Chapter IV

Joel felt himself grow heavier, heavier. His arms were lead. The sweat glistened on his homely drawn features. His green eyes lost their sparkle.

After what seemed hours, he heard Nick Thorp croak from his bunk overhead, "Watch y'self. Stellar drive! Any minute!"

Joel felt a surge of unreasoning fear. A bell rang suddenly.

"That's it!" Thorp warned. "Lie still."

As suddenly as it had struck, the acceleration ceased. A terrifying sensation of weightlessness possessed him. He felt as if he were falling--falling! He wanted to spring from the bunk, but remembered Thorp's warning.

Startled cries burst from the passengers. Several of them jumped up. From the corner of his eye Joel saw them shoot to the overhead where they hung kicking. Then the artificial gravity came on and they fell back to the deck a great deal faster than they'd gone up.

Thorp climbed down. "You can get up now."

Joel scrambled to his feet. He felt light, giddy. Nick Thorp took a look at his alarmed countenance and burst into laughter.

"You'll get your space legs quick enough," he assured Joel. "The gravity aboard ship is only about a third of Earth's pull. You'll enjoy it when you get used to it."

Joel had his doubts about that, but when he glanced at the antics of the others he couldn't resist a grin.

A tall red-haired girl kept bounding into the air at each step. Then she flipped all the way over and lit on her bottom.

Just then a whistle blew. Joel wheeled around to find Mister Mullin, the third mate, standing in the door to the mess-room.

"Line up at your bunks," the third ordered. "This is a Star Ship and no stinking freighter. You'll be expected to keep your quarters clean. Inspection every day!"

"Day?" someone asked.

"We're on Earth time. Lights out at twenty-two hours and on again at six. Meals at eight, twelve and eighteen hours."

With the same dispatch he divided the prisoners into squads of four and assigned each their job.

Joel was relieved to find that he and Nick Thorp were in the same group along with Tamis Ravitz, the dancer, and another man whom Joel didn't know. Their job, it developed, was to keep the mess-room in order.

Mister Mullin glanced at his watch, said, "It's eighteen hours now. You can go in to dinner," and trotted out.

Joel realized that he hadn't eaten in hours. He was famished. He hastened into the mess-room and sat down at a table along with Nick Thorp and Tamis Ravitz.

The tables, which seated four, were built against the bulkheads down each side of the mess-room. Joel was pressing the button for his meal when a tall handsome man with a black goatee approached them.

"I'm Gustav Liedl," he introduced himself in a cultured voice. "I've been assigned to your squad. I thought it an excellent opportunity to become better acquainted."

"Sit down," Nick Thorp invited, introducing the others.

Joel's dinner arrived just then via a slot in the bulkhead and he addressed himself to it silently. Gustav Liedl, though, dawdled over his meal, talking with Tamis.

"Yes," Joel heard Liedl say in reply to one of Tamis' questions. "I was a professor." He made a rueful face, tugging at his black goatee. "At the Sorbonne. Anthropology was my subject."

"Anthropology!" Joel interrupted. "Then you must have some ideas about the natives of Asgard. What they are? Why no one has ever seen them?"

Liedl regarded Joel with a smile. "Ah, the elusive Centaurians! Yes. I've a theory about the Asgardian natives. I spent several years, you know, studying their villages with the Sorbonne's Asgardian Institute...."

Joel, glancing at Tamis, surprised a startled, half-frightened expression on her smooth ivory countenance.

"I've a theory," Liedl repeated, "that the Centaurians are masters of camouflage. I doubt very seriously that they are human. They may even be a quasi-intelligent species of plant life. Have you ever seen the Asgardian jungles, young man?"

"No," Joel admitted.

"Horrible!" Liedl said. "Plants with snaky tendrils like jointless arms. And they aren't rooted. They're capable of independent motion. It's amazing the number of Asgardian species that can move around freely as mammals."

Tamis said gaily, "Then you think the anthropologists have been looking for a man-like animal when all the time the natives have been plants who crept off into the jungle and hid?"

"Exactly!"

"Sounds like a reasonable explanation," Thorp admitted. "I've seen those Asgardian jungles. Crawling, thrashing masses of vegetation." He shook his head. "It gives a body the creeps."

"But how can anything live in that jungle?" Joel protested.

Liedl said triumphantly: "Nothing could! _Nothing but plants!_"

* * * * *

Fifteen minutes before twenty-two hours, a warning bell rang and the lights dimmed. Nick Thorp showed Joel the clothes locker where he could secure sleepers.

The lights went out while Joel was taking his shower. He switched on the dryer in the dark.

After a few seconds his eyes began to adjust. There was a dim night lamp in the mess-room beyond the fo'cs'le. Joel could see by its reflected light almost as well as he could by day. The only difference was the absence of color. Everything appeared in varying shades of gray like a photograph.

The deadening effect of the chemicals that had been used to purify the air of the Experimental Station was beginning to wear off. A medley of familiar and unfamiliar smells beset his nostrils.

All at once, he halted.

There was something here that shouldn't be. Joel could smell it. A strange alien odor that he'd caught only once before.

It was the same smell that had clung to the humanoid guard!

Joel's nostrils flared, but the odor was so faint that he couldn't tell from whence it came. It might be emanating from any one of the gray figures placidly asleep in the gray bunks.

He moved to his own bunk and lay down, but he couldn't sleep. That strange scent had acted like a dash of cold water.

He didn't know how long he lay there. Hours, it seemed. There was no sound beyond the muted rumble of the _Zenith's_ jets, the snores of some of the prisoners.

The temperature had dropped automatically when the lights were extinguished. He adjusted the thermal unit in his sleepers and closed his eyes.

A faint noise from across the fo'cs'le brought them open again instantly.

The gray elfin figure of Tamis Ravitz, the dancer, he saw, was rising cautiously from her bunk. She was barefooted, clad in the loose sleepers. She put her hand to her eyes. When it came away, she swept the fo'cs'le with a brief glance.

Joel almost forgot to breathe.

The dancer had done something to her eyes because they glowed faintly with an eerie flame!

Joel's pulse throbbed in his ears. Tamis, he saw, was moving to the next bunk with a soundless cat-like glide. She pointed a slender metal cylinder at the man who lay sleeping there. A bright green spot sprang out on the man's arm!

The tattoo mark!

The cylinder must be a source of black light able to kick fluorescence out of the tattoo marks. What did it mean? Who was Tamis?

From sleeping figure to sleeping figure, the girl glided. Sometimes she found the tattoo mark; sometimes she didn't.

She was approaching Joel's bunk. He forced himself to relax, to breathe evenly as if in a deep sleep.

Then she was hovering over him....

Joel's hand closed with a crushing grip about her wrist, yanked her off her feet into the bunk!

Tamis uttered one smothered cry, struggled soundlessly. Then she seemed to realize the futility of trying to break free and went limp.

Joel could feel her warm lithe body pinned against him. A strange alien scent filled his nostrils. It was delicate, flower-like, yet utterly alien.

The hair lifted on the back of his neck like the hackles of a dog. He found himself staring deep into the girl's eyes.

They had no pupil, no color, only a weird flickering light in their depths that glimmered like candle flame.

A shudder of revulsion swept over him. Tamis Ravitz, the dancer, wasn't human!

"Who are you?" Joel asked in a low hoarse voice. "What are you?"

"Please! Softly!" She lay beside him, relaxed, breathing tremulously.

"What are you?" he repeated.

"I can't tell you."

"You'll tell me or I'll turn you over to the guards. What did you do to your eyes?"

"This." She held up a pair of contact lenses. Realistic pupils and iris, Joel saw, had been moulded into the thin slivers of glass. She slipped them quickly into place. Her eyes looked normal, human. They were a perfect disguise.

"What are you?" Joel asked fiercely.

"I'm a mutation."

"No, you're not. I can tell by your scent! You're not human!"

The girl went rigid. Then she began to kick and twist and squirm desperately. Joel pinned down her legs, tightened his grip.

"D'you want me to yell for the guards?"

"No! No!" she breathed in panic.

"Then tell me what this is all about!"

"Have you the tattoo mark?"

* * * * *

Joel held up his left arm, being careful to retain a grip on her with the other. She trained the cylinder at his elbow. The green spot began to fluoresce.

"Ah," she breathed, relaxing limply. "You _are_ a legitimate maladjustment case. I thought you were a spy...." Her voice trailed off.

Joel remained silent.

"Believe me," she said. "I can't tell all. Not now. It's too dangerous. Suppose someone should wake and find me here!"

"What are you?" he repeated stonily.

She hesitated; then, putting her lips against his ear, she breathed, "Ganelon. I'm ganelon--not human. I--I am a native of the planet you humans call Asgard."

"But how have you escaped detection? Why hasn't anyone ever seen a Centaurian?"

"They've seen us--often." There was the suggestion of a giggle in Tamis' low voice. "Perhaps, like Professor Liedl thinks, we're plants."

"No. You're animal. I can tell. Maybe you could fool my eyes but not my nose."

"That nose of yours. It is unfair. _You_ are the mutation!" She gave a silvery chuckle and then clapped her hand over her mouth.

"Please," she begged. "I must go. We are courting discovery!"

"You haven't told me...."

"Tomorrow night," she interrupted. Suddenly she stiffened.

Joel heard it too. The faint noise of a heavy body shifting in one of the bunks. His eyes darted across the darkened fo'cs'le!

Walt Eriss, the burly ex-surgeon, had raised himself to one elbow and was staring across into their bunk.

Joel's heart stood still.

How long had Eriss been awake? Had he heard anything?

Joel could distinguish his features clearly but in shadings of gray and black. Eriss' eyes were narrowed, his mouth open in an expression of acute concentration.

"Does he see us?" Tamis breathed in terror.

"No." The word carried only as far as the girl's ear.

With a swift cat-like movement, Tamis slid to her feet and stood like a gray statue.

The shaggy giant was swinging his legs silently over the edge of his bunk. With infinite caution he began to creep towards them.

Joel stood up beside Tamis. Around him there was silence broken only by the low breathing of the prisoners, the faint rumble of the _Zenith's_ jets.

He pressed himself against the foot of the bunk, waiting, waiting for that stalking gray giant to creep within reach.

Joel didn't dare breathe. The ex-surgeon was so close that he could see his lips drawn back from his teeth, his blind staring eyes trying to probe the blackness. It took an effort of will to realize that it was too dark for Eriss to see anything.

Another step.

Joel set himself.

Eriss' foot glided forward. He was within reach.

Joel's balled fist came up like a sledge-hammer, cracked solidly against the point of Eriss' chin. There was a distinct "pop!" as the ex-surgeon's jawbone broke. His head snapped back, his knees buckled....

Joel stepped forward, caught him beneath the arms. Walt Eriss was out cold.

"Tamis!" Joel hissed.

"Yes?"

"Grab his feet. We'll lay him in his bunk."

Together they lifted the giant, hauled him across the deck, stowed him in his bed.

"Tomorrow!" Tamis breathed.

Joel saw her slide into her bunk. He retreated across the fo'cs'le and lay down, but his brain was reeling.

What did the presence of a native Centaurian among the malcontents signify? Then he thought of Walt Eriss and a coldness flowed through his veins. How much had the ex-surgeon overheard of this?

At length in utter emotional exhaustion, he dropped off to sleep.

* * * * *

Joel was awakened by lights and the angry sound of voices. He opened his eyes. Beams of light were darting here, there. The fo'cs'le seemed overflowing with guards in their gaudy blue and yellow uniforms.

He caught sight of the third mate, tousle-haired and wearing a lemon yellow dressing gown.

The third was saying, "By God, Captain Goplerud! What have we got this voyage? A gang of homicidal maniacs?"

Walt Eriss, Joel saw, was sitting up mumbling inarticulately. His jaw was swollen and queerly crooked. The ship's doctor was fussing over him.

"Jaw's broken," the doctor diagnosed.

Captain Goplerud ran his fingers distractedly through his hair. "It's that damned Hakkyt!" he said. "Hakkyt did this."

"Who's Hakkyt?" Mister Mullin wanted to know.

"He's the fellow who beat up Eriss before."

"Where is he?"

"Here," said Joel swinging his feet to the deck.

The beam of a flashlight struck him in the eyes.

"D'you know anything about this?" Mister Mullin demanded.

Joel shook his head.

"Does anyone know anything about it?" the third mate cried swinging the light beam in a flashing arc.

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.