Part 3

No one answered.

Captain Goplerud said, "It's no use. They're tight-mouthed as clams."

Mullin cursed, then he said, "Get this man to the hospital."

Walt Eriss was bundled onto a stretcher. The guards moved off. The doctor, Mullin, and Captain Goplerud disappeared with the lights.

Darkness settled once more over the fo'cs'le.

For a moment there was silence. Then a prisoner asked, "What happened?"

A babble of voices answered. Somebody said, "The first I heard was Eriss beating on the door to the guardroom. When it was opened he fainted and they carried him in here."

Thorp leaned down from the bunk above.

"You hurt, Joel?"

"No. Why should I be?"

He was answered by a chuckle.

V

When Joel sat down to breakfast the next morning, Tamis shot him a warning glance from beneath lowered lashes. The pallor of her cheeks was accentuated by her sooty hair. She had the exotic look of some temple harlot strayed through time from ancient Babylonia.

Joel realized suddenly that Professor Liedl was talking to him. "What did you say?" he asked.

"That was a splendid service you performed last night."

"You mean Eriss? But I didn't do it."

"You're too modest." Liedl combed his black van dyke with long brown fingers. "I'm a light sleeper, my boy. And my bunk, you may recall, is next yours."

Joel's face stiffened. He glanced quickly at Tamis. The blood had drained from the girl's countenance.

"What did you hear?" he asked in a frozen voice.

"Don't be embarrassed. Your voices didn't carry, and I'm quite broadminded."

Joel stared at him bewildered. Then the blood began to burn in his cheeks as it dawned on him what Liedl meant. "The old goat," he thought. "So that's what he believes!" And he felt suddenly relieved.

Tamis' lashes were lowered. She bit her nether lip. But whether from amusement or confusion, he couldn't decide.

Fortunately, at that moment the door to the guardroom opened. Mister Mullin stuck his head inside; shouted:

"Get a move on. Inspection in fifteen minutes."

With relief Joel made his escape. He didn't like Liedl's insinuation. He didn't like Liedl. There was something cold and repellant about the black bearded professor. He wondered what crime he had committed to be sentenced to the Experimental Station.

In exactly fifteen minutes Captain Goplerud, accompanied by Mister Mullin entered the prisoners' quarters and lined them up at their bunks. Then a dozen guards filed in and took posts about the fo'cs'le with drawn paralyzers.

Joel wondered uneasily what was up. He wasn't left long in doubt.

A stiff-backed man in a faultless olive-green uniform came through the door. He was wearing the gold sunburst of a Star Ship commander on his breast.

Nick Thorp nudged Joel. "The old man!" he said out of the corner of his mouth. "What the devil brings him down here?"

The commandant ran his eyes over the prisoners. "Very good, Mullin." He turned, said crisply, "This way, Governor."

Governor Cameron and his daughter came through the door together. The governor was a big man with harassed gray eyes. He faced his daughter in obvious exasperation. "Well, here they are, Priscilla. Now why were you so confounded anxious to see them?"

The girl stared around with parted lips. There was a curious eagerness in her green eyes. Then she discovered Joel and he was suddenly conscious of that strange affinity between them.

She wore gold sandals and her toenails and fingernails were lacquered green to match her eyes and hair. She had on a brief pleated skirt, a matching monkey jacket of shimmering rose silkon. Her bare midriff, the valley between her breasts, her long legs were smooth golden tan.

"Which one," she asked in a breathless voice, "broke Walt Eriss' jaw?"

"Hakkyt," Mullin informed her briskly. "The big ugly one over there." He pointed at Joel.

Joel found himself staring into the girl's green eyes again. Her lashes were long, black and curly. Her green hair was startling but it wasn't garish.

Without taking her eyes from Joel's, she asked, "Could I see his examination reports? I think he's a...."

The governor started nervously. "You're buying no more serfs Priscilla!" he interrupted in haste. "That's final!"

Joel felt his face burn. Buy him? So that's what had brought them down here to the prisoners' quarters!

The girl was staring at her father with a puzzled expression. Something very like a warning flickered between them--something in Governor Cameron's expression. Joel couldn't be sure.

But the girl's eyes widened.

For a moment there was a strained silence. Then she shrugged, turned back to Joel, studied him brazenly detail by detail. He felt naked beneath those probing green eyes. He felt like a prize Hereford bull.

Priscilla said, "Nevertheless, I should like to glance over those reports, Captain." Her voice didn't sound quite natural.

She had slipped into a part, Joel sensed; she was acting. But why? He was too furious to care. He created a shocked disturbance by saying in a cold voice, "I wouldn't be a good buy!"

* * * * *

Jaws dropped among the prisoners.

Mister Mullin shouted, "Speak when you're spoken to!"

Priscilla Cameron suddenly smiled. "Why not?" she asked him, silencing the apoplectic mate with a wave.

"I'll damn well see to it that I'm not!"

Priscilla continued to regard him with delighted green eyes. "A challenge!" She turned to the saturnine man wearing the gold sunburst. "How much do you want for him, Commandant?"

The commandant had been observing the scene with cynical gray eyes. He was the perfect Terran type; tall, brown-skinned, erect. Now he said,

"Sorry, Priscilla, but he's not mine to sell. He's the property of the Republic, and the laws are specific. He has to be sold at auction in Eden."

Priscilla said, "Stuff! The governor can authorize the private sale of any serf...."

"We're not on Asgard," the commandant reminded her dryly. "This is a Star Ship."

Governor Cameron's visage had grown a rich plum shade. "This farce has gone far enough!" he bellowed furiously. But his anger didn't ring quite true. "I wouldn't authorize the sale of this fellow to my daughter if I could!"

Priscilla said sweetly, "I'll buy him at public auction."

"You will not!"

"Exactly how, pater dear, do you propose to stop me?"

The governor looked as if he were about to have a stroke. Then he swung around, stamped from the fo'cs'le.

It struck Joel as a shade overdrawn. As if Priscilla inadvertently had been about to let something slip, and they'd staged this impromptu fight to cover up.

He heard the commandant say, "Sorry, Priscilla, but I'm due on the bridge."

Priscilla gave Joel a last searching look. Her green eyes sparkled. "I'll see you at the slave block in Eden," she said as she preceded the commandant through the door.

As soon as the guards had withdrawn, Nick Thorp gave a low whistle.

Joel was still furious. "What was she driving at? Why the devil did she pick me out?" He noticed that Professor Liedl was regarding him with a frown. Tamis, too, was watching him, a speculative expression on her elfin piquant features.

Thorp shrugged. "That's hard to tell. She's got a reputation from one end of Asgard to the other. There's even been talk that she's a mutant."

"Mutant." Joel frowned. She certainly hadn't bred true to type. The standard Terran female had light brown skin, black hair and gray eyes. But hers were green--like cat eyes. Like his own eyes!

A startled expression passed over his likeable rugged features. "By George!" he said aloud. "I wonder!"

Later, when the lights had been extinguished again, he lay awake in the dark--tense, listening. The fo'cs'le was quiet. At length, satisfied that everyone was asleep, he slid from his bunk, crossed the deck to the mess-room.

The faint yellow night light was burning. He sat down at a table, lit a cigarette, waited. He was chain-smoking his third cigarette before he heard a step. He glanced up quickly. Tamis was standing in front of him.

Joel said, "I thought you must have gone to sleep."

* * * * *

Tamis sat down facing him. She'd removed the contact lenses. The liquid luminous depths of her eyes were hypnotic. "No. I couldn't sleep. We need men like you too badly. You especially."

"Me?" he said, startled. "You need me?"

She smiled. "My people, Joel, are a timid race, unwarlike, unaggressive. There are many differences between us. Not of an organic nature. We are fundamentally alike. The differences lie in our culture."

"How do you mean?"

"It is difficult to explain. But your race is so far advanced in the physical sciences that it terrifies us. With your incomprehensible machines you could sweep us into extinction in the wink of an eye.

"When the first Terran ship landed on Asgard, we were careful not to show ourselves. Then we learned a queer thing. Although the Terrans were amazingly clever in physics and chemistry, they knew nothing about the potential of the machines that were their own bodies. Nothing! So we continued to elude them and to study them...."

"How?"

"I am not at liberty to tell you that. If the Thinkers accept you, they'll inform you how it is done."

Joel stared at her narrow eyes. "But...."

"No. Don't interrupt. Your civilization, we learned, was a machine civilization. Your race even went so far as to reject any individual who differed from the norm. The Republic's goal was an ant-like similarity of all its members."

Joel said, "I don't see...."

"Don't you? What becomes of any mutation who escapes the vigilance of the Eugenics Board? What happened to you, Joel Hakkyt?"

Joel was silent.

She looked at him searchingly. "Instead of concentrating on the physical sciences, my people have studied--themselves! The psychological sciences. We don't try to control our environment; we fit ourselves to it."

Joel shook his head, still not comprehending.

She said, "You humans build elaborate shelters to protect yourselves against the elements; we have developed our bodies to resist the weather. We revel in rain. Sunlight is intoxicating.

"You have added speed to your legs with machines, wings to your arms with machines. Your machines are like crutches. They give you an immense power, but they atrophy the natural endowments of your body. Could you do this?"

She pointed with a bird-like gesture behind Joel. He swung around. His eyes widened.

The bulkhead had disappeared! He was staring straight through the ship as if it had ceased to exist. He could see the awesome black infinity of deep space speckled with countless pinpoint suns.

Then the bulkhead gathered substance. And he was looking at the blank wall again.

He let his breath escape. "How did you do that?"

"You were seeing with my eyes. Your people have invented machines to do that--the X-ray machine, the fluoroscope. They are crutches. They cannot do half so well as the eye alone!"

"But it's impossible!" he burst out.

She shook her head. "No. Consider the facts. Even in the densest solid, there is more space than matter. Every atom is like a miniature solar system. There is an infinity of space in that bulkhead but only a drop of matter no bigger than a grain of sand. Is it not true?"

Joel nodded.

Tamis giggled. "You know that, and yet you let the grain of sand obstruct your view!"

"But why hide yourselves?" he burst out. "With powers like that...."

"I didn't destroy the wall," she interrupted. "I recognized its transparent qualities. That is all. We have no weapons, no science that can destroy. We can only hide!"

"But why hide?" he persisted.

She regarded him sadly. "Your people are a hard grasping race--ruthless. What has happened to the dominant life forms of Mars and Venus? They are extinct!

"We don't propose to be driven into extinction. We have hidden ourselves, waiting for a weapon to free Asgard. And now the Republic itself has given us one!"

"The Republic has given you a weapon!"

"Yes. The maladjusted. The misfits. They are being organized. They are our weapon!"

"Very interesting!" drawled a low voice from the doorway to the fo'cs'le.

Tamis gave a startled gasp. Her face paled. Joel sprang to his feet.

Professor Gustav Liedl stood just inside the doorway. He held a small poisoned needle automatic trained unwaveringly at Joel's belly.

VI

In the tense silence, Liedl moved into the mess-room.

"What are you going to do?" Joel demanded hoarsely.

Liedl grinned, his teeth glittering in the subdued night light.

"Spy!" said Tamis.

Liedl shrugged. "The word has a disagreeable sound. I prefer to call myself a Government Investigator."

He was edging past them toward the door to the guardroom. The muzzle of his gun hung to Joel's belly like the needle of a compass.

"Stop him, Joel!" Tamis begged wildly. "You are human. You can kill!"

Liedl had to pass within three feet of Joel down the narrow aisle between the tables in order to reach the guardroom. Joel could see the sweat standing out on his sallow forehead.

"Don't try anything!" the professor croaked and began to slide past.

There was the sound of a step from the fo'cs'le. Then the voice of Nick Thorp sang out softly, "Where are you going, Gus?"

Liedl blanched, jerked his head. For a second his eyes were off Joel.

Joel's hand whipped out, slapped the dart gun. It was torn from Liedl's fingers, went slithering across the deck to fetch up with a clatter against the bulkhead.

Liedl opened his mouth to yell. Joel's big hands closed about his throat.

"Kill him!" said Nick Thorp in a brittle voice.

Liedl clawed wildly, spasmodically, at Joel's wrists. The ex-professor's black goatee stuck straight out like a spear. His mouth was open. His round gray eyes bulged.

The muscles of Joel's forearms stood out like cords. Sweat trickled unheeded down his nose. His face was expressionless, his green eyes narrowed morosely.

The only sounds were Nick Thorp's hoarse breathing and the muted rumble of the jets. Tamis pressed herself against the bulkhead, a fixed, horrified expression on her face.

Liedl's convulsive thrashing grew weaker. Suddenly his knees buckled. He buckled. He slumped to the deck.

Joel followed him down, stooping over him bear-like, never relaxing the throttling pressure. Sweat ran into his eyes.

He became aware of Thorp shaking his shoulder.

"He's dead!" Thorp was saying. "Dead. Do you hear me?"

Joel drew a gasping breath, stood up, wiped the sweat out of his eyes. He didn't look at the crumpled figure on the deck. This was the second man he'd killed. The first had been an accident, but not Gustav Liedl.

Tamis said suddenly, "We can't leave him there!"

"No," Thorp agreed. "We'd better dump him down the waste chute. The reconverters will dispose of him."

He picked up the body like a limp sack of potatoes. "Open the chute."

The girl held up the lid while Thorp slid the body into it. There was a faint swoosh. Tamis let the lid drop.

An awkward silence fell upon them.

"Well," Thorp broke it, "we're in this together. Liedl was a government spy. There'll be hell to pay when he turns up missing."

"But they can't trace it to us," Tamis asked. "Can they?"

"No. The reconverters will take care of that."

Joel stood up abruptly, started for the fo'cs'le.

"Joel!" Tamis said.

He didn't answer.

* * * * *

Walt Eriss, the ex-surgeon, returned eventually from the ship's hospital--a savage-eyed Eriss who obviously had been nursing his grievances. Almost his first act was to confront Joel.

"Hakkyt," he said thinly, "that's twice you've struck me." He fingered his jaw, his curious yellow-gray eyes aflame. "I'll kill you for this."

Everyone stopped talking, stared breathlessly at the shaggy haired giant. Thorp moved beside Joel, but he didn't say anything.

Joel said dryly: "Well--what's stopping you?"

Walt Eriss began to tremble. "No," he said in a harsh voice. "I don't want witnesses."

"Talk," said Joel. "You talk too much to do anything."

The ex-surgeon turned abruptly on his heel and stalked away.

Thorp said, low-voiced, "Watch him. Don't ever let him get behind you."

"He's a bluff."

"No. He's a killer. I've seen his kind before. He'll get you, Joel." The spaceman's blue eyes were cold. "You're not safe while he's alive...."

Joel frowned. "What do you mean?"

"I mean we'd better dump him down the reconverters tonight!"

Joel was shocked. "I'm not a murderer!"

"It's not murder; it's self-defense."

"No!" said Joel and refused to hear any more about it.

The succession of days crept past as alike as beads on a string. Joel tried to draw Tamis out about the Ganelons, but she had been too badly frightened by Liedl's death.

She was afraid of him, too; he could see it in her eyes and it worried him. One sleeping period he asked her about it with characteristic bluntness.

Tamis bit her lip. "I--I never saw a man killed before. I can't get it out of my mind. It's not you, Joel." And then she began to tell him about her early life in the Ganelon village.

It was a life without sham--a simple joyous pagan existence close to the primal forces of nature. Tamis' voice trembled with nostalgia.

Joel was fascinated. He was on fire with impatience to reach Asgard.

On the forty-third day the _Zenith_ came out of the Stellar Drive and began to fire her braking tubes.

Down, down she settled towards the surface of Asgard, second planet of Alpha Centauri A. An electric excitement ran like flames through the Unfit.

Joel couldn't eat. "How much longer?" he asked Thorp for the hundredth time.

"For Saturn's sake, sit down," the ex-spaceman exploded.

Joel dropped into a relaxer, lit a cigarette. His green eyes glittered with anticipation. Tamis gave him an amused glance, but Joel sensed that the Ganelon girl was as excited as himself.

"We should be landing in an hour," she informed him.

Joel felt the _Zenith_ shiver from the violence of her braking blasts. Minutes ticked past like hours. Then a bell began to ring and went on ringing.

After an interminable wait, Joel was shaken by a heavy jar. The _Zenith_ rocked sickeningly. There was another blast of the jets. Another jar.

The roar dwindled and fell silent. A strange hush pervaded the ship.

"Asgard!" Thorp shouted, leaping to his feet and slapping Joel on the shoulder. "We're down!"

* * * * *

The prisoners were led straight from the Star Ship into the spaceport where a robot surface bus was waiting to carry them into Eden. The bus was constructed after a design strange to Joel. It was a half-track with heavy mesh screens at the windows.

When he accidentally touched the screen, he received a jarring electric shock. Tamis, who was seated beside him, giggled.

"Where do they think we'd escape to?" he demanded bitterly.

"They're not to keep us from escaping, Joel."

Just then the bus started smoothly, gathered momentum, burst out into the brilliant light of Asgard's twin suns.

Joel forgot the electrified screens, craning his neck, trying to see everything at once. The spaceport, he realized, must be located at some distance from Eden. The road ran straight ahead--a glittering plastic ribbon cutting a channel through the fantastic jungle.

It was monstrous, that jungle. It writhed, twisted, swayed in great swaths although there wasn't the faintest breeze. Suddenly the bus stopped with a jerk to allow a herd of huge tree-like plants to swarm across the road.

Joel gaped at them in amazement. They had thick flesh-like trunks from which writhing tentacles sprouted like the arms of an octopus. A mass of wriggling squirming thread-like roots propelled the plants forward with startling speed.

"Ugh!" Joel shuddered, turned to Tamis. "What are those?"

"Nigel trees."

Joel wrenched back suddenly from the window. One of the nigel trees had lashed out with a tentacle. It touched the screen. There was a green spark. The tentacle jerked back.

"Now do you see why the screens are electrified?" Tamis asked. "The nigel trees are carnivorous."

The bus started to move again. Joel was regarding the Ganelon girl with a frown. "You actually live in the jungle with those things roaming about?"

"Yes. They don't bother us."

He looked incredulous. "Why not? Don't they like your flavor?"

Tamis giggled. "We can control them--a little. They don't think. They react to external stimuli."

"I see," said Joel. But he didn't.

He heard a wailing siren overhauling them fast from the direction of the spaceport. The bus pulled over to let an escort of guards on armored prowl-cycles roar past. Immediately following them, came a plastic tear-drop tri-wheeler. The governor and his daughter were lounging back in its roomy seats.

Priscilla glimpsed Joel and waved mockingly. Then the procession was gone, a second detachment of guards bringing up the rear.

Buildings, Joel noticed, had begun to replace the jungle, buildings of thick opaque plastic without windows. The moving sidewalks, shaded by gaudy awnings, were crowded with men and women clad in little more than shorts and sandals.

The air, Joel realized, was stifling. The dazzling yellow ball that was Alpha Centauri A rode high in the steel blue sky. Alpha Centauri B was a smaller molten-orange sun swimming just above the horizon. Joel had never felt such heat before. It was like the engine room of a tramp spacer.

The bus slowed down, swung into the curb. Captain Goplerud shouted, "Pile out!"

Joel saw a detachment of guards drawn up at the curb. They wore white uniforms and pith helmets and carried small automatic paralyzers. A crowd began to collect behind the double line of guards, which ran like a gauntlet into a massive prison-like structure. From behind him, Nick Thorp said, "Here's an old friend of yours."

"Who?" He glanced up in surprise, recognized Priscilla Cameron grinning at him with an impish expression.

* * * * *

She was dressed in crisp white shorts and a brief jacket. Her green hair wasn't so startling as it had been aboard ship. Joel had noticed other women on the street of Eden with green hair, with yellow hair, with cerise, vermillion, chartreuse hair. It obviously was the latest mode of Asgard.

"That's the one, Colonel!" he heard Priscilla say to the man beside her. "Be sure to notify me when he comes up for sale."

Joel reddened.

The colonel touched his cap. "I'll be glad to, Miss Cameron." He turned to Captain Goplerud.

"Move them inside, Captain. They're not used to the suns. Have a good crossing?"

"Rotten," said Goplerud. "I'm glad to get 'em off my hands. Watch that fellow Hakkyt, by the way. He's a killer."

Then the line began to move. He had been carried beyond earshot into the dim warmth of the prison.

VII

The voice of Tamis Ravitz came softly, insistently through the steaming prison twilight. "Joel. Joel!"

He swung away from the window through which he'd been staring at the streams of pedestrians outside. "Yes?"

The Ganelon girl lowered her voice. "I've been in communication with my people...."

"What?" Joel couldn't believe his ears. For two days the Unfit had been locked in the prison. All of them in a single barracks-like room. The girl hadn't been out of his sight. "How the devil...."

She smiled, tapped her forehead with a slim forefinger.

"Telepathy?"

She nodded.

Joel's green eyes narrowed. Tamis never failed to astonish him. The suffocating heat didn't bother her in the least.

The other prisoners were sprawled about the floor, many of them stark naked. Clothes of any kind were a torment. The slightest exertion brought fountains of sweat pouring from the skin. But Tamis wasn't even perspiring.

She said, "I've made my report. I've been given permission to tell you certain facts. Is there anything you particularly want to know?"

Joel scratched the bristles on his chin, frowned. "How is it," he asked finally, "that the Ganelons have never been discovered?"

An impish grin crossed her smooth elfin features. "Professor Liedl was almost right."