Gavin spent most of his four-hour watch trying to ascertain the secret of its mechanism. He was still sweating over it profusely when Sally Wilde, the second assistant-engineer, arrived in her wheel chair to relieve him.
The second was a tall, gray-eyed blonde, handsome after a rangy fashion. One of her long legs was propped straight ahead of her in a plastic cast. She was wheeled down by the relieving watch and shook hands with Gavin like a man.
"I've been curious about what you were like," she informed him with a roguish smile. She wore a green wrapper thrown about her indifferently, and that was all. She caught the direction of his eye. "Damned nuisance to dress with this lump of plastic on my leg."
She was, Gavin perceived, the arch type of emancipated female whom he detested so heartily. He mumbled something about being glad she was doing so nicely.
"The last third," she explained, "was a disappointment. But you're a pleasant surprise, Mr. Murdock. So virile." She thumped the transparent plastic cast. "When I get rid of this we'll do something about it."
Gavin fled up the ladder.
He came out on the observation deck and recognized Nadia in her gray coveralls seated in a deck chair and staring upward at the stars. They floated in the void like gems on black velvet.
He came up behind her saying, "Some day man will conquer outer space as he has the planetary system."
Nadia sat up, her black eyes provoked. "What are you? A fish? After all I'm supposed to have a passion for you. Didn't I say back in Trev's office that we had a lot to talk over, Mr. Gavin Murdock, ex-chief engineer of theEuropa?"
Gavin pulled up a deck chair. His blue eyes wary, he asked in a flat voice, "Why did you vouch for me? You never worked for Transplanet. Why did you lie?"
"No," she replied slowly. "No, I never was third mate aboard any of Transplanet's ships. But I wasn't lying. I did know you." She laughed teasingly. "And I did have a crush on you, Mr. Gavin Murdock, ex-first assistant-engineer of Tri-World's ship, theSaturn!"
Gavin controlled an inclination to jump. His face hardened. It was true he had been first assistant-engineer of theSaturn. He had left her to join the T.I.S.
"I was a cadet aboard theSaturn," Nadia explained. "Now just exactly what are you? And what do you want aboard theNova?"
Gavin was silent a moment. "Now you're going to lie," accused the girl angrily.
"No. On the contrary, I'm going to ask you the same question. Your own position can't be too secure. That's why you had to back me up with that artistic lie in Trev's office. You were afraid they'd start asking you questions ... I wouldn't be surprised if you were a T.I.S. agent!"
The girl looked startled. A flush suffused her pale cheeks. She said, "So that's how you plan to shut my mouth. You devil! You know that if Cabot even suspected such a thing he'd kill me."
"Well," said Gavin coolly. "I don't know that any of us can afford to take a chance if you're a T.I.S. agent."
"Hush!" pleaded Nadia in agony.
"Look what it would mean. We'd be condemned to the Lunar Corrective Colony."
She gripped his arm desperately. "But I'm not! I'm not!" She regained her composure with an effort and went on in a low bitter tone, "I have been proscribed! Does that answer your questions? I killed a man. He was a high official of Tri-World. The corporation put a price on my head."
The Terran government was humanitarian. Capital punishment had been abolished along with a score of other institutions such as marriage, divorce and the family.
But the big corporations were the real rulers. Feudal in character, they maintained their power by purges that would have made the bloody twentieth century snow white by comparison. Their property, their officials were inviolate. Their law was a tooth for a tooth, and their gunmen hung on the trail of an offender whom they had proscribed until they caught up with him.
If the girl was telling the truth, she was as good as dead. Sooner or later, ten—twenty years, it made no difference, the agents of Tri-World would catch up with her.
"Why did you kill him?"
"He—he...." She glanced at the deck, flushed faintly.
"Nonsense," said Gavin. "People don't get killed for that any more. Why did you kill him?"
She looked at him, startled. "He caught me drawing a plan of Tri-World's magnetic ore-loader. It was a corporation secret. I was just a kid, a cadet aboard theSaturn. I—I was offered a lot of money for the plans...." She halted lamely.
"Who offered you the money?"
"Trev." Her voice was a whisper.
Gavin was surprised only at the fact that Nadia had confessed such a thing. She had placed herself completely in his power as long as she lived.
"I didn't ask you here to tell you that," she broke in on his speculations. Her voice was unsteady. "But to show you something. Look." And she pointed behind them towards Venus.
Gavin at first could see nothing except the yellow sun with its spectacular corona. Then he discovered a faint streak like the luminous trail of a meteor. After a second he made out a second and a third.
"We're being followed," Nadia said. "They've been on our trail ever since we left Venus. The chief astrogator figured their speed. They'll overtake us in five sidereal days. Only, they'll be too late."
"Why?"
"The little death!" she explained.
A premonition of danger made a cold track in his brain. He swung around.
Nadia Petrovna stood very straight not four feet from him. Big tears stood like drops of crystal in her long black eyes. She was holding her tiny dart-gun at Gavin's chest.
"May God rest your soul." She uttered the words in a choked voice, and pulled the trigger.
Gavin was caught completely flatfooted. He glimpsed a flash as the splinter of steel zipped at his chest and knew he was a dead man.
The dart struck his breast and stood straight out from his blouse. He stared down at it in panic.
But no fire of poison coursed through his veins.
He remembered his dart-proof plastic vest with a flood of relief. Another needle stuck through his blouse into the vest as Nadia pulled the trigger a second time.
Gavin crumpled slowly forward.
Then his knees stiffened. His hand snapped out to close about Nadia's slim wrist, dragging her down with him. Savagely, he wrenched the gun from her fingers. She began to sob.
Sitting on the deck, he plucked the two poisoned darts from the front of his plastic vest. "It's good to know who your friends are," he said dryly and got to his feet. "Don't try it again. I won't be so lenient next time."
VI
By the sixth day, Gavin Murdock was no nearer the solution of the little death than he had been at the start.
It was Villanowski's watch below. Gavin sat on the observation deck, watching the three streaks in the void which betrayed their pursuers. They had closed the gap until they were almost on top of them. If theNovapossessed a unique spacedrive, Gavin reflected, she'd better be unlimbering it. The three ships were almost in atomic shell range.
His thoughts wrestled for the hundredth time with the little death. Villanowski had become suspicious and clammed up. The officers frankly didn't like to discuss it. They evaded his questions, insisting he must first experience it.
Suddenly, Gavin started to his feet, his eyes searching the void. In toward the sun he had glimpsed the hair line of a rocket ship's jets. He thought he could distinguish five separate streaks of light, but they were so faint and far away that they blended into one streak. Five trails! That could only mean a flight of patrol spacers blasting after the three pursuers of theNova.
Gavin heard a step behind him and twisted sideways, his hand rising to his shoulder holster.
Nadia Petrovna came out on the observation deck. She caught sight of Gavin and started to withdraw. Then an expression of determination took possession of her features. She flushed and said, "Let's call off the war."
"Sure." Gavin's voice was without mockery, but his hand still hovered close to his chest.
The girl came across the deck, her expression flooded with relief. "I'm glad now I didn't kill you. I—I was frightened. You believe that?"
"Sure."
"I've never dared tell anybody what I was forced to tell you. I've lived for two years in absolute terror. I was desperate."
"Sure."
"You don't believe me?"
"Not altogether," he admitted. His hand didn't leave his chest. "Why should I?"
Nadia bit her lip. Then she slipped her hand in the breast of her coveralls, brought out her diminutive dart-gun. She brought it out very slow and holding it by the barrel because Gavin was covering her with his own automatic.
"Drop it," he commanded. "Push it to me with your foot."
"Now," she said, "can we talk without suspicion? I'm unarmed."
"Are you?"
Her black eyes widened in surprise.
"Yes. Of course. I wouldn't...."
"Wouldn't you?" asked Gavin stonily.
She sighed faintly. "You can search me."
Gavin moved around behind her. He searched her impersonally, but thoroughly. If she'd been concealing so much as a postage stamp he was convinced he would have found it.
"All right," he said with a grin. "Now I trust you."
She dropped to a deck chair. "I've been trying to work up enough courage," she confessed, "to—to talk to you. But you've been so grim you've frightened me off."
"Why? D'you want another try at me?"
"That's not fair." Her eyes sought the deck. "I'm afraid. Cabot has been ... he's ... I think he suspects me of working with X."
"Are you?"
"No." Her voice was shocked.
"But Trev was?"
She nodded.
"And you were working with Trev?"
"I wasn't working with him," she protested. "Only that one time. He offered me five thousand credits to copy theSaturn'sloader."
"How did you connect with theNova?"
"Do you mean how did I happen to get the job as third mate? But I told you. I was a cadet aboard theSaturn. I simply asked Cabot for the job."
Gavin said, "That lie wouldn't fool a school kid. If you were proscribed by Tri-World you wouldn't have dared approach Cabot in the open. Someone hid you out. Someone with enough influence with Cabot got you aboard theNova—"
The general alarm cut loose with its strident clangor. Gavin sprang to his feet. "What's that for?"
"The little death!" Nadia said with a shudder.
As suddenly as the bell started it was stilled. A harsh voice came through the public address system, "Go to your quarters immediately! All personnel report immediately to your quarters and take to your bunks." The voice brayed forth the commands three more times at short intervals.
Gavin started at a run for the interior of the ship.
"Wait! Wait for me," Nadia cried.
He paused. "You better run for your cabin."
"I'm scared," she confessed in a trembling voice. "Let me come with you."
"I'm going to the engine room."
"But...." Her black eyes opened wide. Then she said defiantly, "I don't care. I—I want to come, too."
The jets fell silent.
"There she goes over to the robot pilot. If you're coming with me you'll have to stretch a leg." Without another word, he plunged off down the corridor.
A peculiar whine began to make itself heard. It was so high it hurt his ears. The atmosphere within the ship was growing foggy. A yellow-tinged mist eddied sluggishly like ink discoloring a glass of water.
He reached the engine room. There he halted so abruptly that Nadia pitched against him.
The engine room was deserted. But the strange door in the aft bulkhead stood open.
"What is it?" Nadia whispered.
"Don't know." He blinked his eyes, trying to pierce the gathering yellow fog. He caught a glimpse of a bank of switches, the base of a spherical tube, big as man. Then Villanowski passed across the opening from left to right.
Gavin began to creep toward the door. Halfway there a blinding flash stabbed at the base of his skull. He swayed dizzily, thought, "Nadia!" Half drawing his dart-gun, he turned laboriously around.
But the girl lay stretched on the deck, her long black lashes fluttering.
Gavin paused, tried to turn back to the door. It was like moving through syrup. A second flash burst in his brain. He pitched to the deck.
"Nine years!" said a man's stifled voice. It reached Gavin, vaguely distorted like an image through wavy glass. "My orbit, it's been nine years!"
Through the open window came a wailing chant of imported black laborers from Terra.
"But I didn't do it. You can't take me back now." The man's face was sweating and yellow-white. His fingers twitched. He spread them nervously on the desk top. "I'm proscribed. Jordon was a stockholder in Amalgamated Plastic. They'll kill me! Even in the Lunar Corrective Colony, they'll kill me."
"Sorry."
The cold unfeeling tone of his own voice shocked Gavin.
"But it's been nine years," the man persisted as if the time meant anything. Gavin had been sent out by the T.I.S. to get him. Twenty years wouldn't have made any difference.
"Even if I was guilty, I've proved I don't need corrective psychiatry. I'm not an incorrigible."
"Look," Gavin interrupted. "I've got a job. I don't know whether you're guilty or not and I don't care. I don't even blame you for killing Jordon, if you did...."
Gavin's sense of strangeness increased. This had all happened once before during his first year in the T.I.S. This man had been accused of murdering a minor official of Amalgamated Plastic and had fled. After nine years the T.I.S. had learned that he was at a remote trading post on Ganymede. Gavin had been sent to fetch him back for trial.
Only Gavin wasn't dreaming all this now. He wasre-livingit!
He was inside himself, yet outside, judging, appraising his own actions with the detachment of an impersonal observer.
"I can make you rich. Millions of credits." The man's voice became low, wheedling. "There's a deposit of pitchblende back in the hills. It's fabulous...."
"It's no use," said Gavin harshly. "Hell, man, I'd always know that six or seven years from now another T.I.S. agent might tap me on the shoulder like I've done you. Besides, I'm satisfied. I'm a...."
"Manhunter!"
"If you like. I'm a manhunter. You might as well ask a cat to turn loose a mouse. It's against his nature. Come along now."
"Murderer," said the man with disconcerting calmness. "I'm innocent—and you're killing me just as surely as if you shot me with that dart-gun. Do you think Amalgamated Plastic has forgotten? I'm proscribed. Their agents will get me. Why don't you shoot me outright?" His voice ran up the scale, half-hysterical with fright as he read his sentence in Gavin's cold, unblinking eyes. "You're not human. Go ahead. Kill me now. I'm not coming. Do you hear? I'm not coming."
Gavin saw himself reach suddenly across the desk and rap the fugitive on the skull with the butt of his dart-gun.
From its peculiar vantage point, the detached half of Gavin's personality knew the inexorable sequence of events to follow. He would haul the fellow back to Terra, where he would be murdered by agents of Amalgamated Plastic at his trial.
For the first time, Gavin realized, he was seeing himself as he must appear to others. A gaunt, hollow-cheeked, sandy-haired man, with implacable blue eyes, tight-lipped, hard-faced. Manhunter!
He felt the cold deck under his fingers. He opened his eyes. He was still in theNova'sengine room. The yellow mist had dissipated. He saw Villanowski standing over him. The chief's homely features were cold.
"What the hell are you doing here?"
Gavin pulled himself together with an effort and scrambled to his feet.
"Curious," he admitted frankly. From the corner of his eyes, he saw Nadia sit up, holding her temples.
Villanowski's eyes narrowed. "What did you see?"
"Nothing," Gavin said in a disappointed voice. He could feel the perspiration break through his pores. Villanowski was no fool. "The mist caught us at the foot of the ladder." He paused. "Next time we go into the little death, I'd like to be in the control room with you."
"You saw the control room?"
"Oh, the door was open." Gavin summoned all his histrionic ability to sound convincing. "I saw you and started in. Then—then I fainted, I guess."
Indecision was reflected on Villanowski's face. Finally he growled, "Get out, the pair of you. Don't come down here again except on your watch."
Gavin followed the girl up the ladder, his palms slippery with sweat on the cold bars. He wasn't sure whether he'd fooled Villanowski or not. They entered the mess room, helped themselves to coffee. He realized the girl hadn't uttered a word since the little death. He saw she was regarding him with a half-frightened, half-perplexed frown.
"How did the little death affect you?" he asked her.
"I had a dream. At least, I think it was." She bit her lip.
"What was it about?"
"Something in the future." She laughed. "It's silly, isn't it, to be so frightened at a dream. Especially one so fantastic."
"I don't know," Gavin replied dryly. "Mine didn't leave me so comfortable ... but you haven't told me what yours was."
Nadia rubbed her temples. "I dreamed we were all captured on Jupiter and sent to the Penal Colony." She laughed at herself. "It's so silly, because you—you"—again she gave a low laugh—"you were a T.I.S. agent!"
Gavin felt his mouth go dry. He stared at her in consternation. He moistened his lips and started to ask for more particulars, when the chief astrogator entered the messroom.
TheNova'sastrogator nodded perfunctorily at them and went across to the solar chart. Very deliberately, he pulled out the pin marking theNova'sposition, moved it across the map to within a week's voyage of Jupiter.
Gavin couldn't believe his eyes. "That's impossible! We weren't unconscious but a few seconds during the little death...."
"An hour," Nadia corrected. "The effects last an hour. So Villanowski claims."
"An hour, then. What difference does it make? TheNovacouldn't have gone that distance in an hour, nor in a thousand hours! Why man, that's faster than the speed of light!"
The chief astrogator grunted. "Impossible or not, that's our position. If you don't think so, go on out on the observation deck and take a look."
Gavin leaped to his feet and plunged through the door. When he came out on the quartzite enclosed deck, he flung his gaze aloft.
The entire aspect of the heavens had changed. The three streaks denoting the pursuing space craft were absent. The sun had diminished to the size of a lemon. And dead ahead loomed the huge banded disc of Jupiter.
It was true. In the space of a few moments theNovahad traversed the void between Venus and Jupiter. Even though the planets were in a superior conjunction, the feat was unthinkable.
No wonder the big corporations were fighting like wildcats to get hold of theNova'sspacedrive!
Gavin dropped weakly in a deck chair, overawed by the possibilities. A new era of space travel was being inaugurated!
VII
Gavin Murdock was on watch below, when theNovasliced into the upper strata of Jupiter's atmosphere. She dived in at a slant on the opposite side of the planet for Jovopolis and was quickly smothered from view by the thick translucent air.
To the early astronomers, Jupiter had appeared enormous although it was only about a third denser than water. But the Huygen expedition in the first years of interplanetary travel had resolved the enigma. Jupiter consisted of a small solid core surrounded by an intensive and very dense atmosphere. The force of gravity at the surface was only between two and three times that on Terra.
Nominally, Jupiter was a colony of the Terran empire. But every attempt at settlement had proved disastrous. Today Jovopolis was an outpost, consisting of rotting shacks, a trading post, and one modern structure which housed the Huygen Memorial Institute of Science. Even the interplanetary patrol had made no attempt to install a permanent base. The officers and men lived in their ship while they were assigned to the station.
TheNovabegan to settle Jove-ward. Gavin never left the bridge televisor, pulling switches, relaying orders to the jetman and master mechanic as the clumsy monster performed the ticklish job of landing.
Villanowski, who had been routed out of his bunk by the landing alarm, paced back and forth the length of the engine room, his eyes everywhere. He didn't interfere, though.
Then theNovastruck with a bump which threw the chief engineer to his hands and knees.
He scrambled up, brushing off his shorts. "Nice landing." He patted Gavin's shoulder. "Nice landing."
Itwasa nice landing. Gavin's bony freckled features relaxed. Broken ankles, bruises and sprains were only too frequent when setting a ship down without the benefit of spaceways.
"How long will it take us to load?"
"Five days," Villanowski replied. "Jovian time."
The Jovian day, Gavin knew, was only nine hours and fifty-five minutes long. That meant the Nova would be on Jupiter forty-nine hours. Gavin made a hasty mental calculation. It cut the margin of success to the barest minimum time. He would have to act and act quickly.
He started for the ladder, feeling the increased gravity tug at his flesh.
"Not so fast, lad," said Villanowski.
Gavin paused.
The chief engineer's attitude had undergone such a remarkable change that Gavin's own suspicions had been aroused. It dated from the second meal following the little death. Nadia had regaled the officers with her dream—the one in which Gavin had been a T.I.S. agent and contrived the capture of them all on Jupiter.
Villanowski's homely face had clouded. Then he had remarked with a wry expression that stranger things could happen.
Oddly enough, however, he no longer evinced the slightest suspicion of Gavin. But an occasional joshing reference to Murdock, the T.I.S. agent, revealed that he hadn't forgotten Nadia's dream.
Gavin said, "Yes sir," in a doubtful tone. He couldn't afford to arouse any doubts now.
"The Captain wants to see you before you go ashore."
"Yes, sir."
Wondering what Cabot wanted with him, he struggled up the ladder. Sweat began to pour from his skin. It was like climbing with the old man of the sea anchored to his back.
By the time he reached his cabin he was exhausted. He stretched out on his bunk, drew his breath in sobbing gasps. No wonder colonization of Jupiter had proved so difficult.
At length, he drove himself to his feet. The plan, which had been hatched in the head office of the T.I.S., would brook no delay. Captain Cabot would have to wait.
Stooping, he pulled a bundle of tough, specially-treated fiberoid, a material used in the construction of space suits, from under his bunk, slung it across his shoulder. Next, he dragged forth a clock-like instrument to which had been attached a magnesium flare, and lastly a cylinder of hydrogen.
The hydrogen Gavin had refined from water by a crude electrolysis. The rest of the equipment he had slipped from the engine room, working on it during leisure moments since the little death.
He opened his door. The corridor was deserted.
Twice during the ascent topside, Gavin had to stop and rest. Even breathing was an effort. At length he reached the arched outer skin of the monster, pried open an escape hatch.
The thick yellow air of Jupiter poured down upon him like soup. It smelled and tasted faintly like swamp gas. He had a momentary fear that he would strangle. A spasm of coughing seized him as he gulped in the first breaths.
Then, his lungs having adjusted themselves, he clambered to the outer shell.
A hundred feet below, he could make out the surface, only sketchily visible through the yellow pea-soup air. Slave pens and cantonments were all swallowed by the dense fog.
He set to work assembling his instruments. The cold knifed to his bones. A wind was blowing, too. It pushed against him like the sluggish current of a river.
The fiberoid package, unfolded, proved to be a balloon almost ten feet in diameter. It had a safety valve in it to neutralize the pressure when the bag reached the stratosphere. Gavin attached the clock and flare, started the clock in operation, inflated the bag. The instant it tugged at his numbed fingers, he shut off the hydrogen, cast it free.
It was scarcely a fifth inflated, but the heavy pressure caused it to float slowly, upward out of sight.
The clock was timed to ignite the flare when the balloon reached the stratosphere. Observatories on Io, Europa, Callisto, and Ganymede had their instruments trained on Jupiter. As soon as the flare was discovered, a check was to be made of the prevailing winds in that area. A simple parabola would indicate the balloon flare's probable course. The information then would be relayed to a flight of five patrol spacers held in readiness on the nearer moon.
That was the way it had been planned. But now Gavin was not so sure. So many things could interfere. He closed the trap overhead and retreated back to his cabin.
Sweating profusely, he flung himself on his bunk. He was still there, his breath rasping in his throat, when his door was pushed silently open from the outside.
Gavin whipped his dart-gun from its spring clip and slipped it under his pillow. He didn't move, but lay still with his eyes closed except for the barest fraction of an inch.
The door yawned wider.
Then the figure of Nadia Petrovna slipped soundlessly inside, eased the door shut. She stood over him, watching him with a desperate intentness. Satisfied that he slept, she set to work searching his cabin.
Gavin lay quiet, observing her skill appreciatively. The girl was efficient. She went rapidly through his closet, his chest, his bags.
She probed the lone chair cushion with a long needle, peered under his bed, then vanished in the shower. After a moment she reappeared, stood over him again, a puzzled expression on her pretty slavic features.
"No luck, eh?" murmured Gavin pleasantly. He opened his eyes and sat up.
Nadia gasped.
Gavin narrowed his eyes and roared in a suddenly harsh voice, "What the hell are you prying through my luggage for?"
The girl jumped. "I—I ..." she began, and then lapsed into confusion.
He waited.
"It sounds so foolish," she confessed, her long black eyes on the deck. Her fingers were twining about each other nervously. "But I can't get that dream out of my mind." She glanced up at him with a frightened expression.
"What dream?"
"The little death. When you turned out to be a T.I.S. agent. I—I begged you to give me a chance, let me try to escape."
"Yes," asked Gavin with a show of interest. "What did I do?"
"You laughed at me. I can't forget it."
"I wouldn't laugh at you," he replied somberly.
The girl's eyes softened. They were remarkable eyes, long and black and lustrous, the lashes half-hiding them.
"Why, Gavin, I believe you're flirting with me."
There was an odd little laugh in the words. It was the first time she'd called him Gavin.
"Don't be too sure," said Gavin gruffly. His arms went around her waist. He pulled her to a seat beside him and kissed her roughly.
Someone rapped at the door. Nadia sprang to her feet. Gavin called out, "Who is it?"
"The steward, sir. The Captain sent me to fetch you to the messroom."
When Gavin entered the officer's mess, he saw the Captain seated across a table from the thinnest man he had ever encountered.
"This is Hendricks," Cabot introduced them. The Captain was cold sober and hard-eyed. "He's the factor here at the cantonment."
Gavin shook hands. The factor had an amazing grip. His flesh hung on in tough strings. He looked more like an animated skeleton than a man, but Gavin was conscious of a tremendous wiry strength in him.
"You going ashore, Mr. Murdock?" the factor inquired.
Gavin nodded. "Miss Petrovna and I were planning to visit the cantonment." He saw a glance pass between Cabot and the factor.
The factor said, "Splendid," and rubbed his emaciated hands together. "Allow me to play host. The officers are already at my establishment."
Gavin thanked him.
"But let me warn you," went on the factor. "Don't wander off. The gravity aboard the ship here is bad enough. The atmosphere is much worse. It's easy to get lost, I've known newcomers to die of exhaustion only a few steps from the cantonment."
Gavin thanked him again, started to withdraw when the factor halted him.
"I've bearers waiting outside," he explained. "They're at your service while you're here. I really advise you not to walk any more than necessary."
This time Gavin made good his escape. He had been politely instructed not to pry, he realized. Villanowski might be confident of him, but not the Captain.
Gavin was smiling when he met Nadia at the main port, but his eyes were hard. Both of them had donned outer insulating garments of thermal cloth.
"We're going to be carried in litters like ancient Oriental potentates," he informed her.
Nadia laughed. "You've never been to Jupiter before?"
He shook his head.
They passed through the lock into the swirling yellow air. It was like swimming. They crept down the gangplank. The bearers were standing patiently at the surface.
Gavin had seen Jovian dawn men before, but they never failed to excite his curiosity. Huge, almost seven feet tall, and muscled like gladiators, they were imposing as Greek gods. Their skin was the vivid blue of polished turquoise, their long manes as yellow as a sunburst.
"There's a double litter," Nadia pointed out. "Let's take that."
Gavin followed her inside. The litter was cushioned like a divan. One was borne along in a semi reclining position. Nadia clapped her hands and cried, "Cantonment!"
Four naked blue giants swung the litter to their shoulders and started off at a rapid trot. In a few paces, the ship had disappeared. They were like a tiny raft, alone in a welter of yellow oppressive fog.
Gavin, peering over the edge, saw that the giants were following a paved road. After a moment they began to pass an endless procession of dawn men, chained ankle to ankle and moving sluggishly toward theNova.
Already the loading had started.
Gavin stared at the half-men curiously. They crept along, features drawn, their yellow manes matted with dirt. There was a haunted look in their eyes like caged animals.
Thirty percent would die in the crossing, he knew. Within a year ninety percent of the rest would be dead, victims of home-sickness, of pneumonia and measles and Venusian lung rot, not to mention a score of other diseases. The terrible rate of fatality was good business for the slavers. It held up the demand.
"They aren't really human," said Nadia in a faint voice as if reading his thoughts. "They're sub-men."
Gavin nodded. Some place along the evolutionary scale the Jovians had taken a wrong turning. They would never evolve into truehomo sapiens. But even cattle weren't treated as they were.
The walls of the cantonment hove suddenly in view through the murky atmosphere. The giants paused before a massive entrance like the gate of a feudal castle.
Gavin climbed out of the litter and started to help Nadia down. Somewhere off in the distance he heard a faint popping.
"What is it?" cried the girl, struck by his strained air of attention.
"It sounds like the dum-dum fire. Listen!"
They both fell silent.
From the direction of theNovacame faintly a sound like a string of fire-crackers going off together. "Itisdum-dum fire!"
"But it can't be! It's impossible."
The sound of explosions drifted to them again.
Gavin sprang back into the litter.
"Wait here," he cried. "Something's wrong at the ship." He knew that it couldn't be the Terran patrol spacers attacking. The balloon hadn't time to rise into the stratosphere yet.
A great fear for theNova'ssafety gripped him. Whatever the cost, the ship must be preserved intact so that Terra's scientists could examine her space drive. It had become the paramount issue, over-shadowing in importance even the detestable slave trade.
"No!" Nadia cried. "Don't go back there." She flung herself on him, pressing her body flat against his. "Please, for my sake, Gavin!"
He pushed her rudely aside.
Just then the chief astrogator burst upon them, running from inside the cantonment. His strides were labored, his breath wheezing in his chest. He saw Gavin and shouted: "The ship's being attacked! They've radioed the cantonment for help!"
"Who by?"
"X's men!" The chief astrogator began to run down the paved highway toward theNovaand was swallowed by the fog.
Gavin heard something whine through the air. He flung himself flat on his face, shouting at Nadia, "Down! They're shelling the cantonment!"
The shell burst out of sight in the fog. A blast of air hit him like a wall of water.
Nadia sat up, her face smudged where she'd groveled in the dirt. She was cursing like a spaceman.
Gavin yanked her to her feet. "Clear out!" He began to haul her away from the doomed cantonment.
Another shell lobbed over their heads to explode directly behind them. Gavin's hands were torn from the girl. He was blown a dozen feet by the blast.
He lay where he lit, knowing nothing, feeling nothing.
VIII
Gavin's first impression was one of numbing cold. He opened his eyes. Pitch blackness engulfed him. He had difficulty orienting himself. Rather hazily, he recalled the shelling of the cantonment by X's men.
Gradually his mind cleared.
The swift Jovian night had fallen, he perceived, and the temperature had dropped sharply. Only his insulating outer garments had saved him from freezing.
He began to grope around for Nadia's body. He found nothing but bare ground, stones, shrubs.
He sat back on his haunches, getting his bearings. The night pressed against his eyeballs; silence rang in his ears. No popping of dum-dum fire was to be heard. Whether the raiders had won, or Cabot was still in possession of his ship, he couldn't tell. But the fight was over.
X, himself, he realized, couldn't possibly have reached Jupiter yet. Even if he had been aboard one of the ships which had pursued theNovaout from Venus, a whole year must elapse before he could arrive. Then, if X's men had attacked theNova, they had been planted here earlier and had been waiting in ambush.
That meant X had been tipped off to the location of the hidden slave cantonment on Jupiter.
Something brushed against Gavin's face! It felt like cold fingertips.
Gavin's arms flailed the air in stark terror. He struck a soft, cold, hairless body. There was a barrage of half-human squeaks. The air was full of the fluttering of wings.
Scavenger bats!
Gavin felt a prickling of cold sweat break through his skin. He began to grope feverishly for the girl's body again, working outward in an ever-widening spiral.
After an hour he had lengthened the radius of his search until he was among the debris of the cantonment. He sat back on his haunches, sure of only one thing. Nadia Petrovna was not there!
The air above the demolished cantonment was thick with the squeaks and wing rushing of the hairless bats. A faint yellow glow heralded the dawn.
If theNovahadn't sailed, there was still hope.
Gavin drove himself to his feet, prowled the debris in search of the road. He started hundreds of the half-human scavenger bats into whispering, squeaking flight, stumbled across countless bodies. The raiders had been thorough.
At length he found the paved highway, began to follow it by feel.
A wind was blowing across the road. Gavin had to fight it like a man fording a stream against a strong current. The light, though, continued to brighten until he could make out the trace beneath his feet. Then the towering bulk of theNovaloomed dead ahead.
She wasn't gone! Gavin flung himself gasping on the ground, trembling with exhaustion.
He rested only long enough to control his trembling muscles, then began to skirt the ship towards the blind spot in the rear. He stayed out of sight. He had no desire to be spied by a possible watch posted at the scanner.
The disposal chute was just forward of the rear jets. Gavin reached it unobserved, as far as he could see, and began to worm his way up the inside of the tube like a climber ascending a chimney. He reached the lock and got his shoulder beneath it. The lock had been designed to operate in space where the pressure inside the ship helped seal it. Now, aided by Jupiter's dense atmosphere, he succeeded in prying the lock up and scrambling into the trap.
Ten minutes later, he climbed out of the chute directly aft of the galley. The air was warm and light, bringing him the odor of cooking soup.
The passage was deserted.
Gavin slipped into the escape well which led from the engine room to theNova'souter skin, clambered downward again. He stepped from the escape well softly into the engine room itself.
At first he thought it was deserted. Then he discovered a guard posted beside the sealed door in the aft bulkhead. Gavin had never seen him before. He was a big Terran in coarse outer garments. He was facing half away from the T.I.S. agent, holding a dart-gun.
Gavin slipped his fingers through his brass knucks. He edged cautiously from behind theNova'scyclotron, crept up on the man with the stealth of a ferret. At the last moment, the fellow heard him and swung around.
Gavin clipped him behind his ear with the weight of his shoulder back of the blow. The guard's head banged against the steel bulkhead. He slipped nervelessly to a sitting posture, tumbled sideways. His breath bubbled with a rattling sound from his mouth. Then he stopped breathing.
Without bothering to check his pulse, Gavin turned to the control panel. The fuel gauge showed a comfortable surplus.
Ears straining to catch any untoward sound, he slowly pulled down the lever which dumped the fuel, watched the gauge with a growing tensity of nerves.
The level in the gauge dropped tantalizingly slowly, as the liquid fuel bubbled out of the tanks onto the surface of Jupiter to saturate the soil. It was still a half-inch from the empty symbol when he heard voices.
Someone was descending the ladder into the engine room.
Gavin's jaw set; his lips thinned. With his left hand he drew his dart-gun, but he didn't release the dumping lever. The gauge showed a three-eighths of an inch, then a quarter. A pair of boots descended into his range of vision followed by the legs and waist of a man.
The man reached the deck, faced around and stared at the T.I.S. agent in astonishment. "Don't move!" began Gavin.
Another voice from up the ladder barked "Drop that gun!"
Gavin's eyes flashed upward. He saw a man's head, shoulder and arm through the circular ladder well. The man seemed to be lying on the deck above covering him through the opening with a dart-gun. Gavin dropped his own automatic.
"Take your hand off that lever!" the man snapped.
Gavin flicked his eye to the gauge. The last of the fuel was flowing from the tanks. He released the lever, straightened his shoulders.
Let them do what they pleased to him now, he thought, they were too late. TheNovawas grounded!
The second man descended the ladder and the pair of them regarded him curiously. They were both big men, Terrans in baggy outer garments like the guard whose skull Gavin had cracked.
"Who the hell are you?" asked the first man in a flat voice.
These men were bad. They didn't play at it. They didn't try to be. It was etched in their cold eyes and tight mouths.
Gavin moistened his lips. "Murdock. Third assistant-engineer."
"Another one," exclaimed the second man in faint surprise. "I thought we'd bagged the lot."
The other grunted. "We'd better take him to Y."
Gavin was searched and then hustled up the ladder into the officer's mess. As he was propelled through the door, conversation died in the messroom, and four pairs of eyes turned on him curiously.
Gavin controlled his surprise. Villanowski was there, ironed to his chair, his homely features taut with strain. At the table to the left of Villanowski sat the emaciated factor. He wasn't ironed. Neither was Nadia Petrovna. She had changed into crisp shorts and was leaning forward, lips parted in surprise.
But it was the fourth man who drew the T.I.S. agent's attention.
He sat between Nadia Petrovna and the factor, lolling back in his chair indolently, a sheaf of papers spread on the table before him. His face was like a death mask in which the coloring, the lines had been painted by a machine. It was perfect, but without life.
Then Gavin realized that it was a mask. The man's whole face was a lie, even to the realistic mole on his chin.
He leaned across the table. "Who's this?" he asked in a strong harsh voice.
"He says his name's Murdock. Claims he was third assistant-engineer. We found him down in the engine room. He's killed Peters and dumped all the fuel."
Nadia drew in her breath sharply, looked frightened. The factor's fleshless features blackened with rage. Even Villanowski glanced up, a look of surprise and dawning hope in his eyes. Only the man in the mask didn't change expression.
"Go back to your post," he ordered Gavin's captors. "We'll take care of Mr. Murdock." Then, when they had left, he said, "You were contacted by my—ah—co-worker on Venus, Murdock. Mr. X, he called himself." He chuckled, the noise issuing from between unsmiling painted lips like the voice of an automaton. "For the sake of convenience, you can term me Mr. Y."
Gavin didn't say anything.
"You have presented us with a problem," Mr. Y went on.
"Where's Cabot?" Gavin interrupted.
"Dead."
"The chief astrogator, the crew?"
"All dead. In fact, we thought we'd wiped the slate clean."
The factor suddenly slammed the table with his bony fist. "What are you playing with him for, Y? I've sacrificed everything. The cantonment, the slaves. I demand that he be done away with before he can contrive any more damage."
Y regarded the factor with venomous amber eyes, the only living features in his death mask. "Has it occurred to you to wonderwhyMr. Murdock dumped theNova'sfuel?"
The factor started.
"Mr. Murdock," said Y, turning back to Gavin, "what persuaded you to ground theNova?"
Gavin's lips thinned. He didn't say anything. Y continued to regard him a moment. Then he asked Nadia, "I believe you suspected Murdock of being an agent of United Spaceways, Miss Petrovna?"
Before the girl could answer the factor broke in again. "Why can't we use theNova'sspecial space drive?"
"You're referring to the machinery of the little death," rejoined Y. "But I thought you knew. It can't operate until theNovahas attained a certain velocity. That much we've ascertained from Mr. Villanowski."
"Then we're trapped!" The factor leaped to his feet. His agility in the increased gravity was amazing. Gavin realized that the long years the factor had spent on Jupiter had trained his muscles as well as wrung every ounce of extra flesh from his spare frame.
"I see that you've comprehended our position at last," said Y grimly. "What about the emergency fuel tanks at the cantonment?"
"Gone. Your damned shelling exploded them."
Y nodded. "Just as I thought. If Murdock drained theNova'stanks, he must be expecting help. It will have considerable bearing on any course we plan to take, just who these aids are, how many they'll be, and when to expect them."
He returned to Gavin. "You'll spare yourself a painful experience, Murdock, if you talk now. You can't gain anything by forcing us to wring the information from you. We won't hesitate to stoop to torture."
"No," Gavin agreed. "I suppose not." He hesitated. United Spaceways and Tri-World were the two corporations most likely to want theNova'sspace drive. Nadia suspected that he was an agent of United Spaceways. Therefore ... he moistened his lips. "My work's done, anyway. I'm a Tri-World agent."
"But that's impossible!" Nadia burst out in sudden protest. "We...." She paused, looking confused as she realized she'd been tricked.
Y said, "That was very clever, Murdock. Yes. I'm working for Tri-World. Miss Petrovna and my good friend, the factor, have supplied us with valuable information and help for a price. But the knowledge won't be of any earthly use to you."
Gavin felt no triumph at the confirmation of his suspicions. What Y said was true. As soon as they had squeezed him dry, he would be silenced.
The door opened. A Terran appeared. "The slaves have all been unloaded and dispersed, sir. The bodies of the crew are buried. We're ship-shape and ready to take off."
Y put a forefinger to the chin of his death mask, rubbed the plastic gently. "Establish radio contact with theComet."
"Yes sir," replied the man. "The message, sir?"
"Rendezvous cancelled. Emergency. Proceed to us at once prepared to divide fuel."
"Yes, sir." The man went out, closing the door softly behind him.
IX
Gavin's heart sank. Of course the ship that brought Y would be hidden in the neighborhood. It would be simple enough for them to refuel theNova.
Y had taken time to release the slaves and dispose of the bodies of the crew. That, Gavin surmised, was what had delayed theNova'stake-off long enough for him to slip aboard. Now should theNovabe apprehended in space, the Interplanetary patrol would be forced to release her for lack of evidence.
Villanowski glanced up. "We're licked, lad. We may as well toss in the towel."
Gavin looked at the chief engineer blankly.
"You mean," asked Y of Villanowski, "that you and Murdock are working for the same organization?"
The chief engineer laughed bitterly. "We're not working for anyone, but ourselves. You forget, Mr. Y, that the four-dimensional drive isn't the only contribution I've made to interplanetary travel. General Atomic stole the others. We had hoped—" he jerked his head at Gavin "—to keep this one for ourselves!"
Gavin's mind was going in circles like a dog chasing its tail. What was Villanowski's motive?
"Go on," said Y in a foreboding voice.
Villanowski looked down at his chains. "A ship travels through space during a passage of time. It had occurred to me that if I could invert the formula and drive a ship through time during a passage of space, the crude rocket ships could be abandoned. Murdock had gotten in trouble when Transplanet was discovered to be a colonal smuggling ring. He had studied astrophysics under me at New Yale. I knew him and knew I could trust him."
Gavin swallowed and struggled to keep a grip on himself. Obviously Villanowski had something up his sleeve.
Villanowski looked at Gavin. "We needed a space ship to complete our experiments. The effect of the drive on a body at rest was startling enough to predict success if we could attain sufficient velocity."
Gavin thought he detected a faint stressing of the word "startling". Villanowski had said, "The effect of the drive on a body at rest was startling...." TheNovawas at rest!
"I persuaded Cabot," Villanowski proceeded, "to let me install the mechanism aboard theNova. Murdock was to try—"
Gavin jumped.
With a back-handed, edge-on swipe, he caught Y in the throat full on his larynx.
Nadia screamed as Y went over backwards and lay still. The factor leaped to his feet. Gavin kicked him in the belly. Spinning against the girl, he wrenched out of her hand the dart-gun which she was drawing.
"The keys!" Villanowski panted. "Y has them."
Nadia opened her mouth to scream again.
"Don't." Gavin pointed the dart-gun straight at her open mouth. Nadia shut it.
The factor was writhing on the deck, but Y lay like dead. Gavin found the keys and released Villanowski.
"The engine room," he cried, "we've got to reach the engine room."
"Take Y's gun," said Gavin. He turned on Nadia. "Come along. We can't leave you here to sound an alarm."
Nadia's lips were bloodless. She moved stiffly between them, Gavin's dart-gun prodding her gently in the spine.
They reached the engine room without being discovered and disarmed the startled guard. Villanowski whistled a bar in C sharp and then said, "Open sesame." The door in the steel bulkhead swung soundlessly outward.
There was a faint grin on Villanowski's homely face. "Sound waves set its mechanism in operation. I read a story when I was a youngster—Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves," he confessed. "When I built the lock I couldn't resist designing it to respond to those vibrations."
The ship rocked slightly.
"What's that?"
"Felt like the blow-back of an atom jet," Gavin replied tersely. "I think Y's ship, theComet, is landing."
TheNovarocked again, more violently than before, and a faint rush of flaming jets penetrated to the engine room.
Villanowski scuttled through the door with Gavin prodding Nadia after him. The chief darted for the control board, seized a gleaming lever, slid it cautiously along a slot.
The huge spherical tube, which Gavin had observed before, began to glow gently. The yellow mist, he saw, was gathering in the outer room, but the air in their chamber remained crystal clear.
"The time field," Villanowski explained, "creates a neutral area, an oasis, around the point of generation."
Gavin rubbed his eyes. On the other side of the door was nothing! It was like looking out into the void beyond the farthermost limits of the stars.
"Now, Murdock," Gavin heard Villanowski ask, "when do you expect the interplanetary patrol spacers to land?"
Gavin wheeled around. There was an uncertain smile on Villanowski's homely features.
"How did you know?"
"The little death," Villanowski explained complacently. "When Miss Petrovna told me her dream, I knew...."
"Youarea T.I.S. agent!" Nadia interrupted in an odd voice. She put her hand on Gavin's sleeve. "You're going to turn me over to the courts?"
Two white patches appeared at the corners of Gavin's mouth. "Sure. The patrol spacers are on their way. I couldn't turn them back now—" he paused—"even if I wanted to."
"Give me a chance, Gavin?"
He asked, "Why did you sell out to Tri-World?"
The girl lifted her eyes to his. "I was proscribed. Tri-World has granted me amnesty. That was their price. My life. I wouldn't have done it, Gavin, but I was afraid."
"Does that explain why you tried to double-cross Tri-World in the first place?"
"I told you about that."
"And what about Trev? He hid you out when you were proscribed. He got you aboard theNova. Why did you sell him out to Cabot?"
"But I didn't. I—I...."
"Don't lie to me," he said and gripped her shoulders. "You'd made your dicker with Tri-World. Trev was in your way. He knew too much about you. He might even have got wind of what you were up to. So you went to Cabot and told him about Trev being a dealer in scientific secrets. You knew Cabot would kill him, thinking the Martian had sold out to X."
The girl flinched. "I'm not asking you to shield me, Gavin. Turn me loose. Just let me have a fighting chance to escape. Give me a chance, Gavin."
"And Cabot," Gavin continued inexorably, his pale blue eyes stony. "You delivered Cabot and theNovaover to Tri-World."
He turned her loose.
"Give you a chance," he repeated and gave a short bitter laugh. "A chance to do what? Double-cross me like you have everyone else?"
Nadia shrank away. "The dream!" she said in a frightened voice. "It's just as it was in the dream. You laughed!"
Villanowski interrupted sadly. "You weren't dreaming during the little death. We're only equipped with three dimensional sense organs. We're blind to everything but the immediate instant. But time's a dimension. It's co-existent. When theNovawas projected across time, your entire life was spread out around you. What you actually did was experience a segment of your life. It happened to be a segment in the future."
Nadia's lips were bloodless. "You guessed when I told you about the dream?"
"I didn't guess," replied Villanowski. "I knew! Miss Petrovna, if you saw theNovacaptured by the Interplanetary Patrol through efforts of Murdock who was a T.I.S. agent, then it was inevitable that it would take place exactly as you had seen it. There was nothing any of us could do about it!"
A faint grin broke across Villanowski's homely face. "I saw that it behooved me to give Murdock a hand when and if he needed it."
Gavin said, "I think I can promise you amnesty, Villanowski. I couldn't have captured theNovawithout your help."
"Oh, that's not all," Villanowski chuckled. "The Empire will want this space drive to power her ships. I'll be a valuable man. Even Y didn't intend to kill me until I had explained its mechanism to Tri-World's scientists."
"How long," asked Gavin abruptly, "have we been on Jupiter? I lost track after that shell knocked me out at the cantonment."
"This is the second day."
Gavin wrinkled his brow. "The patrol ships should be here in about four hours."
Outside theNova, a gaping hole in space marked her position. The astounded crew of theComet, who had landed prepared to refuel the capturedNova, eyed the eerie vacancy with mixed emotions. One of the crew flung a rock into the enveloping blackness. It disappeared. There was no sound of its falling to the ground.
The commander of theComet, deprived of Y's guidance, fumed nervously. He glanced at his watch at intervals, saying at length, "If theNovadoesn't reappear by dark, we'll take off. We can lay up and re-establish contact by radio."
The men gathered about the maw of blackness staring into it with hypnotic fascination.
They fell an easy prey to the five sleek patrol craft which plummeted down on them three hours later.
The short Jovian day was on the wane when theNovabegan to gather substance like a tenuous cloud. Her misty outlines grew solid. Then the port opened. Gavin Murdock appeared in the entrance.
Commandant Samuels, a grizzled veteran of the T.I.S., was the first man up the gangplank. He shook Gavin's hand. "Nice work, Murdock. But it smacks damnably of witchcraft."
The Flight Commander was right behind him, followed by the captains of the Empire's patrol spacers. The Flight Commander caught sight of two of Y's men lying unconscious just within the port.
"What the hell's this? The palace of the sleeping beauty?"
"You haven't seen the half of it," Gavin assured him with a grin. "They're lying all over the ship like that. Villanowski says the effects last about an hour. Better lock them up before they come to."
"Villanowski?" echoed the T.I.S. Commandant. "He's not dead, is he?"
"No," said Gavin, surprised at the anxiety in the Commandant's voice.
"Good!" growled Samuels. He lowered his voice to a subdued roar. "Ticklish mission. I'm supposed to persuade him to accept a post on the Empire's Bureau of Research. They're afraid his space drive will fall into wrong hands. But Villanowski's such an embittered old goat, he'll probably...."
There was a faint chuckle behind Gavin.
Villanowski, who had come up unobserved, said, "Your diplomacy, Commandant Samuels, is unique." There was a broad grin on his homely face. "I couldn't think of opposing such finesse."
The grizzled T.I.S. Commandant's features flamed an apoplectic red. Then he burst into laughter, wiped his eyes, and blew his nose.
"Where's Nadia?" Gavin asked sharply.
"Ironed to my old chair in the officer's mess." Villanowski handed Gavin the keys.
Gavin passed them on to the Commandant. He gave a terse but concise report, while the men filed aboard and began to cart the unconscious Tri-World agents off to the patrol spacers.
Y was found to be dead, the blow on his esophagus having killed him. When the mask was stripped from his face, Commandant Samuels identified him in amazement as the chief of Tri-World's gestapo.
"We caught X, too," he said. "We received a flash aboard the flagship that X has been captured in space."
"What was he charged with?"
"Piracy. Y's men will be tried on the same charges. Tri-World, of course, will disclaim any connection, but she'll have to rebuild her gestapo from top to bottom."
Gavin moved aside to allow two men with a stretcher to pass out the lock. The body of the factor lay on the stretcher looking thin as a straw. He was alive, Gavin noted, seeing his chest move faintly.
"This gives the death blow to the slave trade," the Commandant began. Then he realized Gavin wasn't listening.
Nadia Petrovna followed the stretcher. Her hands were in irons and a guard walked beside her. She passed silently between the men, her black eyes flashing Gavin a look of hate before she descended the gangplank.
"Mark my word," said Commandant Samuels grumpily, "that girl will get off with a light sentence. She'll run true to form and sell Tri-World down the river. She'll be the prosecution's principal witness."
Gavin shrugged.
"Which reminds me," put in Villanowski. "Since the Empire's so anxious for me to return to the fold, I don't want to appear too eager."
"Eh?" A pained expression rippled the T.I.S. Commandant's ruddy features.
"I'd like the chief engineer's rating aboard the first ship to reach the stars." There was a wistful note in Villanowski's voice.
"There shouldn't be any hitch there," the Commandant agreed in a relieved tone. "You're the logical man to head an expedition outside the system."
"What about a third assistant-engineer?" Gavin interrupted.
"We work pretty well together," said Villanowski.
Gavin's lean freckled face broke into a grin. "It's a bargain."
The two men solemnly shook hands.
[Transcriber's Note: Original text had two Section VIII headings. Second heading renumbered to IX.]