends, with three passengers on each of the sides.
Snap was in his seat when I arrived. He eyed me down the length of the table.
“Good morning, Gregg. We missed you at breakfast. Notpressure-sick, I hope?”
There were three passengers already seated at our table––all men. Snap, in a gay mood, introduced me.
“This is our third officer, Gregg Haljan. Big, handsome fellow, isn’t he? And as pleasant as he is good-looking. Gregg, this is Sero Ob Hahn.”
I metthe keen, dark-eyed somber gaze of a Venus man of middle age. A small, slim, graceful man, with sleek black hair. His pointed face, accentuated by the pointed beard, was pallid. He wore a white and purple robe; upon his breast was a huge platinum ornament, a device like a star and cross entwined.
“I am happy to meet you, sir.” His voice was soft and sleek.
“Ob Hahn,” I repeated. “I should have heard of you, no doubt. But––”
A smile plucked at his thin, gray lips. “That is the error of mine, not yours. My mission is that all the universe shall hear of me.”
“He’s preaching the religion of the Venus Mystics,” Snap explained.
“And this enlightened gentleman,” said Ob Hahn ironically, “has just termed it fetishism. The ignorance––”
“Oh, I say!” protested the man at Ob Hahn’s side. “I mean, you seem to think I intended something opprobrious. As a matter of fact––”
“We’ve an argument, Gregg,” laughed Snap. “This is Sir Arthur Coniston, an English gentleman, lecturer and sky-trotter––that is, he will be a sky-trotter; he tells us he plans a number of voyages.”
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The tall Englishman in his white linen suit bowed acknowledgment. “My compliments, Mr. Haljan. I hope you have no strong religious convictions, else we will make your table here very miserable!”
Thethird passenger had evidently kept out of the argument. Snap introduced him as Rance Rankin. An American––a quiet, blond fellow of thirty-five or forty.
I ordered my breakfast and let the argument go on.
“Won’t make me miserable,” said Snap. “I love an argument. You said, Sir Arthur?...
“I mean to say, I think I said too much. Mr. Rankin, you are more diplomatic.”
Rankin laughed. “I am a magician,” he said to me. “A theatrical entertainer. I deal in tricks––how to fool an audience––” His keen, amused gaze was on Ob Hahn. “This gentleman from Venus and I have too much in common to argue.”
“A nasty one!” the Englishman exclaimed. “By Jove! Really, Mr. Rankin, you’re a bit too cruel!”
I could see we were doomed to have turbulent meals this voyage. I like to eat in quiet; arguing passengers always annoy me. There were still three seats vacant at our table; I wondered who would occupy them. I soon learned the answer––for one seat at least. Rankin said calmly:
“Where is the little Venus girl this meal?” His glance went to the empty seat at my right hand. “The Venza––wasn’t that her name? She and I are destined for the same theater in Ferrok-Shahn.”
So Venza was to sit beside me. It was good news. Ten days of a religious argument three times a day would be intolerable. But the cheerful Venza would help.
“She never eats the mid-day meal,” said Snap. “She’s on the deck, having orange juice. I guess it’s the old gag about diet, eh?”
Myattention wandered about the salon. Most of the seats were occupied. At the captain’s table I saw the objects of my search. George Prince and his sister sat one on each side of the captain. I saw George Prince in the life now as a man who looked hardly twenty-five. He was at this moment evidently in a gay mood. His clean-cut, handsome profile, with its poetic dark curls, was turned toward me. There seemed little of the villain about him.
And I saw Anita Prince now as a dark-haired, black eyed little beauty, in feature resembling her brother very strongly. She presently finished her meal. She rose, with him after her. She was dressed in Earth fashion––white blouse and dark jacket, wide, knee-length trousers of gray, with a red sash her only touch of color. She went past me, flashed me her smile and nod.
My heart was pounding. I answered her greeting, and met George Prince’s casual gaze. He, too, smiled, as though to signify that his sister had told him of the service I had done her. Or was his smile an ironical memory of how he had eluded me this morning when I chased him?
I gazed after his small, white-suited figure as he followed Anita from the salon. And thinking of her, I prayed that Carter and Halsey might be wrong. Whatever plotting against the Grantline Expedition might be going on, I hoped that George Prince was innocent of it. Yet I knew in my heart it was a futile hope. Prince had been that eavesdropper outside the helio-room. I could not really doubt it. But that his sister must be ignorant of what he was doing, I was sure.
Myattention was brought suddenly back to the reality of our table. I heard Ob Hahn’s silky voice:
“We passed quite close to the moon last night, Mr. Dean.”
“Yes,” said Snap. “We did, didn’t we? Always do––it’s a technical problem323of the exigencies of interstellar navigation. Explain it to them, Gregg––you’re an expert.”
I waved it away with a laugh. There was a brief silence. I could not help noticing Sir Arthur Coniston’s queer look, and I think I have never seen so keen a glance as Rance Rankin shot at me. Were all these people aware of Grantline’s treasure on the moon? It suddenly seemed so. I wished fervently at that instant that the ten days of this voyage were over and we were safely at Ferrok-Shahn. Captain Carter was absolutely right. Coming back we would have a cordon of interplanetary police aboard.
Sir Arthur broke the awkward silence. “Magnificent sight, the moon, from so close a viewpoint––though I was too much afraid of pressure-sickness to be up to see it.”
I hadnearly finished my hasty meal when another incident shocked me. The two other passengers at our table came in and took their seats. A Martian girl and man. The girl had the seat at my left, with the man beside her. All Martians are tall. This girl was about my own height––that is, six feet, two inches. The man was seven feet or more. Both wore the Martian outer robe. The girl flung hers back. Her limbs were encased in pseudo-mail. She looked, as all Martians like to look, a very warlike Amazon. But she was a pretty girl. She smiled at me with a keen-eyed, direct gaze.
“Mr. Dean said at breakfast that you were big and handsome. You are.”
They were brother and sister, these Martians. Snap introduced them as Set Miko and Setta Moa.[5]
This Miko was, from our Earth standards, a tremendous, brawny giant. Not spindly, like most Martians, this fellow, for all his seven feet of height, was almost heavy-set. He wore a plaited leather jerkin beneath his robe, and knee pants of leather out of which his lower legs showed as gray, hairy pillars of strength. He had come into the salon with a swagger, his sword-ornament clanking.
“A pleasant voyage so far,” he said to me as he started his meal. His voice had the heavy, throaty rasp characteristic of the Martian. He spoke perfect English––both Martians and Venus people are by heritage extraordinarylinguists. Miko and his sister Moa had a touch of Martian accent, worn almost away by living for some years in Great-New York.
The shock to me came within a few minutes. Miko, absorbed in attacking his meal, inadvertently pushed back his robe to bare his forearm. An instant only, then it dropped again to his wrist. But in that instant I had seen, upon the gray flesh, a thin sear turned red. A very recent burn––as though a pencil-ray of heat had caught his arm.
My mind flung back. Only last night in the City Corridor, Snap and I had been followed by a Martian. I had shot at him with the heat-ray; I thought I had hit him on the arm. Was this the mysterious Martian who had followed us from Halsey’s office?
CHAPTER VVenza the Venus Girl
It wasshortly after that mid-day meal when I encountered Venza sitting on the starlit deck. I had been in the bow observatory; taken my routine castings of our position and worked them out. I was, I think, of the Planetara’s officers the most expert handler of the mathematical mechanical calculators. The locating of our position and charting the trajectory of our course was, under ordinary circumstances, about all I had to do. And it took only a few minutes each twelve hours.
I had a moment with Carter in the isolation of his chart-room.
“This voyage! Gregg, I’m getting like you––too fanciful. We’ve a normal324group of passengers, apparently; but I don’t like the look of any of them. That Ob Hahn, at your table––”
“Snaky-looking fellow,” I commented. “He and the Englishman are great on arguments. Did you have Prince’s cabinsearched?”
My breath hung on his answer.
“Yes. Nothing unusual among his things. We searched both his room and his sister’s.”
I did not follow that up. Instead I told him about the burn on Miko’s thick gray arm.
Hestared. “I wish to the Almighty we were at Ferrok-Shahn. Gregg, to-night when the passengers are asleep, come here to me. Snap will be here, and Dr. Frank. We can trust him.”
“He knows about––about the Grantline treasure?”
“Yes. And so do Balch and Blackstone.”
Balch and Blackstone were our first and second officers.
“We’ll all meet here, Gregg––say about the zero hour. We must take some precautions.”
He suddenly felt he should say no more now. He dismissed me.
I found Venza seated alone in a secluded corner of the starlit deck. A porthole, with the black heavens and the blazing stars, was before her. There was an empty seat nearby.
“Hola-lo,[6]Gregg! Sit here with me. I have been wondering when you would come after me.”
I sat down beside her. “What are you doing––going to Mars, Venza? I’m glad to see you.”
“Many thanks. But I am glad to see you, Gregg. So handsome a man.... Do you know, from Venus to the earth and I have no doubt on all of Mars, no man will please me more.”
“Glib tongue,” I laughed. “Born to flatter the male––every girl of your world.” And I added seriously, “You don’t answer my question? What takes you to Mars?”
“Contract. By the stars, what else? Of course, a chance to make a voyage with you––”
“Don’t be silly, Venza.”
I enjoyedher. I gazed at her small, slim figure gracefully reclining in the deck chair. Her long, gray robe parted––by design, I have no doubt––to display her shapely, satin-sheathed legs. Her black hair was coiled in a heavy knot at the back of her neck; her carmined lips were parted with a mocking, alluring smile. The exotic perfume of her enveloped me.
She glanced at me sidewise from beneath her sweeping black lashes.
“Be serious,” I added.
“I am serious. Sober. Intoxicated by you, but sober.”
I said, “What sort of a contract?”
“A theater in Ferrok-Shahn. Good money, Gregg. I’m to be there a year.” She sat up to face me. “There’s a fellow here on the Planetara, Rance Rankin, he calls himself. At our table––a big, good-looking blond American. He says he is a magician. Ever hear of him?”
“That’s what he told me. No, I never heard of him.”
“Nor did I. And I thought I had heard of everyone of any importance. He is listed for the same theater where I’m going. Nice sort of fellow.” She paused, and added suddenly, “If he’s a professional entertainer, I’m a motor-oiler.”
Itstartled me. “Why do you say that?”
Instinctively my gaze swept the deck. An Earth woman and child and a small Venus man were in sight, but not within earshot.
“Why do you look so furtive?” she retorted. “Gregg, there’s something strange about this voyage. I’m no fool, nor you, and you know it as well as I do.”
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“Rance Rankin––” I prompted.
She leaned closer toward me. “He could fool you. But not me––I’ve known too many real magicians.” She grinned. “I challenged him to trick me. You should have seen him trying to evade!”
“Do you know Ob Hahn?” I interrupted.
She shook her head. “Never heard of him. But he told me plenty at breakfast. By Satan, what a flow of words that devil-driver can muster! He and the Englishman don’t mesh very well, do they?”
She stared at me. I had not answered her grin; my mind was too busy with queer fancies. Halsey’s words: “Things are not always what they seem––” Were these passengers masqueraders? Put here by George Prince? And then I thought of Miko the Martian, and the burn upon his arm.
“Come back, Gregg! Don’t go wandering off like that!” She dropped her voice to a whisper. “I’ll be serious. I want to know what in the hell is going on aboard this ship. I’m a woman, and I’m curious. You tell me.”
“Whatdo you mean?” I parried.
“I mean a lot of things. What we’ve just been talking about. And what was the excitement you were in just before breakfast this morning?”
“Excitement?”
“Gregg, you may trust me.” For the first time she was wholly serious. Her gaze made sure no one was within hearing. She put her hand on my arm. I could barely hear her whisper: “I know they might have a ray upon us––I’ll be careful.”
“They?”
“Anyone. Something’s going on. You know it––you are in it. I saw you this morning, Gregg. Wild-eyed, chasing a phantom––”
“You?”
“And I heard the phantom! A man’s footsteps. A magnetic reflecting invisible cloak. You couldn’t fool an audience with that––it’s too commonplace. If Rance Rankin tried––”
I gripped her. “Don’t ramble, Venza! You saw me?”
“Yes. My stateroom door was open. I was sitting with a cigarillo. I saw the purser in the smoking room. He was visible from––”
“Wait! Venza, that prowler went through the smoking room!”
“I know he did. I could hear him.”
“Did the purser hear him?”
“Of course. The purser looked up, followed the sound with his gaze. I thought that was queer. He never made a move. And then you came along and he acted innocent. Why? What’s going on, that’s what I want to know!”
I heldmy breath. “Venza, where did the prowler run to? Can you––”
She whispered calmly, “Into A 20. I saw the door open and close––I even think I could see the blurred outline of him. Those magnetic cloaks!” She added, “Why should George Prince be sneaking around with you after him? And the purser acting innocent? And who is this George Prince, anyway?”
The huge Martian, Miko, with his sister Moa came strolling along the deck. They nodded as they passed us.
I whispered, “I can’t explain anything now. But you’re right, Venza: there is something going on. Listen! Whatever you learn––anything you encounter which looks unusual––will you tell me? I––well, I do trust you––really I do!––but the thing isn’t mine to tell.”
The somber pools of her eyes were shining. “You are very lovable, Gregg. I won’t question you.” She was trembling with excitement. “Whatever it is, I want to be in it. Here’s something I can tell you now. We’ve two high-class gold-leaf gamblers aboard. Did you know that?”
“No. Who are––”
“Shac and Dud Ardley. Let me state every detective in Great-New York knows them. They had a wonderful game with that Englishman, Sir Arthur Coniston, this morning. Stripped him326of half a pound of eight-inch leaves––a neat little stack. A crooked game, of course. Those fellows are more nimble-fingered than Rance Rankin ever dared to be!”
I satstaring at her. She was a mine of information, this girl.
“And Gregg, I tried my charms on Shac and Dud. Nice men, but dumb. Whatever’s going on, they’re not in it. They wanted to know what kind of a ship this was. Why? Because Shac has a cute little eavesdropping microphone of his own. He had it working in the night last night. He overheard George Prince and that big giant Miko arguing about the moon!”
I gasped. “Venza, softer!”
Against all propriety of this public deck she pretended to drape herself upon me. Her hair smothered my face as her lips almost touched my ear.
“Something about treasure on the moon––Shac couldn’t understand what. And they mentioned you. He didn’t hear what they said because the purser joined them.” Her whispered words tumbled over one another. “A hundred pounds of gold leaf––that’s the purser’s price. He’s with them, whatever it is. He promised to do something for them.”
She stopped. “Well?” I prompted.
“That’s all. Shac’s current was interrupted.”
“Tell him to try it again, Venza! I’ll talk with him. No! I’d better let him alone. Can you get him to keep his mouth shut?”
“I think he might do anything I told him. He’s a man.”
“Find out what you can.”
She sat away from me suddenly. “There’s Anita and George Prince.”
Theycame to the corner of the deck, but turned back. Venza caught my look. And understood it.
“So you love Anita Prince so much as that, Gregg?” Venza was smiling. “I wish you––I wish some man handsome as you would gaze after me like that.”
She turned solemn. “You may be interested to know that she loves you. I could see it. I knew it when I mentioned you to her this morning.”
“Me? Why, we’ve hardly spoken!”
“Is it necessary? I never heard that it was.”
I could not see Venza’s face; she stood up suddenly. And when I rose beside her, she whispered,
“We should not be seen talking so long. I’ll find out what I can.”
I stared after her slight robed figure as she turned into the lounge archway and vanished.
CHAPTER VIA Traitor, and a Passing Asteroid
Captain Carterwas grim. “So they’ve bought him off, have they? Go bring him in here, Gregg. We’ll have it out with him now.”
Snap, Dr. Frank, Balch, our first officer, and I were in the captain’s chart-room. It was 4 P. M.––our Earth starting time. We were sixteen hours upon our voyage.
I found Johnson in his office in the lounge. “Captain wants to see you. Close up.”
He closed his window upon an American woman passenger who was demanding details of Martian currency, and followed me forward. “What is it, Gregg?”
“I don’t know.”
Captain Carter banged the slide upon us. The chart-room was insulated. The hum of the current was obvious. Johnson noticed it. He started at the hostile faces of the surgeon and Balch. And he tried to bluster.
“What is this? Something wrong?”
Carter wasted no words. “We have information, Johnson––there’s some under cover plot here aboard. I want to know what it is. Suppose you tell us frankly.”
Thepurser looked blank. “What do you mean? We’ve gamblers aboard, if that’s––”
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“To hell with that,” growled Balch. “You had a secret interview with that Martian, Set Miko, and with George Prince!”
Johnson scowled from under his heavy brows, and then raised them in surprise.
“Did I? You mean changing their money? I don’t like your tone, Balch. I’m not your under-officer!”
“But you’re under me,” roared the captain. “By God, I’m master here!”
“Well, I’m not disputing that,” said the purser mildly. “This fellow Balch––”
“We’re in no mood for argument,” Dr. Frank cut in. “Clouding the issue.”
“I won’t let it be clouded,” the captain exclaimed. I had never seen Carter so choleric. He was evidently under a tremendous strain. He added,
“Johnson, you’ve been acting suspiciously. I don’t give a damn whether I’ve proof of it or not––I say it. Did you, or did you not meet George Prince and that Martian last night?”
“No, I did not. And I don’t mind telling you, Captain Carter, that your tone also is offensive!”
“Is it?” Carter suddenly seized him. They were both big men. Johnson’s heavy face went purplish red.
“Take your hands!––” They were struggling. Carter’s hands were fumbling at the purser’s pockets. I leaped, flung an arm around Johnson’s neck, pinning him.
“Easy there! We’ve got you, Johnson!”
Snaptried to help me. “Go on, bang him on the head, Gregg. Now’s your chance!”
We searched him. A heat-ray cylinder––that was legitimate. But we found a small battery and eavesdropping microphone similar to the one Venza had mentioned that Shac the gambler was carrying.
“What are you doing with that?” the captain demanded.
“None of your business! Is it criminal? Carter, I’ll have the Line officials dismiss you for this! Take your hands off me, all of you!”
“Look at this!” exclaimed Dr. Frank.
From Johnson’s breast pocket the surgeon drew a folded document. It was the scale drawing of the Planetara’s interior corridors, the lower control rooms and mechanisms. It was always kept in Johnson’s safe. And with it, another document: the ship’s clearance papers––the secret code pass-words for this voyage, to be used if we should be challenged by any interplanetary police ship.
Snap gasped. “My God, that was in my helio-room strong box! I’m the only one on this vessel except the captain who’s entitled to know those pass-words!”
Out of the silence, Balch demanded, “Well, what about it, Johnson?”
The purser was still defiant. “I won’t answer your questions, Balch. At the proper time, I’ll explain––Gregg Haljan, you’re choking me!”
I easedup. But I shook him. “You’d better talk.”
He was exasperatingly silent.
“Enough!” exploded Carter. “He can explain when we get to port. Meanwhile I’ll put him where he’ll do no more damage. Gregg, lock him in the cage.”
We ignored his violent protestations. The cage––in the old days of sea-vessels on Earth, they called it the brig––was the ship’s jail. A steel-lined, windowless room located under the deck in the peak of the bow. I dragged the struggling Johnson there, with the amazed watcher looking down from the observatory window at our lunging, starlit forms.
“Shut up, Johnson! If you know what’s good for you––”
He was making a fearful commotion. Behind us, where the deck narrowed at the superstructure, half a dozen passengers were gazing in surprise.
“I’ll have you thrown out of the Service, Gregg Haljan!”
I shut him up finally. And flung him328down the ladder into the cage and sealed the deck trap-door upon him. I was headed back for the chart-room when from the observatory came the lookout’s voice.
“An asteroid, Haljan! Officer Blackstone wants you.”
I hurried to the turret bridge. An asteroid was in sight. We had attained nearly our maximum speed now. An asteroid was approaching, so dangerously close that our trajectory would have to be altered. I heard Blackstone’s signals ringing in the control rooms; and met Carter as he ran to the bridge with me.
“That scoundrel! We’ll get more out of him, Gregg. By God, I’ll put the chemicals on him––torture him, illegal or not!”
Wehad no time for further discussion. The asteroid was rapidly approaching. Already, under the glass, it was a magnificent sight. I had never seen this tiny world before––asteroids are not numerous between the Earth and Mars, or in toward Venus. I never expected to see this one again. How little of the future can we humans fathom, for all our science! If I could only have looked into the future, even for a few short hours! How different then would have been the outcome of this tragic voyage!
The asteroid came rushing at us. Its orbital velocity, I later computed, was some twenty-two miles a second. Our own, at the present maximum, was a fraction over seventy-seven. The asteroid had for some time been under observation by the lookout. He gave his warning only when it seemed that our trajectory should be altered to avoid a dangerously close passing.
At the combined speeds of nearly a hundred miles a second the asteroid swept into view. With the naked eye, at first it was a tiny speck of star-dust, unnoticed in the gem-strewn black velvet of Space. A speck. Then a gleaming dot, silver white, with the light of our Sun upon it.
Five minutes. The dot grew to a disc. Expanding. A full moon, silver-white. Brightest world in the firmament––the light from it bathed the Planetara, illumined the deck, painting everything with silver.
I stood with Carter and Blackstone on the turret bridge. It was obvious that unless we altered our course, the asteroid would pass too close for safety. Already we were feeling its attraction; from the control rooms came the report that our trajectory was disturbed by this new mass so near.
“Better make your calculations now, Gregg,” Blackstone suggested.
I castup the rough elements from the observational instruments in the turret. It took me some ten or fifteen minutes. When I had us upon our new course, with the attractive and repulsive plates in the Planetara’s hull set in their altered combinations, I went out to the bridge again.
The asteroid hung over our bow quarter. No more than twenty or thirty thousand miles away. A giant ball now, filling all that quadrant of the heavens. The configurations of its mountains––its land and water areas––were plainly visible. Its axial rotation was apparent.
“Perfectly habitable,” Blackstone said. “But I’ve searched all over this hemisphere with the glass. No sign of human life––certainly nothing civilized––nothing in the fashion of cities.”
A fair little world, by the look of it. A tiny globe: Blackstone had figured it at some eight hundred miles in diameter. There seemed a normal atmosphere. We could see areas where the surface was obscured by clouds. And oceans, and land masses. Polar icecaps. Lush vegetation at its equator.
Blackstone had roughly cast its orbital elements. A narrowellipse. No wonder we had never encountered this fair little world before. It had come from the outer region beyond Neptune. At perihelion it would reach inside Mercury, round the Sun, and head outward again.
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Weswept past the asteroid at a distance of some six thousand miles. Close enough, in very truth––a minute of flight at our combined speeds totaling a hundred miles a second. I had descended to the passenger deck, where I stood alone at a window, gazing.
The passengers were all gathered to view the passing little world. I saw, not far from me, Anita, standing with her brother; and the giant figure of Miko with them.
Half an hour since, first with the naked eye, this wandering little world had shown itself; it swam slowly past, began to dwindle behind us. A huge half moon. A thinner, smaller quadrant. A tiny crescent, like a silver bar-pin to adorn some lady’s breast. And then it was a dot, a point of light indistinguishable among the myriad others hovering in this great black void.
The incident of the passing of the asteroid was over. I turned from the deck window. My heart leaped. The moment for which all day I had been subconsciously longing was at hand. Anita was sitting in a deck chair, momentarily alone. Her gaze was on me as I looked her way, and she smiled an invitation for me to join her.
CHAPTER VIIUnspoken Love
Unspokenlove! I think if I had yielded to the impulse of my heart, I would have poured out all those protestations of a lover’s ecstasy, incongruous here upon this starlit public deck, to a girl I hardly knew. I think, too, she might have received them with a tender acquiescence. The starlight was mirrored in her dark eyes. Misty eyes, with great reaches of unfathomable space in their depths. Yet I felt their tenderness.
Unfathomable strangeness of love! Who am I to write of it, with all the poets of all the ages striving to express the unexpressible? A bond, strangely fashioned by nature, between me and this little dark-haired Earth beauty. As though marked by the stars we were destined to be lovers....
Thus ran the romance of my unspoken thoughts. But I was sitting quietly in the deck chair, striving to regard her gentle beauty impersonally. And saying:
“But Miss Prince, why are you and your brother going to Ferrok-Shahn? His business––”
Even as I voiced it, I hated myself for such a question. So nimble is the human mind that mingled with my rhapsodies of love was my need for information of George Prince....
“Oh,” she said, “this is pleasure, not business, for George.” It seemed to me that a shadow crossed her expressive face. But it was gone in an instant, and she smiled. “We have always wanted to travel. We are alone in the world, you know––our parents died when we were children.”
I filledin her pause. “You will like Mars––so many interesting things to see.”
She nodded. “Yes, I understand so. Our Earth is so much the same all over, cast all in one mould.”
“But a hundred or two hundred years ago it was not, Miss Prince. I have read how the picturesque Orient, differing from––well, Great-New York, or London, for instance––”
“Transportation did that,” she interrupted eagerly. “Made everything the same––the people all look alike––dress alike.”
We discussed it. She had an alert, eager mind, childlike with its curiosity, yet strangely matured. And her manner was naïvely earnest. Yet this was no clinging vine, this little Anita Prince. There was a firmness, a hint of masculine strength in her chin, and in her manner.
“If I were a man, what wonders I could achieve in this marvelous age!” Her sense of humor made her laugh at herself. “Easy for a girl to say that,” she added.
330
“You have greater wonders to achieve, Miss Prince,” I said impulsively.
“Yes? What are they?” She had a very frank and level gaze, devoid of coquetry.
My heart was pounding. “The wonders of the next generation. A little son, cast in your own gentle image––”
What madness, this clumsy brash talk! I choked it off.
Butshe took no offense. The dark rose-petals of her cheeks were mantled deeper red, but she laughed.
“That is true.” She turned abruptly serious. “I should not laugh. The wonders of the next generation––conquering humans marching on....” Her voice trailed away. My hand went to her arm. Strange tingling something which poets call love! It burned and surged from my trembling fingers into the flesh of her forearm.
The starlight glowed in her eyes. She seemed to be gazing, not at the silver-lit deck, but away into distant reaches of the future. And she murmured:
“A little son, cast in my own gentle image. But with the strength of his father....”
Our moment. Just a breathless moment given us as we sat there with my hand burning her arm, as though we both might be seeing ourselves joined in a new individual––a little son, cast in his mother’s gentle image and with the strength of his father. Our moment, and then it was over. A step sounded. I sat back. The giant gray figure of Miko came past, his great cloak swaying, with his clanking sword-ornament beneath it. His bullet head, with its close-clipped hair, was hatless. He gazed at us, swaggered past, and turned the deck corner.
Our moment was gone. Anita said conventionally, “It has been pleasant to talk with you, Mr. Haljan.”
“But we’ll have many more,” I said. “Ten days––”
“You think we’ll reach Ferrok-Shahn on schedule?”
“Yes. I think so.... As I was saying, Miss Prince, you’ll enjoy Mars. A strange, aggressively forward-looking people.”
Anoppression seemed on her. She stirred in her chair.
“Yes, they are,” she said vaguely. “My brother and I know many Martians in Great-New York.” She checked herself abruptly. Was she sorry she had said that? It seemed so.
Miko was coming back. He stopped this time before us.
“Your brother would see you, Anita. He sent me to bring you to his room.”
The glance he shot me had a touch of insolence. I stood up, and he towered a head over me.
Anita said, “Oh yes. I’ll come.”
I bowed. “I will see you again, Miss Prince. I thank you for a pleasant half-hour.”
The Martian led her away. Her little figure was like a child with a giant. It seemed, as they passed the length of the deck with me staring after them, that he took her arm roughly. And that she shrank from him in fear.
And they did not go inside. As though to show me that he had merely taken her from me, he stopped at a distant deck window and stood talking to her. Once he picked her up as one would pick up a child to show it some distant object through the window.
“A little son with the strength of his father....” Her words echoed in my mind. Was Anita afraid of this Martian’s wooing? Yet held to him by some power he might have over her brother? The vagrant thought struck me.
Was it that?
CHAPTER VIIIA Scream in the Night
Wekept, on the Planetara, always the time and routine of our port of departure. The rest of that afternoon and evening were a blank of confusion to me. Anita’s words; the touch of my hand upon her arm; that331vast realm of what might be for us, like a glimpse of a magic land of happiness which I had seen in her eyes, and perhaps she had seen in mine––all this surged within me.
I wandered about the vessel. I was not hungry. I did not go to the dining salon for dinner. I carried Johnson food and water to his cage; and sat, with my heat-cylinder upon him, listening to his threats of what would happen when he could complain to the Line’s higher officials.
But what was Johnson doing carrying a plan of the ship’s control rooms in his pockets? And worse: How had he dared open Snap’s box in the helio-room and abstract the code pass-words for this voyage? Without them we would be an outlawed vessel, subject to arrest if any patrol hailed us. Had Johnson been planning to sell those pass-words to Miko? I thought so. I tried to get the confession out of him, but could not.
I had a brief consultation with Captain Carter. He was genuinely apprehensive now. The Planetara carried no long-range guns, and very few side-arms. A half-dozen of the heat-ray hand projectors; a few old-fashioned weapons of explosion-rifles and automatic revolvers. And hand projectors with the new Benson curve-light. We had models of this for curved vision, so that one might see around a corner, so to speak. And with them, we could project the heat-ray in a curve as well.
Theweapons were all in Carter’s chart-room, save the few we officers always carried. Carter was apprehensive, but of what he could not say. He had not thought that our plan to stop at the Moon for treasure could affect this outward voyage. Any danger would be upon the way back, when the Planetara would be adequately guarded with long-range electronic guns, and manned with police-soldiers.
But now we were practically defenseless....
I had a moment with Venza, but she had nothing new to communicate to me.
And for half an hour I chatted with George Prince. He seemed a gay, pleasant young man. I could almost have fancied I liked him. Or was it because he was Anita’s brother? He told me how he looked forward to traveling with her on Mars. No, he had never been there before, he said.
He had a measure of Anita’s earnest naïve personality. Or was he a very clever scoundrel, with irony lurking in his soft voice, and a chuckle that he could so befool me?
“We’ll talk again, Haljan. You interest me––I’ve enjoyed it.”
He sauntered away from me, joining the saturnine Ob Hahn, with whom presently I heard him discussing religion.
The arrest of Johnson had caused considerable comment among the passengers. A few had seen me drag him forward to the cage. The incident had been the subject of passenger discussion all afternoon. Captain Carter had posted a notice to the effect that Johnson’s accounts had been found in serious error, and that Dr. Frank for this voyage would act in his stead.
Itwas near midnight when Snap and I closed and sealed the helio-room and started for the chart-room, where we were to meet with Captain Carter and the other officers. The passengers had nearly all retired. A game was in progress in the smoking room, but the deck was almost deserted.
Snap and I were passing along one of the interior corridors. The stateroom doors, with the illumined names of the passengers, were all closed. The metal grid of the floor echoed our footsteps. Snap was in advance of me. His body suddenly rose in the air. He went like a balloon to the ceiling, struck it gently, and all in a heap came floating down and landed on the floor!
“What in the infernal!––”
He was laughing as he picked himself up. But it was a brief laugh. We knew what had happened: the artificial332gravity-controls in the base of the ship, which by magnetic force gave us normality aboard, were being tampered with! For just this instant, this particular small section of this corridor had been cut off. The slight bulk of the Planetara, floating in space, had no appreciable gravity pull on Snap’s body, and the impulse of his step as he came to the unmagnetized area of the corridor had thrown him to the ceiling. The area was normal now. Snap and I tested it gingerly.
He gripped me. “That never went wrong by accident, Gregg! Someone down there––”
Werushed to the nearest descending ladder. In the deserted lower room the bank of dials stood neglected. A score of dials and switches were here, governing the magnetism of different areas of the ship. There should have been a night operator, but he was gone.
Then we saw him lying nearby, sprawled face down on the floor! In the silence and dim lurid glow of the fluorescent tubes, we stood holding our breaths, peering and listening. No one here.
The guard was not dead. He lay unconscious from a blow on the head. A brawny fellow. We had him revived in a few moments. A broadcast flash of the call-buzz brought Dr. Frank in haste from the chart-room.
“What’s the matter?”
We pointed at the unconscious man. “Someone was here,” I said hastily. “Experimenting with the magnetic switches. Evidently unfamiliar with them––pulling one or another to test their workings and so see the reactions on the dials.”
We told him what had happened to Snap in the upper corridor.
Dr. Frank revived the guard in a moment. He was no worse off for the episode, save a lump on his head, and a nasty headache.
But he had little to tell us. He had heard a step. Saw nothing––and then had been struck on the head, by some invisible assailant.
Weleft him nursing his head, sitting belligerent at his post. Armed now with my heat-ray cylinder which I loaned him.
“Strange doings this voyage,” he told us. “All the crew knows it––all been talkin’ about it. I stick it out now, but when we get back home I’m done with this star travelin’. I belong on the sea anyway. A good old freighter is all right for me.”
We hurried back to the upper level. We would indeed have to plan something at this chart-room conference. This was the first tangible attack our adversaries had made.
We were on the passenger deck headed for the chart-room when all three of us stopped short, frozen with horror. Through the silent passenger quarters a scream rang out! A girl’s shuddering, gasping scream. Terror in it. Horror. Or a scream of agony. In the silence of the dully vibrating ship it was utterly horrible. It lasted an instant––a single long scream; then was abruptly stilled.
And with blood pounding my temples and rushing like ice through my veins, I recognized it.
Anita!