Chapter II

Timmy Gordon awakened to find his immediate world in a chill of killing frost. Cold water ran down his brow. Johnny Damokles' muttered curses penetrated his consciousness. "What ... hap ... happened?"

"Don't speaks ... you almost go for rides with Father Charon on one-way ferryboat. Look!" Johnny turned Tim's head tenderly to one side, and the young flyer gasped.

"Great flying dragons!"

Timmy's eyes traveled over the squat bulk of a figure clad from head to foot in heavy synthi-leather. "A Neptunian," he blurted, "but dead. How? Who did it?"

"I did it ... with toastings fork!"

"What?" Timmy's head went round in circles, "You killed one ton of concentrated Neptunian-venom with a toasting fork?"

"Sure things, boss. I stick heavy fellers with fork. He go hiss. Then bad smells. Then fall down ... _woosh!_" Damokles gave a graphic description in pantomime, and Timmy understood how this seeming miracle had happened. A Neptunian, accustomed to a mass of seventeen times that of Earth normal, a normal temperature at minus-180 Centigrade, and a methane plus solid oxygen atmosphere, would need some insulating, restricting suit to move about on frail Callisto. Apparently Johnny's fork had struck a weak spot in the refrigerant-suit, and a mild Callistonian climate had literally boiled the Neptunian to death.

Timmy staggered to his feet and tramped through the artificial frost to the Neptunian's side. A tiny mark, distinctive and simple, was branded on his assailant's collar. "The Tsom clan," said Timmy to himself. "The Director was right ... but why did he attack me in particular?"

Johnny Damokles pointed, "Look!" he said.

A bulky figure broke from the bushes and darted toward Hangar 6, but in that darkness, it was unrecognizable. "Get him!" barked Timmy, and raced down the path.

The figure, whoever and whatever it was, had disappeared by the time Timmy Gordon reached his ship. A quick inspection showed nothing in the hangar, and he climbed aboard the _Solabor_.

"About time you came," grumbled Shelton Thurner. He threw an empty bottle through the door and climbed from his seat in the back of the ship. "You ready to go?"

Gordon disregarded the question. "You see anyone come down here?"

"No. Been all alone."

"A Neptunian attacked me back in the bushes. Look," he showed Thurner the frost-bitten bruises on his throat. "Whoever set the Neptunian on me came this way ... _fast_!" He moved forward, seized Thurner by the shoulder, and laid his hand on the pilot's heavily-muscled chest. If Thurner had been the man, speedy running would have resulted in irregular breathing and heart-action. But the pilot's breathing was calm and normal. With an angry snarl he seized Timmy's wrist and flung him backward.

"Keep your hands to yourself, Gordon!" Thurner hissed.

"Sorry." Timmy's eyes squinted into slits, "I was just proving you innocent ... to my own satisfaction." He turned, climbed out of the ship, and hurriedly called the Director to report what had occurred. "Shall I stay on," he asked, "and help investigate?"

"No. We'll clean up the mess. Blast off as soon as possible, and get back here sooner!"

"QX, sir," said Tim, and hoisted himself aboard ship. "All set?"

"Been ready for twenty minutes."

"Yowsah, boss!" chimed Johnny Damokles.

* * * * *

There was utter silence, but in the midst of it, Callisto vanished. Seconds later Jupiter's bulk faded redly from the sky to become a dot silhouetted sunward. And all in silence.

"Lord, man!" Thurner looked at Timmy with a hint of surprise veiling his usual antagonism. "How in hell does this thing work?"

"Search me," shrugged Timmy. "I worked it out on a sensitizing principle. My impervium hull was supposed to reject light as a mirror would, and so throw itself forward like a beam of light. The thing works, too."

"She sure do," chuckled the delighted Greek. He looked through the sunward port and watched Jupiter diminishing. "Great Scotts!" he yelled. "This ships are fast like Greek god, Mercury!"

"And just as inexplicable."

"Why, man?" asked Thurner, "You've told us how she worked."

"You mean ... how I _thought_ she would work. Unfortunately, I tried the same principle on more impervium ... and not another ship has flown like this one. My math was wrong, but my mechanics worked. Just once."

"So I'm supposed to operate a fluke to Neptune?"

"Don't worry about it, Thurner. She's dependable and her controls are exactly like those in an ordinary planetary-liner. Watch." Timmy threw the wheel down, and the _Solabor_ tipped into a wide curve. Jupiter vanished. Dotted pinpoints of stars prickled the black of inter-world space.

"Looks easy," grunted the pilot. He slipped over into the wheelman's chair, and fiddled experimentally with gadgets. "Okay," he said, "after four or five minutes I'll be able to handle her."

"QX," said Timmy. "There's a copy of Maconachy's book on Supra-solar Navigation behind you. Great book, Maconachy, wouldn't want to be in space without it to lean on." Thurner grunted again.

"Yeah. Good stuff for you practical astrogators. Put it over there in reach. And listen...." Thurner's voice lost some of its begrudging tone. "We're on this trip together. Let's make it peaceable." He stretched out a broad paw, and Timmy shook. Thurner, for all his slyness and for all the ease with which Tim had knocked him down back there in the Space Bar, was a powerful man. Tim wondered why he hadn't fought back.

"All right!" he said, "We're together ... for the duration."

"It's a bargain. Now ... tell me more about how she operates. This ship's _actually faster_ than light?"

"Yep! Warps across a light beam just the way a sailboat can exceed the speed of wind on a certain tacks. Look back at the sun."

Thurner turned his head. "I'll be damned. A Doppler effect!"

"We're exceeding the speed of light ... right now!"

"And you're sure this principle of yours won't work on any other ship. Was there anything mixed with the impervium?"

"Central labs checked it," Timmy replied. "It was pure impervium."

"Where'd you get it?"

"By _coincidence_ ... from Neptune."

Thurner's face went red. "Look, guy," he said, "The war's off, and I don't like being played for a fool. There's no impervium on Neptune."

"Sorry, Thurner. This metal did come from Neptune. I bought the back fin of the old XC-34 ... it was towed in from Nep back in '67."

"I see." Thurner's brows knitted, and he muttered an apology. Then, turning away, he ran through the logarithms in Maconachy, made a few quick checks, shifted dials coolly and competently, and leaned back. "I'll take her in from here," he said.

"From the dark side," cautioned Tim.

"Okay. I'll drive part way to Pluto ... then swing back."

"QX," said Gordon. He spun about and walked to the back of the little ship. "How do you like it, Johnny?" he asked, and Damokles' face lighted up.

"She's one dam' fine ship ... go like go-to-hell fireball ... but look it here, Meester Timmy."

"Yes?"

"Why you say she won't work for any other ships?"

"Just won't. That's all."

"Maybe this planets Neptune do it."

"How, Johnny? We tested the impervium from every angle, and found it nothing but pure metal."

"Maybe is so. Dam' gods, Neptune, are funny feller. Sometimes he look like friend ... sometimes he are foe. Sometimes just do nothing ... but plenty happen just because Neptune are there. See?"

Tim whistled. "I see what you mean. Like a catalytic agent. You can't detect it. You don't test it ... _but it does something_."

"Who's the difference? Call her cataltickic agents ... call her fool gods Neptune. What them hells!" The little Greek shrugged his shoulders and was silent.

* * * * *

Up in the _Solabor's_ bow, later, Thurner spun the dials on the automatic calculator. Timmy watched him idly, then, moving away from the window, fell asleep. Johnny Damokles hummed an old tune, and lost himself in reveries on Greece. It was strange that so intense a national feeling could survive the melting pot of world assimilation. Yet the Greek national feeling had survived unchanged for more than three thousand years. The greasy old suit which Johnny Damokles wore, remained almost unchanged from the 20th Century attire which his ancestors had worn at Crete and in the long, bloody fight down through the mountains from Olympus. Alone amongst all the people of the 28th Century, the Greeks remembered their past glory, and the bloody history which had split them as a nation, yet welded the iron of heroism into their souls.

Only the Greeks, in a world of mechanics and science, were still concerned with events now dead and gone. Small nations may live ... in tradition.

Johnny Damokles let his gaze slowly fall from that wild pattern of unvisited universes which spread before him in the _Solabor's_ ports ... and slowly turned the pages of his beloved Aristotle. An essay on the nature of the order of things caught his attention, but reading was no pleasant occupation inside the _Solabor's_ stuffy little cabin. Johnny's head nodded. His eyes fluttered. He fell asleep.

* * * * *

Timmy Gordon's return from slumber was rather like the awakening of a city-dweller whose ear is annoyed by a sudden onslaught of silence. Accustomed by now to the sensation of motion, immobility woke him up.

"Stopped?" he yawned. "Why?" The cabin was dark, and in that velvety obscuration, Timmy could barely see the recumbent sleeping form of Johnny Damokles. He leaped to his feet. Strange, his body felt heavy, leaden, drugged.

A faint bluish light, barely enough to weaken the black of night, pushed its way through the window. Timmy staggered forward to the control bench. Shelton Thurner was gone!

But where? How? Where were they?

Timmy reached for the starting button to test his motors, but the panel had been stripped. Bare.

The answer came swiftly. To the accompaniment of a blast of noisome gas, the door swung open. Two figures entered. The door thumped shut.

"Thurner!" gasped Timmy. "But what? Where've you been?" His questions were interrupted, sharply. Behind Shelton Thurner, and barely visible, stood the hulking figure of a Neptunian.

Thurner's hand shot out and clamped on Tim Gordon's arm, "Bow!" he said. "You're on Neptune now ... you swine."

Timmy's fist shot out with the speed of a striking cobra, and a solid blow bounced off the renegade pilot's jaw. Nothing happened. Thurner grinned. His evil gapped-teeth gleamed. He raised his hand and brought it down with a flat _thwack_ on the young Earthman's cheek. Timmy felt as though a sharpened file had hit him. Warm blood ran down his chin, and dripped floorward.

"Things are different now," said Thurner. "I don't have to take anything from you pigs." He drew back his hand for a second blow, but the figure behind him stepped forward.

"No!" it ordered. "Not now. There'll be time ... yet."

"What's all this?" snapped Timmy.

Thurner smirked, "You're on Neptune ... and are ... shall we say ... a guest of the Tsom Clan."

"Distinctly," hissed the semi-human figure behind Thurner. "Oh most distinctly ... a guest."

"And this ... renegade?"

"You allude to Shelton Thurner?"

"Yes!"

The Neptunian looked from Timmy to the big pilot. "I do not believe," he said, "that you will understand this easily. But you do your late associate an injustice. He is no renegade ... but a leader of the Tsom Clan."

"A Neptunian? Impossible!"

"Not at all my dear sir. We Neptunians have science. Given the proper materials, our surgeons can duplicate the ... rather ... loathesome appearance of you humans."

"You can make men out of a semi-human?"

"We are adaptable, my dear sir." The creature's nictitating membrane drew up over his eyeballs and gave him a deceptively sleepy appearance.

"But what about the temperature? How could Thurner stand Callistonian heat and gravity, when built for that of Neptune?"

"Enough of this foolish questioning!" barked Thurner, "Take the fools outside."

The creature at his side raised a leather-clad hand in a peaceful, gentle gesture. "Patience, friend," he said, "We owe our _guest_ much. For he has much to give us."

"I have!" blurted Timmy.

"Yes!" the Neptunian's manner was calm and unruffled. "You, a skilled practical mechanic, can contribute to a glorious Neptunian victory."

"And you think I will?"

"I know you will. No human-being has the nerve structure to stand up under our harsher persuasive methods. It is quite important for us to learn your method of treating impervium for these faster-than-light ships."

"But my method doesn't work."

"That's true," interjected Thurner. "We talked about it on the way out."

"Most regrettable!" Again that unpleasant, half-dead membrane flashed across the Neptunian's eyes. He seemed to sleep. Minutes passed before he looked up again. "In that event," he said, "you must suffer for the good of Neptune. Follow me." He waited while Timmy climbed into a heated, anti-gravitational space suit.

Thurner cuffed Johnny Damokles to his feet and motioned for him to put on a space suit. Then completely in command of the situation, the Neptunians led Tim and Johnny out into the blue cold of a monster and horrible world. They paused long enough for Thurner and his companion to remove the space suits they'd worn in the heated cabin of the _Solabor_, and when Thurner seemed to peel his very skin from his body, Timmy understood the miracle by which the pilot had posed as a Callistonian.