Part 2

"Yes. Whispering. Eight men--five in the crew--"

"I'm only a mathematics clerk," I said. "But beauty like yours, Miss Blake--it makes me wish I were King. King of the Universe."

"That would be very nice," she laughed.

"Yes. Wouldn't it? 'If I were King, ah love, if I were King, the stars would be your pearls upon a string; the world a ruby for your finger ring; and you could have the sun and moon to wear--if I were King.'"

And I meant it. Surely no man ever made love under such a handicap as this! I bent closer over her, with the perfume of her intoxicating me; and she whispered,

"You tell him I'm afraid--tonight--at the next time of sleep--"

* * * * *

She suddenly checked herself, with a sharp sucking intake of her breath as she stared down the deck. My gaze followed hers. From the gloom beside the superstructure some twenty feet from us, a shadow had detached itself--misshapen shadow; that hunchback, malevolent looking member of the crew. He went shambling past us, with a coil of rope from a cargo shifter in his hand.

Did his sudden appearance strike terror into Nina? She was holding herself tense; not speaking, nor glancing at me, but staring seemingly fascinated by the man's gargoyle aspect. He perhaps did not notice us, and yet I had the feeling that his little eyes under the lumpy forehead had flung us a peering glance.

When he had gone past and vanished, back toward the stem on the other side deck, it seemed to me that the girl was shuddering.

"What is it?" I whispered.

"N-nothing."

"You're afraid of that fellow, Nina?"

"No! Oh no!" Her unnecessary vehemence seemed to belie her words.

The thing had so startled me that I had relaxed my caution. I realized it, as abruptly, from the ladder-steps which led up to the control turret on the roof of the superstructure almost over us, a long, lanky, white-uniformed figure was disclosed coming down. It was the ship's First Officer, young William Wilson. He was a handsome young giant. He smiled at us--mostly at Nina, and lounged into the chair beside her.

I had no further chance to be with the girl alone. A light meal was served us by one of the stewards, there on deck. The radio-helio operator, young Len Smith, had joined us. The squat, heavy-faced James Polter, ship's Purser, added himself to us; and then the fat, jolly, moon-faced little Peter Green, Second Officer, came puffing down from the chart room behind the control turret and drew up a chair. It was as though the girl were a magnet.

I left them presently. From back along the side-deck where I stood apparently gazing through a bull's-eye at the vast wonders of the glittering Heavens in which the little _X-87_ was hanging, I could see the group of men around Nina on the fore-deck, a gay little party in the moonlight. Why was Nina so terrified of that ugly hunchback? I had inquired about him casually from young Len Smith. His name was Durk; a new member of the crew, engaged to replace one of those so mysteriously sick. This was his first voyage.... Five of the crew, Nina had said. I was to tell the Captain about it. Vehemently now I wanted a talk with Mackensie. We'd have to chance an eavesdropper; if I was alert, my detector should warn me; and the promptness with which we had discovered the eavesdropping ray before, I figured would warn the fellow not to use it again.

It would have been, by Earth-routine, perhaps eleven p.m. The passengers were retiring to their sleeping cubbies. The decks now were almost deserted. I went up one of the side ladders to the superstructure roof. It glittered with starlight that came down through the glassite pressure dome which arched close overhead here. The superstructure roof was a rectangular deck space, a hundred feet long perhaps, by thirty wide. A low railing surrounded it at which one might look down upon the lower side decks. Chairs were scattered about up here, all of them unoccupied. Amidships was the little kiosk which housed the radio-helio equipment, with young Smith's sleeping cubby adjacent to it. The place was closed and locked now. Aft of it there was open deck space to where the roof-deck ended, with the stern deck-triangle a level below, where the earth-light still was red like blood.

I turned forward. The chart room backed against the control turret. The chart room was dark. In the control turret I could see Capt. Mackensie at the controls, his squat, square figure etched by moonlight. Would this be a good time to try and talk with him?

I started forward. The party down on the forward deck was just dispersing; I saw the boyish figure of Nina, starting for the superstructure corridor, with the giant handsome William Wilson escorting her. And then Dr. Frye came up the front ladder, went into the control turret and joined Mackensie. I turned aft; it was no time to see Mackensie now.

* * * * *

Suddenly I stopped, melted down into a black shadow near the helio kiosk and flattened myself on the deck. An S.S. Man, so they say, developes a sixth sense. Maybe so. Certainly I didn't see anything, nor hear anything. But I was aware that someone, or something, was up here on the silent deck with me. Perhaps it was a sense of smell; my nostrils dilated with the impression that the faint drift of artificial air up here had somehow changed its quality. Was there something artificially invisible stalking here? The Groff magnetic cloaks, so recently perfected, are closely held by Governmental orders. Even we S.S. Men seldom use them. But it is a queer thing--no matter what devices you use in crime-tracking, you may be pretty sure the criminal has them to use against you.

I tried my infra-red glasses. They disclosed nothing save the glowing heat of the ventilators where the warm air was coming up. The nearest I had to an eavesdropper was a pair of low-scale phones. In a second or two I adjusted them; tuned them. The myriad blended tiny sounds of the ship's interior gave me nothing that I could identify. And then it seemed that there was a very faint hissing--something, quite near me, which should not have been here.

Banning heat-gun in hand, I prowled around to the other side of the helio kiosk. How that lurking intruder got away, I don't know. To this day I have no idea. Doubtless he heard or saw me, and slid along the line of deck-shadows in a magnetic cloak, getting away so swiftly that my infra-red glasses could not pick up the heat of his body or his mechanism.

At all events he was gone. There was nothing but a faint chemical smell. And then, on the metal of the helio-room door, I saw a burned spot near the lock where his heat-torch just for a second had started its hissing; and then he had become aware of me and had taken flight. Someone trying to break into Smith's helio room!

That would have taken me to Captain Mackensie whether Dr. Frye was there or not. But abruptly, again I went tense, so suddenly startled that the blood seemed to chill in my veins. The low-scale magnifiers were still in my ears, murmuring with a chaos of tiny, meaningless sounds. My metal heel-tip by chance must have struck a metal cross-beam of the deck. Abruptly I heard a voice, which at that second must have been raised louder than it had been an instant before.

"Oh please! Oh my God, no!"

A girl's voice, gasping that fragment in an anguish of terror. Nina's voice!

* * * * *

I frantically tuned the magnifiers, to clarify it; but I lost it and could not get it back. Nina's voice, seemingly from her sleeping-cubby, which I knew was just about under me in the superstructure. I went down the side companion ladder with a rush; ducked into a nearby cross corridor. It was dim, silent and empty. The name-plates glowed on the doors. I came to hers, with its glowing greenish letters, _Nina Blake_.

Without the earphones there was only silence here now. For a second I stood, gun in hand, undecided. The door probably was locked; I did not dare try it to see. With my heat-torch, or even with a flash of the Banning gun, I could melt away the flimsy lock in a few seconds. But would that be quick enough? If one of the villains were in there with her now, and I blasted the door and startled him, his first move might be to kill her....

Tick-tick ... tick-tick....

With naked ears I suddenly realized that I was hearing the ticking from the big coffin-shaped box in her room.... Tick-tick ... tick-tick.... Rhythmic ... gruesome.... I own that my fingers were trembling as I crouched there by the door and adjusted my headphone.... The ticking rose to hammering thuds. Or was it my own pounding heart?... The hammering seemed to drown a tiny whisper of voices. Someone was in there with her, unquestionably.

I have no apologies for what an S.S. Man must do under stress. High over the top of the door there was a small transom-like opening, covered by a metal grillework. I could see faint tubelight glowing up there from within her room. I backed across the corridor, adjusting with hurried fingers my miniature projector of the Benson curve-ray. In another second its faint violet stream leaped from my hand in a crescent up to the grille. Curved light-rays, an arc through the grille and down into her room, bringing me along its curved path a faint distorted vista of the scene inside.

And then I heard her low voice quivering with terror:

"No! No, Jim--don't--"

James Polter, the Purser? In that confused second I stared along the Benson curve-light. Just an edge of the coffin-shaped box, which was lying flat on the floor against one wall, was visible to me. In the center of the dim room, Nina was standing--beautiful, slim little figure in a pale-rose, filmy negligee, with her dark hair streaming down over her pink-white shoulders. Her back was to me as she gazed at the deck window. It was a dark oval, with the shadows of the side-deck outside.

And in that second the blob of a man was visible in the window. I could only glimpse the hunched outline of him as he scrambled through, dropped to the deck and fled.

* * * * *

There was a cross corridor here which led directly to the forward end of that starboard side deck. I dashed its length; reached the deck. It was empty. That was my first confused impression; then as I whirled aft, I saw a blob on it, near the other end of the superstructure. A blob which rhythmically moved, sidewise and back again. And in the silence, there was the squish of water.

It was the hunchback deckhand. He was swabbing the deck, with a mop and a pail of water. I slowed my pace as I approached him, and dropped the Banning gun into my pocket. Could he by any wild chance, have been the figure I saw climb out of Nina's window? It seemed impossible.

"Evening, Durk," I said. I stopped beside him. His lumpy, disease-ridden face came up as he shot me a glance.

"Even-sir," he muttered.

His bulbous lips were parted, as though perhaps with a panting breath. The idea turned me cold. What ghastly hold could this fellow have upon Nina? I can't pretend to describe my emotions at that moment. Nina wasn't screaming now to tell that a man had forced himself into her room. She was willing to keep it secret. Or perhaps too terrorized to do anything else.

"What's your name?" I said pleasantly. I had stopped beside him; was lighting an arrant cylinder.

"You said my name, sir. It's Durk." His muttered voice was thick. The sort of voice one might use to disguise its natural tone? Was it that?

"Oh, yes. Durk," I agreed. "Jim Durk? You're a new man, aren't you?"

"First voyage, yes sir. But my name's Pete Durk."

Surely he was breathing too hard for a man scrubbing a deck--much more like a man who had been running.

"My first voyage too," I said. I started on; then turned back. "By the way, have you seen Mr. Polter? I was looking for him."

"The Purser, sir? I'm thinkin' he should be in his office."

I nodded; turned the superstructure corner; went into the main corridor. Polter's little office cubby had a light in it. He was sitting there casting up his accounts. Jim Polter. I had heard half a dozen people call him that. Nina's voice came echoing back into my mind.... "No--no Jim, don't--"

Was this the fellow who had climbed out of her window just a few moments ago? His desk light illumined his squat, thick-set figure. He was a man of perhaps forty. He glanced up at my step.

"Hello, Mr. Penelle. You're up late."

"Just going in," I said.

Polter was smoking. The fragile ash on the little white paper cylinder was nearly an inch long.

I passed on. At Nina's door I briefly paused. There was no sound. The ventilator grille overhead was dark now. Upon impulse I pressed her buzzer.

"Yes? Who is it?"

"It's I. Fred Penelle."

Her door opened an inch; the sheen of light in the corridor showed her white face framed by the flowing black hair. A wave of her perfume came out to me.

"What--what is it?" she murmured.

"Are you all right?" I whispered lamely.

"Yes. Yes--of course." And she added still more softly, "You're taking too much chance--here like this. The Captain--did you tell the Captain--what I told you--"

"I'm going there now."

She closed the door. I stood with the sudden realization that I might be going beyond my job as an S.S. Man; my personal interest in this girl leading me to pry into her private affairs. But the feeling was brief. The terror was still in her eyes; I could not miss it. I decided then to go to Mackensie in the control turret. Someone had tried to melt into the helio room. Mackensie must be told it. Heaven knows, there never had been an S.S. Man who felt as helpless as I did at that moment. I could not determine whether I should tell the Captain what I had seen and heard in Nina's room, or not. How much Mackensie himself knew of what might be going on, I could not guess. And there was not another person on the _X-87_ whom I could trust! It was as though I were wholly alone here, with lurking murderers in every shadow, watching their chance--waiting perhaps for a predetermined time when they would come into the open and strike.

* * * * *

I was part way along the corridor when without warning my body rose in the air. Like a balloon I went to the low vaulted ceiling, struck it gently, rebounded, and floated diagonally back to the floor, where I landed in a heap! Heaven knows, it was startling. For those seconds I had been weightless, the impulse of my last step wafting me up, and my thud against the ceiling knocking me back again. The weird loss of weight was gone at once; I was close to the floor when I felt myself drop down to it. And I scrambled to my feet. My heart was thumping; I knew what had happened. In the base of the ship, artificial gravity controls gave us Earth's normal gravity on board. Without them, the slight mass of the _X-87_ would give a gravity pull so negligible that everything in its interior would be almost without weight. Len Smith, the young helio operator, had taken me around the little vessel just before the voyage began, explaining me its mechanisms. I remembered the room of magnetic controls, where the _X-87's_ artificial gravity was regulated. A young technician named Bentley had been there. I had spoken to him a moment. He and his partner alternated on duty there throughout all the voyage.

And the artificial gravity controls now were being tampered with! For just a second or two, this particular area of the corridor here had been cut off, so that as I came to the de-magnetized area my step had tossed me to the ceiling. The floor section was normal now; I stepped out on it gingerly to test it.

Why was Bentley experimenting with his controls? Surely that never went wrong by accident. If I could catch Bentley at it--force him to explain--Or was it someone else tampering with the complex gravitational mechanisms down there?...

I remembered the location of the little magnetic control room; rushed to the nearest descending ladder. The lower level, down in the hull, was a metal catwalk, with side aisles leading into suspended tiny rooms. Freight storage compartments bow and stern; air renewal systems; pressure mechanisms; heating and ventilating systems. Beneath me, at the bottom of the hull, were the rooms of gravity plate-shifting mechanisms--compressed air shifters of the huge hull gravity plates by which the course of the ship through Space was controlled. I was not concerned with them--merely with the magnetic artificial gravity of the vessel's interior. The little magnet room was near it hand; its door was open, with its blue tubelight streaming out.

No one was in sight to see me, apparently, as I padded swiftly along the catwalk. From the distant bow and stern mess-rooms I could hear the faint blended murmuring voices of some of the crew who were off duty. I came to the magnetic room doorway. The room seemingly was empty. The banks of dials, switches and levers which governed the different areas of the ship were ranged up one wall. They all seemed in normal operation; none of the tiny warning trouble-lights were illumined. Bentley's little table, with his pack of arrant cylinders and a scroll book he had evidently been reading, was here with its empty chair before it.

* * * * *

And then I saw him! He was lying sprawled, face down, over in a corner, with a monstrous shadow from the table upon him, and just the faint glow of the electronic flourescent tubes painting his dark worksuit so that I noticed him. He was dead; I turned him over, stooping beside him. His chest was drilled with a pencilray of heat, presumably from a low-caliber Banning gun....

"Don't move, Penelle! I've got you!"

I stiffened at the sound of the low, menacing voice in the dimness behind me.

"Leave that gun where it is. Put your hands up and turn around. By God if you try anything funny, I'll drill you through. I've got you covered."

I was kneeling by the body of Bentley, with my gun on the floor-grid beside me. With hands up, I slowly turned. The tall figure of William Wilson, the ship's First Officer loomed over me with the tubelight gleaming on his white and gold uniform. He was staring down grimly; he held a small heat-gun at his hip, leveled at me.

Out in the open at last. So this was one of the criminals; the fellow who had tried to melt into the helio room? The eavesdropper? The man who had been in Nina's room? Heaven knows, of all on board, I had least suspected him.

He thought, of course, he had me trapped. But you can't capture an S.S. Man just by holding a gun on him and telling him to put up his hands. Even with my hands up, and the Banning gun on the floor beside me,--I could have pointed my left shoulder at him, drilled him with a stab of heat from the heat-ray embedded in the padded shoulder of my jacket. My right elbow was pressing my side to fire it, with all my body tensed to try and drop under what might have been his answering shot. But I didn't fire. His next words checked me.

"So you're not just a mathematics clerk--a damned murderer here on board! Get up! We're going up to Mackensie."

I stared as his foot kicked at my gun, and he swiftly stooped and picked it up.

"Come on," he added with a rasp. "Climb to your feet, Penelle. We'll see what the Captain has to say about this--"

"That suits me," I murmured. I said nothing more. Docilly I let him shove me in advance of him, up the ladder, along the dim main corridor, up the companionway from the starlit bow deck triangle to the little catwalk bridge in front of the turret.

* * * * *

Fortunately we encountered no one. At his telescope in the peak of the bow, the forward lookout turned and gazed at us curiously. The dim control turret was empty, eerie with the spots of fluorescent light from its banks of instruments. The controls were locked for the vessel's present course. The door oval to the adjacent chart room was open. Mackensie was alone in there, plotting the _X-87's_ future course on a chart. He stared blankly as the grim young Wilson shoved me in upon him.

"Caught this damned fellow in the magnet-room, Captain. He's killed Bentley. By God--something queer's in the air this voyage. Bentley murdered--"

Mackensie's first stare of startled amusement as I was shoved captive before him, faded into horror. His heavy, square jaw dropped.

"Bentley murdered? Good Lord--why--what ..."

"Somebody was tampering with the ship's gravity," I murmured swiftly. "I felt it go off in a section of the main corridor--went down to the magnet-room. Bentley's there dead--drilled through the chest--"

"Bentley killed? Murder, here on my ship! Why, by the Gods of the starways--" Big Mackensie was momentarily stupified, his eyes widened, his heavy face mottled an apoplectic red with his rush of anger.

"I caught this fellow Penelle--" young Wilson began.

"Don't be an ass," Mackensie roared. "He's a Government crime-tracker--stationed here on board this voyage--"

My gesture tried to stop him. "Easy Captain. Listeners might be on us--"

The chart room door, here beside us, which opened onto the superstructure roof, was closed. But the small oval window beside it, also facing sternward, was open. I dashed to it. The dim roof deck seemed empty. I noticed a light in Len Smith's helio cubby.

I drew down the metal shade of our window. Whirled back. The astonished young Wilson stared at me in numbed amazement. "They're coming into the open," I murmured. "Look here, Captain, we've got to plan--"

"Why--why, good Lord--I thought we were guarding against a plot on the Moon--"

"Well, we're not. It's here--now--" I told him what Nina had said; five of the crew. The new men, placed here on board. And how many of the officers might be in it--

"Why--why good Lord--" Mackensie was completely stricken. For an instant that floored me. I saw him now as a Captain of the old school--bluff, roaring; the sort of fellow who on a surface vessel would deal grimly and ruthlessly with mutineers. But he was frightened now; frightened and confused.

"Why--why Penelle--you mean to think that here on my ship--"

"Ready to strike--now," I murmured. I told him about the burned place on the helio room door. He could only stare, numbed. And now the murder of Bentley--the first tangible attack our adversaries had made. Who were they? Five of the crew--that would include the hunchback Durk ... Mokk, the Martian? Ollog Torio, the pallid Venus man? Some of the other passengers maybe? And of the ship's officers, whom could we trust?

"Why--why all of them, by God," Mackensie murmured, as I voiced it. "I wouldn't have traitors on my staff--"

But this treasure of the T-catalyst--it might be worth a million decimars to the Venus revolutionists. And money can buy men--even men who have long been in honest service. The Second Officer--fat, jolly little Peter Green--he perhaps could be trusted. James Polter, the Purser? Of him I could not guess. Dr. Fyre, the Surgeon? Even with a plugged, counterfeit thousandth part of a decimar, I wouldn't take my eyes off him.

* * * * *

The handsome young giant, Wilson, stood gazing at us now in blank horror. He was hardly more than a boy. Quite evidently he knew completely nothing of what was going on.

"But what are we going to do?" Mackensie was stammering. Then he spluttered, "By the God's I won't have this sort of thing on my ship. I'll muster them all up here--find out who this damned murderer is--"

I seized him. "Easy Captain." Then I bent closer to him. "Captain Mackensie--things I don't understand yet about this. That big box in Miss Blake's room--" And on impulse I whispered: "Someone was climbing out her window a while ago. She called him Jim. She's in terror of him. Captain, see here, you've got to tell me everything about this."