Part 2

He whirled in time to see the big blonde reaching for him. Gavin had no intention of letting her get her hands on him again. His gleaming knucks caught the girl on the jaw. She folded to the floor, half-across the legs of the unconscious X.

He regarded the pair for a moment, catching his breath. Then he went to the door, shot a bolt and opened it cautiously. The three men who had herded him into the bar were standing just outside.

He backed out, waved negligently and said, "I'll see you later, then," loudly enough for the three men to hear, and closed the door.

The men eyed him coldly. As soon as he was past they trooped inside.

Gavin instantly lit out running at top speed. He didn't slow down until he skidded inside the Temple of Joy half a block away and brought up panting before a startled headwaiter. "Where's the _Nova_ party?"

"_Nova_ party, sir?"

"Yes, yes," Gavin said impatiently. He changed position so he could keep the entrance in sight. "The officers of the _Nova_ are throwing a celebration here tonight. Where are they, man? Speak up."

The waiter looked at Gavin as if he were crazy. "I never heard of them," he said. "There's no such party here."

Gavin's lips thinned. He was silent a moment, digesting this information. He glanced toward the door. To return now to the street would be fatal. They would be waiting for him. He wasn't safe even here in the lobby of the Temple of Joy. He wanted to mix in with the safety of crowds and lights.

He gave the waiter a bill, saying, "Get me a table then, near the wall."

The waiter's expression changed miraculously. He said, "Yes, sir," and ushered Gavin into the inner sanctum.

A heady, throbbing rhythm beat like surf in Gavin's ears. The light was dim, rosy, intimate. Gavin threaded his way between the seated patrons conscious of laughter, of bare shoulders and arms, of vivid splashes of color.

"Here, sir," said the waiter. Gavin sat down and ordered bourbon.

A Martian girl was executing a barbaric dance in a cleared space in the center of the floor. When the waiter brought Gavin his drink, he sipped it guardedly, dividing his attention between the dancer and the entrance. From the corner of his eye, he saw someone come inside. He turned his head and immediately stiffened.

It was Nadia Petrovna. She was alone.

* * * * *

The girl paused at the edge of the tables, her long black eyes sweeping the room. When they reached Gavin, they halted. She waved and started for his table.

Her costume, Gavin realized, must have been designed individually for Nadia by one of the great Martian fashion artists. Two plates of thinnest rose plastic inlaid with delicate gold lace work had been moulded to conform exactly to her high small breasts. What kept them in place was a mystery--one which Gavin wouldn't have been above solving. A full skirt of rose satin hung low on slim ample hips and fell to the instep of her gold sandals.

He stood up as she approached, holding a chair for her.

She didn't sit down. Her face appeared whiter than when he had last seen her in Trev's office. She said hurriedly, in an undertone.

"Where have you been? The party was cancelled. We've been scouring Venusport for you. The _Nova_ sails in an hour."

"Sit down," said Gavin.

"But ..." she began and then sank into the chair.

Gavin took his seat, saying, "The _Nova_ wasn't scheduled to sail until tomorrow."

"I know." Her voice was urgent. "It's an emergency of some sort. I don't know what's happened. Captain Cabot got our clearance from the port of authorities just a few minutes ago. Hurry, please. I've a cab waiting outside." She started to push back from the table.

"We've an hour," said Gavin dryly. His hard blue eyes regarded the girl with a thoughtful stare. There had been no record of this girl in the T.I.S.'s secret file. What did it mean? He wondered again why she had lied for him in Trev's office.

He asked suddenly, "Does the Temple have a back door?"

"I don't know."

"We're going to find out."

He stood up and left money on the table. When Nadia still hesitated, Gavin took her arm lightly but firmly and urged her toward the stage door.

A yellow-skinned Venusian, his green eyes cold as glass, stopped them at the entrance of the passage. "You can't come backstage," he said.

On the dance floor, a flock of girls dressed like Ganymedian natives were performing an orgiastic dance. The drums in the orchestra beat out a sultry rhythm. Gavin reached in his pocket for a bill. A disturbance at the main door caused him to look up quickly.

A man had just entered across the room. It was Mr. X.

Nine men followed X through the door, fanning out among the tables. They were armed with bell-mouthed, Dixon ray rifles.

"Everybody keep your seat!" Mr. X called out sharply.

A woman screamed. The drums stopped. The dancing girls lapsed into a confused huddle.

Instead of a bill, Gavin brought the knucks out of his pocket and clipped the Venusian behind his ear. Snatching the girl's arm, he dragged her through the door.

"Run," he commanded. "Run like hell!" He pushed her down the long dimly lit corridor ahead of them.

Nadia ran. She hiked up her skirts and ran as if the devil himself were after her. Gavin, hard on her heels, caught the reflection of a yellow ray as one of X's men turned loose at the stage door. The sound of screams, shouts and overturned tables pursued them down the corridor.

Gavin caught glimpses of dressing rooms, a scad of Venusian and Terran girls changing costume. He nearly collided with an electronician. Then they burst through a small chamber where a wizened Mercurian sat in a chair propped against the wall--and out into the street.

It was the next street over from Mercury Alley, Gavin realized. He hailed a robot cab, piled in with the girl and said, "Pit Nine."

The cab darted away from the curb. Gavin caught a flash of bare leg, stared at Nadia. She was hunched in her corner, her face a dim oval in the darkened interior. She pointed something black at him.

"I've got a dart-gun!" Her voice trembled. "Don't move! Or I'll shoot!"

III

Gavin Murdock drew a deep breath. He didn't move. The girl must have carried the gun strapped around her leg above the knee. In that costume it wouldn't have been invisible anyplace else.

He said, "It's your move."

Without answering him, the girl said, "Change of address--Pit Seven."

"Change of address--Pit Seven," the metallic voice of the cab repeated through the speaker overhead.

Gavin felt like a blind man playing chess. He narrowed his pale blue eyes. "Where are we going?"

"The _Nova_." Her voice was unfriendly.

"But the _Nova's_ at Pit Nine."

"Pit Nine's being watched. We're going to use the underground."

Gavin shifted slightly, half-turned towards the girl. "Point that dart gun some other direction," he complained. "My blood's running cold."

She didn't move it.

Gavin's long arm snapped out with the precision of a cat's paw, slapped the gun out of her hands. The girl gasped, "Oh!" snatched for the weapon, but Gavin's hand was already covering it.

The gun in his possession, he asked, "Who's watching the _Nova_?"

"As if you didn't know!"

Gavin considered this, examining the dart-gun at the same time. It was a tiny thing, curved to fit the roundness of a leg. Beautiful as a jewel.

"Oddly enough," he returned dryly, "I don't know."

She glared at him through the semi-gloom without replying. The buildings flowed past the windows, the green glow of lichens and moss illuminating the street with about the same intensity as a full moon's light on Terra.

Gavin made his voice cold as he leaned toward the girl. "Do you want me to loosen your tongue for you? Who's watching the _Nova_?"

Nadia gasped, her hand at her throat. "You know as well as I do. X's men!"

"Who's X?"

"Who's X? You ask that? You went to see him this afternoon. You even made an appointment with him later."

Gavin recalled the words he had spoken for the benefit of X's men as he left the bar--"I'll see you later, then." Captain Cabot was not without his own spy system after all. His estimation of Cabot went up a notch.

"You won't believe this," he said, "but I haven't the foggiest notion who X is. Do you know?"

Nadia's dark eyes looked puzzled. She shook her head, gave a short laugh. "You're going to be a big disappointment to Josiah. I wouldn't care to be in your shoes."

"Josiah ... oh, you're referring to Captain Cabot. So he expects me to be able to tell him who X represents."

"You were talking to him," said the girl bluntly.

Gavin regarded Nadia a moment. Then he asked, "Why has the sailing been advanced?"

She clamped shut her jaws.

"You don't want me to force you to talk, do you?" suggested Gavin.

"You wouldn't dare."

"Wouldn't I?"

Nadia bit her lip. "It doesn't make any difference, I suppose." She shrugged. "You know anyway, if you're working for X. Captain found out that some powerful clique is trying to have the _Nova_ interned. He rushed his clearance through before they had time to act." She paused before adding, "X has bought off Trev."

So it was the Martian who had sold out, not Nadia. He handed back the girl's dart-gun. "Here. See if you can't behave yourself now."

Nadia took the weapon. She pointed it deliberately at Gavin's chest. "Please clasp your hands behind your neck!"

* * * * *

The robot cab drew up at the curb. The door opened. It's voice issued from the loudspeaker. "Pit Seven."

"Get out," Nadia ordered. "Stand back from the door."

Gavin slid out. The buildings were gone, replaced by a wall of structural concrete which disappeared overhead in the clouds. It had begun to rain again, a clammy drizzle. The girl followed him to the curb, shivering as the drops hit her bare shoulders and back.

A green-lighted sign over a door in the concrete wall read:

PIT SEVEN--PASSENGER ENTRANCE

"In there." She motioned at the door.

Gavin, a step in advance, ducked inside and went ahead down a long incline until he fetched up in a mouldy unused waiting room.

"Take the door to the left."

A sign above it read:

MANAGEMENT--PRIVATE

At the girl's direction, Gavin passed through bare offices, smelling of stale air and mildew and into a narrow corridor which led straight as an arrow into the distance in either direction. Walls, ceiling and floor radiated a pale green glow from the fungus.

Gavin, who had been keeping his sense of direction with an effort, realized that the passage led towards Pit Nine. They followed it for a quarter of a mile, passing only one intersecting corridor. They turned in the second passage they met, passed along it a short distance, and came out in the maw of Pit Nine itself.

They were on a balcony a hundred feet from the floor of the pit. The well below was charred black by countless jet blasts. The _Nova_, a dull black bullet-shaped monster, rested on its jets, towering straight up four hundred feet above them. He saw an airy gangplank sloping from the balcony to an open port in the ship. There was a glum Venusian standing guard at the gangplank.

Urged along by the girl, Gavin ascended the gangplank into the ship itself. "I've heard of shanghai-ing," he remarked over his shoulder. "But this is the first case of being shanghai-ed exactly according to your wishes."

Nadia said, "Captain Cabot will talk to you." She indicated an elevator and they ascended rapidly to the ship's control room.

There were three men in the spacious control room: Captain Cabot, the senior astrogator, and a communications man. They faced about, stared at Gavin as the girl prodded him through the door.

"I found him in the Temple of Joy," said Nadia.

Cabot's glance slid over Gavin. His lean wolfish face cracked into a smile. "I haven't time to question him now--" he began, when the communications man interrupted.

"He's up there!" said the communications man. "Directly overhead. But he's beyond the Heaviside layer. I can't make out his class, but he's big. Feels like a patrol ship."

A frown passed across Cabot's face. He snapped on a televisor. "Engine room," came a faint voice.

Cabot glanced at his watch. "Taking off in ten minutes. There's a ship above the clouds. Don't know who she is. Have all jets primed. We may have to dodge her."

"Check," said the voice.

"And, John," Cabot added, "I've got your third aboard. I don't care to trust him until we get beyond the thousand-mile-limit, though, so carry on for a while longer."

"Check," said the voice.

Cabot snapped off the televisor and turned to Nadia. "Lock Mr. Murdock in seventeen. Then report back to the bridge."

"Yes sir," said Nadia.

Gavin was led silently below again. He could hear the rumble of the warming jets. Nadia appeared nervous, jumpy. She wanted to get back to the bridge and an acceleration chair before the take-off, Gavin guessed.

About midway down, she paused before a metal door numbered seventeen, swung it open, disclosing blackness. Gavin stepped inside.

The girl allowed her face to relax. She said in a softer voice, "Lie down. The _Nova's_ take-off is pretty rugged. Five G's." The metal door clanged shut.

Gavin heard a bolt snick into place. Blackness, utter impenetrable blackness engulfed him.

He spent precious minutes searching for the light switch, as the roar of the jets whined up an ascending scale. With a grunt of satisfaction, he found them, snapped them on. The cabin flooded with brilliance.

The body of Trev, the Martian was stretched stark and cold on the metal deck!

* * * * *

Gavin bent shakily over the broker of slaves and scientific secrets. Trev's black eyes were open, glassy. A thin three cornered sliver of metal protruded from his throat. The Martian would never steal the _Nova's_ space drive now. He had been shot with a poisoned dart.

Suddenly, a tremendous weight fell on Gavin's shoulders. He was squashed flat to the deck beside the dead Martian, pinned there. The breath was crushed from his chest, and he struggled wildly to inflate his lungs.

The _Nova_, he realized in desperation, was off!

Gavin managed to roll to his belly, push himself to hands and knees. The pressure didn't relax. He crawled to a corner, got his legs braced against a stanchion. If the strange ship above the clouds should prove unfriendly, the _Nova_ would be bucking like a crazed steer in her efforts to dodge. Anyone caught unprepared would be flipped from bulkhead to bulkhead until he was a bundle of splintered bones.

The acceleration dragged at Gavin's lean flesh. He looked ten years older in the harsh bright light. Sweat burst from his pores; his eye-lids drooped; his mouth sagged.

Then the whine of the jets ceased. The terrific acceleration relaxed. Gavin felt like a toy balloon.

Consternation widened his pale blue eyes. He gripped himself for the buffeting he was almost sure would follow.

In the silence a wild clamor broke out from stem to stern.

The general alarm!

Gavin tensed. He could feel the pulse drumming in his temples. Then it came. The jets burst into a full throated roar. The _Nova_ lurched crazily to the starboard and then swept upward at a tangent.

Again the _Nova_ bucked, this time to port. A sickening circular movement took possession of his prison. The ship, he realized, must be above the clouds in the upper stratosphere and climbing higher in tight spirals.

Suddenly the _Nova_ gave an uncontrolled lurch. A faint far away explosion reached his ears.

They were being fired at! That was an atomic shell bursting off the starboard bow. Sweat coursed down Gavin's cheeks.

Were they going to let him die in the locked cabin like a trapped rat? The crew could escape in space tenders, if the _Nova_ were hit. Another shell burst closer, throwing the gigantic ship sideways as a hurricane tosses a chip.

Something burst in Gavin's brain. He came to his senses, realized he was hammering in berserk terror on the unyielding metal door. His knuckles were streaming blood.

He got a grip on himself, forced himself to sit down again in the corner, back to the bulkhead, feet thrust against the stanchion. The body of the Martian, he saw, was sliding in erratic circles about the deck.

Gavin wet his lips, his blue eyes desperate. He had scarcely settled himself when the third explosion burst. It was so close that there was no sound, only a terrific blast of pressure. The lights dimmed. Gavin was torn from his stanchion and hurled across the cabin against the opposite bulkhead.

Fortunately, he didn't strike the unguarded steel. Instead he was flung against the Martian's body which acted as a pad. Even so the shock was terrific. Blackness welled up behind his eyes. He lost consciousness.

Gavin opened his eyes and realized he couldn't have been unconscious but a second or two. He sprang to his feet. And struck his head and shoulders on the ceiling!

He gave himself a push from the overhead and floated slowly back to the deck.

Then he realized what was wrong. The jets were quiet. A silence so absolute that it rang in his ears blanketed the _Nova_. In all that ship there was no sound anywhere.

The _Nova_ was falling free, falling back to the surface of Venus!

IV

The skin was stretched taut across Gavin's gaunt features, the freckles standing out like pennies.

The air, rapidly growing denser, began to whine like the keening for the dead. He stiffened, straining to catch the sound he had imagined.

It came again. The cough of a rocket tube.

A wild hope flamed in Gavin's blue eyes. The roar of the jets blasted into life. The cabin heeled sharply to starboard. Gavin slid down the sloping deck until he fetched up against the bulkhead, which had suddenly become the floor.

The _Nova_, he realized in a flood of relief, had come out of the fall and was speeding parallel to the surface. He sat down, his joints turning to water. He had a violent urge to be sick.

Gavin's first belief that the attacking ship had been one of Terra's patrol spacers gave way to doubt. In the first place, the _Nova_ hadn't been beyond Venus' thousand-mile-limit. Furthermore, he didn't believe a Terran patrol ship would have waylaid the _Nova_ outward bound when she was innocent of her cargo of slaves.

Then who was it?

He heard a bolt click back. The door through which he had entered was directly overhead. The _Nova_, though, had been constructed for flying either keel-on or stern-down. The passages which previously had been horizontal were now vertical, and the vertical wells running from bow to stern lay horizontal to the angle of flight. A door which had been overhead when they were shooting straight up, now was directly across the cabin.

As Gavin watched, it swung open. Nadia Petrovna was framed in the opening.

She said in a breathless tight voice, "You've got to take over the engine room! Half the black gang are dead or laid up! Captain Cabot sent me to fetch you!"

Her hair, Gavin saw, had come undone and fell about her bare white shoulders like an inky cloud. A trickle of blood drew a crooked red line from a cut above her left eye down across her high cheek bone to her small pointed chin. One of the rose plastic breast plates had been torn completely away, and the rose gown was split up her left hip from sandal to belt.

Gavin plunged for the door.

"This way!" Nadia started aft at a run. "The ladder! The elevators are stalled!"

"Chief engineer?" Gavin grunted. "Where's the chief?"

"Unconscious! Concussion. Don't know how serious," she flung back at him as she dashed along the corridor, her torn skirt streaming out behind her. "The first is dead. The second has a broken leg."

She reached the emergency ladder and threw herself down it with reckless abandon. Gavin followed a little more cautiously.

The engine room, Gavin saw when he and Nadia dropped to the deck, was functioning smoothly enough now, although there was no evidence of the explosion. A smear of blood against a bulkhead caught his eyes, then a twisted body lashed to the deck.

But a jetman, a yellow Venusian girl, naked to the waist, was at her post beside the quartzite windows of the tubes. Sweat poured off her in rivulets as she watched the color of the explosions to check the mixture.

The master mechanic, a fat Terran, was at the bridge televisor. He gave Gavin a relieved glance. "Bridge calling, sir."

Gavin jumped to the televisor. He saw the lean wolfish profile of Captain Cabot on the screen. Cabot's cheek had been laid open to the bone. One arm swung uselessly. His features were bleak as granite.

Gavin said, "Murdock reporting, sir."

"Take over, Mr. Murdock." Cabot's voice sounded harsh, metallic through the instrument. "We're describing an orbit about Venus at an altitude of seven kilometers."

"Check."

"Is Miss Petrovna there?"

"Yes, sir."

"Let me speak to her."

The girl approached the televisor.

Captain Cabot ordered her in a terse voice, "Stay with Murdock. If he shows any signs of treachery, shoot him!"

"Yes, sir," said the girl. She plucked the tiny dart-gun from the spring clip on her leg where it had been visible through the rent in her skirt.

"You heard my orders, Mr. Murdock," Cabot's cold voice issued from the instrument. "Stand by to fire the starboard tube-bank. We're coming out of the clouds again."

"Check."

In spite of himself Gavin couldn't help but admire the coolness of Josiah Cabot. He turned to Nadia. "What happened?" he demanded.

* * * * *

The girl, her long black eyes serious, had her dart-gun leveled at his chest. "I was at the scanner," she replied in an unsteady voice. "We cleared the clouds, making five G's. This ship was right on top of us."

"What ship?"

She shook her head. "She wasn't a patrol spacer. She didn't identify herself. We dodged. Then she cut loose at us with atom shells. The third shot did the damage. I don't know how serious yet, but half the crew are laid up. Captain Cabot cut the jets, which allowed us to fall back into the cloud bank as if we'd been knocked out."

That was quick shrewd thinking, Gavin realized.

The bridge televisor whistled shrilly.

"Bridge calling," came Cabot's voice.

"Engine room."

"Starboard jets. Half blast."

"Check." Gavin pulled the lever on the control board. "Starboard jets!" he yelled above the sudden roar to the half-naked jetman.

The _Nova_ began to nose upward in a slow arc.

"Prime all tubes," came Cabot's crisp voice through the audio. "We'll be above the clouds any moment."

"Check," said Gavin.

A mounting tension gripped them all as the seconds dragged past. Then the televisor whistled again.

"Cut starboard rockets. Half blast ahead." There was another pause and Cabot added with a faint smile, "We're through the cloud bank. No sign of the spacer."

Nadia heaved a sigh of relief and leaned weakly against the ladder.

"Guess we lost her half around the planet," surmised Gavin.

"Course 37.22 x 5," came Cabot's voice once more. "Proceed at one G until we ascertain damage. That is all."

"Check," said Gavin. He snapped off the televisor. "You can put that dart-gun away," he advised Nadia dryly.

The girl snapped erect. She whipped the dart-gun in line with Gavin's chest again. "I haven't been relieved!" She began in a queer voice. The gun trembled. Her knees sagged. She swayed, sat down suddenly on the first rung of the ladder.

"What's the matter?"

She gave a short, half-hysterical laugh. "Matter! I've had the pants scared off me, and you ask what's the matter!" She clenched her teeth, dropped her head in her hands. Her black hair fell like a veil over her face.

Gavin snapped on the televisor.

"Engine room calling."

"Bridge," came Cabot's precise voice.

"Murdock speaking, sir. Advise Miss Petrovna be relieved. She's suffering from shock."

Cabot looked startled. He hesitated. "Tell Miss Petrovna she's relieved. Carry on, Mr. Murdock."

"Check."

Gavin turned to the girl. "You heard the Captain."