Part 2

Joel stared at the hulking form as if it were some monster. "But why were the others letting him throttle you?" he asked Nick Thorp. "Why didn't they stop him?"

"They're afraid of him."

"But they could've ganged him...." Joel stopped with his mouth open.

A bell had begun to ring with an ear-splitting clangor!

Muttered exclamations burst from the prisoners as they exchanged alarmed glances. The bell continued to ring.

"What's happening?" Joel asked.

Nick Thorp shook his grizzled head. "I don't know. But the bell's a signal for us to line up at our bunks."

Joel realized that the other prisoners had formed in a row down the walls. He glanced about uncertainly.

"There's a vacant bunk beside mine," Nick Thorp suggested.

Joel gratefully took his place beside Thorp. The bell fell silent. Everyone was staring through the wall into the guardroom.

The guards had abandoned their card game, he saw. They were straightening their uniforms, buttoning their tunics. He could see the passage beyond and two men making their way along it.

One, he recognized, was Doctor Chedwick, white-frocked and moon-faced. The other was a short man with a truculent walk. He was wearing the green uniform of a space man.

A low excited buzz arose from the prisoners. Joel caught words here and there. "Asgard! So soon!"

He felt tight with excitement and glanced surreptitiously at the girl beside him.

She was an exotic elfin creature, even in the shapeless gray coveralls. Her black eyes and hair, the smooth olive of her complexion lent her the appearance of an Arab. He wondered what crime she had committed that had condemned her to the Experimental Station.

Then the door to the guardroom was flung violently open. The captain appeared in the entrance and shouted, "Attention!"

* * * * *

The whispering ceased as the guards in their peacock blue and yellow filed into the dormitory. They were carrying a long plastic chain, which they stretched down the center of the floor. About every yard, Joel saw that a metal collar had been linked to the chain.

Doctor Chedwick came through the door with the green-uniformed spaceman beside him.

"This is Sam Mullin," he said indicating the spaceman. "Third mate of the _Zenith_. Mister Mullin will be responsible for you while you're aboard the _Zenith_. You're to be embarked at once...."

Joel's heart leaped against his ribs. Even the archaic title of "mister" had a heady sound. It was a tradition among spacemen, he knew. Only officers of Star Ships were called "mister."

"What's this?" Doctor Chedwick interrupted himself catching sight of the unconscious figure of Eriss on the floor.

"There was a fight, Doctor," the captain hastened to explain. "The new man and Walt Eriss."

"Hakkyt knocked out Eriss?"

The captain nodded.

Doctor Chedwick shot Joel a startled glance. "Watch those fists of yours, young man. You're too free with them." Then to the captain, "Revive Eriss and shackle the prisoners."

Joel noticed that the guards were careful to fasten one of the collars about the ex-surgeon's neck before they broke a vial of some liquid and held it under his nose.

Eriss opened his eyes and sat up groggily. Then his gaze fastened on Joel. With a bellow of rage he was on his feet, charging across the room like a mad bull.

Three men, hanging onto the chain, snubbed him up short!

Eriss wheeled furiously, found himself facing half a dozen drawn paralyzers and brought up with a curse.

Joel could see the veins throb in the giant's temples. But the captain turned indifferently to the other prisoners. "Line up beside the chain."

Joel took his place between the black-haired girl and Nick Thorp. The collar was snapped about his throat. In single file and with a good deal of tripping, the prisoners, chained neck to neck, tramped through the door.

Doctor Chedwick left them at the main corridor, but the Captain and Mister Mullin helped the guards herd them into a lift.

They dropped soundlessly level after level until they were well below the surface. At length the lift stopped, the doors opened.

To his surprise Joel saw that there was a pneumatic station beneath the dome, and a train was waiting in the tube.

They were shepherded into a coach. They had a good deal of trouble arranging themselves in the seats because of the chain linking them together, but at last it was done.

Captain Goplerud blew a whistle and swung inside the car. The door slammed shut. With a powerful surge and a whoosh the train shot off.

Joel found himself beside Nick Thorp. "Where do you suppose we're going?" he asked breathlessly.

"Nu York," Thorp replied. "All the Star Ships berth at the White Plains spaceport. We're lucky. The _Zenith's_ a crack luxury liner. No being battened down in the hold of some stinking freighter for us."

"You've been to space before?"

Thorp turned his incredibly blue eyes on Joel. "For twenty-three years. Rocket ships and Star Ships. I never thought I'd see space again...."

Joel eyed the battered gray-haired spaceman with increased respect. Here was a man who'd seen the stews of Venusport, breathed the murky air of Jovopolis, gazed out on the frigid whiteness of Pluto.

"Then you've been to Asgard?"

"Many's the time. Wait 'til you see it, lad. Jungles and rain and crawling plants that can pluck a man off the ground and devour him quick as a cat!"

Joel was fascinated. The train slid along with a monotonous roar that shut them in a cell of privacy.

"Who's the girl?" he asked, nodding at the elfin sloe-eyed brunette in the seat ahead.

Nick Thorp's eyes twinkled. "Tamis Ravitz. She used to be a dancer. Poisoned her dancing partner in a fit of jealous rage. So I've heard."

Joel was shocked and looked it.

Thorp's battered features cracked into a broad grin. "We're a rum bunch. None of us can afford to throw stones at the others."

Joel felt the rebuke in his words and reddened.

* * * * *

The spaceman had slumped in the seat and closed his eyes. The dull roar of the train had a soothing quality. But Joel was too keyed up to relax.

He kept thinking of the humanoid guard and the fluorescent tattoo mark on his elbow and Doctor Chedwick saying: "The less you know about them, the safer you'll be. Someone will contact you at Asgard. Don't mention our conversation to anyone...."

A buzzer began to whirr softly. The train braked. The guards rose and shouted,

"On your feet! On your feet! Line up in the aisle."

The train wooshed to a soft stop as if it had run into a foam rubber cushion. The doors slid back, letting in a thundering bedlam of sound.

Joel found himself staring out into a vast groined hall lit by harsh violet light. Streams of beetle-like robot trucks, piled high with baggage, darted along elevated roadways. People were everywhere, a crazy throng like a disturbed colony of ants.

He drew a ragged breath, feeling his heart thud against his ribs. The metal collar jerked against his throat and he fell into step.

They shuffled out of the coach onto a long ramp. A huge red sign directly ahead caught Joel's eyes. Its flashing letters were at least ten feet high.

CENTAURUS FLIGHT TAKE-OFF--15:52 STAR SHIP ZENITH

The file of prisoners made straight for the sign, entered a narrow corridor that sloped downward like a tunnel. From the tunnel they emerged into the maw of a huge pit. Joel rubbed his eyes. He'd never seen the rocket pits before.

The _Zenith_, a dull black, bullet-shaped monster, rested on her fins with her nose pointing straight up towards the starry black firmament. Gangplanks like airy cobwebs spanned the gap between the Star Ship and the blackened concrete walls.

The file of prisoners crawled out along one of the gangplanks. They were in the center of it, when Joel felt Nick Thorp's fingers close like a vise on his shoulder.

"Look! Overhead! We're having distinguished company this voyage!"

Joel glanced up.

* * * * *

Above and to one side another gangplank crossed the gap. A stout man was leaning on the rail and watching the prisoners. Beside him stood a young woman with the warm beautiful face of a Venusian dancing girl.

She was clad in a short green coat with exaggerated square-cut shoulders, and for one shocked moment Joel thought that she didn't have on anything beneath it. Then he realized that she must be wearing shorts which the coat was just long enough to hide.

For the rest, he received a swift impression of long shapely tanned legs, sooty lashes, green eyes and hair. _Green hair!_

Then their eyes met--met and held. There was a swift outleaping of spirit between them, an indescribable feeling of kinship, of recognition. Joel felt shaken, bewitched. A smile was trembling on the girl's half-parted lips.

And then he had been carried into the ship and he couldn't see her any longer.

"Who were they?" he asked unsteadily.

"Humphrey Cameron, Governor of Asgard," Thorp explained. "The girl was his daughter, Priscilla Cameron."

Tamis Ravitz said over her shoulder, "Did you see that hair? _Green!_ She's been the talk of Terra."

Joel thought the dancer sounded envious. They were shuffling single file down a long corridor that led straight into the bowels of the ship. A vague rumbling made the deck tremble beneath his feet. He heard shouted orders, the sound of the gangplank being run in.

His face whitened in the raw violet light. All thoughts of the green haired Priscilla Cameron were driven from his mind.

From the passage the prisoners were herded into a long low chamber outfitted with tables. Here they were unchained.

Mister Mullin glanced at his chronometer. "Take-off in fifteen minutes," he warned. "Strap yourselves into your bunks."

He disappeared at a run. The guards filed out of the prisoner's mess locking the door behind them.

"Come along," Thorp urged Joel as a wild clangor broke out from the stem to stern of the _Zenith_. "We've time for a quick look around before we get settled."

Joel followed him wordlessly into the sleeping quarters. Beyond the fo'cs'le were the washrooms and that was all. A second bell rang just as they flung themselves into empty bunks.

The rumble of the tubes mounted into a furious roar. A trip hammer struck Joel in the chest, pinned him into the cushion. He gasped, strained to inflate his lungs.

The _Zenith_ was off!

IV

Joel felt himself grow heavier, heavier. His arms were lead. The sweat glistened on his homely drawn features. His green eyes lost their sparkle.

After what seemed hours, he heard Nick Thorp croak from his bunk overhead, "Watch y'self. Stellar drive! Any minute!"

Joel felt a surge of unreasoning fear. A bell rang suddenly.

"That's it!" Thorp warned. "Lie still."

As suddenly as it had struck, the acceleration ceased. A terrifying sensation of weightlessness possessed him. He felt as if he were falling--falling! He wanted to spring from the bunk, but remembered Thorp's warning.

Startled cries burst from the passengers. Several of them jumped up. From the corner of his eye Joel saw them shoot to the overhead where they hung kicking. Then the artificial gravity came on and they fell back to the deck a great deal faster than they'd gone up.

Thorp climbed down. "You can get up now."

Joel scrambled to his feet. He felt light, giddy. Nick Thorp took a look at his alarmed countenance and burst into laughter.

"You'll get your space legs quick enough," he assured Joel. "The gravity aboard ship is only about a third of Earth's pull. You'll enjoy it when you get used to it."

Joel had his doubts about that, but when he glanced at the antics of the others he couldn't resist a grin.

A tall red-haired girl kept bounding into the air at each step. Then she flipped all the way over and lit on her bottom.

Just then a whistle blew. Joel wheeled around to find Mister Mullin, the third mate, standing in the door to the mess-room.

"Line up at your bunks," the third ordered. "This is a Star Ship and no stinking freighter. You'll be expected to keep your quarters clean. Inspection every day!"

"Day?" someone asked.

"We're on Earth time. Lights out at twenty-two hours and on again at six. Meals at eight, twelve and eighteen hours."

With the same dispatch he divided the prisoners into squads of four and assigned each their job.

Joel was relieved to find that he and Nick Thorp were in the same group along with Tamis Ravitz, the dancer, and another man whom Joel didn't know. Their job, it developed, was to keep the mess-room in order.

Mister Mullin glanced at his watch, said, "It's eighteen hours now. You can go in to dinner," and trotted out.

Joel realized that he hadn't eaten in hours. He was famished. He hastened into the mess-room and sat down at a table along with Nick Thorp and Tamis Ravitz.

The tables, which seated four, were built against the bulkheads down each side of the mess-room. Joel was pressing the button for his meal when a tall handsome man with a black goatee approached them.

"I'm Gustav Liedl," he introduced himself in a cultured voice. "I've been assigned to your squad. I thought it an excellent opportunity to become better acquainted."

"Sit down," Nick Thorp invited, introducing the others.

Joel's dinner arrived just then via a slot in the bulkhead and he addressed himself to it silently. Gustav Liedl, though, dawdled over his meal, talking with Tamis.

"Yes," Joel heard Liedl say in reply to one of Tamis' questions. "I was a professor." He made a rueful face, tugging at his black goatee. "At the Sorbonne. Anthropology was my subject."

"Anthropology!" Joel interrupted. "Then you must have some ideas about the natives of Asgard. What they are? Why no one has ever seen them?"

Liedl regarded Joel with a smile. "Ah, the elusive Centaurians! Yes. I've a theory about the Asgardian natives. I spent several years, you know, studying their villages with the Sorbonne's Asgardian Institute...."

Joel, glancing at Tamis, surprised a startled, half-frightened expression on her smooth ivory countenance.

"I've a theory," Liedl repeated, "that the Centaurians are masters of camouflage. I doubt very seriously that they are human. They may even be a quasi-intelligent species of plant life. Have you ever seen the Asgardian jungles, young man?"

"No," Joel admitted.

"Horrible!" Liedl said. "Plants with snaky tendrils like jointless arms. And they aren't rooted. They're capable of independent motion. It's amazing the number of Asgardian species that can move around freely as mammals."

Tamis said gaily, "Then you think the anthropologists have been looking for a man-like animal when all the time the natives have been plants who crept off into the jungle and hid?"

"Exactly!"

"Sounds like a reasonable explanation," Thorp admitted. "I've seen those Asgardian jungles. Crawling, thrashing masses of vegetation." He shook his head. "It gives a body the creeps."

"But how can anything live in that jungle?" Joel protested.

Liedl said triumphantly: "Nothing could! _Nothing but plants!_"

* * * * *

Fifteen minutes before twenty-two hours, a warning bell rang and the lights dimmed. Nick Thorp showed Joel the clothes locker where he could secure sleepers.

The lights went out while Joel was taking his shower. He switched on the dryer in the dark.

After a few seconds his eyes began to adjust. There was a dim night lamp in the mess-room beyond the fo'cs'le. Joel could see by its reflected light almost as well as he could by day. The only difference was the absence of color. Everything appeared in varying shades of gray like a photograph.

The deadening effect of the chemicals that had been used to purify the air of the Experimental Station was beginning to wear off. A medley of familiar and unfamiliar smells beset his nostrils.

All at once, he halted.

There was something here that shouldn't be. Joel could smell it. A strange alien odor that he'd caught only once before.

It was the same smell that had clung to the humanoid guard!

Joel's nostrils flared, but the odor was so faint that he couldn't tell from whence it came. It might be emanating from any one of the gray figures placidly asleep in the gray bunks.

He moved to his own bunk and lay down, but he couldn't sleep. That strange scent had acted like a dash of cold water.

He didn't know how long he lay there. Hours, it seemed. There was no sound beyond the muted rumble of the _Zenith's_ jets, the snores of some of the prisoners.

The temperature had dropped automatically when the lights were extinguished. He adjusted the thermal unit in his sleepers and closed his eyes.

A faint noise from across the fo'cs'le brought them open again instantly.

The gray elfin figure of Tamis Ravitz, the dancer, he saw, was rising cautiously from her bunk. She was barefooted, clad in the loose sleepers. She put her hand to her eyes. When it came away, she swept the fo'cs'le with a brief glance.

Joel almost forgot to breathe.

The dancer had done something to her eyes because they glowed faintly with an eerie flame!

Joel's pulse throbbed in his ears. Tamis, he saw, was moving to the next bunk with a soundless cat-like glide. She pointed a slender metal cylinder at the man who lay sleeping there. A bright green spot sprang out on the man's arm!

The tattoo mark!

The cylinder must be a source of black light able to kick fluorescence out of the tattoo marks. What did it mean? Who was Tamis?

From sleeping figure to sleeping figure, the girl glided. Sometimes she found the tattoo mark; sometimes she didn't.

She was approaching Joel's bunk. He forced himself to relax, to breathe evenly as if in a deep sleep.

Then she was hovering over him....

Joel's hand closed with a crushing grip about her wrist, yanked her off her feet into the bunk!

Tamis uttered one smothered cry, struggled soundlessly. Then she seemed to realize the futility of trying to break free and went limp.

Joel could feel her warm lithe body pinned against him. A strange alien scent filled his nostrils. It was delicate, flower-like, yet utterly alien.

The hair lifted on the back of his neck like the hackles of a dog. He found himself staring deep into the girl's eyes.

They had no pupil, no color, only a weird flickering light in their depths that glimmered like candle flame.

A shudder of revulsion swept over him. Tamis Ravitz, the dancer, wasn't human!

"Who are you?" Joel asked in a low hoarse voice. "What are you?"

"Please! Softly!" She lay beside him, relaxed, breathing tremulously.

"What are you?" he repeated.

"I can't tell you."

"You'll tell me or I'll turn you over to the guards. What did you do to your eyes?"

"This." She held up a pair of contact lenses. Realistic pupils and iris, Joel saw, had been moulded into the thin slivers of glass. She slipped them quickly into place. Her eyes looked normal, human. They were a perfect disguise.

"What are you?" Joel asked fiercely.

"I'm a mutation."

"No, you're not. I can tell by your scent! You're not human!"

The girl went rigid. Then she began to kick and twist and squirm desperately. Joel pinned down her legs, tightened his grip.

"D'you want me to yell for the guards?"

"No! No!" she breathed in panic.

"Then tell me what this is all about!"

"Have you the tattoo mark?"

* * * * *

Joel held up his left arm, being careful to retain a grip on her with the other. She trained the cylinder at his elbow. The green spot began to fluoresce.

"Ah," she breathed, relaxing limply. "You _are_ a legitimate maladjustment case. I thought you were a spy...." Her voice trailed off.

Joel remained silent.

"Believe me," she said. "I can't tell all. Not now. It's too dangerous. Suppose someone should wake and find me here!"

"What are you?" he repeated stonily.

She hesitated; then, putting her lips against his ear, she breathed, "Ganelon. I'm ganelon--not human. I--I am a native of the planet you humans call Asgard."

"But how have you escaped detection? Why hasn't anyone ever seen a Centaurian?"

"They've seen us--often." There was the suggestion of a giggle in Tamis' low voice. "Perhaps, like Professor Liedl thinks, we're plants."

"No. You're animal. I can tell. Maybe you could fool my eyes but not my nose."

"That nose of yours. It is unfair. _You_ are the mutation!" She gave a silvery chuckle and then clapped her hand over her mouth.

"Please," she begged. "I must go. We are courting discovery!"

"You haven't told me...."

"Tomorrow night," she interrupted. Suddenly she stiffened.

Joel heard it too. The faint noise of a heavy body shifting in one of the bunks. His eyes darted across the darkened fo'cs'le!

Walt Eriss, the burly ex-surgeon, had raised himself to one elbow and was staring across into their bunk.

Joel's heart stood still.

How long had Eriss been awake? Had he heard anything?

Joel could distinguish his features clearly but in shadings of gray and black. Eriss' eyes were narrowed, his mouth open in an expression of acute concentration.

"Does he see us?" Tamis breathed in terror.

"No." The word carried only as far as the girl's ear.

With a swift cat-like movement, Tamis slid to her feet and stood like a gray statue.

The shaggy giant was swinging his legs silently over the edge of his bunk. With infinite caution he began to creep towards them.

Joel stood up beside Tamis. Around him there was silence broken only by the low breathing of the prisoners, the faint rumble of the _Zenith's_ jets.

He pressed himself against the foot of the bunk, waiting, waiting for that stalking gray giant to creep within reach.

Joel didn't dare breathe. The ex-surgeon was so close that he could see his lips drawn back from his teeth, his blind staring eyes trying to probe the blackness. It took an effort of will to realize that it was too dark for Eriss to see anything.

Another step.

Joel set himself.

Eriss' foot glided forward. He was within reach.

Joel's balled fist came up like a sledge-hammer, cracked solidly against the point of Eriss' chin. There was a distinct "pop!" as the ex-surgeon's jawbone broke. His head snapped back, his knees buckled....

Joel stepped forward, caught him beneath the arms. Walt Eriss was out cold.

"Tamis!" Joel hissed.

"Yes?"

"Grab his feet. We'll lay him in his bunk."

Together they lifted the giant, hauled him across the deck, stowed him in his bed.

"Tomorrow!" Tamis breathed.

Joel saw her slide into her bunk. He retreated across the fo'cs'le and lay down, but his brain was reeling.

What did the presence of a native Centaurian among the malcontents signify? Then he thought of Walt Eriss and a coldness flowed through his veins. How much had the ex-surgeon overheard of this?

At length in utter emotional exhaustion, he dropped off to sleep.

* * * * *

Joel was awakened by lights and the angry sound of voices. He opened his eyes. Beams of light were darting here, there. The fo'cs'le seemed overflowing with guards in their gaudy blue and yellow uniforms.

He caught sight of the third mate, tousle-haired and wearing a lemon yellow dressing gown.

The third was saying, "By God, Captain Goplerud! What have we got this voyage? A gang of homicidal maniacs?"

Walt Eriss, Joel saw, was sitting up mumbling inarticulately. His jaw was swollen and queerly crooked. The ship's doctor was fussing over him.

"Jaw's broken," the doctor diagnosed.

Captain Goplerud ran his fingers distractedly through his hair. "It's that damned Hakkyt!" he said. "Hakkyt did this."

"Who's Hakkyt?" Mister Mullin wanted to know.

"He's the fellow who beat up Eriss before."

"Where is he?"

"Here," said Joel swinging his feet to the deck.

The beam of a flashlight struck him in the eyes.

"D'you know anything about this?" Mister Mullin demanded.

Joel shook his head.

"Does anyone know anything about it?" the third mate cried swinging the light beam in a flashing arc.