Part 2

He used the key Quong Kee had given him and found the ship deserted. The interior was better. He was pleased to find a three-inch layer of Selene between the hulls. The artificial spider silk, closely woven and specially processed, was as tough as any material in existence and its insulating qualities couldn't be matched.

In the spotless control cabin he found that the instruments were fully modern. The cabin was globular; gyroscopes kept the gravity--if any--under its floor. A glance into other compartments brought a whistle to his lips--the _Chicago_ was crammed with fuel and food. Gail Melvin must have prepared this as a permanent home.

Two tiny sections were the sleeping quarters of Gail and George Melvin. He poked around them until a feeling of guilt made him stop. He sank into a spongy, bolted-down chair, damning his new-found ethics. He'd straighten out a few things when that female showed up.

* * * * *

She didn't seem surprised to see him. She glanced his way casually and started tugging off her heavy coat. A gentlemanly impulse almost had him out of his seat to help her, but he stifled it.

Her nose was red from the mild summer weather of Mars, and he thought briefly that if her cheeks were a little fuller, she would probably be more or less good looking. As a matter of plain fact, she was too damned skinny. She must spend most of her time worrying about her brother.

She was taller than he had thought, but still looked slight and helpless. And hopeless as well. Her shoulders drooped a little as she faced him.

"I saw Quong Kee," she said.

"Oh--I'm sorry about your brother." He hesitated. "Have you any idea who did it?"

He almost squirmed when she looked at him. The expression in her eyes was not entirely friendly.

"I have ideas," she said. "And they're not nice."

Her eyes were dark and smoldering now.

"They questioned George with a new type of lie detector--Skolssolky or some such name. I wasn't supposed to know--"

Barnard's eyebrows went up. "The police questioned George? Somebody must have found out!"

Gail dropped her coat over the back of another chair and sat on the chair. She was pale and her eyes were haggard.

"When I found the police had picked him up," she said, "I took an espine pill and became _en rapport_ with him."

She pressed her slender fingers against her temples. "I'm tired ... espine isn't as bad as _neoin_, of course, but it has a strong reaction. They found out some things from George that I'd never been able to find out.

"This instrument reaches deeper into the subconscious than anything ever used before. Even so, everything was vague. But George had been on Pluto. Somehow he'd followed the _neoin_ trail there; how, I don't know.

"But on Pluto, they did something to him. They took his mind and made him like a new-born child. His brain was perfectly blank. I've been teaching him as I'd teach an infant--but he was so slow learning."

"Pluto--" Barnard stared. "Then _neoin_ comes from Pluto. Lansfer knows this--"

He looked at the girl and damned his conscience again. There was a first aid box set into the wall, and he found a bottle of brandy in it. A small black bottle was there. He noted the label--_Espine_, another outlawed drug the authorities tolerated for emergency purposes. Not habit-forming, but continued use of it would soften the brain and wreck the nerve centers.

He slammed the cabinet door on the black bottle. She had reason to be tired.

He made her drink the brandy. She spoke softly, between sips. "When I heard that, I determined to go to Pluto. If something there could take my brother's intelligence away, we might be able to reverse the process."

"Or lose your own," Barnard murmured.

"When Quong Kee told me about the--George, it changed all that, of course. There was no need to go to Pluto."

"You've got your nerve," Barnard growled. "You speak very calmly about invading Pluto single handed."

Definitely, Pluto was no place for her. But he had to be in on the kill. Would Lansfer cooperate?

"Miss Melvin," he said, "I'll have to see the Space Police, find out if they'll take me with them. I suspect they won't. So I'm going to cable my boss for money, and if it's all right with you, I'll charter this ship--"

"I'll be very happy," she said, "to take you with me to Pluto--so you can get your story."

He stared. "But--you mean you still intend to go to Pluto? What possible reason could you have now?"

* * * * *

She reached for her coat and dug into the sleeve. Barnard blinked when three of her fingers came out at the shoulder.

"That hole," she said, "was made by a bullet. Somebody took a shot at me on the way over here, and I've been followed. Evidently they've decided I know too much. I'll never step out that door alive."

She indicated a red pane of glass on the instrument panel. "If that glows, they're approaching the ship. Be ready to give them a warning blast from the rockets."

Barnard thought wistfully of the gun he had left in his hotel room. "That means I'm here for keeps, too. But you can't go to Pluto. I'll drop you off at another Martian city--or on some other planet that's on our route."

"Did you ever operate a space ship?" she asked.

"No, but--"

She shook her head. "Besides, they have agents everywhere. My life isn't worth a counterfeit milliplatin. So I might just as well go to Pluto."

Barnard sprang to life as the detector signal glowed deep red. He leaped to the handles of the rocket jets, prepared to throw out a warning blast.

There was a pounding on the hull. "Open up, in there! It's the Space Police!"

"That's Lansfer's voice." Barnard hesitated at the lock. "That means we're safe--or does it? Is this ship ready to take off?"

"Yes--"

"Then--just on a hunch--get at the control board--"

He closed the inner door of the lock behind him before he opened the outer. No use silhouetting himself against the lighted interior.

Lansfer almost lost his poker face. "You! You'll get into trouble, Barnard, if you're not careful. What are you doing here?"

"Guest of Miss Melvin, commander. And you?"

The officer indicated a paper. Barnard noted that his other hand remained close to his holster.

"We're impounding this ship. The Space Police can't be responsible for old wrecks endangering human life and limb on the spaceways."

"Very thoughtful of the Space Police all of a sudden," said Barnard.

There were two other patrolmen with Lansfer, he saw. Remish and a red-haired man he knew to be named Grady. His searching eyes picked out several shadowy figures lurking at corners of the field. He looked again at Lansfer.

"You have our word," he said, "that this ship is to be used only as living quarters by Miss Melvin."

Lansfer stared coolly up at him. "This court order calls for the _Chicago_ to be delivered immediately into the custody of the sheriff and auctioned for scrap. You and Miss Melvin will leave it immediately."

Barnard nodded agreeably. "All right, commander. We'll leave--right now."

Lansfer relaxed. He was about two feet below Barnard, the platform being that high from the ground. Barnard reached out carefully with his foot and shoved. The spaceman flew backwards into Grady, and the two of them crashed to the frozen ground.

Barnard pulled the door swiftly. Lansfer was clawing for his gun and shouting for Remish to stop them. Remish's gloved fingers fumbled as he drew and the outer door was closed before he fired. Barnard grinned as the bullets bounced off the door. That hull was more than tough enough to handle all the bullets the Space Police could throw at it.

"Get off the ground, Gail," he shouted.

He slammed the inner door of the lock and swayed with the control room globe as the rockets went into action. The ship jumped forward a few feet, balked for a moment. Gail threw a lever that opened the shutters. They saw the three policemen scrambling madly to both sides as the _Chicago_ started roaring down the field.

They blasted away and left the ground, the police still firing after them. Barnard clung to a bolted-down chair as they lurched wildly. Gail pointed the nose up until the ship would have been hanging from its props, if it had any.

"That's all we needed," said Barnard, sourly. "We're both outlaws now--fair game for anybody. Our only hope is to break the dope ring. And Lansfer, if we can."

She looked distastefully at him. "That would make a good story, wouldn't it? Daring reporter defies police; smashes _neoin_ ring. Of course, there might be some opposition."

"Which way is Pluto?" he asked, changing the subject.

"I haven't the faintest idea. Hand me that book--the big one--"

IV

Barnard found that space navigation was more complex than he had thought. He watched in grudging admiration as the girl rejected course after course. Finally she looked up at him and frowned.

"We have to go sunward--the sun is almost directly between us and Pluto. We can get there fast, and speed is our best bet to evade the Space Police. But it'll be dangerous."

"I'll take the chance," said Barnard. "But don't be reckless with your own life. How many months will it take?"

"About four days."

He stared suspiciously at her. "It took me fourteen days from Earth to Mars. What's this crate got that the Inner Planets Line hasn't?"

She smiled. "For a great reporter, you don't know much. They could make the Earth-Mars run in a day--but that's where the danger comes in. If a rock gets in their path, they have to be traveling slow enough for the detectors to find it and change the course. That's done automatically, but we haven't powerful enough detectors yet to handle high speeds."

"Oh, a job for the instrument makers?" Barnard was beginning to realize his ignorance.

"You could put it that way. The chance of hitting anything big enough to hurt a space ship is small, of course, but with hundreds of ships in space, there would be a lot of wrecks if they all went as fast as we're going to go!"

* * * * *

They plunged almost directly into the sun, nose forward to cut down the radiant energy. Gail sat in a sea of charts and tables, calling out instructions to Barnard, who was learning to handle the controls. She kept the rockets blazing, and before many hours had passed they could almost see the sun growing in size.

In the growing warmth, the reporter dozed off to a restless, nightmarish sleep. He awoke with a start to find himself soggy with perspiration, his bones aching. Gail, hunched over her figures, looked up and grinned impishly.

"Warm?" she asked. "The cooling units are going full blast. The vision plates are all shuttered, but if you want to look, I've swung dark glass into place."

She gestured to one of the darkened vision plates, and her fingers slid to a button that opened the shutters. Barnard looked and closed his eyes when he saw the monstrous body that was the sun.

"I've seen enough," he assured her. "Where are we?"

"Inside the orbit of Mercury. We'll be closer before we're farther away."

Barnard studied her. At the most dangerous part of their journey, where space was filled with cosmic debris plunging into the sun, she had lost her hunted look and worked with a graceful nonchalance. She seemed actually to be enjoying the whole thing.

The murderous forces of radiant energy pounded at and through the heavily insulated hulls. Barnard mopped his sweat-soaked face and waited for the metal of the space ship to ignite. He stared at the girl and wondered how she could be so happy and poised, though she was as bedraggled as he was. Was her mind gone, too?

He decided so when she told him, much later:

"Congratulations, Mr. Barnard. Right now you and I are closer to the sun than any other human beings ever have been--"

He studied her face.

She stared through the darkened glass into the inferno. "Except," she said thoughtfully, "for a few unfortunate expeditions that fell into it."

* * * * *

Then they were starting to recede. The _Chicago_ was inside the eccentric orbit of Vulcan, and starting to plunge away from the sun. The tremendous velocity they had been building up was far more powerful than the titanic pull of the sun's gravitational field. Gradually, the temperature went down to a cool 100 degrees, and the two humans, limp and worn, took turns catnapping.

Barnard lugged can after can of fuel for the tanks. The motors pounded constantly, building up greater and greater velocity. At timed intervals, Gail took sights of the visible planets to check their speed.

Their course curved far above the plane of the ecliptic. No passage through the asteroid belt at this speed!

That was Gail's main worry. "We're veering out of the crowded belt, but there're stray asteroids far from the ecliptic plane. If we pass that region, we'll be in fairly empty space, and more or less safe, except for the Space Police."

Barnard raised his eyebrows. "Space Police? How could they trace us at this speed?"

"We're as obvious as a green spaced Venusian in New York," she told him. "It's the speed--we're actually tearing up space. Lansfer's instruments could pick us out from a hundred million miles. But that's a lot of room." She glanced slyly at him. "Now you can write science articles for the Sunday supplements."

"Lay off me," he begged. His questing fingers found a cigarette as the clock ticked over to the hour. Smokes were rationed in space. He lit up and drew smoke into his hungry lungs, then passed the cigarette to Gail.

"At least," he said, "I have a job to do on Pluto, which is more than you can say. What are you going there for?"

She passed the cigarette back.

"It seemed like a good idea at the time," she said.

Barnard stared silently at her. She looked strangely happy, plunging toward God-knew-what evils on far Pluto! He felt suddenly disgusted with the whole affair. They were two fools, defying the Space Police for the right to seek certain death.

"Gail," he said, "don't go through with it. Slow the ship down and get off at the nearest human settlement--one of the Jovian moons, or Titan. I can handle this ship now. My syndicate will pay--"

The entire universe exploded then. He pounded brutally into the concave walls, whirling end over end as the ship spun madly out of control. His head crashed as the spherical control room escaped its gyroscopes and he fought desperately against crushing blackness. Gail--was she mangled, killed? There was a senseless spinning, and then it was dark ... dark....

* * * * *

He fought his way out of the blackness. Something was searing his throat ... he coughed in agony and the shock brought him partly to his senses.

Gail was pouring brandy into him. He saw her by the hard glare of the battery-run light. She was bruised and her coveralls were torn, but she was alive.

He came to his feet and gripped her arms. "Gail?"

Then he stopped. Her eyes were pained and misting. She swayed and collapsed in his arms.

For a moment he was frantic. What to do? He carried her to her room, made her comfortable. Fervently, he hoped no bones were broken. But after a few minutes she opened her eyes and made a face at him.

"I'm not hurt," she said dreamily. "Just a sissy. Go and see what happened."

Gratefully, he watched her relax. He rubbed his hands thoughtfully and studied the damage in the control room. The meteor couldn't have hit very hard--they would have been killed without knowing it. A mere graze!

He reached out fearfully and cut off the blazing rockets. The vision plates were blackened--no way of knowing which way they were going.

That was his first job, then--to unshutter the vision plates. He reviewed his knowledge of the mechanism. Evidently the master switch that controlled them all had been short-circuited. The switch was in the very tail of the ship. He crawled through the hold and into the tiny compartment in the tail.

His pocket flash picked out the switch, and he made with the screw driver. A few seconds later he looked proudly through the opened plate, feeling like a master mechanic.

But he didn't feel so happy when he saw a swifter-moving point of light in the star-filled sky.

A spaceship was closing in on the _Chicago_. And goose pimples rose on his arms when he recognized it as the police ship of Commander Lansfer.

He had to get back to the control room.

The police ship was coming in at a half mile a second, relative to them. What both ships were doing relative to the system he didn't know, or care. On his hands and knees in the close cubby, he scrambled around to get back to the control room. But already it was too late.

Invisible beams of magnetic force leaped into life between the two vessels, as the law ship clamped down with its Duvals. Barnard was pitched heavily forward as the beams seized the _Chicago_. His head crashed into something hard, and he fell into a relaxed bundle.

V

It was cold, and he was beating his way out of a frozen death. He fought his way up from the floor, a sluggish chill in the marrow of his bones. Frigid ... and he was sinking back.

Remembrance shocked him into wakefulness. He stared from the port before his face. The police ship was there, clamped by invisible forces to the _Chicago_. Dully, he watched the fore rockets blasting for deceleration.

Deceleration--?

That brought him to frantic life. Were they nearing Pluto? How long had he been out? And--why was it so cold?

His teeth and knees still chattering, he wriggled down the narrow passage, pushed his light before him into the room where he had left Gail. He stared wildly.

She was gone.

Then the police had come aboard while he was unconscious and taken her aboard their vessel.

Back in the control room, he stood helplessly for a few seconds, his mind starting to black out again. No power--the ship was leaking its heat into space. His numbed fingers found the right switches. Heat started to seep into the room, and life seemed to flow back into his body.

But Gail--what of her? His distrust of the solemn-faced Lansfer became suddenly more intense. He had to find out--and he was separated from the police ship by fifty feet that might as well have been miles.

There was another way. He fumbled in the medicine kit, snatched the black bottle labeled "_Espine_." He'd take a pill, even if it killed him in his weakened condition, and use ESP to find out what went on aboard the other vessel. He tore the stopper from the container and turned it upside down over his palm.

Nothing came out.

He cursed the empty bottle fervently, because already the only other answer was coming to his mind. He almost tried not to think of it. But this was emergency.

In one of his pockets he found the tiny packages of _neoin_ he had bought while cultivating the peddlers on Mars.

There was a tiny pinch of gray powder in the paper he tore open. One gram--a normal dose. Full strength, he was sure--the stuff was seldom cut.

He hesitated. Even one dose of the drug created a craving for more. He vowed grimly that this first taste would be his last.

But this made his fight personal. He must destroy the source of _neoin_ in sheer self-defense!

Before the gray powder was past his tonsils, he knew he had taken too much for a beginner. A fantastic lift, a great self-confidence almost sent his mind out of the world. Grimly he fought to keep down the giddy exhilaration, and let his thoughts search for Lansfer's ship.

He had trouble coordinating his thoughts, because of the tendency of his drugged mind to stray. But he caught the control room of the police ship.

Carefully, he kept away from the minds of the four people there. There was an added lift when he perceived Gail, small and defiant, facing Commander Lansfer.

It was Barnard's first experience in extra-sensory perception. With all the power of his will, he focussed his thoughts on the scene. Gail was speaking.

"I tell you," she said, "the reporter is on Earth. He said something about having a big lead. I took the ship into Earth's atmosphere and he bailed out in a parachute. I was glad to be rid of him."

* * * * *

Barnard hoped that what she said was entirely untrue.

"You say--" Lansfer's face was without expression--"that he forced you to do this?"

"I said no such thing," Gail told him. "And if you're going to twist my statements, I'll say nothing more."

Lansfer's palm flicked out and Gail's head reeled. A vivid patch of red appeared on her cheek. Barnard's fingers tightened around the spongy arms of his chair.

The commander turned swiftly to Remish and Grady. None of the officers noticed--but Barnard did--that Gail's fingers were sliding along the control board.

"Barnard is aboard that ship," Lansfer snapped. "You two couldn't have searched very thoroughly. This girl is lying--she couldn't possibly have slowed down enough to let Barnard 'chute to Earth, and still have come this far."

Remish looked uncertain. "Commander--you're the boss here, but--"

"But what?" Lansfer barked.

Remish's eyes darted briefly to where the red welts stood out on Gail's cheek. He licked his lips and for a second his gaze met Grady's. For a moment he hesitated, then faced Lansfer again. He shrugged briefly.

"Never mind," he said. "We'll talk it over at headquarters later."

Lansfer lost some of his poise. He glared at the two patrolmen. "You two get back to the _Chicago_. Find Barnard and bring him to me!"

Barnard saw Gail's hand hovering over the tiny bar. Suddenly he was shocked. He realized that the bar controlled the Duvals--the magnetic beams that pinned the two ships together. Then she had felt his presence and was waiting for a signal from him. He shouted the thought:

"_No!_"

Swiftly she disobeyed him, and twisted the bar. In almost the same instant she snatched the gun from Lansfer's holster. She backed away a step and leveled it at the officer.

"Turn this ship around," she ordered. "We're going back to Mars."

Lansfer's narrowed eyes peered at the control board where she had disconnected the grapples. He turned to the girl. His voice was flat, sullen.

"Give me that gun."

"No." She backed away another step and he followed, hand reaching. Her face became paler. Lansfer stopped and stared into her eyes. His eyes were compelling, hypnotic. She stood motionless and tried to shake the effect. Lansfer moved a step closer.

Remish's hand gently removed the gun from her fingers.

Barnard swore disgustedly. Why had Gail cut the grapples? She must have some fool idea that he could beat the police to Pluto, win out on his own.

Maybe he could. There were only two little difficulties involved. First, he didn't know where Pluto was, or how to find it. Second--the planet was Earth-size, and where on its millions of square miles of surface was whatever he wanted?

The second problem was partly solved. From Lansfer's mind he had a vague picture of a vast white sea, trapped in a ring of white mountains that knifed into a black sky.

From Lansfer's mind--!

Even in his _neoin_ jag, a jolt came to him. How did Lansfer know that? Frantically, his thoughts speared back to the police ship. But it was too far now--only confused fragments came.

But one image brought him to his feet, sobered and fearful for Gail's safety. Wildly he searched space for the magenta blasts of the police ship's rockets.

Because his extra-sensory perception brought one clear image. In Lansfer's pocket he had perceived the ancient twentieth century coin he had given to George Melvin.

VI

His fevered eyes studied the vision plate. Pluto--since they had been pointing toward it, must be ahead. He held his hand over a button, and cross hairs appeared on the plate. At the junction of the hairs was nothing.

But he found a grayish blob larger than the others at the edge of the plate. Experimentally, he turned in the rockets and headed for it. It moved steadily to the right, so it must be the planet.