Part 4

"Don't mind me," Kevin said, within the _Frank Buck_. "If I'm confused it's merely because I can't believe this. Not you, LeClarc, not you."

They'd been ushered into the main lounge of the _Frank Buck_, a ship of about the _Gordak_'s dimensions, but two or three years older. LeClarc stood there with his neutron gun, watching them carefully. In a few moments, Schuyler Barling joined them, a greasy salve covering the discoloration on his jaw. The jaw looked painfully swollen too, and Barling rubbed it speculatively. "I won't forget this," he growled briefly to Teejay, then turned to LeClarc. "Kevin McGann I know, but what about this man?"

"Stedman?" said LeClarc. "You'll want him, because he's the extra-zoo man on the _Gordak_. If you took McGann and the woman alone, they still might be able to do their work on Carmical's ship. But with Stedman your prisoner as well, their hands are tied over there."

"What is this?" Teejay demanded defiantly. "What's the meaning of--"

"Will you be quiet and let me do the talking?" Barling interrupted her. "It was LeClarc who radioed and told me your coin had two heads. If you wanted to play the game that way, I wasn't going to stand by and let you. So--"

"So," LeClarc took up the thread for him, "we got together, Mr. Barling and I."

"But you, LeClarc," said Kevin. "You'd jump through a fire-hoop into a pit of acid if Captain Moore told you to."

"Would I?" LeClarc chuckled softly.

"Yes. Yes, you would."

"Perhaps there was a time I'd have done that, McGann. Perhaps. But then I thought the Captain needed me, and wanted me to help her, too. Now, with you and Stedman--well, LeClarc isn't so important, is he?"

"So that's it!" Kevin roared. "You're jealous. Not jealous the way a man should be, when he loves a woman, but jealous because you believed Captain Moore had discarded you--had decided you weren't such an essential cog in the _Gordak_ machine."

"Shut up." LeClarc took a quick step toward Kevin and hit him, hooking his left fist at the bigger man's jaw. Kevin staggered but did not go down. Bellowing, he charged at LeClarc, but the Frenchman waved him off with the neutron gun.

"Stop it, LeClarc!" Barling snapped. "I didn't have you bring them here to make a shambles of the lounge. Just stand off in the corner--that's right, there--and watch them. I'll do the talking."

"You realize, of course," Teejay told him calmly, "that this is kidnapping."

"Is it? Who is to say? You never entered the _Gordak_; LeClarc met you within the airlock. For all your crew knows, the three of you are out on Ganymede somewhere--with not much air left. After a time, they'll have to give you up as dead. With the Captain gone, and the Exec, and the expert on Extra-terrestrial zoology--their expedition won't amount to much. It looks to me like old man Carmical will be without a circus this year, unless he resorts to a strictly terrestrial shindig."

"What happens then?" Teejay wanted to know.

"Well, I'll be frank with you. I haven't decided. I can't simply return you to civilization, of course."

"Of course," Teejay echoed him acidly.

"Then you'd be able to holler 'kidnapper'. It would seem that you give me only one alternative. Ah--excuse me a moment."

A trio of men had entered the lounge and the leader, a stocky man of about thirty-five, was beaming. "We've got three," he said.

"Splendid, splendid. In that case, nothing remains to keep us on Ganymede."

"Chief, I'm sure glad of that. This place can give you the heebies, and you never know why. Those three anthrovacs should be a fine core to build your circus around, though."

"Three anthrovacs?" Teejay cried, her composure fading for the first time. "You've got three anthrovacs?"

Barling nodded. "LeClarc here was good enough to tell us Stedman's plan. A first-rate idea, as you can see, only we were able to carry it out. Frankly, I wasn't so optimistic at first."

"Let's get back to us," Teejay suggested. "You were saying...?"

"Umm-mm, yes. There's only one alternative, and much as I regret--"

"What is it? What's the alternative?"

"Please, must I say it? I think you know, and there's no need for me to--"

"No, I want to hear it."

"Suit yourself," said Barling. "The only solution is this: we'll have to eliminate you."

"When?"

"The sooner the better. But Captain Moore, you're making me feel--"

"That's all I wanted to know!" Teejay cried, and hurled herself at Barling. "We might as well try to escape while we still have a chance."

* * * * *

After that, things happened almost too fast for Steve to follow. Kevin got the idea at once, charging at LeClarc before the Frenchman had time to gather his wits. The neutron gun hissed violently, searing a three-inch chunk out of the ceiling. But then LeClarc was struck by two hundred pounds of Kevin McGann, and went down before the onslaught.

Something exploded against Steve's jaw and he did a quick flip and landed on his back. He'd hardly had time to declare himself in the battle, when one of Barling's men had jumped him. Now the man came down atop him, flailing with both fists, but Steve chopped at his face with short, clubbing blows and scrambled to his feet while the man caught his breath.

Steve didn't wait, plunging toward the man with murder in his eyes--and failed to reach him. An arm circled his neck from behind and he was dragged to the floor again, by the second of the three anthrovac hunters. He rolled over, saw Kevin and LeClarc off to his right, standing toe-to-toe and slugging. And beyond them, Teejay was cuffing Barling around the lounge with lusty, man-sized blows. Barling went down under the onslaught, falling at the woman's feet, but then the third hunter had grasped her swirling black cape from behind, throwing it over her head and tripping her. She fought blindly as she went down, taking the hunter with her; and with Barling, they became a tangled melee of thrashing arms and legs.

Steve rolled out from under the second hunter, but the first one met him halfway and pole-axed him down to the floor again with a hard right hand. Sobbing, clutching at the man's legs, Steve began to pull himself upright and got a knee in his face. He went down again, and this time everything in the room receded into a vague, shadowy fog.

When Steve could see again, there was still no order to the chaos. He hadn't lived a violent life like Kevin or Teejay--such things were not part of his background, although he'd boxed in college and won the light-heavyweight championship, too. But there was something different, something elemental about a free-for-all brawl.

LeClarc lay on his back, supine. He looked out of it for the duration, which still set the odds at four to three against the trio from the _Gordak_. Right now Kevin held his own with the two hunters who'd done Steve in, at least temporarily. But that couldn't last, for both were big, muscular men. And Teejay? She was a woman, so perhaps the odds were even worse. Steve smiled grimly as he clambered to his feet to help Kevin. Teejay was a woman, but she was the new twenty-second century woman, and proud of it. The third hunter kicked and thrashed helplessly on the floor as she held him in a head-scissors and at the same time fended off Barling who was crawling around them and looking for an opening. Teejay, definitely, was an asset.

Steve got to hunter number three quickly, pulling him off Kevin and straightening him with an uppercut. After that, it was a set-up. Steve pounded once and then again with his left hand at the man's midsection, then finished by crossing his right and feeling it crunch against the man's jaw.

"Now I see how you could take care of LeClarc that first day!" Kevin yelled, and promptly polished off the other hunter with a blow that lifted him completely off the floor.

As one, they whirled around to face the other side of the room. Barling and his henchman had finally got the upper hand. Teejay lay on her side, her hands behind her back. Not unconscious, she was completely spent, and an almost equally exhausted Barling was attempting to tie her hands with the black cape. The hunter sat there, dull-eyed, watching them. It was Kevin who lifted the hunter and hurled him away, and when Steve rolled Barling over and pushed him against the wall, the man did not resist.

Teejay climbed to her feet, unsteadily. "I--guess I'm growing--soft," she panted. "Maybe--I don't know--maybe training and muscle-toning from--infancy--aren't the answer. A gal just isn't cut out for rough and tumble fighting." Her hand flashed up to her forehead, the back of it resting against her brow. "Ooo, Steve, catch me--"

She fainted in his arms.

Somehow, they got Teejay into her vac-suit. The walls of the lounge were sound-proofed, and the struggle had attracted no one. Silently they made their way out of the lounge and through the corridors of the _Frank Buck_, heading for the airlock. Steve toted Teejay over his shoulder, and remembering Mercury, felt very good about it. He ached all over from the fight and he knew he'd need some mending. But she'd called him Steve, and that--suddenly and ridiculously--was most important.

"What's going on here?" A crewman met them in the corridor and bellowed his challenge.

Kevin raised the neutron gun he had taken from LeClarc.

He never used it.

A fraction of a second later, the _Frank Buck_ blasted off from the surface of Ganymede, and sudden acceleration threw them all to the floor. As Steve was to learn later, no hands were at the controls. No _human_ hands.

* * * * *

"This, roughly, is the situation," began Barling, pacing back and forth, speaking out of swollen lips and averting the right side of his face with its puffy cheek and blackened eye. "We are all in this together, and--"

"You hypocrite!" cried Teejay. "Six hours ago, you wanted to kill us. Now, because something unexpected pops up, you change your mind. Temporarily, for as long as you can use us, is that it?"

"No. If we can get out of this I'll forget about killing, provided you forget about kidnapping."

"Well...."

"You haven't any other choice, Captain Moore."

"He's right," Kevin admitted. "But what's the trouble we're in, Mr. Barling?"

"Six hours ago you three jumped us and almost made your escape. But the _Frank Buck_ took off; suddenly, without warning. _None of my men was at the controls._"

"That doesn't make sense," Steve objected.

"I didn't think so, either. I almost don't know how to explain it, what I've seen with my own eyes after my men held you in detention here in the lounge."

"Why don't you begin at the beginning?" Teejay said, and yawned.

"Don't be funny. Somehow, the anthrovacs escaped from their bubbles and--"

"What?" This was Steve, more than slightly incredulous. "Anthrovacs are mild creatures and unless they're attacked they won't do anything violent."

"That's what I thought, Stedman. I don't know what to think now. The anthrovacs escaped--and freed all the other animals. We've been out longer than the _Gordak_, we have a couple of dozen prize specimens. Lead by the anthrovacs, they've taken over the ship."

"Now you're joking," Teejay told him. "They're all brainless, those creatures, except for the anthrovacs."

"They _were_ brainless, Captain Moore. But not now. Now they behave logically, with a purpose, and they've taken over the _Frank Buck_ from stem to stern--all except those animals that need a special sort of atmosphere to breathe, and they've remained in their bubbles.

"Otherwise, the animals took over. And I suppose you can imagine--the crew was too astounded to resist, especially since the anthrovacs had gotten hold of neutron guns and seemed to know how to use them. Result--we've all been disarmed, we're prisoners aboard our own ship, and bound for I don't know where."

"Sounds crazy to me," Teejay said, and stalked toward the door.

Steve took a quick step after her, but Barling held him back. "Let her find out for herself, Stedman. Then maybe we can talk sense."

Teejay opened the door, stepped out into the corridor. Tensely, Steve waited, ready to bolt after her at the first indications of trouble. But what he heard was a yelp of surprise from the woman, and then she came running back into the lounge, slamming the door behind her.

"A Martian desert cat!" she cried. "It didn't do anything; it just stood there, all ten feet of it, looking at me!"

"Then you believe me?" Barling demanded. "As I see it, we must have been struck by some cosmic radiation which mutated the animals, and--"

"No," Steve told him bluntly. "That's impossible. First place, any such change would have to be selective. _All_ the animals wouldn't be affected. And more important, mutation takes generations to manifest itself. You never see the change at all in the original creature. Look at Earth, way back in the early years of atomics. Genes were mutated at those two island cities--Nagasaki and, umm-mm, I forget the name of the other. Anyway, genes were mutated, but it took over two hundred years for those mutations to become apparent. See what I mean?"

"I do," said Barling. "And that's precisely why I think we ought to fight this thing together. I had an idea, you helped me with it. We can continue like that."

"Well," Steve nodded, "we have a first-class problem on our hands. We can't do anything about it until we know what's going on--only the mystery's a little deeper than you think. First, I heard a voice out on Ganymede. My brother's voice."

"Your brother's?" Barling scratched his head. "Oh, wait a minute! You must mean Charlie Stedman who was killed out here a few years back?"

"Yeah, Charlie. You can't hear voices on Ganymede, but I heard them, inside my head. Also, don't forget the Ganymede-fear. I'd say the three things will fit together when we begin to learn what's going on."

"Provided we can find out," Teejay told him. "You can keep your scientific mysteries for a while, Steve. What I want to know is this: where are we going, and why?"

"Ask your desert cat out there." Kevin's laughter was sour.

"What we need is a good turncoat," Teejay assured him. "Someone who can go out among the animals and ask questions. I'm joking, of course, but if anyone could do it, it would be that rat, LeClarc."

Steve frowned. "That's not as funny as it sounds. Has anyone seen LeClarc since the fight?"

"No!" Kevin slammed fist against palm.

Steve was about to answer, but quite suddenly the lights blinked out. Somewhere outside, a dozen animals roared their fear. Within the lounge, Kevin commenced cursing lustily and an involuntary moan escaped Barling's lips.

The darkness was the bleak, utter black of deep space. Further, Steve realized, the steady humming of the fission engines had ceased.

Minutes later, impossible pain gripped him and flung him, sobbing to the floor. He'd never felt anything like it, a gripping, grinding, twisting torment which tried to turn him inside out. He heard the others dimly, reeling about the lounge and falling to the floor, and in the darkness someone fell near him.

"Steve? Steve, is that you?" Teejay....

"Yeah." The pain seemed to come in waves, and Steve gritted his teeth when the second turned out to be worse than the first. He reached out with his hand, found Teejay's and squeezed it. "Hold on, kid. It can't last forever."

"It better--not."

When her hand tensed in his, then relaxed, Steve knew she'd fainted. And soon after that, his own senses reeled and deserted him.

* * * * *

Teejay's hand was still tightly clenched in his when he regained consciousness. A dozen feet from them, Kevin sat up, shaking his head slowly back and forth. Schuyler Barling lay stretched out on his stomach.

"Whatever happened," Kevin growled, "I didn't like it."

Teejay extricated her hand, looked at Steve, smiled. "It's still awful quiet outside."

It didn't remain that way for long. As if Teejay's words had been a signal, a voice boomed at them from the wall-microphone. "We have landed. All humans will please file out into the main corridor in an orderly fashion and make their way to the airlock."

Schuyler Barling sat up groggily.

Teejay said, "I could swear I know that voice from somewhere."

"And I," Kevin told them. "It's familiar, though I can't place it."

Steve felt his heart pounding. The voice was Charlie's.

* * * * *

They stood on a flat, grassy plain which stretched halfway to the horizon and then began to undulate into low hills. And far off, shrouded by purple mists, a range of mountains loomed distantly.

Purple mist; a purplish cast to the sky; a fiercely bright blue sun. "What world is this?" said Kevin.

The crew of the _Frank Buck_--a hundred men--stood in a long, thin file outside the ship. They'd balked at first, but silently, the three anthrovacs had ferreted them out with their neutron guns, never uttering a sound, merely motioning with the weapons. Of the other animals Steve saw nothing, but within the corridors of the _Frank Buck_ he'd encountered a sand crawler and a desert cat, both dead.

The seconds fled, became minutes. When half an hour had passed, the crew became restless and some of them ambled off on the grassy plain until one of the anthrovacs herded them back. The _Frank Buck_'s Exec, a short, wiry man, strode within the ship and came out a few moments later, scratching his head. "I can't understand it," he said. "None of the instruments work. I thought we could just pile back into the ship and blast off, but apparently someone has other ideas."

Someone did.

Someone came striding across the plain, a small dot of a figure at first. He came closer.

Steve ignored the anthrovacs, ran forward. "Charlie!" he cried. "Charlie!"

The man was shorter than Steve, and stockier. His eyes searched Steve's face briefly, and he said: "Should I know you?"

"Should you! I'm your brother!"

"Interesting, but quite impossible."

The words hardly registered, and Steve babbled on, "We thought you were dead. It was Teejay here who reported back to Earth saying you'd died on Ganymede. Now you're alive and--" Abruptly he whirled, turned to Teejay. "You lied, damn you! Here's Charlie, see? Charlie was never dead. But you said--"

"I said Charlie was dead." The woman met his gaze levelly. "He was. I know a dead man when I see one. He was dead."

"But--"

"But nothing. I don't know who this is. I can't explain it. That has nothing to do with what happened on Ganymede years ago."

"Yes? Then what did happen? Why did Charlie write once that you must have been spawned in hell? You never did want to tell me what happened on Ganymede, did you? Maybe Charlie can."

"That is my name, Charlie Stedman. It is the name this body has always had, although when I do not inhabit it I assure you I am not Charlie Stedman," the stocky man said. "You see, the original inhabitant of the garment--the body--was destroyed. The name applied to the body as well as the inhabiting mind. The language remained engraved in the brain cells, and impersonal parts of the memory, too. In that sense, I am Charlie Stedman. Does it satisfy you?"

"Hell, no," said Steve, bewildered. Mystery had been piled upon mystery, with no solution in sight. And grim confusion turned to grimmer anger as he faced Teejay once more. "All right, start talking. Just how did you find Charlie? And what made him hate you like that? Talk, damn you!"

"Okay, I will. But I don't know why Charlie hated me, and that's the truth. I only met him once or twice and--unless it was Schuyler here. Hey, Schuyler!"

Barling joined them. "What do you want?"

"Answer this question: do you make a practise of poisoning the minds of your crew against me?"

"Well, I don't know what you mean by poi--"

Teejay grabbed a handful of his shirt and twisted, constricting the collar about his throat. "Answer me," she said. "And no run around."

"I--I guess so. It's only business, Captain Moore. The more they hated you, the more they'd be willing to fight you in the hunt every step of the way."

"How about Charlie Stedman?"

"I don't remember. Probably, it was like that."

Teejay flung him away from her. "Does that satisfy you, Steve?"

"For that part, yes. But what about the rest of it?"

"Not much to tell. I was out alone on Ganymede, a few miles from the ship. I thought I heard voices, sort of inside my head. I went forward to explore, just like you did, and also like you, I almost didn't have enough air to get back. Especially since I found your brother on the way."

"And he was dead?" As he spoke, Steve looked at his brother, standing right there in front of him, and wondered if anyone ever asked a more impossible question.

"Yes. He was dead. I don't know how he died, but I placed my ear against the chest of his vac-suit. The heart-beat is amplified through it, you know. But there wasn't any. After that, I ran back to the _Gordak_, and I had barely enough air to make it. I reported Charlie's death, of course."

Charlie's death. Well, she sounded sincere. But there was Charlie, standing two paces to her right and apparently listening to an account of his own demise.

* * * * *

Charlie cleared his throat. Quite evidently, it wasn't Charlie at all, but Steve could think of the man in no other way, for down to the smallest physical detail, he was Charlie. "That will suffice," he said. Again, it was Charlie's voice, but expressionless. "Enough of bickering. You will all march with me toward those hills, and we have a long journey before sunset."

The nine-foot anthrovacs took up their positions one on each side of the column and one behind it, and no one disobeyed. Once Steve looked back over his shoulder and saw the purple mists had almost completely swallowed the _Frank Buck_.

Then the irony of the situation struck Steve and he smiled--almost. He'd come to Ganymede after anthrovacs. But he'd left the satellite under an anthrovac guard! Fine thing. A mighty hunter was he! Clear across the universe to be bagged by his own game!

Obviously, Steve thought as they marched on, the blue day-star was not Earth's sun. Somehow, in a matter of moments, they'd left the Solar System entirely. He knew that theories had been advanced about traveling through something called sub-space, something which could make flight to the farthest stars almost instantaneous, since sub-space existed outside the space-time continuum. And that wrenching from one spatial plane to another might explain the tremendous pain they'd undergone, too. But surely the _Frank Buck_ had never been equipped for such flight. The whole concept of sub-space flight was strictly theoretical and hadn't even reached the drawing-board stage.

Then how had it happened?

Kevin had some vague, half-formed ideas on the subject, and he let Steve know about them. "It's a puzzler, boy. They took us a long way, space alone knows how far. I don't pretend to know why; we can't figure that out, not yet. But I know this: they could not have done that without help. Someone had to bring the ship."

"The anthrovacs?" Steve suggested.

"Not the anthrovacs. For all their handling neutron guns and taking the _Frank Buck_ over, they're just big apes to me. Maybe they were able to take the ship off Ganymede, but no more than that. They had help, boy, and from the inside."

"Who? Who do you mean?"

"I'm not sure I know. But look at it this way. The _Gordak_ wasn't taken, the _Frank Buck_ was. Why? I'll tell you why, or at least I'll tell you one possibility. There were scores of men on each ship, but while the _Gordak_ had only one animal--the stone worm you got on Mercury--the _Frank Buck_ had dozens. All right so far, boy? Well, here's what I think: _whoever took the ship wanted both men and animals._"

"I still don't understand."