Chapter IV

Bong! Bong! Bong! Bong! rang the warning gong, reverberating through the launching pit.

Mustapha IX had shaken hands for the last time with Villainowski and hurried down the gangplank. The ports were all sealed; crew at their stations. Outside the pits, the frenzied crowd was delirious with excitement. Wasn't it man's first attempt to reach the stars?

Bong! Bong! Bong! Bong! Bong!

On the last stroke the _Shooting Star_ fell silent except for the muffled roar of her tubes warming. At the same instant the crowd grew impossibly still.

The raw fear, which had made itself felt in spite of the festivities, rode to the surface. The strange psychological dread of deep space.

A woman in the relatives' stand suddenly buried her face in her hands, her shoulders shaking with violent sobs. She was the wife of the master mechanic on the third's watch. A gray-faced man moved towards the woman, patted her shoulders.

Just then a continuous violent explosion shook the frail stand like an earth tremor. The _Shooting Star_ burst from the pits, trailing a comet-tail of orange flame.

"Oh, my husband!" wailed the woman, "oh, my husband!" but her voice was drowned in the roar.

* * * * *

Jon Saxon threw off his safety belt, glanced across at the strained white face of Ileth Urban in the next acceleration chair. "Buck up," he grinned. "It's too late to change your mind now."

The girl nervously tucked a curl in place, smiled uncertainly. "Heaven help me! Are we going to share all my thoughts during the rest of the voyage?"

"Hell, no," said Saxon. "I want to preserve some of my illusions." He leaned towards her. "I'll strike a bargain with you, though. If you don't mention that I'm a telepath, I'll not report our--er--experience last night."

"You mean you haven't said anything?"

"No," said Saxon. "Why should I? I didn't have proof. Who'd want to tackle General Atomic without cast-iron evidence? On second thought, who'd want to tackle General Atomic at all? No one would believe me, anyway. Just like they won't believe you if you tell them I'm a telepath."

Saxon could see the girl reach a decision. "Oh, I wouldn't say that," he broke in before she could voice her thought. "You've lots of other courses. You could snub me or spread tales behind my back."

"I didn't say it!" she retorted hotly. "I thought it. My Lord, I can't even call my thoughts my own!"

"Then it's a bargain."

"I didn't say so."

"No. But you've decided to...."

She stamped her feet. "That's what I mean! That's what I mean!"

"Calm down," he said. "Half the staff is staring at you."

Ileth drew a deep breath, shrugged. A grim smile flashed across her pretty patrician features.

"If you can stand it," she replied with an unexpected twinkle in her hazel-green eyes, "I suppose I can too."

He stood up. "Like to meet the rest of the staff? Fine. You're all settled in your cabin, aren't you? No? Then I'll give you a hand as soon as we finish our tour of introduction."

Ileth's eyes had grown darker and darker.

"Now don't lose your temper," he said hastily.

"I haven't said a damn word. At least let me get my answers out of my mouth."

Saxon laughed, taking her arm. "Come along. We're accelerating at one G constant. We'll have no trouble moving around." He hesitated, then asked in an off hand manner,

"Has Q62 identified himself yet?"

Ileth looked startled, frightened. She tried to draw away but Saxon held onto her arm. "No. No, he hasn't. Please let go. You're hurting me, Jon."

But he didn't release her. "Is he aboard the ship?"

"No. I don't know. General Atomic didn't notify me that he would be." Abruptly, Ileth didn't seem confused any longer. She raised her chin, looked Saxon nakedly in the eyes making no effort to conceal her thoughts. "I think he is," she said simply. "But I don't know. He hasn't identified himself, if he is. I--I haven't seen anyone aboard that I know. I think I'm the only General Atomic agent aboard, and I'm an accredited representative."

Saxon regarded her a moment without speaking. The girl was telling the truth as far as she knew. There could be no doubt about that.

* * * * *

Saxon introduced Ileth to Brand, Government's bio-chemist, to Mercedes, the gray-haired middle-aged woman who was Government's authority in anthropology. He made the circuit of the lounge with her, letting her chat with ethnologists and semantics experts, psycho-historians and zoologists--all of Government's brilliant array of specialists. And all the while he kept his mind open and alert, sifting their varied thought patterns for a betraying sign.

He didn't intercept a single suspicious thought.

They all seemed to be just exactly what they were supposed to be, each one an expert in his field, eager and enthusiastic investigators beginning an unparalleled adventure. Saxon could discover no evidences that any of them had sold out to General Atomic.

If Q62 or any General Atomic agent were among Government's staff, they were perfect in dissembling their thoughts.

From the lounge, Saxon showed Ileth about the ship. He could see it was an experience for the girl.

The _Shooting Star_ had been built along the general design of a cruiser, heavily armed and armored against the possibilities of hostile races inhabiting the planets of the Alpha Centaurian suns.

Her crew was small. Government's staff of scientists numbered fourteen; and only four of the corporations were represented: General Atomic, Tri-World, Amalgamated Plastic and United Spaceways. In spite of the mass of equipment and a year's emergency ration of fuel and supplies, they were not crowded.

Saxon led Ileth through the control room, the officer's mess, the engine room and observation deck. Everywhere they went, Saxon probed the brains of crew and officers.

At the end of two hours, he still had found exactly nothing. Apparently Q62 was not aboard. Ileth asked slyly, "Did you find him?"

They had entered the deck on which the cabins were located and were passing the closed door of number seven.

"Q62?" said Saxon with a puzzled frown. "No--" He halted abruptly, seizing the girl's arm.

"Jon! What is it?"

"Be quiet!"

Saxon's scalp was tingling as if minute electrical shocks were coursing through the roots of his hair.

The Aliens?

The feel was unmistakable to his extra-human sixth sense. And it was emanating from Cabin Seven!

Like a cat he reached the door in one silent bound, pressed the button. The panel slid back noiselessly. Except for a blade of light lancing into the cabin from the lighted passage, only darkness lurked beyond the doorway.

The alien unhuman feel was suddenly so strong that it was like a cold draft pouring through the blackened entrance, sending chills rippling up his spine.

Ileth's eyes were enormous. Saxon could hear her frightened erratic breathing. Her fear-thoughts beat at his brain. "_What is it? What has he found? What's wrong?_"

In spite of himself, Saxon could feel the blood drain out of his cheeks. He wanted suddenly to slam the door and run blindly down the corridor, away from that strange creature lurking in the dark of Cabin Seven.

He controlled himself, reached noiselessly inside the door, pressed the switch. Light flooded the cabin.

"Why, it's just a girl!" said Ileth, who was peering wide-eyed over Saxon's shoulder. She giggled nervously.

Saxon stared at the occupant of the cabin, scarcely crediting his eyes. It was a girl right enough, a flaxen haired girl sleeping easily on her back in the narrow bunk.

A thin flexoplas coverlet was thrown across her. One slim bare leg dangled over the edge of the bunk. Her face, Saxon saw, was heart shaped, the closed eyelids delicately blue.

At Ileth's giggle, the creature opened her eyes, sat upright with a half-suppressed scream. Ileth backed out of the doorway in embarrassment, but Saxon stood as if turned to stone.

The tingling sensation was sending goose flesh racing over his skin. The alien emanations were streaming straight from the girl on the bunk.

He recovered himself, thought violently, angrily, "_Who are you?_"

The girl stared at him without making a sound. Saxon realized that her eyes were amber as topaz, large and strangely lambent. Then a faint smile twitched the corners of her lips. She made no move to escape, not even to cover her breasts and shoulder.

"_You!_" the thought reached Saxon tinged with amusement. "_It would be you who discovered me!_"

She touched a tiny instrument strapped to her wrist, which Saxon noticed for the first time.

"_Who are you?_" he thought again, then narrowed his eyes with crazed disbelief.

He could see the bulkhead through the girl. She gave a low laugh. The flexoplas coverlet, which had lain so lightly over her lap, collapsed slowly.

The girl was gone, dissolved. Only her throaty laugh lingered in the still air.

Saxon rubbed his eyes. He felt Ileth trembling against him as if she had a chill. Setting his jaw, he stepped up to the bunk, felt the sheets. They were warm and still held the impression of the girl's body.

He straightened, realized that the tingling in his scalp had ceased. The alien telepath was gone. But where?

"Let's get the hell out of here," Ileth said vehemently.

Saxon followed her into the passage, switched off the lights, closed the door softly behind him.

"I don't believe it!" said Ileth. "I don't want to believe it." Her fine patrician features were paper white, making her black lashes and eyebrows stand out like heavy strokes of a crayon. Her lips were bloodless.

Saxon shook his head in bewilderment.

"Couldn't you read her mind?" asked Ileth.

"She had the most perfect mental barrier I've ever encountered. I couldn't read a thing. Only...."

"Only what?"

"Nothing," he said abruptly, shaking his massive shoulders as if to free them from a burden. "Nothing. I think we'd better keep our mouths shut about this too. If we went around telling what we've seen, they'd throw us in the psychopathic ward."

Ileth shuddered.

"Maybe it was an hallucination," she suggested. "Maybe we're nutty as a fruit cake, I hope."