Chapter IX

Gavin's heart sank. Of course the ship that brought Y would be hidden in the neighborhood. It would be simple enough for them to refuel the _Nova_.

Y had taken time to release the slaves and dispose of the bodies of the crew. That, Gavin surmised, was what had delayed the _Nova's_ take-off long enough for him to slip aboard. Now should the _Nova_ be apprehended in space, the Interplanetary patrol would be forced to release her for lack of evidence.

Villanowski glanced up. "We're licked, lad. We may as well toss in the towel."

Gavin looked at the chief engineer blankly.

"You mean," asked Y of Villanowski, "that you and Murdock are working for the same organization?"

The chief engineer laughed bitterly. "We're not working for anyone, but ourselves. You forget, Mr. Y, that the four-dimensional drive isn't the only contribution I've made to interplanetary travel. General Atomic stole the others. We had hoped--" he jerked his head at Gavin "--to keep this one for ourselves!"

Gavin's mind was going in circles like a dog chasing its tail. What was Villanowski's motive?

"Go on," said Y in a foreboding voice.

Villanowski looked down at his chains. "A ship travels through space during a passage of time. It had occurred to me that if I could invert the formula and drive a ship through time during a passage of space, the crude rocket ships could be abandoned. Murdock had gotten in trouble when Transplanet was discovered to be a colonal smuggling ring. He had studied astrophysics under me at New Yale. I knew him and knew I could trust him."

Gavin swallowed and struggled to keep a grip on himself. Obviously Villanowski had something up his sleeve.

Villanowski looked at Gavin. "We needed a space ship to complete our experiments. The effect of the drive on a body at rest was startling enough to predict success if we could attain sufficient velocity."

Gavin thought he detected a faint stressing of the word "startling". Villanowski had said, "_The effect of the drive on a body at rest was startling_...." The _Nova_ was at rest!

"I persuaded Cabot," Villanowski proceeded, "to let me install the mechanism aboard the _Nova_. Murdock was to try--"

Gavin jumped.

With a back-handed, edge-on swipe, he caught Y in the throat full on his larynx.

Nadia screamed as Y went over backwards and lay still. The factor leaped to his feet. Gavin kicked him in the belly. Spinning against the girl, he wrenched out of her hand the dart-gun which she was drawing.

"The keys!" Villanowski panted. "Y has them."

Nadia opened her mouth to scream again.

"Don't." Gavin pointed the dart-gun straight at her open mouth. Nadia shut it.

The factor was writhing on the deck, but Y lay like dead. Gavin found the keys and released Villanowski.

"The engine room," he cried, "we've got to reach the engine room."

"Take Y's gun," said Gavin. He turned on Nadia. "Come along. We can't leave you here to sound an alarm."

Nadia's lips were bloodless. She moved stiffly between them, Gavin's dart-gun prodding her gently in the spine.

They reached the engine room without being discovered and disarmed the startled guard. Villanowski whistled a bar in C sharp and then said, "Open sesame." The door in the steel bulkhead swung soundlessly outward.

There was a faint grin on Villanowski's homely face. "Sound waves set its mechanism in operation. I read a story when I was a youngster--Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves," he confessed. "When I built the lock I couldn't resist designing it to respond to those vibrations."

The ship rocked slightly.

"What's that?"

"Felt like the blow-back of an atom jet," Gavin replied tersely. "I think Y's ship, the _Comet_, is landing."

The _Nova_ rocked again, more violently than before, and a faint rush of flaming jets penetrated to the engine room.

Villanowski scuttled through the door with Gavin prodding Nadia after him. The chief darted for the control board, seized a gleaming lever, slid it cautiously along a slot.

The huge spherical tube, which Gavin had observed before, began to glow gently. The yellow mist, he saw, was gathering in the outer room, but the air in their chamber remained crystal clear.

"The time field," Villanowski explained, "creates a neutral area, an oasis, around the point of generation."

Gavin rubbed his eyes. On the other side of the door was nothing! It was like looking out into the void beyond the farthermost limits of the stars.

"Now, Murdock," Gavin heard Villanowski ask, "when do you expect the interplanetary patrol spacers to land?"

* * * * *

Gavin wheeled around. There was an uncertain smile on Villanowski's homely features.

"How did you know?"

"The little death," Villanowski explained complacently. "When Miss Petrovna told me her dream, I knew...."

"You _are_ a T.I.S. agent!" Nadia interrupted in an odd voice. She put her hand on Gavin's sleeve. "You're going to turn me over to the courts?"

Two white patches appeared at the corners of Gavin's mouth. "Sure. The patrol spacers are on their way. I couldn't turn them back now--" he paused--"even if I wanted to."

"Give me a chance, Gavin?"

He asked, "Why did you sell out to Tri-World?"

The girl lifted her eyes to his. "I was proscribed. Tri-World has granted me amnesty. That was their price. My life. I wouldn't have done it, Gavin, but I was afraid."

"Does that explain why you tried to double-cross Tri-World in the first place?"

"I told you about that."

"And what about Trev? He hid you out when you were proscribed. He got you aboard the _Nova_. Why did you sell him out to Cabot?"

"But I didn't. I--I...."

"Don't lie to me," he said and gripped her shoulders. "You'd made your dicker with Tri-World. Trev was in your way. He knew too much about you. He might even have got wind of what you were up to. So you went to Cabot and told him about Trev being a dealer in scientific secrets. You knew Cabot would kill him, thinking the Martian had sold out to X."

The girl flinched. "I'm not asking you to shield me, Gavin. Turn me loose. Just let me have a fighting chance to escape. Give me a chance, Gavin."

"And Cabot," Gavin continued inexorably, his pale blue eyes stony. "You delivered Cabot and the _Nova_ over to Tri-World."

He turned her loose.

"Give you a chance," he repeated and gave a short bitter laugh. "A chance to do what? Double-cross me like you have everyone else?"

Nadia shrank away. "The dream!" she said in a frightened voice. "It's just as it was in the dream. You laughed!"

Villanowski interrupted sadly. "You weren't dreaming during the little death. We're only equipped with three dimensional sense organs. We're blind to everything but the immediate instant. But time's a dimension. It's co-existent. When the _Nova_ was projected across time, your entire life was spread out around you. What you actually did was experience a segment of your life. It happened to be a segment in the future."

Nadia's lips were bloodless. "You guessed when I told you about the dream?"

"I didn't guess," replied Villanowski. "I knew! Miss Petrovna, if you saw the _Nova_ captured by the Interplanetary Patrol through efforts of Murdock who was a T.I.S. agent, then it was inevitable that it would take place exactly as you had seen it. There was nothing any of us could do about it!"

A faint grin broke across Villanowski's homely face. "I saw that it behooved me to give Murdock a hand when and if he needed it."

Gavin said, "I think I can promise you amnesty, Villanowski. I couldn't have captured the _Nova_ without your help."

"Oh, that's not all," Villanowski chuckled. "The Empire will want this space drive to power her ships. I'll be a valuable man. Even Y didn't intend to kill me until I had explained its mechanism to Tri-World's scientists."

"How long," asked Gavin abruptly, "have we been on Jupiter? I lost track after that shell knocked me out at the cantonment."

"This is the second day."

Gavin wrinkled his brow. "The patrol ships should be here in about four hours."

* * * * *

Outside the _Nova_, a gaping hole in space marked her position. The astounded crew of the _Comet_, who had landed prepared to refuel the captured _Nova_, eyed the eerie vacancy with mixed emotions. One of the crew flung a rock into the enveloping blackness. It disappeared. There was no sound of its falling to the ground.

The commander of the _Comet_, deprived of Y's guidance, fumed nervously. He glanced at his watch at intervals, saying at length, "If the _Nova_ doesn't reappear by dark, we'll take off. We can lay up and re-establish contact by radio."

The men gathered about the maw of blackness staring into it with hypnotic fascination.

They fell an easy prey to the five sleek patrol craft which plummeted down on them three hours later.

The short Jovian day was on the wane when the _Nova_ began to gather substance like a tenuous cloud. Her misty outlines grew solid. Then the port opened. Gavin Murdock appeared in the entrance.

Commandant Samuels, a grizzled veteran of the T.I.S., was the first man up the gangplank. He shook Gavin's hand. "Nice work, Murdock. But it smacks damnably of witchcraft."

The Flight Commander was right behind him, followed by the captains of the Empire's patrol spacers. The Flight Commander caught sight of two of Y's men lying unconscious just within the port.

"What the hell's this? The palace of the sleeping beauty?"

"You haven't seen the half of it," Gavin assured him with a grin. "They're lying all over the ship like that. Villanowski says the effects last about an hour. Better lock them up before they come to."

"Villanowski?" echoed the T.I.S. Commandant. "He's not dead, is he?"

"No," said Gavin, surprised at the anxiety in the Commandant's voice.

"Good!" growled Samuels. He lowered his voice to a subdued roar. "Ticklish mission. I'm supposed to persuade him to accept a post on the Empire's Bureau of Research. They're afraid his space drive will fall into wrong hands. But Villanowski's such an embittered old goat, he'll probably...."

There was a faint chuckle behind Gavin.

Villanowski, who had come up unobserved, said, "Your diplomacy, Commandant Samuels, is unique." There was a broad grin on his homely face. "I couldn't think of opposing such finesse."

The grizzled T.I.S. Commandant's features flamed an apoplectic red. Then he burst into laughter, wiped his eyes, and blew his nose.

"Where's Nadia?" Gavin asked sharply.

"Ironed to my old chair in the officer's mess." Villanowski handed Gavin the keys.

Gavin passed them on to the Commandant. He gave a terse but concise report, while the men filed aboard and began to cart the unconscious Tri-World agents off to the patrol spacers.

Y was found to be dead, the blow on his esophagus having killed him. When the mask was stripped from his face, Commandant Samuels identified him in amazement as the chief of Tri-World's gestapo.

"We caught X, too," he said. "We received a flash aboard the flagship that X has been captured in space."

"What was he charged with?"

"Piracy. Y's men will be tried on the same charges. Tri-World, of course, will disclaim any connection, but she'll have to rebuild her gestapo from top to bottom."

* * * * *

Gavin moved aside to allow two men with a stretcher to pass out the lock. The body of the factor lay on the stretcher looking thin as a straw. He was alive, Gavin noted, seeing his chest move faintly.

"This gives the death blow to the slave trade," the Commandant began. Then he realized Gavin wasn't listening.

Nadia Petrovna followed the stretcher. Her hands were in irons and a guard walked beside her. She passed silently between the men, her black eyes flashing Gavin a look of hate before she descended the gangplank.

"Mark my word," said Commandant Samuels grumpily, "that girl will get off with a light sentence. She'll run true to form and sell Tri-World down the river. She'll be the prosecution's principal witness."

Gavin shrugged.

"Which reminds me," put in Villanowski. "Since the Empire's so anxious for me to return to the fold, I don't want to appear too eager."

"Eh?" A pained expression rippled the T.I.S. Commandant's ruddy features.

"I'd like the chief engineer's rating aboard the first ship to reach the stars." There was a wistful note in Villanowski's voice.

"There shouldn't be any hitch there," the Commandant agreed in a relieved tone. "You're the logical man to head an expedition outside the system."

"What about a third assistant-engineer?" Gavin interrupted.

"We work pretty well together," said Villanowski.

Gavin's lean freckled face broke into a grin. "It's a bargain."

The two men solemnly shook hands.

* * * * *

[Transcriber's Note: Original text had two Section VIII headings. Second heading renumbered to IX.]