Chapter II: Part 2

Him? Who? I had no time to ask. Mackensie had flung open the door; shoved me out onto the deck. It still seemed deserted; dim with starlight from the glassite dome overhead. Amidships, some forty feet from me, the light in Smith's little helio cubby showed faintly eerie in one of his windows.

I ran there. "Smith. Len Smith...." I called it softly. "Len Smith--"

There was only the faint echo of my voice, coming back at me from the steel cubby wall. The door was ajar. I shoved at it, burst in and stood stricken, transfixed, with so great a horror flooding me that the eerie scene in the helio cubby swam before my gaze. At his instrument table the white-uniformed figure of young Smith lay sprawled, a white figure crimsoned ghastly with blood. A knife handle protruded from his back. Horribly his head dangled sidewise, with grisly severed neck.

And as I rushed forward, my movement jostled the body. It slumped, fell from the stool, hitting the floor with a thud. The blow broke the neck vertebrae; the head--ghastly little ball--rolled across the room and stopped at the wall, gruesomely right side up, with Smith's dead eyes staring at me--eyes with the agony of death frozen in them.

Then I saw the wreckage of the instrument table. All our communications smashed, wrecked beyond repair! For another second I numbly stared. Then, from some distant point of the ship's interior, a strident little electric whistle sounded. A signal! From another section I heard it answered. And then a shot! The barking explosion of a powder-gun ... the hiss of a stabbing heat-ray ... a commotion in the lower corridors--shouts of startled passengers ... a turmoil everywhere....

The attack had begun!

* * * * *

The turmoil that all in those seconds was spreading about the ship like fire in prairie grass released me from my numbness. I whirled; dashed back through the helio cubby door to the roof deck. It was still unoccupied. Back on the stern deck triangle, where just the stern tip of it showed from here, with the dull-red Earth-light upon it, there was the sizzling flash of a heat-gun. I saw the stern lookout collapse back from his telescope; fall to the deck.

Toward the bow, through the chart-room window where the shade now was up, Wilson was staring out. "Penelle!"

His voice reached me. Beyond the kiosk of chart room and control turret, a figure appeared coming up the little catwalk ladder from the bow deck. It seemed to be the bow lookout, but whether friend or foe I had no way of guessing.

"Watch yourself, Wilson," I shouted. "Watch the turret--" I was dashing for the side companionway. Whatever transpired up here, there was only one thing in my mind in the chaos of that moment. Nina.... She was alone down in her cabin. I must get her up here....

I leaped down the last half of that little side ladder. On the dim side deck ten feet away, two men were fighting, one in white gold uniform, the other a deckhand. They rolled on the deck. A knife flashed.... Another man came suddenly from the smoking lounge doorway. He plunged at me, whirling an iron bar. My Banning flash met him head on; I jumped aside as his dead body catapulted to the deck. There was another flash. One of the rolling, fighting men on the deck went limp. The other rose. It was the fat little Peter Green, Second Officer. He was panting; his face streaked with blood.

"Get to your room," he gasped as he saw me. "All passengers stay in your cubbies. Piracy!"

The passengers were shouting now; from a nearby corridor entrance women were screaming. Then from up at the turret, Mackensie turned on the vessel's distress siren. Its shrill, dismal electrical whine sounded above the turmoil.

"Go up to the control turret," I shouted at Green. I dashed into the corridor. Passengers scattered to right and left before me.

"Get into your rooms," I shouted. "Everybody stay in. Barricade--"

An Earth-woman screamed; somebody shouted, "That big Martian--murderer--I saw him killing--" Two little Lunites, mine workers, a young man and a girl, stood with arms around each other in one of the doorways. Pallid little people, confused, helpless, cringing. I shoved them back into their room and banged their door.

Then I turned into the main corridor, ran aft along it, came to the next cross passage. Nina! I saw her, ahead of me in the corridor, close by her smashed door. She was struggling, fighting with the snaky Venus man Ollog Torio; his arms lifted her up as he tried to carry her. I shouted an oath; I did not dare fire. And at the sound of my voice he dropped her, made off through the end door so quickly that I had no time to drill him.

"Nina! Nina!"

I gathered her up, frail little thing in her negligee with her luxuriant black hair streaming down.

"Nina, did he hurt you?"

"No! No, I'm all right."

She was breathless; pallid; her dark eyes were pools of terror. "Oh, dear God!" she gasped. "It's come." She clutched at me. "That hunchback--that fellow Durk--have you seen him?"

"No, I haven't." Her question sent a shudder through me. I set her on her feet. "We've got to get up to the control turret. The captain--his loyal officers up there."

"Oh--Oh, Lord!" With a new anguish of terror upon her face she jerked away from me, ran for her doorway. I saw where Torio had melted through its lock with a heat blast. I dashed through it after her, and caught her in the center of her room.

"Nina, what's the matter?"

* * * * *

The oblong coffin box! It lay flat on the floor, over by the wall of the dim room. In a sudden lull of the ship's chaos the rhythmic ticking was audible. And now there were other sounds from within the box! A thumping! A low, mumbling man's voice!

A rasping voice in the cabin doorway sounded behind me. Gun in hand, I whirled. One of the huge deckhands stood there, murder on his face, a blood-stained knife between his teeth so that he looked like an ancient picture of a surface vessel pirate. He lunged in at us. My flash caught him full in the face; horribly his features blackened as he went down.

"Oh--Oh, I had no chance to let you out!" Nina was half sobbing it as she flung herself down over the box. The ship's alarm siren had suddenly died. Did that mean that the captain and the others in the control turret had been killed? The thought stabbed at me. Distant shots were still sounding. The oaths of fighting men were audible--the loyal members of the crew, fighting those traitors who had so suddenly set upon them. Footsteps were thudding on the roof-deck overhead.

"No chance to let you out!" The pallid girl with trembling fingers was fumbling at the box. Its lid rose up, with the head and shoulders of a man appearing beneath; a man entombed, hiding in there, breathing with the air-renewers of the ticking mechanism. A stalwart man of iron-gray hair. Georg Blake! Nina's father. I recognized him from the many pictures I had seen. He leaped out of the box, stared at me.

"A Government man," Nina gasped. "Here to help us."

The report of Blake's death--his possible murder--all that had been Blake's own doing. He gripped me now; murmured it swiftly. A giant, dominant fellow, he towered over me. Nina was unpacking his weapons from the box as he told me. He had believed there was a plot on the Moon against him; was smuggling himself to the Moon, where in secret, with the villains thinking him dead and only his young daughter to cope with, he expected to expose them. And most of the voyage he had been hidden in the box, afraid of eavesdroppers or some prying Benson curve-ray.

"Give me those guns, Nina. These damnable murderers--" Then he swung at me; lowered his voice: "Mackensie has the catalyst?"

"Yes," I murmured.

"Good! I know where. By Heaven, they can kill us both and still they won't find it." He was buckling his weapons to his huge belt.

"The captain's in the control turret," I said. "Making a stand up there. We should go to him."

"Yes. You're right. Come on."

We ran. I put my arm around the girl as she sagged like a terrified child against me. Bow and stern, the sounds of the fighting seemed somewhat to have slackened. The passengers still were screaming; I shoved them back in their doorways as we dashed past. And suddenly, reaching the side deck, I realized that the towering Blake was not with us. The deck here was wet with blood. Three or four bodies lay nearby. An Earth-woman lay writhing, her white throat slashed with crimson. There was nothing I could do to help her. My gun ranged the deck; there was nothing to shoot at. Off at the stern, I saw a running man leap high in the air and go down. Then the red Earth-light back there momentarily darkened. Someone had thrown a darkness bomb; its light-absorbing gas came spreading along the deck toward us.

"This way, Nina--climb. I'll follow."

We went up the little ladder. Near the top I held her back, poking my head cautiously up, in advance of her. The dimly starlit deck was blurred with gas and heat fumes. We were mid-forward, perhaps halfway between the helio cubby and the chart room. In a patch here on the deck, darkness gas hung in a layer, a black shroud nearly waist deep. Light still showed in the window of the helio room, where the grewsome body of Len Smith lay sprawled. The chart room was dark, its door closed; but the steel shutter of its window, facing this way, was up a few inches. I thought I saw the muzzle of a gun protruding.

Good enough. Mackensie, Wilson and perhaps others were in there--barricaded, still holding out. I shouted, "I'm Penelle. Don't fire!"

"Come ahead," Mackensie's great voice roared.

* * * * *

Life, or death, can hang upon such a little thing. Directly across the thirty-foot roof deck from me the top of the other side-ladder was visible above the layer of darkness. A man's head and shoulders suddenly appeared there. My weapon leveled; but then I saw that it was Nina's father. He saw me at the same instant, waved at me and jumped from the ladder, wading through the waist-high darkness toward the chart room.

I do feel that there was nothing I could have done. Heaven knows I would give anything now if only I had had some flash of intuition.

But I was thinking only of Nina. I turned to gaze down at her, where she stood a step or two below me on the ladder. "Come on, it's all safe."

Safe? I turned back just in time to see a hand and arm come up out of the layer of darkness. Weird, as though detached from its body, it swung; the fingers loosed a little globe. It was only a few feet behind Blake. The globe hurtled at his head, struck it--an explosive bomb. It burst with a sharp report and a little puff of yellow-red light. Perhaps I caught a glimpse of the ghastly scattered fragments of what had been a human head. There was only a grewsome gory neck-stump as the giant body of Blake toppled down into the layer of darkness.

I fired into the darkness gas. The stab of heat dispelled it a little. I hit nothing. Then, as I jumped from the ladder, forgetful of Nina, from the chart-room window Mackensie was wildly firing from two weapons. One of the sizzling heat-rays barely missed me. And then someone behind him, Wilson perhaps, tossed a light-bomb. Its blinding actinic glare momentarily dispelled the gloom. At the other side companion-ladder we caught a vague glimpse of the massive head and shoulders of Mokk as he leaped down to the lower deck. His triumphant laugh floated up after him.

"You, Penelle, bring the girl in here," Mackensie was roaring. "Hurry now."

I all but carried the half-fainting Nina. The darkness gas was floating away; but I thanked God that enough remained to shroud the fallen headless body of her father as we passed it. The door of the chart room opened; I dashed in with her; hands banged the steel door closed and bolted it.

"I guess we're all here," Mackensie said. The _X-87_ captain was grim, his thick face puffed with the choleric blood swelling it. His left arm hung almost limp at his side; I saw where his white uniform was burned with the scorching edge of a heat-stab. Young Wilson was here, disheveled, wild-eyed. The little oval to the control turret was open; I could see the fat little Peter Green and James Polter, the purser, in there, crouched at a slit of the forward visor window, weapons in hand. I went in to them.

"Just us," I murmured. "Where's Dr. Frye?"

Polter grimly gestured. "Down there--see him? Damned traitor. I drilled him. See him?"

The _X-87_ was still on her course. The forward deck triangle was still bathed in moonlight, save that gases blurred it. The forward lookout's telescope lay in a wreck, with his body upon it. Other motionless forms were strewn about; chairs were overturned--those same chairs where Nina and the rest of us had gathered in the moonlight so short a time ago. Dr. Frye's thin body lay huddled down there.

I was aware now that all the fighting had ceased; there was only the distant murmurs of the terrified passengers, in their cabins beneath us. The mutineers everywhere had won; I could not doubt it. The thing was a swift massacre. Those crew members who had tried to be loyal were all dead. I stared, from the tiny hatch-opening in the bow, which led down to the forward messroom, a hand cautiously appeared. There was a stab of flame; a report; an old-fashioned leaden slug thudded harmlessly against a corner of the catwalk bridge, only a few feet from the slit at which we were peering. And in the silence, the sniper's chuckle sounded.

At my elbow, suddenly there was a buzzing. Green turned his head slightly. "Call--coming from the main gravity plate room," he murmured. "Answer it, Penelle."

I moved toward the little mouthpiece. But Mackensie had heard it and came running in from the adjacent chart room. "I'll take it. Keep at your lookouts, everybody--this may be a ruse to catch us off guard."

I could hear the tiny voice coming from the receiver as Mackensie clapped it to his ear.

"This is Torio," the voice said suavely. "Have you had enough, Captain?"

"You go to hell," Mackensie roared.

"That would be very nice, Captain, but it's more likely to be your own destination." I could picture the sleek, ironically smiling Venus man down there at the speaking tube. "We demand your surrender now--if you do not wish to die."

"To hell with you--"

"All you have to do is come out of the turret, with your hands up. You'll be treated--like the passengers. Fair treatment, I do assure you."

"I'll have all you pirates in the detention pen before this is ended," Mackensie roared.

"All we want is your surrender. And to have you tell us where you've hidden that little leaden cylinder."

"By Heaven, you'll never find it. Dead or alive."

"Dead, if you say so," Torio's voice snapped. And then his irony returned. "We'll give you five minutes to decide."

"I want nothing from you. By the gods, I'm still Master here!"

"Empty title, Captain."

"I'm steering us back to Earth," the captain rasped. "The Interplanetary Patrol is coming for us."

That made the Venus man chuckle. "If only it were. But it isn't."

"We'll be back on Earth in eighteen hours," the choleric Mackensie asserted. "You can all go to hell--you murderers--bandits--"

"Back to Earth?" Torio sneered. "Watch us turn, Captain. Not back to Earth. It's Venus we're going to head for. Venus--where the new triumphant Government will be needing that treasure you've hidden. Up there with you in the turret, isn't it?"

"To hell with you--"

"Watch us turn, Captain."

* * * * *

I was aware of the glittering Heavens up through the glassite pressure dome as they made a dizzying swoop. The little _X-87_, with her gravity plates abruptly shifted by the manual controls in the hull room, was turning over.

"See it, Captain?"

"You damned fools," Mackensie roared. "Disconnect my controls if you like. What the hell of it? You can't chart a course down there. You haven't the instruments or the skill."

"Quite true, Captain. That's why we want you to surrender. We'd really rather not kill you. And if we go falling through Space this way, unguided, we might eventually hit something. Your five minutes are almost up. What do you say?"

My nostrils abruptly were dilating. What was this? Suddenly I was aware of a queer acrid smell here. And my head gave a swoop. Here in the turret Green and Polter were at the forward window. I saw them fling me a startled glance. Both of them staggered to their feet. And Mackensie, still gripping the receiver, was swaying.

"What's the matter, Captain?" Torio's suave ironic voice was demanding. "Do you smell it already? You're so silent."

William Wilson, with Nina, was alone on guard in the adjacent chart room. He gave a sudden startled cry. "Come quick! Something's the matter with me."

Poisonous gas here! We realized it abruptly; gas pouring in through the ventilators from below.

"Close those vents!" Mackensie gasped. "Poisoned air--" His hand was clutching at his throat. With his thick neck, full-blooded body, he felt it worse than any of us. His face was purpling; his eyes abruptly bulging. In that second he staggered and fell, ripping the receiver connection out as he went down, where still the ironic voice of Torio was jibing at us.

The rest of us sprang to the grid vents. There was no way of shutting the poisoned air off! The hinges of the multiple little visors were melted away!

"That--that damned Dr. Frye," Polter gasped. "He was up here a while ago. I wondered--"

A scream from Nina, mingled with a sizzling flash in the other room, transfixed us. With all the weird scene swaying before me, I dashed through the oval. Young Wilson was lying sprawling, dead from a bolt, with his head and shoulders on the window ledge. Nina was crouching in a corner, gasping, staring in terror. I started toward her. My ears were roaring as though with a thousand Niagaras. A titan hand seemed compressing my chest with a band of steel as I gasped for breath.

"Nina--Nina--" My own voice, so futile, sounded far away. Then I heard the steel shutter of the chart room window snap up to the top. Into the opening, a man came climbing. Mokk, with a patch of chemical fabric binding his nose and mouth like a mask. My gun sizzled at him, but the stab went wild as I staggered. Then he came leaping at me.

From the turret I was aware of other shots; a scream of agony from Polter as he was struck; thudding blows as the visor pane was crashed. And then a scream from little Green. The end! On the chart room floor grid I found myself wildly grappling the hulking Martian. My gun had clattered away as his three hundred-pound weight crashed me down. Dimly I realized that this sudden wild attack upon us was because the bandits, for their own sakes, had no desire to have any great amount of the poisoned air circulating about the little ship.

"You damned little Earth-fool," Mokk was growling. "Don't you see I'd rather not kill you?"

My puny little blows into his face only made him rasp with anger. I was trying to twist from under him. I almost made it. But abruptly he seized me around the middle, rose up and hurled me. Like a child I hurtled across the room, crashing against the alumite inner wall. The world went up into a blinding roar of light as my head struck. Dimly I was aware of dropping back to the floor. There was only blinding, roaring light, and Nina's choked scream of terror as my senses faded and I slid into the soundless abyss of unconsciousness.

* * * * *

I was at last aware that I was not dead, by the dim feeling that my head was throbbing. I was lying on something soft. Voices were here; the muffled, blended murmur of men's voices. At first they seemed very faint and far away. Then, as my returning senses clarified a little more, I knew that the voices were close to me.

I opened my eyes at last to find myself lying on a blanket on the chart room floor. In a chair Nina was huddled, mutely staring with wide, terrified eyes to where at his chart-table Captain Mackensie was slumped, sullenly staring at the celestial diagrams spread before him. The sleek, ironic figure of Torio was beside him, his slim gray hand gesturing at the charts.

"We are now just about here, Captain?"

"Yes," Mackensie growled.

"Then we want a computation of the swiftest course, from here to Venus. You will figure it out. Tell us the gravity plate combination."

I could feel that blood was stiffly matting the hair at the back of my head, a ragged scalp wound there. I was bathed in cold sweat; weak, so dizzy still that the eerie chart room swam before me. But my strength slowly was returning. How much time had passed? Considerable, I judged, from that blood so stiffly dry in my hair. With a fumbling hand I felt of my clothes. All my instruments and weapons had been taken.

Then I saw, in another chair, the huge slumped figure of Mokk, his massive legs crossed at ease. On his knees his hand held a gun alert. The room light fell on his heavy face. It bore an expression of grim irony, as his dark eyes, watchful, roved the room.

"The segment of a parabola, Captain," the soft voice of Torio was saying. "Would that be most swift? Remember, as we turn in past the Earth, we go no closer than forty thousand miles."

"You're fools," Mackensie muttered. "This voyage will take a month or more."

"Why not?"

"The alarm will be out for us. The Interplanetary Patrol will pick us up."

"Let us hope not, Captain. You and Miss Nina would be the first to die. But there is not too much danger, I think. The modern electro-telescopes are very wonderful, but there is none, at forty thousand miles, powerful enough to pick up so small a speck of floating dust as the _X-87_. Or at least, not to identify it."

"I wouldn't be too sure, Torio. And at best, your food will give out."

"We will hope not," Torio smiled. His voice turned brisk. "Chart your course, Captain. Remember, we kept you alive just for this duty."

Nina said suddenly, "This silence everywhere about the ship--where are the passengers?"

Torio turned smilingly to her. "Why, little lady, didn't you know? We gave them pressure suits and put them out the keel porte. Have no fear, they'll drift down safely. Some of the suits are powered. If they're clever they'll get back to Earth."

As though this were an old-fashioned surface vessel--giving the passengers life preservers and tossing them into the middle of an ocean.

"Penelle seems to have recovered his wits," Mokk said suddenly. "See what he knows, Torio."

It turned all their gazes upon me. I was up on one elbow. "What I know about what?" I said.

* * * * *

Torio leaped to his feet and stood bending over me. "Now then, you damned crime-tracker. Where is the T-catalyst? It's hidden around here somewhere. Where is it?"

"Catalyst," I mumbled. "I don't know what you mean."

Torio's foot kicked savagely at me. I tensed; the giant Mokk shifted his weapon to level down at me. I saw Mackensie flash me a glance.

"So you're going to try that too?" Torio rasped.

I stared. "He doesn't know any more about it than I do," Mackensie growled. "Nobody knew except Georg Blake, and you killed him. Find it for yourself. My guess it that Blake cast it adrift when the attack came."

"You talk without sense," Mokk put in. "Maybe the girl knows." He chuckled. "If you leave me alone with her, Torio, I can think of ways to make her tell."

"I know nothing about it," Nina gasped.

"Well, some one of you does," Torio said grimly. "We'll start with this damn crime-tracker." He leaped across the room, came back with a length of wire. My gaze strayed to the opposite wall; the treasure was there, back of a secret panel.

"Bare your chest, Penelle." Torio stooped to where I was backed against the wall, on the floor. He tore at my shirt, exposing the flesh of my chest. "Are you going to tell?"

"I can't. I don't know."

Beyond his slim shoulder I saw Nina's face, pallid, her dark eyes glistening with horror, her lips compressed as though to stifle a scream. Torio had a small cylinder in his hand, with the naked length of wire connected to it. The wire was glowing now--red, orange, white, then violet hot.

"A few lashes with this," Torio hissed at me. "Whatever you know will come out then." His pale face was blazing.

"He will talk even more quickly if you try that on the girl," Mokk growled.

"No!" I burst out. "No, damn you! We don't know where it is! I can't tell what I don't know."

"We'll see," Torio muttered. He dangled the wire at my face. The violet light of it was blinding; the heat scorched my skin.

"Stop! Oh, stop it! I'll tell you!" Nina's anguished cry rang out. The light and heat receded from my face.

"Oh, so you're the one who's willing to tell?" Torio swung on her; snapped off the current in his wire and flung it away. "All right, where is it? But remember, by the gods, if we don't find it where you say--"

"It's there." She gestured to the wall. "My father told me it's there."

"I hope so," the giant Mokk growled. "For your sake, I hope so, little lady."

I held my breath. If by some mischance it should not be there--

Then Torio found the pressure-clip and slid the panel. With a cry of triumph as he saw the hidden little safe; he did not wait to question us on how to open it, but seized a heat-torch; melted its lock in a moment. The foot-long leaden cylinder was disclosed. There could be no question of the authenticity of its contents--its contents-dial glowed with the Gamma rays bombarding it from within. The pointer trembled at the figures indicating the strength and character of the bombardment.

"All goes well," Mokk chuckled. "We have no problems now, friend Torio. You and I can trust each other, eh? Put it back in the safe. That is as good a place as any." The giant Martian stood up, yawning. "You work out our course with the captain. For me, I shall go down and take some rest." He grinned. "The little Earth-girl fascinates you, eh, Torio? I must leave her up here with you. Very well. I would not be one to quarrel over so small a thing. The girls of Mars please me better."

Torio, too, was smiling. They were highly pleased with themselves, these triumphant villains. "Take Penelle with you," Torio said contemptuously. "Lock him up in one of the cubbies. Have one of the men feed him."

I caught Torio's flashing, significant look, and one of grinning irony with which the Martian answered it. And Nina saw it also. A cry burst from her and she leaped up.

"You--you don't mean that! You're going to kill him, now that you haven't anything more to get out of him! Oh--Oh, please--"

Her slim little hands gripped Torio by the shoulders. I saw him tense; he stared; and then he laughed softly. "Well, my dear--when you ask me in such a way as this--"

"Oh, I do. I do."

"Then I will keep him alive."

"Don't--don't take him down there."

"You do not trust me?" His voice sounded hurt. He swung on Mokk. "Bind him and lock him up. Do not harm him. If you do, you will answer to me for it. I mean it now."

"Quite correct," Mokk agreed with a grin. "If that is your form of love-making, it is your own affair. Let us hope she will give you her favor, since you do this for her."

"Take him away," Torio commanded. "Come, Captain--let us get this course charted."

* * * * *

I stood up as Mokk prodded me with his weapon and he shoved me from the room. Was he going to kill me now out of hand? I had that feeling, and it wasn't pleasant. But he only shoved me along the starlit and moonlit roof deck. We had turned partly over. The huge ball of Earth was directly under us now; the Moon was high overhead, blurred through the glassite pressure dome. I saw, distantly, a man or two of the crew, watching us as we came down the side ladder. How many of the mutineers were there? I had no way of guessing. As Mokk shoved me from the side deck into the cross corridor, down the deck near the stern triangle, I caught a glimpse of the hunchback, Durk, staring silently at us.

Part way along the corridor the Martian shoved me into one of the passenger sleeping-cubbies. He lighted one of its tiny hooded wall lights. Then he produced lengths of wire; bound my ankles; lashed my wrists, crossed behind me.

"I'll put you into the bunk for greater comfort," he chuckled.

"Thanks."

"Oh, I do it for friend Torio, and his little lady, not for you. Are you hungry?"

"No."

"Well, I'll send you food later."

He left me, closing the door softly after him. I lay in the shadowed bunk, listening to the silence of the vibrationless little vessel. Across the small sleeping room, the window oval was visible, its alumite shutter halfway down. The open segment was very faintly starlit. Perhaps I had been dozing; my head throbbed; the dank sweat of weakness was still upon me. Then suddenly I was snapped into alertness; it seemed that I had heard a sound on the side deck outside my window.

And abruptly there was a shadow there in the half-oval window opening. Someone looking in? My heart pounded as I stared; and in a second the soundless shadow withdrew. A minute passed. Again I tensed at the sound of a faint creak. My door was opening! Beyond the bunk bottom I could see the door as very slowly, quietly it swung inward. Then the sheen of light from the corridor darkened; a blob slipped into the room; the door softly closed. The blob, hunched, stealthy, came slowly toward me.

Whatever outcry I might have made froze on my lips with my sudden rush of horror. Twitching, I strained at my bonds, but the damnable wire held and merely dug into my flesh from the effort. The hunchback! He came shambling. In one of his dangling hands he held a knife; the hooded light here in the cubby glinted on its naked blade. And in that second the light-sheen caught his face--ghastly, lumped, twisted countenance, with bulbous parted lips as he sucked in his breath.

"Penelle--"

"Get away from me," I rasped. "You'll answer to Torio for this. By Heaven, he'll flay you alive."

"Not so loud! Easy there, I'm not here to hurt you."

What was this? Not a guttural, illiterate voice. I recalled my fleeting impression before that this Durk had the sort of voice one uses for disguise. He was beside me now; and as the light, its hood here within a foot or two, brightly illumined his face, realization came to me. Wax, embedded under the skin, by the Glotz-process of disguise. We of the Shadow Squad sometimes use it, though I must confess I had never seen it so cleverly done as here.

"Who are you?" I muttered.

He whispered, "I'm Jim--Jim Blake."

* * * * *

Nina's brother! My S.S. boss had mentioned him; mysteriously he had disappeared. He was loosening the wires which bound me; and his swift whispers told me: Like his father, he had wanted to get secretly to the Moon. Throughout all the mutiny he had had no opportunity of doing anything which seemed better than posing as one of the villains. Only once had he had any chance to communicate with Nina--that time when he had gone to her room, telling her that he was going to try and kill Mokk and Torio before the attack started, and thus ward it off. And that he had not been able to do.

He was only a boy really, barely twenty; he was trembling with eagerness and excitement now as he cast me loose and I rose up out of the bunk and stood beside him.

"You armed?" I whispered.

"No; only this knife. I've tried to get something else but can't."

"Any of the crew with weapons?"

"No, I don't think so. Knives, machinery bars and things like that. Mokk and Torio seemed to have everything."

"How many in the crew?"

"Five, and me. One got killed in the fight. Another wounded. There were two or three others planted among the passengers. Maybe more. They got killed, too. Oh, what shall we do? All I could think of was to get here and release you."

"And I damn well thank you, Jim." I clapped him on the back. "Look here, you keep the knife. Heaven knows you may need it."

"What are we going to do?" he whispered eagerly. "Is--is Nina all right?"

"Yes, I guess so. Up in the turret. Have you seen Mokk?"

"That Martian? No. What can we do?"

Certainly I had no very clear idea. Five men, and Mokk and Torio. They were not very many to be dispersed about the ship, and we had a fair chance of cautiously moving around without encountering any of them. Torio, I figured, was still in the chart room, with Nina and Mackensie. Mokk, perhaps, was asleep somewhere. Young Blake had no very clear idea of where the other five might be.

"Come on," I whispered. "Let's take a look at the chart room." If by any wild chance we could overcome Torio and get the electric weapons--

We got up to the roof deck without encounter. From one of the midships ladders I stared forward to the chart room. I could see Torio and Mackensie still in there, at the table with the charts. And now, beside the chart room, where he could command its door and also the control turret, a huge blob was lurking. Was it Mokk?

It wasn't. I made the figure out more clearly as he moved a trifle.

"That's one of the crew," Blake whispered. "Look--he's got a ray-gun."

I could see it. I turned back. "Got to try something else. The midships keel pressure porte," I whispered. "Ever been down there, Jim?"

He stared. "No. What's your idea? Pressure porte?"

"There's also a pressure porte in the dome, just over the control turret. If we can get some Erentz pressure suits down in the keel--"

Whether he understood me or not, I didn't stop to find out. I had still only a very vague idea myself, just the glimmer of a desperate plan which might work out.

"You better lead," I suggested. "I'll direct you. Len Smith showed me down there. If we run into anybody you can fool them long enough for me to jump them."

Unless it might be the Martian, with his belt bristling with electronic guns. Vehemently I prayed we could keep clear of him. Silently, furtively, we padded into the lower corridor. No sound. With young Blake close ahead of me, we went down onto the mid-level catwalk. Still there was nothing save eerie lights and deserted rooms. Nothing? A ghastly reek came through a doorway at me. I glanced in.

"The dead," Blake whispered with a shudder. "Said they were going to cast them out a porte, but they didn't yet."

* * * * *

The dead. That catwalk room was a reeking, ghastly charnel house. A good thirty bodies--men, women and children of three worlds, piled in a horrible litter. I gasped. All the passengers were here. There had been no disembarking of passengers, as Torio had ironically described to Nina.

We went on. Descended another level. We were in the keel now. Suddenly footsteps sounded on the catwalk above us. One of the crew passed along it. Fortunately he did not look down through the grid.

"Got by that by a margin," I whispered. "Straight ahead, Jim. Then half a flight down."

From one of the storehouse rooms just ahead of us a man suddenly emerged. I shrank against the dark corridor wall.

"Oh, you, Durk," the man said softly. "Lookit what I found in here--cask of alcoholite. Good drinkin', Durk."

Jim Blake is only a boy, but he didn't shrink from his job. I was tensed to leap past him upon the man in the doorway. The fellow abruptly saw me. He squealed, "Look, behind you--"

That's all he ever did say. Blake went at him like a little springing leopard. The knife flashed; the man went down with only a choked gurgle of blood in his throat.

"Got him," Blake murmured.

"Good enough. Come on."

The emergency pressure porte was to one side of the corridor, an oblong compartment, with one tiny segment of the tubelight up in its ceiling sending down a faint pallid sheen. The inner door here was open so that normal air pressure was in the porte.

"Luck better be with us now," I murmured. "Let's see what they've left in the emergency equipment room."

It was here on the other side the corridor. My heart pounded with triumph. There were plenty of Erentz suits and helmets here. Both young Blake and I had used the familiar Carpley suit and helmet for outer stratosphere flying. These were not so very different, save that the electronic current in the double shell of the fabric circulated faster, for the more speedy absorption of the interior pressure within the suit, when worn in the vacuum of Space.

We had them on in a moment, with the huge goggling helmets buckled at the throat. Through my glassite bull's-eye I could see young Blake's weirdly disguised face. He was trying to smile; but he was probably pretty fairly frightened. For which I don't blame him; I was myself. The baggy, still deflated suits hung on us in great grotesque folds. I touched my metal-tipped glove to the metal plate on his shoulder for audiphone contact.

"Think you can work it all right?" I murmured.

"Yes. Yes, sure."

"Keep with me when we get outside," I cautioned.

"Yes. I'll--I'll try."

I was in an agony of apprehension that someone would come and catch us here before we could get the porte closed. But no one did. Our pressure suits caused no trouble. The Erentz mechanism controls, renewal of the interior air, and the pressure-absorbing current, are simple enough to work. Within a minute our suits were bloated, huge. And then as we stepped into the pressure room, I saw what clarified and altered all my vague plans. A complete get-away! It was possible now, for here on a rack of the pressure room floor lay a little volplane--emergency Space-sled, its canoe-like hull some twenty feet long, its wings for air gliding folded against its sides. It was provisioned with emergency food and water. I bent over it with hurried, triumphant examination. The stern had a tiny outboard rocket engine; and in the bow were small manually controlled gravity plates. It was ready; the descent to Earth in it could be made, with fair safety, and perhaps in a week.

* * * * *

We slid the inner pressure door closed. An exit out of a pressure room can be swiftly made. We opened the small vents of the outer panels. The air of the room started hissing out into the vacuum outside.

"Easy," I murmured. "Not too fast. We don't want to get blown out."

Within a minute we could open the outer door; the last escaping air went with a thin hissing rush. At the threshold before us yawned the vast abyss of Space. I stood for a second gazing down at the great mottled reddish ball of Earth. Forty thousand miles down to it. There was a little launching rack out here to hold the volplane. We slid it out; locked it into position. I had told Blake now what I was going to try and do. He demurred at waiting here in the volplane, but I forced him.

"You can see up from here," I murmured. "Somebody has to launch it. When I give you the signal, shove it off. You can pick us up."

"If we have luck," I murmured it to myself.

He nodded comprehension.

Then, cautiously, I stepped from the threshold, out into Space. An empty abyss of forty thousand miles, down to the Earth's surface beneath me. Though I knew very well what would happen to me, of course, I must say that I had to steel myself grimly, to step off from the brink of that threshold. It made my senses momentarily reel. But the weird sensation was gone in a moment.

It was like a diver taking a step under water. I did not fall. I had let myself off the brink gingerly; and I felt my body sluggishly moving out a foot or two, with all the universe slowly, dizzily turning over. I am no skilled mathematician. Given the gross tonnage of the little _X-87_, doubtless astronomers could figure the relation of its gravity pull upon me, so close, compared to the giant bulk of the Earth, so far away. Perhaps even at forty thousand miles, and against the pull of the Moon, some two hundred thousand miles above me, and the _X-87_ only a foot or two--the Earth would slowly have drawn me down. But I knew that there was an aura of the vessel's artificial interior gravity out here. Len Smith had told me of many tests which had been made between the Earth and the Moon.

At all events, I drifted downward a few feet, like a waterlogged chunk of wood slowly turning over. Then slowly I came back; landed in a clumsy, struggling heap against the ship's glistening alumite side. To each of us, himself is the center of the Universe. Cautiously I stood up. At once the vessel seemed my little world, lying flat on its side under me, with the reddish giant Earth to my right, the round white Moon to the left; and over my head, the great glittering vault of the Heavens, star-strewn upon a background of black velvet.

I seemed to weigh perhaps a pound or two. Like a fly, gingerly I crawled along the vessel's bulging side. Then I came to the dome. The roof deck within was grotesquely tilted on end. The vision of it was blurred by the glassite pressure plates, but it seemed unoccupied, slowly righting itself as I crawled up the bulge, cautiously clinging to avoid having my own efforts cast me off.

Then at last I came to the top, with the little _X-87_ right side up under my feet and the Moon above me. I knew that from the roof deck I could be seen up here as a distorted, shadowy blob. My heart was pounding with the fear that an alarm would come, but none did. I reached, at last, the little pressure porte in the dome over the control turret and chart room. I had two deflated Erentz suits and helmets lashed to me. The emergency panel was here, like a trap door under me. Through its transparent bull's-eye I could see into the small, dim compartment under me. The lower panel was open, but there was a lever out here by which I could slide it closed. Would it make any sound and alarm Torio in the chart room under it? I held my breath as it slid. There was no commotion.

* * * * *

It took only a minute to let the air out of the little scaled pressure room. Then cautiously I dropped down into it, with the interior gravity gripping me so that suddenly I was my normal weight once more. Breathless, tense, I lay flat, with my suit deflating as I stared down into the chart room. Nina and Torio were there. I could see them, but not hear them. She was in a chair, with him standing before her. And then I caught my breath. What was this? An angle of the control turret also was within my line of vision. A crimsoned figure lay there; the body of Captain Mackensie. He had finished his work; charted the course--and this was his reward.

A little of the outside of the turret also was visible. It did not seem that the guard was out there now. Had he been sent away, so that Torio now might be alone with Nina? Fervently I hoped so.

There was no alarm as I cautiously slid the trap in the chart room ceiling.

"Oh--Oh, please--let me alone!"

"But, my dear little lady, do you want me to kill Penelle? Surely you--" The snaky Torio got no further than that. I was some fifteen feet directly above him. Perhaps he was aware of my hurtling body but he had no chance to avoid it as I crashed down upon him. The work-knife in my gloved, metal-fingered hand stabbed. He went limp under me, with blood gushing from his chest where the knife had gone to its hilt.

My helmet was up in the pressure room. "Nina, climb up!" I slid the little wall ladder into position for her. "Quick, now! Get into the pressure suit up there. Inflate it, and wait for me."

White and grim, she obeyed wordlessly. I started her up the ladder, swung for the hidden wall safe. Would the leaden cylinder of the catalyst still be here? It was. I strapped it quickly to my belt.

Then I dashed for the instrument cubby. A little explosive time-bomb.... I found one; and hurried with it into the control turret, where I placed it against the mechanisms of the Erentz current--that huge electronic stream which circulated throughout all the double-shelled plates of the vessel to absorb the inner pressure. Ten minutes? Would that give us time enough?

Nina was in the pressure suit when in a minute more I reached the upper room.

"Good enough, Nina. Now, the helmet! Your brother Jim is outside--safe."

My heart leaped with triumph at her gasp of joy. "Oh, Fred--"

"Come on, hurry."

We were garbed, ready and through the outer porte in another minute or two. My hand clung to Nina's metal shoulder.

"Careful, there's no gravity. Don't shove yourself off."

We were like two crawling flies on the smooth outer surface of the pressure dome. Still there was no alarm. We got part way down the side. Young Blake, in the poised little volplane farther down, saw us. I waved my arm, and he shoved his tiny craft off. Like a log in water it floated out twenty feet or so, turned and came drifting diagonally back.

"We'll dive for it," I murmured. "He'll pick us up."

* * * * *

I did not see the emerging figure, here beside us in the starlight; I did not even know that there was a tiny pressure porte here on the side deck at one of the bull's-eyes. But suddenly a panel slid wide. Upon a rush of air, a huge bloated figure came out; struck against me, with its arms gripping me.

Mokk! I could see his heavy, snarling face through the visor pane. His body and mine, as we gripped each other, toppled off into emptiness. Amazing, weightless combat. The whole Universe was turning over as we floated out, kicking, flailing, floundering. He was trying to reach the knife at his belt. He got it, but somehow my mailed fist was able to strike it away. It went floating off. The thing to me was a weird chaos. I tried to kick away, but he clung, his great hands with metal fingers gouging at the fabric of my suit to rip it. Once, his hand clapped to my shoulder. With sudden audiphone contact I heard his rasping voice:

"The end of you, Earth-man."

But, thank God, it wasn't. Abruptly, by some fortunate chance I was able to snatch my knife from its belt-sheath. It ripped into Mokk's fabric. I was aware of a little flash of deranged electricity; his suit deflated. Ghastly human explosion--every tiny cell of his body bursting with its inner pressure. The rush of released, dissipating expanding air from his suit sprayed bursting gore upon me. Gore, and the noisome pink-white foam which had been his flesh.

I shoved the ghastly thing away; saw myself now seemingly upon my back, grotesquely struggling to turn erect with the _X-87_ hanging diagonally some twenty feet away. Nina was still clinging to its side, with the volplane gliding near her. She dove, and Blake hauled her aboard. And then he shoved to me; gripped me at last.

"All right," I gasped. "Good enough, Jim--you sit here with Nina--"

At the bow of our fragile little craft, I set the gravity plates for an intensification of Earth's attraction. I set them to the fullest of their power. For a moment we slowly turned over, with all the Heavens, the Moon, Earth and the little _X-87_ in a dizzying swing. Then we steadied, with the Earth ahead of us.

Clinging, I shoved myself back in the canoe-like volplane, to Nina and Blake. Touched them. "We're starting. See the ship?"

The little vessel, close behind and above us, was slowly receding.

"But they'll discover us!" young Blake murmured. "They have telescopes--they'll discover us--and the _X-87_ can catch us easily."

"Maybe," I muttered. "Maybe not--"

* * * * *

Then it came!

It was a weird, soundless explosion. We saw a jagged little series of flashes as the Erentz current burst out. Then, with a puff of light, soundlessly the vessel flew apart ... a million fragments of bursting ship and bursting human bodies. All about us was the glistening, starlit shimmer of them, like a fountain spray of pyrotechnic beauty. Then there was just emptiness of Interplanetary Space where the ship had been. But a cloud of shimmering particles hung there, like myriad specks of stardust to mark where a tiny world had exploded. After a time their little gravity drew them together into a loose ball of shattered Matter hanging balanced by the myriad Celestial forces. Some of the larger pieces were starting around it, little satellites with the inertia of their velocity balancing the gravity of the central mass. A new tiny System, here in the vast Heavens. It drifted off, finding its new orbit--drifted as we dropped away from it until at last it was only a shining speck among the billions of giant worlds. And then we could no longer see it.

* * * * *

I have little to add. You all know the details of our long but safe descent, with the Interplanetary patrol picking us up before we reached the stratosphere. And now, as a postscript, I may say that Miss Nina Blake has allowed me to announce that very presently she will be applying for the publication of her marriage. And she will name Frederick Penelle, of the Great-New York Shadow Squad.

Earth-Moon Flight 9 certainly was not star-crossed, for me.