His space-trained senses had felt the swift, tiny moment of jarring repercussion that meant only one thing—that from one of the escape ports a life-skiff, an auxiliary safety rocket, had slipped from its base on theLibra, taken off into space!
"He's escaping! He's kidnaped her and taken off in a life-skiff. Bud! Take over! I'm lifting gravs!"
And for the first time in his career as an officer of the SSP, Lieutenant Daniel Mallory violated, deliberately, a rule of the Space Patrol handbook. He rammed theLibra'scontrols into the robot hands of the Iron Mike, and abandoned his post in mid-flight!
It was not that he considered himself more capable than his captain or the second mate. His move was dominated by only one thing, the urgent need for haste. Safety rockets are, as everyone knows, blindingly fast. Much faster than the heavier, sturdier, cruising vessels that bear them like so many unfledged wallabies in a pouch. Give Smith a flying start and he would never be apprehended. Andhe, Dan Mallory, was much nearer a life-skiff port than the other officers up in the loft of the radio turret.
Slipping, skidding, stumbling in his haste, he raced to the nearest port, flung open the control-bar, threw himself into the small, tear-shaped vehicle lying there. There were regulations demanding that air, food, water supplies be ascertained before flight in one of these was attempted. But there was no time for such nonsense now. Each second seemed an hour as Mallory warmed the hypatomic motors of the skiff, rammed the button that opened theLibra'souter shell, struck another that catapulted the safety-rocket away from its parent craft.
Then the dark of the womblike casing was gone, and he was blasting, under his own power, through space illumined with the candle-gleams of a trillion galactic motes. He set his range-finder and attractor—but even as their needles found their objective, his searching eyes located it. A tiny, silvery gleam against the tawny night ahead—a gleam from the stern of which flared burst upon flaming burst of superheated light.
The rockets of Smith's skiff, hell-bent for Io!
Minuteshadbeen precious! Vitally so. Already the little craft was countless thousands of miles before him. It was a wide margin that separated him; and in that margin lay the difference between freedom and peonage for forty thousand Earth-men, millions of Ionians, the difference between life and death for the girl Smith had kidnaped, the difference between victory and defeat for the Solar Patrolmen.
There was only one way to catch Smith. Recognizing the fact, Dan Mallory bit his lip, set his jaw stubbornly. Acceleration! Acceleration great enough to fling him across the yawning void, enable him to snare his quarry in tensiles....
And he was not strapped! No safety corset to hold tight the straining cords of his viscera, no yards of gauze padding to keep his wracked body from literally flinging itself to shreds. No—
He glanced about him hurriedly. There were piles of cushions, soft, plump, airy, scattered about the metallic cockpit. He jammed a dozen of these behind him, under him, about him. There was an oxy-helmet in its container beside him; he thrust this over his head. Its rubberoid halter settled about his chest, his shoulders. At least his straining eyes would not bulge from their sockets; by adjustment—if he could raise a hand—he could compensate accelerative force with pressure.
He drew a deep breath. Then, recklessly, wrenched the dial of the motor to full acceleration!
It was as though ten thousand fiery demons tore at his body with claws of flame. A weight, massive, imponderable, kicked the breath out of his lungs, forced it from his gaping mouth and flared nostrils into the helmet he wore. He gulped and strangled, fighting to draw into a shrunken chest a breach of fleeing life. One hand moved—or tried to—to his throat in an instinctive gesture of distress. The hand moved a half inch from his knee, flung itself back into his stomach like a leaden weight.
The quick burst of nausea saved his life, because tortured ductless glands released a stream of adrenalin into his churning blood-stream, the miraculously adaptable body of Man rose once again above its normal limitations. Air crept into his lungs, his heart's tumultuous pounding no longer throbbed a threnody in his eardrums.
Still he could move with only the greatest of effort—but he could move! And his eyes, no longer blinded by the red mist that had drowned their sockets, saw the rocket-flares before him seem to literally stop in mid-flight, race back toward him!
A great exultation seized him. He was hardly aware that bright blood had burst from his nostrils, and that as he opened his lips to shout hoarsely the corners of his mouth drooled red. The craft he pursued whirled fiercely toward him; like flame-riding charioteers they jockeyed across the cosmic wastes. Smith knew he was there. Must know. But—Mallory's grin was the grimace of a gargoyle—he didn't have the guts to duplicate the young lieutenant's mad burst of speed.
He was depending on other weapons. Even as Mallory experienced the thought, a stabbing beam spat backward from the other rocket, a coruscating ray of silver that bore sudden death.
But Mallory had anticipated the move; his slow hand had been straining for seconds to forestall it. He pressed a lever—the ship slid into a dive. Another and the terrible pressure lifted from his limbs, his body felt suddenly light and buoyant, strength surged back to him with singing sweetness.
Again that stabbing ray searched for him. But Dan Mallory was no novice at the art of space warfare. He spun his craft into a cycloid Laegland arc, the lethal ray spent itself on indestructible space, and when Mallory came out of his maneuver he was within scant miles of his objective.
Grinning savagely, his hand sought the button that would smash Smith's ship into oblivion—then stayed! Lady Alice! He could not destroy her with Smith. Because now he knew, certainly and surely, two things. One of which was that she must be the bearer of the secret ray formula to Io. In no other way could you account for the fact that Smith had dared everything to kidnap her. She carried the secret, not in papers, but in her mind.
Were she to die—and might the gods of space forbid that his hand should destroy her loveliness!—Kreuther would still be the victor. For with her would perish the final hope of the besieged New Fresno garrison.
The other thing he realized was—
But there was no time for that now. His fingers spurned the ray button; found another. A jolt shivered the space-skiff from fore-quartz to rocket as his tensile beam reached across the closing miles, fastened its grip on Smith's craft.
Mallory's grin tightened. He cut motors. His tensile beam would contract like a rubber band, drawing the two ships together. Smith, feeling that beam upon him, unable to sheer it off, would not be able to turn a lethal radiation upon him now. For the tensile beam was a perfect conduction ray. To destroy one ship meant to destroy both.
There was a groan behind him. Shocked, he turned. From the storage bin, bleeding from nose, ears, mouth, body twisted as though wrung through some gigantic mangler, crawled the missing jewel thief—Albert Lemming!
Mallory choked, sickened. "Lord, man! How did you get aboard here? Why—"
Liquid breath gurgled in Lemming's throat. Glaze filmed his eyeballs. "Tried to—" he panted, "—stow away. Wilmot dead—knew suspect me—hid—"
His head fell forward to the floor. Dan fingered his pulse, found there not the feeblest stir of life. Lemming, fleeing the dreaded breath of suspicion, had lost the more important breath of life. The miracle was that he had survived, even so long, the tremendous acceleration that had taxed all Mallory's space-trained, protected faculties.
And the two space-skiffs closed inexorably the gap between them. Mallory's quick brain leaped to the final problem. But before he could solve it, the small skiff audio burst into speech.
"Well done, whoever you are!" said the voice from the other skiff. "But you realize it won't do you any good?"
Mallory rasped, "I'm coming alongside in a minute, Smith. Stand by to surrender peaceably, or—"
"Or?" mocked the ex-space officer. "So it's you, Lieutenant? I might have guessed it. Your valor is exceeded only by your lack of foresight. I repeat, your hectic pursuit has done you no good."
"Never mind the talk. Stand by. This is the end," said Mallory. "This is checkmate, Smith."
"Not checkmate, my gallant young friend," corrected Smith. "Stalemate.True, you hold me captive in your beam. But to what end? You can't hope to take me alive. Whenever I choose, I can blast you and myself into atoms. And with us goes—" he paused significantly—"Lady Alice! Ah, you are silent, Lieutenant? I thought you would be. Of course, I'm an old man. These youthful romancings no longer interest me. But—bless us, she's much too beautiful to die, isn't she, Lieutenant?"
Lady Alice's voice interrupted.
"Take him, Dan! Don't think about me. I'm not afraid to—"
"You hear, Lieutenant? The girl's gallantry is a fit match for your own. But by this time, surely, you have realized that if she dies, the secret of the new ray weapon dies with her. I think my leader's forces will have taken New Fresno before a second messenger reaches Io."
It was the truth. Knowing that, Dan Mallory groaned. This was a deadlock; one that neither force could break. He said slowly, "Well, Captain? What is your price for Lady Alice's safety?"
"My own," replied the renegade spaceman promptly, "and the secret she bears. I'm not an unreasonable man, Lieutenant. Even though—" bitterness edged his words—"even though the Solar Space Patrol did take the best years of my life, squeeze the heart out of me, throw my aging body into the discard like a dried pulp. No, I'm not unreasonable—"
So that was it. The self-pity of an aging man, perhaps a man gone off his gravs from the letdown after active years. That was why Smith had renounced his SSP pledge, gone over to the other side. Captain Algase's words rang in Dan's memory. "Where there are new causes, there are traitors to the old—" Even a spaceman was not exempt from human weakness.
"If Lady Alice will surrender her secret to me," the renegade captain was continuing, "with convincing proof that the formula she gives me is no lie, I will permit you both to live. I will allow you to keep one of these ships, return to safety—"
Mallory thought feverishly. It was against his every scruple to parley thus with the other man. But he could gain nothing by destroying himself and Lady Alice. Alive, there was always a chance they might win through to the New Fresno fort, carry their message, howsoever belated. If they died, Kreuther and his hirelings would surely win.
He said, "Very well, Smith. I accept. Give him the formula, Lady Alice."
Her answer was tense, vivid.
"No! No, Dan, don't trust him! He won't keep his promise. I know he won't!"
"We must take that chance." Grimly. "Tell him!"
The audio went dead. Mallory waited impatiently. Somewhere, lost in the immensity that engulfed them, theLibrasurged through space on a mission now in the hands of the deadlocked three. So near that it was more sunlike than Sol, Jupiter swung in its titanic orbit about Man's luminary. The endless night was spangled with an infinitude of stars. The stars toward which Man, yearning, groped—while Man's feet still stumbled through the muck and mire of deceit....
And the audio woke to life again. Smith's voice was triumphant. "Very well, Lieutenant. I am satisfied. I have finished the demolition of power and arms units in this ship. Its radio, however, still operates. I think it will sustain life for you until your friends arrive. I am ready to board your ship."
Lady Alice's cry broke in, "Be careful, Dan! He'll kill you! He—" There was the sound of flesh upon flesh, a silence. Then, "Well, Lieutenant?"
Dan said, "Come ahead."
"You will take your place," said Smith, "in the pilot's seat where I can see you from the moment I enter the lock. Put your hands above your head. Do not move or turn as I enter. If you do—"
"Come ahead," repeated Dan. The audio disconnected.
Dan sprang into motion. He believed Lady Alice's warning. And he was prepared to meet subtlety with subtlety; deceit with deceit. Not yet had Smith won. He bent and lifted the broken body of Albert Lemming. Hurriedly he jammed the oxy-helmet down over the dead man's bloody features. He grunted, "Sorry, pal!" as he hoisted Lemming into the pilot's chair, forced stiffening arms back and up in token of surrender. The high back of the chair, the padded cushions made the form hold its position.
He finished just in time. There was a scraping at the airlock. The two ships had drifted side to side now, and entry was a simple matter. Mallory ducked back into the compartment from which Lemming had emerged. His needle gun was in his hand, poised, ready....
Smith entered quietly. He glanced once at the figure in the pilot's chair, said, "Don't move, Lieutenant—" and his arm raised. The girl's warning had been all too true. There was rankest treachery in the leveling of that gun, in the fiery needle dart that hurled across the chamber, burying itself in Lemming's defenseless head. The stench of charred flesh filled the room. The dead body wobbled, lurched to the floor. And—
"Now,youstand still, Smith!" gritted Mallory.
Smith whirled, his jaw dropping open. In his eyes dawned horror, disappointment, rage. He cried out once, raised his gun.
That was how he died. With his traitorous fingers lifted for the last time against a man who wore the uniform he had once worn ... and had disgraced....
Afterward, as they stood in the control turret of theLibra, watching a sober-faced Rick Norton plot the landing that would bring new life to the Ionian colonists, swift retribution to the fomenters of the uprising, Bud Chandler whaled his comrade's back enthusiastically.
"Guy," he said, "in words of one syllable, you're terrific!"
"That's not one syllable," grinned Mallory.
"All right, then, you're a lallapalooza! But how the blue asteroids did you get onto the fact Smith was the guy?"
Dan said, "It came to me almost too late. It had been worrying me subconsciously ever since I had to—" here he flushed—"had to arrest Lady Alice. I knew that someone had, in conversation with me, said something that didn't ring true. And when Wilmot was killed for having discovered the truth about Smith, I suddenly remembered what it was.
"The night before we got the message from Lunar III, assuring us that Kreuther was behind the revolution, Smith had mentioned to me, quite casually, that he suspected there were on theLibra'espionage agents of the Kreuther forces.' What he was attempting to do, of course, was ally himself with us in order to divert suspicion. But he tipped his hand by that little slip of the tongue."
Lady Alice smiled. She said, "Well, you're not awfully smart. Any of you. I knew he was the spy as soon as I heard the message from Earth."
Captain Algase interrupted, "Yeah, that message! I'm going to raise an assortment of hell about that. Causing us to arrest the one person on board we could really trust."
"And all," smiled the girl, "because of one, small, chemical symbol that you misread. Oh, yes, I understand now. I've seen the original. Bud—you went to the Academy, didn't you?"
"Why—why, yes."
"Your professor there must have been quite an old man. I mean your chemistry prof."
"He was. Ancient. But what has that got to do with it?"
"Everything. He taught you the old, the original chemical symbol for the element samarium. 'Sa.' The more common symbol, the generally accepted one, is 'Sm.' Now you see what a great difference that one little error makes in the meaning of the message. You read it:
"'Lane warns Lady Alice, cabal spy, now onLibra. Captain saith intensify protection of new secret ray.'"
"And it should have been read," broke in Dan Mallory, understanding at last, "'Lane warns Lady Alice cabal spy now onLibra—Captain Smith! Intensify protection—' and so on. It was a warningtoyou, not about you!"
"Exactly. Naturally, I was—well, indignant when I was placed under arrest. Afterward, I began to think it a good idea. Confined to my quarters, guarded, I would be completely safe. But unfortunately Captain Smith guessed, when I was arrested, thatIwas the bearer of the formula. So he killed my guard, seized the skiff, and kidnaped me.
"Saith!" grunted Bud Chandler disgustedly. "I told you that word was phony. Joe Marlowe never used good English in his life when a cuss-word would do just as well. Hey! Where are you two going?"
It is doubtful whether Dan Mallory heard the question. There was one other little matter that needed clearing up—but soon! That was the way Lady Alice Charwell, in the moment of their mutual peril, had hurdled the amenities of speech, addressed him not as "Lieutenant," or even as plain "Mallory," but as—
"Dan," he said. "You called me 'Dan.' It's not right, Lady Alice. You shouldn't do things like that unless you mean them. And I—"
"Suppose," she asked, "I like that part of your name best. It is a nice name, you know."
Dan Mallory's big hands pawed futilely at the blue of his uniform. "So," he croaked, "is Mallory. And—and I guess I'm completely crazy. I couldn't ask you to share a name like that. I'm just a space cop. And you're a Lady. A titled Lady."
She said softly, "A Lady, Dan? There is no Duchy of Io any more. That's a thing of the past, and my title is only a courtesy. And, oh—I'm so tired of courtesies. I'm a space cop, too, now. There's nothing in the rules to keep two cops from teaming up, is there? Oh, you big, damn, dumb idiot—!"
Her face, smiling up at his, was inclined at just the right angle. They told him afterward that Rick Norton made a swell landing. He didn't believe it. For it seemed to Dan Mallory that the whole cosmos was swirling and dancing and twisting upside down in a delirium of delight....