Chapter III: Part 3

Only for a fleeting moment did Farradyne follow the possibility that Niles was innocent. There had been no attempt on Cahill's part to contact anybody from the time Farradyne met him until he saw him last alive. Ergo, the Niles must have been forearmed with Cahill's plan. This was the place that Cahill would have brought him; it had just taken him a bit longer to get here without the proper guide.

He leaned back, trying to relax. He took a sip of his martini, not that he wanted it, but to see if his hand were still trembling. It did not seem to shake.

He said, "If you knew Cahill and his whereabouts, you also know quite a bit about me. You'll have heard that I was recognized in a bar on Ganymede by a woman named Norma Hannon, who is a hellflower addict. She hated my guts because I am Charles Farradyne and her brother was among those present when I had the accident in The Bog. She hung onto me for the emotional ride it gave her. I succeeded in locating the home of her parents and was going to take her home when I met Cahill, who offered to come along after a bit of talk. Then during the night, Cahill made a pass at Norma, and she shot him. I put his body out through the scuttle port."

"Cahill was always a damned fool," nodded Niles. "He was a dame-crazy idiot and it served him right. Some men prefer money, power or model railroads. Women are poison."

"I seem to have followed one of them like a little lamb," said Farradyne. "But I was picked up and brought here for a purpose, so let's get down to cases."

"You're a rather quick-on-the-trigger man, aren't you? What makes you assume that this purpose was anything beyond finding out about Cahill?"

"Because you have tipped your hand," said Farradyne feeling more at ease. "You could have accomplished the same thing by tipping the police and waiting for the case to be newscast. If Cahill admitted to hellflower running, it was for a purpose, too. I call the same logic in you, Niles."

"Please. _Mister_ Niles. I'm a bit your senior."

"All right. Mr. Niles. I've learned one thing so far: I can tell a love lotus operator from the rest of the system."

"How?" They all leaned forward eagerly.

"Because it is the real operators that take an amused view of my alleged machinations. They know the facts."

"Very sage. You are a bit brighter than you appeared a moment ago."

"May I ask why you let me cool my heels for almost a month before you hauled me in?" He looked at Carolyn with a wry smile. "I would make a mild bet you weren't more than a few hundred feet from me all the while?"

"You are a blind man, Farradyne," she said calmly.

Mr. Niles smiled knowingly. "There are a lot of unexplained items in your past, Farradyne. We never could be too sure that you were not a Sandman. Of course, it does seem a bit hard to believe that a government operative would crash a spacer and kill thirty-three people just to establish a bad reputation, especially when his own neck was involved in the affair. Still, such a deal might have been managed. So we have been checking on you and from that angle you are clean. Then comes the question of Cahill. It might be that you thought turning in a hellflower operator would help to smooth your lot in life, mayhap get you a bit of a reward. So we waited. No Cahill. Cahill started to bring you here; he would either have turned up with or without you. Or he would have gotten in touch with us. Unless Cahill was dead. You would know the answer. Norma Hannon is keeping her mouth shut, so far as we know. Of course no one would believe a blank anyway, and she probably knows that. So it stands to reason that you know more about Cahill than anybody else."

"No more than I've told you. Cahill came and made me a sort of sidelong offer."

"That much of it rings as true as the other. But there are still holes in your story."

Farradyne nodded. "Let's put it this way: there are ways of getting money and things. I found one way, which is an obvious fact. But I have been told time and again that the entering wedge to a full confession is a willingness to talk. Do you follow me?"

"I do. But--"

Farradyne smiled. "I don't care to face it. Not in company, Mr. Niles." Farradyne's emphasis on the "Mister" was heavy with sarcasm. Niles looked at him piercingly.

"You are a bit belligerent and a trifle sure of yourself. Close-mouthed and apparently able to get along. You'll be out on a lonely limb for some time, Farradyne, but we can use you."

"I can use the sugar," said Farradyne.

"Naturally. Anybody can use money. In fact everybody needs money. What visible means of support have you?"

"I've a subcontract. Once each month I'm to lug a load of thorium refines from Pluto to Terra."

"It's a start but it isn't enough."

"I'll pick up more, doubtless."

Niles leaned back and put the tips of his fingers together pontifically. "One of the hardest jobs in this business is to justify your standard of living. The financial rewards are large and the hours involved are small. It is patent that a man who has not been granted a large inheritance or perhaps stumbled on a lucrative asteroid, cannot live in a semi-royal manner without having to work in a semi-royal fury. One of the great risks in this business is the acceptance of a recruit whose appearance causes discussion. The day when a man can build a fifty-thousand-dollar home on a five-thousand-dollar salary without causing more than a raised eyebrow has gone. If a man has a hidden income, he must appear busy enough to warrant it--or at least provide a reasonable facsimile."

"This I can understand."

"For a job like this," explained Niles, "we prefer the natural-born spaceman, with sand in his shoes or space dust in his eyes. Because the man with a bad case of wanderlust always looks busy even when he is idling. You seem to be that sort, but we never can tell until it is tried. Unless, of course, you turn out to be woman-crazy."

"I'm a normal enough male," said Farradyne. "I'll remind you that Cahill was the guy that tried and failed."

"How normal are you?" demanded Niles. "We'd have less liking for a misogynist than for a satyr here."

Farradyne smiled serenely. "I have enough sense to keep my hands off Norma Hannon, but I have enough red blood to come home with Carolyn. That good enough?"

Niles thought a moment. "Could be. Anyway we'll find out. For one thing, Farradyne, you'll be in no position to hurt anyone but yourself if you're playing games. Once we're really sure of you, it won't matter any more because you will be in a position to get hurt plenty. We'll try it, and see. Now, when do you go to Pluto?"

"I've some schoolteachers to haul out there tomorrow. I've taken them on--"

"Good. Gives you a good background without much labor. Now, when you land on Terra, you'll not bother posting your ship for a job because you have already contracted for a job. Carolyn will be there on a business trip for me and will have chartered your ship for a hauling job back to Mercury. During this trip you will get some more details on how you are to operate. This much I can tell you now, Farradyne: you will be an inbetweener, in fact almost the operator you set yourself up to be. But with one difference, we'll inform you just who is and who is not to be trusted. In other words, you'll have your regular customers and you will sell to no one else. They'll take your entire supply, pay for it and you will take your profit. The remainder you will use to purchase your supply from the upper source. Advancement may come slow or fast, depending on you. You'll get the details later, as for now--" Niles leaned back in his chair and smiled. "Farradyne, you met my daughter in a cocktail lounge and several people heard the two of you planning an evening together. So you will go dancing and dining and have a drink or two and maybe a bit of lovemaking, which is an entirely natural performance. And from this moment you will be Charles and I shall be Mr. Niles and we'll have no nonsense. Understand?"

"I do."

"Good. Now have another martini while Carolyn dresses for dinner."

Niles poured. Carolyn disappeared. Mrs. Niles leaned forward and asked, "Charles, why did you become a spaceman?" Her tone of voice and attitude made her seem like all the other fathers and mothers who have asked the same question. For the moment he forgot about her position in this odd scheme of things just because she looked precisely fitted to the role she played for public consumption. Almost mechanically, Farradyne began to explain. He knew the story by rote because he had told it so often in the same manner and to the same sort of person. This gave his mind a chance to consider them, partly.

Mr. and Mrs. Niles appeared to be the successful businessman and his wife. The aura of respectability extended to include the house and its spacious grounds, so that Farradyne burned with resentment at any proposition whereby he, who had not committed anything more than a few misdemeanors and some rather normal fun and games which are listed on the books but are likely to be overlooked, should be less cultured, less successful and less poised than this family of low-grade vultures. If anything, the attitude of Mrs. Niles shocked him more than the acts of her husband. Men were the part of the race that play the rough games and run up the score, according to Farradyne. Women occupied one of two positions: they were patterned after Farradyne's mother who had been a poised, mature woman of education and breeding, if a trifle puritanical; or they were slatterns and sluts and they looked as well as acted the part. So instead of Mrs. Niles presiding over the mansion as a gracious lady, she should be loud and cheap. That she was poised and gracious offended Farradyne's sense of fitness.

As for Carolyn, who was equally engaged in this loathsome game, Farradyne felt annoyed because there was nothing about her outward appearance that would permit him to scorn her. Like her parents, she gave the impression of success, as though the business they were all engaged in were both honorable and beneficial. Farradyne yearned for the moment when he could pull the pedestal out from under them and dump them into the mud where they damned well belonged.

Farradyne became, in those few moments, a more mature man. He understood Clevis' attitude. Always before, he wondered why a clever man would work for peanuts at a thankless job which included anonymity when he could have put his efforts into some sort of business and emerge wealthy and famous. Now Farradyne was beginning to understand the personal satisfaction that could be gained by following in the footsteps of a man like Clevis. In Niles' own words, some men like money, others like power and still others build model railroads. Well, some achieve their personal gain by rooting out the lice that undermine the moral fiber of the race, and this gives them the same satisfaction that amassing a billion dollars gives a man whose ambition is wealth.

Money had never been Farradyne's god. He had not wanted more than enough to exchange for the fun and games he preferred, and these did not come high. He found himself elated to have discovered a new outlet for his nervous energy and his urge to do something. Performing a thankless job in anonymity could provide for Farradyne a deep satisfaction in proving that he was smarter than people like Niles and family.

He smiled as his mouth got to the point in his story where he was telling about the time he had landed the training ship perfectly--but nine feet above ground, so that the ship dropped the nine feet and nearly flunked him out of spaceman's school. He knew that his smile was hypocritical and he enjoyed this sort of thing. If Niles could play the hypocritical game, so could Farradyne. But Farradyne could play it better because his own kind of hypocrisy was--he hated to call it righteous but could not find a better word to describe it. He could play Niles' game, and he could even go along with Mrs. Niles, although he wondered how a woman that looked as honorable as Mrs. Niles could justify her willingness to have a daughter engaged in the vile game of hellflower running. He could play their game because he would have little contact with them.

But he wondered whether he could play the game Carolyn expected. He did not know exactly what she expected but his guess was that anybody amoral enough to run dope would hardly cavil at anything else. He knew that many a man could lie in his teeth and play the role of spy convincingly, but when the role included making love to a woman whose background was distasteful to a man, Farradyne believed that this distaste would show through anything he did.

And then Carolyn came down the stairs in a white strapless evening dress and Farradyne knew that he was going to have trouble remembering that she was worthy of only shapeless, gray prison denim. "You have to dress, too, Charles," she said in a soft voice, reminding him of their plans for the evening.

Farradyne nodded and got up. He wondered how she could possibly act this part of a young, marriageable woman pleased with a date when at the same time she was engaged in a hellishly illegal operation. He realized at the same time that Carolyn had most likely spent her entire life this way and was attuned to it. Such was her natural way of living, and there was not going to be any possibility of weaning her into a life of honorable struggle.

Then she put her hand into his elbow and gave a little squeeze and Farradyne found it not too hard to put his personal attitude into a small compartment in his mind and half-close the door. The bait was very attractive and only the image of Norma Hannon and her dulled eyes remained with Farradyne to keep that compartment of his mind open to the character of Carolyn Niles.

8

In the salon of the Lancaster, Farradyne smiled knowingly. "The plan was to let you investigate this ship while I dressed, but I gather you have seen your share of spacers."

"I admit it," she replied. "For that I am sorry, Charles. But I couldn't very well have played the know-it-all, could I?"

"I suppose not. Well, park yourself somewhere while I get into whites."

She sat down and stretched. "A highball and a cigarette?" she inquired.

"The cigarette is easy," he said, handing one to her and flipping his lighter. "But the highball may be more difficult. I've nothing but White Star Trail aboard."

She nodded at him. "With water," she said. She relaxed into the cushions. Farradyne went and mixed her highball. She sipped it and nodded approvingly. "Charles, please go dress but fast--I am rather more hungry than curious about the insides of a spacer."

"Of course." He turned to go.

"Charles?" She rose and came forward, lifting her hands to put them on his shoulders. He stood woodenly. "Charles," she asked in a soft voice, "are you unhappy because I am not the girl you hoped I'd be?"

Farradyne wanted to hurt her. "How many men have you played this role for?" he asked.

A wry smile twisted her face. "I should slap your face for that," she said. "Because when I tell you the answer you won't believe me."

Caution came to him. He was the rookie hellflower operator, not the young man who has discovered that his girl has been playing games behind his back. He tried to fit himself into her picture and decided that according to her code of loused-up ethics she might possibly be thinking of a future: a pleasant home with rambling roses and a large lawn and a devoted husband and maybe a handful of happy children all creating the solid-citizen facade for dope running, just as her parents were doing. If this were the case, Farradyne was to play the suitor. He must carry roses for his wife in one hand, toys for the kids in the other and his hip pocket must be filled with hellflowers.

He played it. He relaxed and put his hands on her waist. "I admit to being a bit of a louse," he said with a brief laugh. "But that's because I'm a bit new at a very rough game."

She leaned forward a bit. "Even rough games have their rules."

"I'll play according to the rules as soon as I learn them."

She looked at him. "You know them," she said quietly. "All men and women learn them at home, in school, in church. They're sensible rules and they keep people out of trouble, mostly. If you adhere to the rules, people will have nothing to which their attention can be directed. That's what Father was trying to say when he suggested that you provide a visible means of support for yourself. Play by these rules and we'll get along. It's especially important when we must not have people looking in our direction, Charles."

She sighed and leaned against him softly. "You asked me a question, Charles. The answer is three. One of them preferred a blonde and they are living quietly and happily on Callisto. The second couldn't have jelled because he was the kind of man who would work eighteen hours a day. Some men are that way and some women like it that way, but not me. The third, Charles, was Michael. Mike didn't last long. Only long enough to prove to me that he was a woman-chaser. The fourth could be you, and maybe there mightn't be a fifth."

"Three men in your life," he said.

She smiled up into his eyes. "Three men in my life," she said with a happy little nod of her head, "but, Charles, it isn't three men in my bedroom." Carolyn cocked an eyebrow. "The only way the fourth will get in is to make sure there won't be a fifth. So now you know. You can play it from there."

His arms did not slip around the slender waist, but the hands pulled her close to him. He kissed her gently, and for a moment she clung to him with her body. Her response was affectionate, only bordering on passion. Then she leaned back and smiled into his face. "You need a shave," she told him. "So let go of me until you can kiss me without scratching my skin off." Then to prove that she didn't really mean it, Carolyn kissed him again briefly, and ended it by rubbing her forehead against his chin.

Farradyne went to his stateroom and showered. He shaved, and dressed carefully in white slacks and shirt, and the last remaining holdover from a Victorian period, a dark necktie. He returned to the salon to find Carolyn waiting for him calmly and patiently. She looked him over and nodded approvingly, then got up and rubbed her cheek against his, cooing pleasantly, but moved away again when he tried to kiss her.

Then she tucked her hand under his elbow and said, "Dinner, man-thing."

Farradyne chuckled. "Dinner," he repeated.

She hugged his arm. He led her down the landing ramp and into her car, and at her direction drove to her preference in a dinner spot. The food was good. Carolyn was a fine dancer with a high sense of rhythm and a graceful body. Farradyne decided that if this were a thankless job that gave no chance for fame and fortune, there were plenty of very pleasant facets to it.... Her shoulder rubbed his as he drove her home hours later.

He handed her out of the car and walked to the front door with her. She gave him her key and he opened the door; she walked in, to wait for him just inside. She came into his arms as the door closed behind them and she clung to him, returning his kiss and his embrace; matching his rising fervor with a passion of her own. They parted minutes afterward. Farradyne moved her slightly, settling her body into a more comfortable fit against him.

"It's late," she breathed.

Farradyne chuckled. "With the sun shining like that?"

She kissed him, amused. "It's always like that, silly. You're on Mercury, remember?"

Farradyne held her close and kissed her again. A minute passed before he came up for air. He looked at her, leaning his head back so that he could see her face without looking crosseyed. "I'll bet you are a real hellion in the dark."

Carolyn laughed, and shook her head. "Like all the rest of the women on Mercury, I'm scared to pieces of the dark. But it is late, Charles, and you've just got to go." She hugged his head down so that he could look at her wrist watch on the arm about his neck. "It's five o'clock and you are to take off at nine. Charles, please don't crack up just because of lack of sleep."

"Okay," he said regretfully, "okay."

She held him close. "It's been a nice evening, Charles. So kiss me good-bye, and remember that it won't be long until I see you on Terra."

"It gets dark on Terra," he told her. He tightened his arms and she pressed against him.

Against his lips she murmured, "I might not be afraid of the dark, Charles."

The promise of her last embrace stayed with him. There were only three hours of sleep between the time he left her and the time of awakening for the take-off, but dreams of Carolyn filled them all. They were pleasant dreams and they were unpleasant dreams; he saw Carolyn coming to him with her past renounced, he saw her coming to him as a secret agent who was in the hellish business for the same reason he was. And he dreamed of her waving him a good-bye with her dark eyes filled with tears as she was taken off to the Titan Penal Colony. He even entertained notion of joining her, justifying himself by thinking that people who fall in love with love lotus addiction are the weaklings of the human race and could be eradicated to the advantage of the general level. This he recognized as sophistry.

But, be it as it may, Carolyn was a pleasant, attractive companion, and if her presence could only be known for a very short time, it was none the less pleasant. It was a rough game they were playing and many people were bound to get hurt. More people--innocent people--would get hurt if he called it off. So by the time Farradyne and his dreams came to the conclusion that he could afford to take what pleasure out of life this situation offered for the moment and let Tomorrow exact its tribute, it was time to get out of bed and start the pre-flight check-off.

He had work to do. Schoolmarms to haul to Pluto and some refined thorium ore to bring to Terra. He would make no signal this trip, he was still far from being on the inside. Maybe the next. Or the one after that, depending upon his progress. But in the meantime he would be seeing Carolyn Niles on Terra.

Farradyne began his check-up, already anticipating the reunion which was at least ten days away.

9

They came aboard a half hour later and Farradyne saw at once that this trip would be free of trouble and danger. They were all mild and wide-eyed curious. They obviously knew their place and how to go about in life with a minimum of friction.

Their leader was a Professor Martin, an agile gentleman of about sixty years who led them up the ramp and then stood there introducing each and every one of them to Farradyne as they came in. They became a sea of faces and a sound of disconnected names except for a few of the more vivid ones. Miss Otis, who giggled like a schoolgirl but hadn't been of schoolgirl age for at least thirty years; a Mr. Hughes, dark of skin and smiling, who tried to convey the impression that he knew his way around in space; a very prim dame named Miss Higginbotham who probably had every kid in her class scared of her; a Mrs. Logan who was far too beautiful to be part of Farradyne's narrow pattern for schoolteachers. Miss Tilden seemed to know something about spacing, and her friend, who was old enough to be Miss Tilden's mother, Miss Carewe, knew more about spacing than Miss Tilden. And a Mr. Forbes who seemed completely impressed by everything he laid eyes on.

And so they came, a prim and strait-laced lot, the like of which Farradyne had not seen in a long, long time.

Certainly nothing of the hellflower flavor among this group. It made Farradyne feel easier, and after a bit he began to smile at their innocence and their wholehearted interest. He came to understand that this trip was to be a bit different for them, or it could be if he cared to make it so. It was obvious that their previous hops had been made under pilots who treated them with the usual aloofness that spacemen hold for their passengers. Farradyne felt more sympathetic about them; he wanted to help, wanted to show them what could be seen.

Part of this desire to help them have a good time was born in the idea that someday Farradyne would probably be looking for some character witnesses and if he treated these schoolteachers with cordial interest and a willingness to explain and demonstrate his spacecraft, they would be inclined to accept him as a man of understanding, honesty and ability.

They took off after Farradyne delivered a very short talk on the rigors of take-off maneuvering and the necessity of staying strapped down whenever the spacer was about to cut didoes.

It was even less of a strain than Farradyne anticipated. They helped. Miss Carewe was a home economics teacher and she took care of the galley in a highly efficient manner. Mr. Forbes taught manual training or something of the sort; he requisitioned an oilcan and removed the squeaks from a couple of doors and took care of some of the minor details that Farradyne was inclined to ignore because he had other things on his mind. Someone, Farradyne never found out who, made beds and policed the ship, cleaning the salon and passengers' quarters until the rooms and hallways shone. Whoever it was did not recognize the faint stains of blood apparently, because there were no questions asked about the evidence of Mike Cahill's death.

Miss Tilden spent quite a bit of time making a small oil painting for the space above the bar which she said looked vacant. The degree of their tolerance was high, too. None of them cared for drinking, but they approved of Farradyne and his White Star Trail.

In return, Farradyne took them into the control room and showed them how the ship was run. Professor Hughes toyed with the computer by the hour because he was a mathematics teacher, and Miss Tilden listened to Farradyne by the hour as he recounted some of his adventures in space because she was a teacher of modern history.

The beautiful Mrs. Logan taught science, so Farradyne took her below to explain the atomic pile and how it worked.

With a pre-recorded tape from the course computer running through the autopilot, Farradyne pointed out the motion on the control rods that regulated the activity of the pile. Above the pile, he explained, was a huge tank of water that was used as a reaction-mass. Water was fed through the pile and its energy was raised to some tremendous degree, then hurled out through the throat of the reaction motor.

Mrs. Logan then pointed to the series of little ports in the hull.

Farradyne explained, "Now and then it is necessary to replace the control rods because they become transmuted into metals that have too little absorption factor. To get rid of them on a spaceport would mean the trouble of disposing of quite a bit of metal that is dangerously radioactive. So we take the convenient method of tossing them out in space where they can't harm anything."

"But where do they land?" she asked. "Isn't that dangerous?"

"Not at all. We use discretion. Look. In a few hours we will be halfway to Pluto. Our velocity will be tremendous because we have been accelerating all the way from Mercury. To land on Pluto we'll have to make a turn-over at halfway and start decelerating. If I wanted to replace control rods, I'd do it just before turn-over. The velocity of the ship and the rods would be a good many times the escape velocity of the entire solar system, so the rods would continue on and on, and actually they'd pass out of the solar system beyond Pluto in a matter of hours. Long before we got there."

"But supposing one did land on Terra, for instance?"

"It would make an interesting looking meteorite; it would melt in mid-air. Then the total radioactivity would spread thin and do no damage."

She was satisfied, and Farradyne led her back to the salon.

For the first time in years Farradyne began to feel at ease with the universe. His mind, previously busy with his main problem, found time to consider other things. And, like the rest of the spaceman breed, Farradyne was something of a gadgeteer.

Spacing, in a sense, was very much like the manning of a sailing ship of the nineteenth century. When something needed attention, in space it was during maneuver for landing, take-off, or turn-over; on sea it was coming about on a tack or setting sail, a full-time attention was necessary. Between periods of activity, the spaceman sat on his duff and waited for one of the silent twinkles to detach itself from the stellar curtain above his observation dome and become a planet or destination.

Some spacemen reverted to the point where they built spacecraft in old bottles, others spent their time in tinkering.

Farradyne had always been one of the latter. And so as his mind felt at ease, he began to tinker with the gear down in the repair shop. It was a small room below the passenger section hardly large enough to hold the machinery it contained. But Farradyne, like many of his fellows, enjoyed making things, repairing things and generally experimenting. Every spaceman hoped to come up with something that would make him rich and famous, and some of them had done it. They had plenty of time, a good grasp of things scientific as well as manual dexterity.

So Farradyne tinkered happily.

The shop was silent; the usual milling around of his passengers stopped as they went to bed. Now there was only the occasional groan of metal-upon-metal or the faint whine as a motor somewhere wound up to do some automatic job. The click and clack of relays were just barely audible; they would have been unheard by someone whose training had been other than that of a spaceman. In the background was the muted sibilant of the reaction motor, a sound like the shush of a distant seashore. Farradyne heard these sounds unconsciously. They were as pleasant to the ears of the spaceman as the sounds of a sailing ship were to the old-time seaman.

But another faint sound came to disturb him, rising up into the level of audibility very slowly.

It was a ringing in Farradyne's ears.

Ringing in the ears can come from too much alcohol, or a shot of dope, or a slap on the side of the head. Or a change in air-pressure. Farradyne had not been drinking nor taking the needle, but he had spent many years in an environment where the supply of air was important. He had become oversensitive to it. He sniffed automatically, the gesture of a man who has reason to suspect the quality of the air he is breathing. He shook his head. He did feel a bit light-headed. There was the bare trifle of a dull pain above his eyes and a sting in his nose. He sneezed and brought forth a dribble of blood.

Farradyne raced aloft; he could settle nothing standing in the workshop. The bulkhead door between the hold of the Lancaster and the passengers' section was closed. He pushed it and it opened with slight difficulty to let a blow of air hit his face. He grunted in puzzlement. Any change in air-pressure in any part of the ship should have started a clangor of the puncture alarm, a racket loud enough to waken the dead.

He went through the stateroom corridor and listened carefully as he went. Some rooms were silent and others sounded like the song of the cross-cut saw working its way through a burl of maple. There were gradations of snores between these extremes. Nothing that a suspicious man could put his finger on. He did not pause in the salon, which was silent and darkened, but not completely black. There was nothing out of the way here.

In fact the only thing that was out of line was the queer fact that the ship was silent when the alarm should have been sounding. He went up to the control room.

Lamps told him the story in a series of quick appraisals, because of some long-forgotten genius that had insisted that whenever possible, warning devices should not be fused, should not be turn-offable and should not be destructible. The Lancaster was a fine ship, designed well, but a frontal attack on a panel with metal cutting tools made the exception to the "whenever possible" part of the design of warning signals.

The ship's bell-system had been opened like a tin can.

But the pilot lamp system was strung here and there behind the panels and it would have taken a major overhaul to ruin it; the saboteur would have spent all night opening cans instead of doing his dirty work. Farradyne should have been asleep, then he would not have noticed the blaze of lamps.

They told him the tale in a glance. The low-pressure portion of the ship was down in the pile-bay, and the reason was that one of the scuttle-doors was open. The pressure in the reaction-mass bay was low, and now that Farradyne had come aloft, the pressure in the upper levels was as low as the reaction-mass bay. As he watched, another one of the scuttle ports swung open and its warning lamp flared into life.

Farradyne went into action. He ripped open the cabinet that held his space-suit and clawed the thing from its hook. He started down the stairway on a stumbling run, getting into the suit by leaps, jumps and pauses. He realized that he could have moved faster if he stopped to do one thing at a time, but his frantic mind would not permit him to make haste slowly. So he stumbled and he fell against the walls, and the tanks of his back rapped against his shoulder-blades, and the helmet cut a divot out of the bridge of his nose. Luckily it did not make him bleed, but it hurt like the very devil.

He zipped up the airtight clotures by the time he reached the little workshop and he ducked in there to get a weapon of some sort. He reached past the hammer, ignored the obvious chisel because it was not heavy enough, even though it was sharp, and picked up a fourteen-inch half-round wood-working rasp. He hefted it in his gloved hand and it felt about right.

The air-break on the topside was open, and Farradyne closed it. He fretted at the seconds necessary to equalize the pressure, and to check the workings of the space-suit. He also located the cause of the air-leakage; normally the air-break doors were airtight. A sliver of wool or cotton string lay in the rubber gasket and produced a channel for the escape of some of the air into the pile-bay. Farradyne stopped, his attention attracted by this trifle of evidence. It was neither wool nor cotton, but a match torn from a giveaway book and used to light a cigarette for Mrs. Logan a good many hours before.

He threw it aside and went in, his attention once more on the important business before him. He ran along the curved corridor. And there, a figure in a space-suit was quietly levering one of the control rods out of its slot and preparing to hurl it into the void.

Farradyne understood the whole act in that one glance; it was the sort of thing that he would do if sabotage were his intention. The single scuttle-port had been opened first by hand. Then the saboteur had scuttled the stock of spare control rods, and since the Lancaster was reasonably new, there had been quite a batch of them. Furthermore they were long, unwieldy, heavy things that took time to handle. Naturally this was the first act, because the next act would cause the ship's acceleration to rise. The rise in acceleration would make the rods too heavy to carry and would also cause investigation as soon as people became aware of the increasing pressure.

Then the working rods would be hurled out, leaving the ship heading toward some anonymous star at about eight gravities of acceleration. The passengers and crew would be helpless--and dead long before they got within any appreciable fraction of a distance to any planet.

Maybe two or three of the rods had been scuttled already. The rest, functioning on the automatic, would have been shoved in farther to compensate; Farradyne could feel no change in the acceleration pressure. But once the working rods were all the way home, the removal of the next would cause the ship to take off, literally with the throttle tied down. Farradyne was willing to bet the rest of his life that the safety-valve that furnished the water-mass to the pile was either welded open or damaged in such a way that the supply could not be stopped.

Then--and Farradyne had to admire the vandal's precautions--he would make his way to the escape hatch and let the helpless passengers go on ... and on....

Victims of another case of "Lost in Space."

The saboteur was well prepared. His suit was a high efficiency job capable of maintaining a man alive for a long time in space. It had a little radio for calling and a small and expensive chemical motor for mild maneuvering, even though it would not be strong enough to permit planetary landing. The man had friends, obviously, lying in wait out there, who would pick him up.

A parcel of ice-cold-blooded murderers.

Farradyne saw the man through a red haze that clouded down over his eyes. His evaluation of the act was made in a glance, and in the bare instant that it took for Farradyne to see the man he got his feet in motion. He plunged forward with a bellow that hurt his own ears.

10

The man whirled and sent a heavy-gloved hand back against Farradyne's face glass. Farradyne lifted the file for a second swing and caught the gleam of a heavy knife just as it swung upward at his face. The blade jabbed at the face glass and blunted slightly before Farradyne's eyes, splintering the glass and sending a shard or two against his cheek.

Farradyne's second swing caught a shoulder and sent the man staggering back; the knife came up and the gleaming edge sliced close to Farradyne's arm. The man stumbled and fell, and Farradyne came forward to take advantage of the opportunity. The long lever used to handle the radioactive control rod chopped against Farradyne's shins and cut his feet out from under him; he landed on his face and the other man kicked out with heavy space boots. The heels rammed Farradyne's helmet hard down into his shoulders, and the top of his helmet hit the top of Farradyne's head, stunning him.

The other scrambled forward and landed on Farradyne's back. He pulled up and back on the fittings of Farradyne's helmet until the pilot's spine ached with the tension. Then the man thrust forward and slammed Farradyne's face down on the deck. The splintered safety glass cracked further and there came the thin, high screech of air escaping through a sharp-edged hole.

Farradyne lashed out and around just in time to parry a slash of the knife. Blade met file in a glint of metal-spark and both weapons were shocked out of the gloved hands to go skittering across the deck.

The man left Farradyne to scramble across the floor after his knife. Farradyne jumped to his feet, took three fast steps and leaped, coming down with both feet on the man's back. The other collapsed and Farradyne fell, turning his right wrist underneath him. The other made a kick that caught Farradyne in the side, turning him over. And as Farradyne rolled, the bent hand touched metal and he came out of the roll clutching a heavy pair of repair pliers. He could cut bolts with them, and had.

He faced the killer, standing again; armed again, spaceman's pliers against assassin's knife. He plunged forward and felt the knife bite against his suit, he swung the pliers as a club and caught the killer's upper arm; he opened the jaws and bit down, twisting and pulling.

A three-cornered tear ripped and came away with the point between the jaws until the heavy outer cloth gave way. The knife came up and bit through Farradyne's suit across the knuckles of the hand that held the pliers. Farradyne kicked, sent the killer staggering and followed him probing at the tear to get at the thin inner suit. The other man struggled, hurled Farradyne back, but Farradyne staggered back with the thin lining between the jaws of the pliers. The suit ripped and there came a puff of white vapor as the air blew into the void.

The struggling killer stopped as though shocked by an electric current; he stood there stiffly, his hands slowly falling to his sides, limp. Farradyne took a step back, breathing hard. He could see now that his head was not jerked back and forth behind the cracked glass. He peered, in time to watch the froth of blood foam out of Hughes' nose.

Hughes! The math professor. The wise guy who had created the part of dumb bunny by making sounds of knowing too much, who pretended to know his way around in space.

Farradyne wondered whether Hughes had cried out in a polytonal voice--then he hauled him into the air-break and slammed the door shut. He felt for a pulse and found one fluttering; he turned him on his face and pumped the ribs in, out, in, out, wondering whether he was wasting his time.

Hughes groaned painfully. His groans echoed and reechoed in the tiny space, but Farradyne could not hear more than the wreaking moan of a man hurt very deeply. Hughes stirred and opened one eye. Then he closed it again and sobbed under his breath. Farradyne checked the heart and found it beating weakly; the pulse was not fluttering any more, and the breath was coming naturally, even though the man's chest heaved high and dropped low and there was a foghorn sound in the throat as he gasped huge lungfuls of air.

Whatever, Hughes would give Farradyne no trouble for some time. Farradyne carried the unconscious man to his stateroom and dropped him on the bed. Then he went below and closed the little hatches, reinserted the control rod, and wondered whether missing a few would louse up his landing.

He went up to the control room and replaced the wiring torn out of the audible-alarm system. The phalanx of warning lamps had winked out and the clangor of the alarm did not come.

Farradyne went back to Hughes; the man was in a semicoma.

"Can you hear me?" demanded Farradyne.

Hughes roused slightly and looked at Farradyne through heavy eyes, mumbling unintelligibly.

"You dirty louse!" fumed Farradyne. "I'd have let you die if it hadn't occurred to me that you might be good for some information. What makes, Hughes? Or should we have an accident below?"

Hughes mumbled something that sounded like defiance.

"Think your friends will give you a raise for this fumble?" jeered Farradyne.

Hughes roused a bit more and looked at Farradyne more directly. "Smart guy," he said in a toneless voice, "you can't--"

Farradyne smiled cynically. "Yes, I can and I have," he snapped. Then he leaned down and put his face close to Hughes' and said carefully, "Hughes, sing me a trio."

Hughes' control was good. His eyes widened only a sliver and the catch in his breath was faint; anybody not watching for these signs of sudden alarm would not have noticed anything amiss. Then the eyes dimmed again and Hughes said, weakly, "Sing nothing."

"What's your pitch, Hughes?"

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"The hell you don't," said Farradyne harshly. "And if you won't talk without it, I can make you yelp real loud. First I break all your fingers, one by one, and then your toes, and then if you're still playing stupid, there's always the trick of slipping a soldering iron under your armpit and then plugging it in. Between the time the current goes on and the time you really start to feel it burn should be long enough to make a lot of gab."

Hughes looked at Farradyne directly. "You'd better kill me," he said flatly. "Because you can't hold me."

"I'll make you a bet," sneered Farradyne. "I'll bet that I can hang onto you, and if I do, you'll pay off by talking. Even-steven, Hughes."

Farradyne went to his small medicine chest and came back with a hypodermic, which he loaded with deliberation. He made a dramatic scene out of pushing the plunger, watching the droplet form on the end of the needle and then adjusting that dose against the scale on the side of the cylinder.

"Marcoleptine," he said conversationally. "A fine pain-killer, Hughes. Just the thing a man would do to help a very ill comrade. It'll keep you quiet until we can discuss the situation without having your screams disturbing the passengers. Slip me your arm, old man. This won't hurt much."

Hughes mouthed a curse, but Farradyne paid no more attention to the man's objections than he would have to the objections of a child. Farradyne caught Hughes' wrist and brought the man's hand up under his armpit, then braced his forearm under Hughes' elbow. Then he lifted an arm-bar, which raised Hughes' shoulder from the cot; Farradyne slid the needle into the elbow easily with his free arm, probed for the vein and discharged the hypodermic.

"I wonder," mused Farradyne aloud, "whether marcoleptine is really non-habit-forming." He sat there on the edge of the bed watching Hughes very carefully. Hughes struggled to keep his eyes wide, fighting off the narcotic. But then the eyelids grew heavier and started to close.

In a weakened, drugged voice, Hughes mumbled, "Easier to slip under--now--can't do anything--will ..." and he was gone. His breathing grew regular and his body was completely flaccid. Farradyne waited until Hughes was well under the dope and then he stopped watching the man critically and began to plan his next move.

Hughes was going to be a sick man. Therefore the marks of battle should not be visible to his companions when they wanted to look in on the ill professor. Farradyne got a washcloth, soaped it well and went to work. He let the hot cloth soak into Hughes' face for a minute or two massaging the face under the cloth with agile fingers. Then he began to scrub.

The caked blood came away. And so did some dark pigment that stained the cloth. The dark-complected Hughes lightened in color; the lines in his face seemed to become less deep as the shadowing pigment was washed away. Schoolteacher Hughes came off into Farradyne's washcloth and what was left was the would-be hellflower trader, Brenner.

"Brenner," breathed Farradyne in astonishment.

But the dope had taken effect and Brenner was out cold. Farradyne bemoaned his enthusiasm for doping the man because questions would fall on deaf ears. Then Farradyne took a more rational view. There would be plenty of time to question the hellflower operator after the schoolteachers left. Meanwhile, Brenner would be kept doped, quiet and nailed-down for the duration. He left Brenner and went to his own bed where--to his surprise--he went to sleep at once instead of lying awake with the myriad questions in his mind....

He carried his book on Medicology with him to the breakfast table the following morning, and at the questioning looks, Farradyne made his announcement, "We have a sick man aboard. Hughes."

Professor Martin asked, "What happened, Mr. Farradyne?"

"It must have been about midnight, I was working below. I heard a rather strange noise up in the passengers' section and went up to find out what was going on. I found Mr. Hughes coughing and sneezing in the passageway, obviously in distress. I inspected him as best as I knew how and we got out my Medicology and compared symptoms. I'll read this section:

"'Coryosis, one of the nine allied infections which are frequently grouped under the ambiguous term "Common Cold," is extremely contagious but fatal only in cases of extreme sensitivity. Treatments consist of isolation amounting to a formal quarantine, and frequent injections of MacDonaldson's Formula 2, Ph-D3; Ra7. The patient is to be kept warm at all times and must remain quiet.'

"So we went to his cabin and I slipped him a shot and he went to bed. Now I'll read a bit more:

"'Contagion measures: Since the source of infection is a filterable virus, care must be taken to remain outside of the twenty-foot range of water droplets resulting from a cough or sneeze. All things touched by the patient must be either sterilized or burned. It is suggested that only one person tend the patient and that this person be immunized with MacDonaldson's Formula at regular intervals. Visiting should be discouraged, and if necessary must be carried on at a distance and for a very few minutes only. The incubation period is very short; the duration of coryosis is approximately fourteen days. It is, however, possible for a re-infection to take place which often resembles the initial infection, thus giving rise to the six-week cold.'

"There's more along this line but I think we have the picture well enough," Farradyne concluded.

Professor Martin's face was grave. "What must we do?" he asked anxiously.

"Nothing," said Farradyne firmly.

"But he shouldn't stay on Pluto."

"That is correct. Pluto is very cold, even with the Terra conversion program going on. Mr. Hughes should be returned to Terra."

"But--"

Farradyne smiled. "I've got to make a freight pickup on Pluto for Terra," he said quietly. "I'll take Mr. Hughes back home."

"That would be very considerate of you, Mr. Farradyne."

Farradyne shook his head in disclaimer. "It's only what any man would do," he said. "What do we know about Mr. Hughes?"

Miss Tilden said, "Not very much, I'm afraid. Mr. Hughes teaches Ancient History in Des Moines, Iowa. He joined us on Mercury, you know."

"No," said Farradyne, "I didn't know. I thought you were all together."

"Apparently Mr. Hughes was traveling alone until he heard of our group," offered Professor Martin. "He was, he said, seeking a reduced-rate trip to Pluto--as we were--when he noticed our flight-plan filed on the bulletin board. He got in touch with me and offered to join."

Farradyne nodded. "There's really plenty of time," he said. "No use getting excited. I'll contact the Des Moines Board of Education later--after we've made our landing and take-off, and are close enough to Terra to make the radio effective. It'll save us some money that way." The latter, he thought, would appeal to these people.

It was left that way. Farradyne did not assume for one moment that Hughes was a complete fake. One of two ideas was certainly true: either there was a real schoolteacher named Hughes who looked like the made-up Brenner, or Brenner had been masquerading as Hughes and really taught school in Des Moines when he was not peddling hellflowers.