Front matter

"It is the little death," they whispered. "When that yellow mist starts creeping, you'll wish you were dead, sir." Gavin Murdock, hardened manhunter, coldly eyed the evil miasma rising through the mystery spaceship and braced himself for unguessable horror....

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Spring 1947. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

The Martian sniffed. "Frankly, Mr. Murdock, your account of yourself is laconic to say the least."

Gavin Murdock grunted, his eyes wary and unblinking. He didn't reply.

The Martian raised his eyes from the documents spread on his glassite desk. He gave the sandy-haired Murdock a shrewd penetrating glance and smiled dryly.

"Of course, we get very few men in the slave trade who care to talk about themselves. We take that into consideration, Mr. Murdock. But an astro-engineer of your talents...." He glanced again at the papers on his desk.

Murdock's pulse hammered suddenly in his throat. He swallowed dryly, but he still didn't interrupt.

"This discharge," the Martian went on. "I see you were employed as first assistant-engineer on the luxury liner Cosmos. That's United Spaceway's crack ship. Would you care to tell me, Mr. Murdock, what persuaded you to apply for this post on the Nova?"

"Blacklisted," Mr. Murdock said succinctly. "Belted the old man in the nose. I've been on the beach here in Venusport ever since. None of the shipping lines'll touch me." He lapsed into silence again.

The Martian drummed long white fingers on the desk top.

"You realize, Mr. Murdock, that when you sign the Nova's articles you forfeit your citizenship on Terra? The Earth Congress issued a proclamation to the effect that any Terran employed in the slave trade...."

"What d'you expect me to do?" Murdock interrupted with a wry expression. He was a tall angular man in his early thirties. "Rot here on Venus? I'm not thrilled at taking a third's rating aboard a Jovian slaver. But it's a job."

The Martian still hesitated, doubt registering on his paper-white, sharply-chiseled features.

At length he said, "Very well," in a dry tone. "You'll have to go to the Commissioner's and sign the articles this afternoon. The Nova sails tomorrow. I'll give you your orders in writing."

But he made no move to do so.

Gavin Murdock stiffened imperceptibly, an alarm pealing in his brain. The Martian, he sensed, was stalling. For what?

The space patrols, Murdock knew, had been making things plenty hot for the slavers. The Empire had outlawed the slave trade three years ago. Her spacers were stamping out the traffic in Jovian Dawn Men which flowed between Jupiter and Venus where slavery was still legalized. Decadent the Empire might be, but she still controlled space. Any slaver caught with his half-human cattle beyond Venus' thousand mile limit was treated as a pirate.

The Martian was saying, "You understand, Mr. Murdock, there's no regular salary connected with this job, but as third assistant-engineer you'll be entitled to a one-twentieth share of the profits of each voyage."

Gavin nodded. His glance flicked about the blank walls. He felt suddenly like an animal in a trap.

The offices of Josiah Cabot, slaver, of whom the Martian was the business representative in Venusport, were on the eighty-seventh floor, well up in the swirling cloud blanket which sheathed the second planet like a glove. The offices were windowless and sound-proof. With an effort, Gavin put down the panic rising in his throat. It was ridiculous to think they could do anything to him in a modern office building here in Venusport.

A buzzer on the desk whirred. The Martian leaned forward and snapped a switch. A girl's voice said, "There's a call for you on the televisor, Mr. Trev. It's the—"

"Switch it to the radiophone," the Martian interrupted. He picked up the phone. "Trev speaking."

Gavin could hear the metallic rattle of a voice in the old fashioned instrument.

Trev said, "Yes ... yes ... thank you," at intervals, and hung up. His black eyes were inscrutable. He turned back to Gavin, saying, "I've been waiting for that call, Mr. Murdock."

He brought his hand into sight above the desk. Gavin Murdock found himself staring into the muzzle of a wicked poisoned-needle automatic!

"Clasp your hands behind your neck, Mr. Murdock. That was United Spaceways. They have no record of your ever having been employed by them. That was a very foolish lie, Mr. Murdock. Please submit yourself to a search."

Gavin drew a long breath. "You can save yourself the trouble. The discharge is forged. I haven't had a ship in three years."

"Stand up."

Gavin unfolded himself awkwardly and rose to his full six feet, two inches. He was clad in plain gray shorts and blouse. A Terran of Scotch-American descent, his face was thin, hollow-cheeked, freckled. His sandy hair had been close-cropped in the military fashion. His pale blue eyes were as bright and restless as a hawk's. He had a thin, arched nose, a tight-lipped mouth and a square jaw. He made no attempt to protest further.

The Martian came around the desk to approach Gavin from behind and jam the needle gun against his back. "Don't move!"

"Hell," said Gavin, "I'm not even breathing."

He heard the panel, which led into the outer office, squeak as it was slid back. A new voice asked, "What's the trouble, Trev?" It was a cold, clipped voice, yet the words were strangely blurred.

Gavin could feel his palms grow damp against the back of his neck. He wanted to whip around, but the Martian still had the dart-gun clamped against his spine.

Trev said, "No trouble, Captain Cabot."

Gavin turned his head slowly in the direction of the voice. He saw a tall man with a lean wolfish face. The man, in handsome black shorts, was standing in the doorway to the outer office, one hand braced against the frame. Just behind the man, peering wide-eyed over his shoulder, was a girl.

"Don't allow us to disturb you," said the man and, waving his companion inside, closed the door. He came stiffly, a little unsteadily, around in front and seated himself in Trev's chair. He was drunk, Gavin realized, drunk as a lord. The girl stood against the wall.

"Not at all, Captain Cabot," said Trev to the newcomer, in a faintly sarcastic voice. "After all it's for your own protection." He patted Gavin's chest, found a small flat dart-gun no larger than a deck of cards. It was secured in a delicate spring clip—strapped beneath his left arm.

"Lethal toy for a legitimate spaceman to be carting around," observed the Martian. "Hand tailored, isn't it?"

When Gavin didn't reply, he added, "He's wearing a plastic dart-proof vest too."

The Captain frowned. "What's the trouble, Trev?"

Trev said, "Mr. Murdock, here, applied for the job as third assistant-engineer on your ship with a forged discharge from United Spaceways. United Spaceways never heard of him."

"Hmmm," said Cabot.

The Martian's long questing fingers continued the search. He discovered Gavin's money belt, unbuckled it, tossed it to the Captain.

"Who do you think he is?" asked Cabot in that faintly blurred voice.

"I don't know," replied Trev. "Take a look in his money belt."

The Captain, frowning in concentration, unzipped the pockets with painful care. They held four hundred interplanetary credits, but that was all.

Without commenting, Trev began to turn Gavin's pockets inside out, bringing to light coins, cigarettes and a lighter.

"What are these?" The Martian came around in front again. He threw a pair of brass knuckles to the desk top.

"Knucks," explained Gavin with a tight grin. "Antiques. But I've a fondness for 'em. Silent. Efficient."

Trev regarded them with distaste. The Captain, on the contrary, looked interested. Gavin couldn't see how the girl reacted as she was sitting almost out of his angle of vision.

The girl puzzled him. She was an unknown factor. He had never heard of her. Cabot, he had placed at once: Master of the Nova, which of all the slaveships was giving the Terran patrols the biggest headache. But the girl. Who was she? Where did she fit in the picture? She was a strikingly beautiful girl, that much he had seen in the momentary glance he had caught of her. Then she had moved out of his vision.

"Who are you?" the Martian asked Gavin bluntly.

"You've got my papers there on the desk. Only the discharge is faked."

"You said you hadn't had a ship in three years. Why?"

"The Commission suspended my license for a year."

"Why?"

Gavin could feel the sweat prickle his forehead. His hands clasped about the back of his neck grew clammy again. He drew a long breath. "Smuggling colonal into Terra. I was chief engineer aboard the Europa. She was one of Transplanet Lines' ships. I was lucky to get off with a suspension. But after the scandal I found I couldn't get a berth."

"So!" said the Martian.

Gavin heard the girl draw a sharp breath.

Captain Cabot leaned forward quickly from the waist, his narrow brown eyes boring into Gavin's.

Colonal was the most vicious drug known in the System. Extracted from a Ganymedian plant, it lifted its devotees into a special paradise for a few short years; then blind raving insanity inexorably followed its use. Transplanet Lines had been in reality a powerful ring of wholesale smugglers. Agents of the Terrestial Intelligence Service had finally smashed the ring. The company had ceased to exist; its high officials having been sent to prison, its ships and records confiscated.

"So," Trev repeated softly. There was a cat-like expression of triumph on his sharp pale features. "Then you and Miss Petrovna must have known each other. Miss Petrovna was third mate aboard the Galaxy, another of Transplanet's ships."

Gavin felt his stomach go hollow. He faced the girl, his hands still clasped grotesquely behind his neck, and forced himself to observe her coolly.

He saw a girl with skin almost as white as a Martian. Her lustrous black hair was combed back severely from a high white forehead, parted in the center, and done in a knot at the nape of her neck. Her long black eyes were half-hidden by thick black lashes. She was wearing white shorts and blouse, the universal daytime dress of Venus.

Gavin turned back to the Martian and said in a stony voice, "I sailed with Transplanet for seven years. I never heard of a Miss Petrovna!"

The girl bit her lip, brought her hand up to her high virginal breasts. The Martian looked puzzled. Captain Cabot frowned.

It was the girl who recovered first from Gavin's unexpected flank attack. She said easily to Gavin, "That's quite possible, Mr. Murdock. You were chief engineer of the Europa. That was Transplanet's finest ship. The Galaxy was only a tramp freighter, and I was just a green third mate." Her voice was low, husky. "But I remember you, Mr. Murdock." She gave an amused laugh. "In fact, I had a crush on you!"

Gavin Murdock's jaw dropped. He stared at the girl in utter astonishment, unable to believe his ears.

"Oh," said the girl, reading his disbelief in his gaunt, freckled features, "I wouldn't have dared put myself forward. I worshipped from afar. I was only eighteen, just out of school."

The Martian interrupted, "Sit down, Mr. Murdock." The lines of suspicion had faded from his forehead. "Sit down. You may drop your hands. What have you been doing since then?"

Gavin sank weakly into his chair. He didn't reply. Captain Cabot was regarding Miss Petrovna with an alert expression. The film of drunkenness, Gavin sensed, had been banished from the Captain's brain like a fog by a ray of sunlight.

The Martian said, "Never mind. It's not important. Once we're satisfied with a man, we don't delve too deeply into his activities. Here, you can have your gear back."

As Gavin stowed the articles in place, the Martian wrote out his pass and shoved it across the desk. "Take this to the Commissioners. It'll authorize you to sign the Nova's articles."

Gavin stood up, zipping the pass in his money belt. Captain Cabot got to his feet also and thrust out his hand. "Glad to have a man of your ability with us on the Nova, Murdock. Miss Petrovna is our third mate. You'll be on the same watch."

The Captain's tone was dry and formal, lacking cordiality. There was, Gavin sensed, no cordiality in the man. He was as devoid of emotion as a block of stone.

The girl said, "Nadia Petrovna's the name, Mr. Murdock." She too had stood up and now extended her hand. When Gavin took it, she smiled, exposing small brilliant white teeth. "The officers of the Nova are celebrating the sailing at the Temple of Joy tonight. You'll be there, won't you, Mr. Murdock?" There was a twinkle in her long black eyes. "We've a lot to talk over."

"I wouldn't miss it," Gavin assured her dryly.

When Gavin Murdock reached the street, he leaned weakly against the lichen-covered wall of the office building and blew out his breath. Still not trusting himself to think, he hailed a robot cab. As the taxi darted out into the traffic, he relaxed limply into the yielding flexoplas cushions.

It had been touch and go, he reflected, but in a few minutes he would be signing the Nova's articles before the Interplanetary Commissioner.

A grin lit his bony freckled face. With the girl vouching for him, the slavers would never be able to disprove his story. Transplanet was no longer in existence; its records were in the secret files of the Terrestial Intelligence Service.

He ought to know, he thought grimly; he, Gavin Murdock, was the T.I.S. agent who had broken the colonal smuggling ring.

Gavin chuckled. Nadia Petrovna's lie had been superb, especially that touch about having had a crush on him. That had been pure artistry. It had carried absolute conviction.

But why had she done it?

Gavin's amusement gave way to misgivings. He was a special agent of the T.I.S. He had been assigned to the Jovian slave trade for two reasons. He wasn't known on Venus or Jupiter. But, more important, he had been an astro-engineer on a Tri-World ship before joining the T.I.S.

He had never been employed by Transplanet, though. He didn't know Nadia Petrovna from Eve!

Then why had she lied?

The robot cab drew up to the curb, stopped, said in a harsh metallic voice, "Offices of the Interplanetary Commission," and the door opened automatically.

II

The light, filtering through Venus' eternal cloud blanket, was a soft gray, not intense enough to cast shadows. Gavin Murdock noted the phenomena with a frown as he walked along the Street of Sorrow.

In the center of the block, he paused suddenly, lit a cigarette. His eyes, darting across the lighter's flame, searched the crooked twilit street behind him. He was just in time to see a figure flatten itself in a doorway.

Gavin's lips tightened. Ever since leaving the Commissioner's he had been conscious of being followed. There had been a man on the corner below his window when he packed his luggage and sent it off to the Nova. The same man had been loitering near the corner as he set off for the Temple of Joy to meet the officers.

He certainly didn't intend to tip his hand by communicating with the T.I.S. Commandant Samuels would know that he had accomplished the first step of that intricate plan, hatched in the head offices of the Terrestial Intelligence Service, when they saw his name on the Nova's articles.

He allowed his glance to travel about the street. He was in the Old Port district. Once it had been the heart of the city, but, the big space lines having built a new field on the bogs of Antram just north of Venusport, the crumbling rocket blast pits of Old Port were no longer used except by slavers, smugglers and a few tramp freighters.

He turned abruptly on his heel and resumed his course toward the Temple of Joy. Let them trail him; they'd learn nothing for their pains.

From the Street of Sorrows, he emerged into Venner Square. The statue of August Venner, the first Terrestial to bridge the void and set foot on Venus, rose green with mold in the center of the plaza.

It began to drizzle.

Gavin glanced at his watch. In a few minutes it would be dark. Already the fungus, lichens and mosses creeping up the face of the buildings were radiating a greenish phosphorescent glow. He quickened his pace across the square. As he entered Mercury Alley, he glanced back.

The figure was furtively skirting the statue.

The alley ahead was deserted. It was a blind alley and at the head of it was The Temple of Joy where the officers of the Nova would be beginning their night's carousal.

A frown made two vertical furrows between Gavin's sandy brows. Then a movement at the other end of Mercury Alley caught his attention. Two men were bearing down on him. They came ahead in the open, but with caution.

A shiver of apprehension coursed up Gavin's spine. He spun around. The shadower behind him was no longer furtive. He too was closing in warily. Both exits of the alley were closed. Except for a single bar, the buildings on either hand were dark and silent. Trap!

The bar should have a rear exit. Gavin wheeled suddenly and plunged through the door. A barmaid industriously polishing the plastic bar glanced up as Gavin slammed the door. There was one customer, a Terran, seated at a corner table. He smiled at Gavin. "Won't you have a seat, Mr. Murdock?"

Gavin halted in mid-stride to regard the man in utter astonishment. He was a nondescript-looking fellow, middle-aged, with a slight black mustache.

"Won't you sit down, Mr. Murdock?" he repeated genially. "I was beginning to fear you'd never arrive."

The girl crossed silently to the door and bolted it.

Gavin's bewilderment gave way rapidly to caution. His pale blue eyes narrowed; his face hardened. He had been herded into the bar, he realized, like a horse into a corral.

"Sit down," urged the middle-aged man for the third time. "What'll you have?"

Gavin reached a decision. He sat down with his back to the wall so that he could keep both the door and the barmaid under observation and said, "Bourbon."

"Fetch the gentleman bourbon, Meg," said the middle-aged man in a pleasant voice.

The girl brought a bottle of Terran whiskey and a glass, placing them on the table before Gavin. She was a buxom blonde with hard, unsmiling blue eyes and hard, painted features. Her violet shorts fit too tight and she was wearing the sketchiest kind of halter around her full breasts.

Gavin poured himself a drink and waited.

"You're wondering, no doubt," began the middle-aged man, "how we knew who you were and the route you'd take." He smiled briefly. "We have our ways of knowing, Mr. Murdock. Let me assure you that, before we decided to approach you, we made a complete examination of your record. For instance, you were chief engineer of the Europa. That was vital. We had to have a man with a technical knowledge of space drives."

Gavin allowed consternation to register on his face, but thought, A good bluff—if I had been chief engineer of the Europa! The middle-aged man, he realized, was only parroting the misinformation he had given Trev, the Martian. Obviously, he had learned about Gavin from either Trev or that girl, Nadia Petrovna. Captain Cabot wouldn't be apt to double-cross himself and this had all the earmarks of treachery.

Gavin drank and asked, "Well?"

"You're an astro-engineer, Mr. Murdock. We're interested."

"Who's 'we'?"

The middle-aged man pulled out a handkerchief with which to pat his sallow cheeks. "I'm sorry, Mr. Murdock, but I'm not at liberty to reveal that."

Gavin scowled. "Who are you?"

"One alias is as good as another." The man smiled pleasantly. "X will do for the present. Suppose you call me Mr. X. I represent a group, Mr. Murdock, who are interested in the Nova's space drive."

"Well?" said Gavin dryly. The group whom Mr. X represented weren't the only ones interested in Nova's spacedrive. The T.I.S., for one, was particularly concerned about it. The Nova made the crossing between Jupiter and Venus with her contraband load of slaves in an impossibly short space of time. The crack patrol ships of the Empire had neither been able to keep the Nova in sight nor trap her. Gavin's early experience as an astro-engineer with Tri-World had been the really important reason that he had been assigned to the job.

Mr. X put the tips of his pudgy fingers together. "As third assistant-engineer of the Nova, Mr. Murdock, you will have an unrivaled opportunity to study her drive. We're willing to pay and pay handsomely for the secret of that drive."

"How much?"

"A million credits," replied Mr. X, without blinking an eye.

Gavin allowed his breath to escape between his teeth. He knew now who was behind Mr. X and it didn't make him any happier. Only one of the big corporations on Terra-United Spaceways, General Atomic, Tri-World, or Amalgamated plastic—could offer such a sum. The Gargantuan companies maintained their own investigation agencies, ruthless, efficient gestapos willing to go to any length to get their hands on valuable discoveries.

He stood up, saying, "I'll think it over."

"I'm afraid you'll have to reach a decision now." X's voice was cold.

Gavin's hard blue eyes went wary.

The T.I.S. maintained in their secret files a complete record of every man and woman engaged in the slave trade. Gavin had studied it thoroughly in preparation for this assignment. Trev, he knew, besides being a broker in slaves for Josiah Cabot, was suspected of dealing in merchandise of a great deal more dangerous character. Scientific secrets.

Trev was a free lance, buying from independent spies and selling to the highest bidder. He was tolerated because the very corporations and governments he stole from were also his patrons. Trev would have connections with all the secret agencies of the different corporations. If anyone were dickering with X to sell the Nova's space drive, Trev would be the likeliest suspect. And, if Trev thought Gavin was dickering with X, the Martian wouldn't hesitate to betray him to Cabot.

That was one side.

On the other hand, it might be a trap. His best policy was to have nothing to do with X.

He said, "I don't do business with someone I don't know. I'm going now. Don't try to stop me."

"Meg," said Mr. X.

Gavin felt the girl's hand seize his shoulders in a grip of steel. She had come up behind him lightly as a cat. Her fingers dug into his arms and held him like a vise. Her buxomness, he realized, in dismay, must be solid muscle.

"Kill him," she advised X over Gavin's shoulder. "He's probably a spy for one of the other companies." She had a harsh metallic voice.

X looked undecided.

Gavin wrenched his shoulders. The girl merely tightened her grip until his biceps felt numb. She smelled strongly of arsilene, a heavy sweetish Martian perfume.

She said over his shoulder again, "Who else but one of their spies would refuse a million credits?"

The shot struck home. X made an expression of distaste and slipped his hand in the pocket of his jacket.

It was no time for gallantry. Gavin snapped back his head. His skull crushed into the girl's face. Her hands loosened. With a wrench, he jerked free and kicked the table in X's lap.

With a wrench, Gavin jerked free!

Gavin bounded around the table, pulling his hands from his pockets. Brass knucks gleamed on both fists. X was scrambling up from beneath the debris. Gavin hit him in the temple.

He whirled in time to see the big blonde reaching for him. Gavin had no intention of letting her get her hands on him again. His gleaming knucks caught the girl on the jaw. She folded to the floor, half-across the legs of the unconscious X.

He regarded the pair for a moment, catching his breath. Then he went to the door, shot a bolt and opened it cautiously. The three men who had herded him into the bar were standing just outside.

He backed out, waved negligently and said, "I'll see you later, then," loudly enough for the three men to hear, and closed the door.

The men eyed him coldly. As soon as he was past they trooped inside.

Gavin instantly lit out running at top speed. He didn't slow down until he skidded inside the Temple of Joy half a block away and brought up panting before a startled headwaiter. "Where's the Nova party?"

"Nova party, sir?"

"Yes, yes," Gavin said impatiently. He changed position so he could keep the entrance in sight. "The officers of the Nova are throwing a celebration here tonight. Where are they, man? Speak up."

The waiter looked at Gavin as if he were crazy. "I never heard of them," he said. "There's no such party here."

Gavin's lips thinned. He was silent a moment, digesting this information. He glanced toward the door. To return now to the street would be fatal. They would be waiting for him. He wasn't safe even here in the lobby of the Temple of Joy. He wanted to mix in with the safety of crowds and lights.

He gave the waiter a bill, saying, "Get me a table then, near the wall."

The waiter's expression changed miraculously. He said, "Yes, sir," and ushered Gavin into the inner sanctum.

A heady, throbbing rhythm beat like surf in Gavin's ears. The light was dim, rosy, intimate. Gavin threaded his way between the seated patrons conscious of laughter, of bare shoulders and arms, of vivid splashes of color.

"Here, sir," said the waiter. Gavin sat down and ordered bourbon.

A Martian girl was executing a barbaric dance in a cleared space in the center of the floor. When the waiter brought Gavin his drink, he sipped it guardedly, dividing his attention between the dancer and the entrance. From the corner of his eye, he saw someone come inside. He turned his head and immediately stiffened.

It was Nadia Petrovna. She was alone.

The girl paused at the edge of the tables, her long black eyes sweeping the room. When they reached Gavin, they halted. She waved and started for his table.

Her costume, Gavin realized, must have been designed individually for Nadia by one of the great Martian fashion artists. Two plates of thinnest rose plastic inlaid with delicate gold lace work had been moulded to conform exactly to her high small breasts. What kept them in place was a mystery—one which Gavin wouldn't have been above solving. A full skirt of rose satin hung low on slim ample hips and fell to the instep of her gold sandals.

He stood up as she approached, holding a chair for her.

She didn't sit down. Her face appeared whiter than when he had last seen her in Trev's office. She said hurriedly, in an undertone.

"Where have you been? The party was cancelled. We've been scouring Venusport for you. The Nova sails in an hour."

"Sit down," said Gavin.

"But ..." she began and then sank into the chair.

Gavin took his seat, saying, "The Nova wasn't scheduled to sail until tomorrow."

"I know." Her voice was urgent. "It's an emergency of some sort. I don't know what's happened. Captain Cabot got our clearance from the port of authorities just a few minutes ago. Hurry, please. I've a cab waiting outside." She started to push back from the table.

"We've an hour," said Gavin dryly. His hard blue eyes regarded the girl with a thoughtful stare. There had been no record of this girl in the T.I.S.'s secret file. What did it mean? He wondered again why she had lied for him in Trev's office.

He asked suddenly, "Does the Temple have a back door?"

"I don't know."

"We're going to find out."

He stood up and left money on the table. When Nadia still hesitated, Gavin took her arm lightly but firmly and urged her toward the stage door.

A yellow-skinned Venusian, his green eyes cold as glass, stopped them at the entrance of the passage. "You can't come backstage," he said.

On the dance floor, a flock of girls dressed like Ganymedian natives were performing an orgiastic dance. The drums in the orchestra beat out a sultry rhythm. Gavin reached in his pocket for a bill. A disturbance at the main door caused him to look up quickly.

A man had just entered across the room. It was Mr. X.

Nine men followed X through the door, fanning out among the tables. They were armed with bell-mouthed, Dixon ray rifles.

"Everybody keep your seat!" Mr. X called out sharply.

A woman screamed. The drums stopped. The dancing girls lapsed into a confused huddle.

Instead of a bill, Gavin brought the knucks out of his pocket and clipped the Venusian behind his ear. Snatching the girl's arm, he dragged her through the door.

"Run," he commanded. "Run like hell!" He pushed her down the long dimly lit corridor ahead of them.

Nadia ran. She hiked up her skirts and ran as if the devil himself were after her. Gavin, hard on her heels, caught the reflection of a yellow ray as one of X's men turned loose at the stage door. The sound of screams, shouts and overturned tables pursued them down the corridor.

Gavin caught glimpses of dressing rooms, a scad of Venusian and Terran girls changing costume. He nearly collided with an electronician. Then they burst through a small chamber where a wizened Mercurian sat in a chair propped against the wall—and out into the street.

It was the next street over from Mercury Alley, Gavin realized. He hailed a robot cab, piled in with the girl and said, "Pit Nine."

The cab darted away from the curb. Gavin caught a flash of bare leg, stared at Nadia. She was hunched in her corner, her face a dim oval in the darkened interior. She pointed something black at him.

"I've got a dart-gun!" Her voice trembled. "Don't move! Or I'll shoot!"

III

Gavin Murdock drew a deep breath. He didn't move. The girl must have carried the gun strapped around her leg above the knee. In that costume it wouldn't have been invisible anyplace else.

He said, "It's your move."

Without answering him, the girl said, "Change of address—Pit Seven."

"Change of address—Pit Seven," the metallic voice of the cab repeated through the speaker overhead.

Gavin felt like a blind man playing chess. He narrowed his pale blue eyes. "Where are we going?"

"The Nova." Her voice was unfriendly.

"But the Nova's at Pit Nine."

"Pit Nine's being watched. We're going to use the underground."

Gavin shifted slightly, half-turned towards the girl. "Point that dart gun some other direction," he complained. "My blood's running cold."

She didn't move it.

Gavin's long arm snapped out with the precision of a cat's paw, slapped the gun out of her hands. The girl gasped, "Oh!" snatched for the weapon, but Gavin's hand was already covering it.

The gun in his possession, he asked, "Who's watching the Nova?"

"As if you didn't know!"

Gavin considered this, examining the dart-gun at the same time. It was a tiny thing, curved to fit the roundness of a leg. Beautiful as a jewel.

"Oddly enough," he returned dryly, "I don't know."

She glared at him through the semi-gloom without replying. The buildings flowed past the windows, the green glow of lichens and moss illuminating the street with about the same intensity as a full moon's light on Terra.

Gavin made his voice cold as he leaned toward the girl. "Do you want me to loosen your tongue for you? Who's watching the Nova?"

Nadia gasped, her hand at her throat. "You know as well as I do. X's men!"

"Who's X?"

"Who's X? You ask that? You went to see him this afternoon. You even made an appointment with him later."

Gavin recalled the words he had spoken for the benefit of X's men as he left the bar—"I'll see you later, then." Captain Cabot was not without his own spy system after all. His estimation of Cabot went up a notch.

"You won't believe this," he said, "but I haven't the foggiest notion who X is. Do you know?"

Nadia's dark eyes looked puzzled. She shook her head, gave a short laugh. "You're going to be a big disappointment to Josiah. I wouldn't care to be in your shoes."

"Josiah ... oh, you're referring to Captain Cabot. So he expects me to be able to tell him who X represents."

"You were talking to him," said the girl bluntly.

Gavin regarded Nadia a moment. Then he asked, "Why has the sailing been advanced?"

She clamped shut her jaws.

"You don't want me to force you to talk, do you?" suggested Gavin.

"You wouldn't dare."

"Wouldn't I?"

Nadia bit her lip. "It doesn't make any difference, I suppose." She shrugged. "You know anyway, if you're working for X. Captain found out that some powerful clique is trying to have the Nova interned. He rushed his clearance through before they had time to act." She paused before adding, "X has bought off Trev."

So it was the Martian who had sold out, not Nadia. He handed back the girl's dart-gun. "Here. See if you can't behave yourself now."

Nadia took the weapon. She pointed it deliberately at Gavin's chest. "Please clasp your hands behind your neck!"

The robot cab drew up at the curb. The door opened. It's voice issued from the loudspeaker. "Pit Seven."

"Get out," Nadia ordered. "Stand back from the door."

Gavin slid out. The buildings were gone, replaced by a wall of structural concrete which disappeared overhead in the clouds. It had begun to rain again, a clammy drizzle. The girl followed him to the curb, shivering as the drops hit her bare shoulders and back.

A green-lighted sign over a door in the concrete wall read:

PIT SEVEN—PASSENGER ENTRANCE

"In there." She motioned at the door.

Gavin, a step in advance, ducked inside and went ahead down a long incline until he fetched up in a mouldy unused waiting room.

"Take the door to the left."

A sign above it read:

MANAGEMENT—PRIVATE

At the girl's direction, Gavin passed through bare offices, smelling of stale air and mildew and into a narrow corridor which led straight as an arrow into the distance in either direction. Walls, ceiling and floor radiated a pale green glow from the fungus.

Gavin, who had been keeping his sense of direction with an effort, realized that the passage led towards Pit Nine. They followed it for a quarter of a mile, passing only one intersecting corridor. They turned in the second passage they met, passed along it a short distance, and came out in the maw of Pit Nine itself.

They were on a balcony a hundred feet from the floor of the pit. The well below was charred black by countless jet blasts. The Nova, a dull black bullet-shaped monster, rested on its jets, towering straight up four hundred feet above them. He saw an airy gangplank sloping from the balcony to an open port in the ship. There was a glum Venusian standing guard at the gangplank.

Urged along by the girl, Gavin ascended the gangplank into the ship itself. "I've heard of shanghai-ing," he remarked over his shoulder. "But this is the first case of being shanghai-ed exactly according to your wishes."

Nadia said, "Captain Cabot will talk to you." She indicated an elevator and they ascended rapidly to the ship's control room.

There were three men in the spacious control room: Captain Cabot, the senior astrogator, and a communications man. They faced about, stared at Gavin as the girl prodded him through the door.

"I found him in the Temple of Joy," said Nadia.

Cabot's glance slid over Gavin. His lean wolfish face cracked into a smile. "I haven't time to question him now—" he began, when the communications man interrupted.

"He's up there!" said the communications man. "Directly overhead. But he's beyond the Heaviside layer. I can't make out his class, but he's big. Feels like a patrol ship."

A frown passed across Cabot's face. He snapped on a televisor. "Engine room," came a faint voice.

Cabot glanced at his watch. "Taking off in ten minutes. There's a ship above the clouds. Don't know who she is. Have all jets primed. We may have to dodge her."

"Check," said the voice.

"And, John," Cabot added, "I've got your third aboard. I don't care to trust him until we get beyond the thousand-mile-limit, though, so carry on for a while longer."

"Check," said the voice.

Cabot snapped off the televisor and turned to Nadia. "Lock Mr. Murdock in seventeen. Then report back to the bridge."

"Yes sir," said Nadia.

Gavin was led silently below again. He could hear the rumble of the warming jets. Nadia appeared nervous, jumpy. She wanted to get back to the bridge and an acceleration chair before the take-off, Gavin guessed.

About midway down, she paused before a metal door numbered seventeen, swung it open, disclosing blackness. Gavin stepped inside.

The girl allowed her face to relax. She said in a softer voice, "Lie down. The Nova's take-off is pretty rugged. Five G's." The metal door clanged shut.

Gavin heard a bolt snick into place. Blackness, utter impenetrable blackness engulfed him.

He spent precious minutes searching for the light switch, as the roar of the jets whined up an ascending scale. With a grunt of satisfaction, he found them, snapped them on. The cabin flooded with brilliance.

The body of Trev, the Martian was stretched stark and cold on the metal deck!

Gavin bent shakily over the broker of slaves and scientific secrets. Trev's black eyes were open, glassy. A thin three cornered sliver of metal protruded from his throat. The Martian would never steal the Nova's space drive now. He had been shot with a poisoned dart.

Suddenly, a tremendous weight fell on Gavin's shoulders. He was squashed flat to the deck beside the dead Martian, pinned there. The breath was crushed from his chest, and he struggled wildly to inflate his lungs.

The Nova, he realized in desperation, was off!

Gavin managed to roll to his belly, push himself to hands and knees. The pressure didn't relax. He crawled to a corner, got his legs braced against a stanchion. If the strange ship above the clouds should prove unfriendly, the Nova would be bucking like a crazed steer in her efforts to dodge. Anyone caught unprepared would be flipped from bulkhead to bulkhead until he was a bundle of splintered bones.

The acceleration dragged at Gavin's lean flesh. He looked ten years older in the harsh bright light. Sweat burst from his pores; his eye-lids drooped; his mouth sagged.

Then the whine of the jets ceased. The terrific acceleration relaxed. Gavin felt like a toy balloon.

Consternation widened his pale blue eyes. He gripped himself for the buffeting he was almost sure would follow.

In the silence a wild clamor broke out from stem to stern.

The general alarm!

Gavin tensed. He could feel the pulse drumming in his temples. Then it came. The jets burst into a full throated roar. The Nova lurched crazily to the starboard and then swept upward at a tangent.

Again the Nova bucked, this time to port. A sickening circular movement took possession of his prison. The ship, he realized, must be above the clouds in the upper stratosphere and climbing higher in tight spirals.

Suddenly the Nova gave an uncontrolled lurch. A faint far away explosion reached his ears.

They were being fired at! That was an atomic shell bursting off the starboard bow. Sweat coursed down Gavin's cheeks.

Were they going to let him die in the locked cabin like a trapped rat? The crew could escape in space tenders, if the Nova were hit. Another shell burst closer, throwing the gigantic ship sideways as a hurricane tosses a chip.

Something burst in Gavin's brain. He came to his senses, realized he was hammering in berserk terror on the unyielding metal door. His knuckles were streaming blood.

He got a grip on himself, forced himself to sit down again in the corner, back to the bulkhead, feet thrust against the stanchion. The body of the Martian, he saw, was sliding in erratic circles about the deck.

Gavin wet his lips, his blue eyes desperate. He had scarcely settled himself when the third explosion burst. It was so close that there was no sound, only a terrific blast of pressure. The lights dimmed. Gavin was torn from his stanchion and hurled across the cabin against the opposite bulkhead.

Fortunately, he didn't strike the unguarded steel. Instead he was flung against the Martian's body which acted as a pad. Even so the shock was terrific. Blackness welled up behind his eyes. He lost consciousness.

Gavin opened his eyes and realized he couldn't have been unconscious but a second or two. He sprang to his feet. And struck his head and shoulders on the ceiling!

He gave himself a push from the overhead and floated slowly back to the deck.

Then he realized what was wrong. The jets were quiet. A silence so absolute that it rang in his ears blanketed the Nova. In all that ship there was no sound anywhere.

The Nova was falling free, falling back to the surface of Venus!

IV

The skin was stretched taut across Gavin's gaunt features, the freckles standing out like pennies.

The air, rapidly growing denser, began to whine like the keening for the dead. He stiffened, straining to catch the sound he had imagined.

It came again. The cough of a rocket tube.

A wild hope flamed in Gavin's blue eyes. The roar of the jets blasted into life. The cabin heeled sharply to starboard. Gavin slid down the sloping deck until he fetched up against the bulkhead, which had suddenly become the floor.

The Nova, he realized in a flood of relief, had come out of the fall and was speeding parallel to the surface. He sat down, his joints turning to water. He had a violent urge to be sick.

Gavin's first belief that the attacking ship had been one of Terra's patrol spacers gave way to doubt. In the first place, the Nova hadn't been beyond Venus' thousand-mile-limit. Furthermore, he didn't believe a Terran patrol ship would have waylaid the Nova outward bound when she was innocent of her cargo of slaves.

Then who was it?

He heard a bolt click back. The door through which he had entered was directly overhead. The Nova, though, had been constructed for flying either keel-on or stern-down. The passages which previously had been horizontal were now vertical, and the vertical wells running from bow to stern lay horizontal to the angle of flight. A door which had been overhead when they were shooting straight up, now was directly across the cabin.

As Gavin watched, it swung open. Nadia Petrovna was framed in the opening.

She said in a breathless tight voice, "You've got to take over the engine room! Half the black gang are dead or laid up! Captain Cabot sent me to fetch you!"

Her hair, Gavin saw, had come undone and fell about her bare white shoulders like an inky cloud. A trickle of blood drew a crooked red line from a cut above her left eye down across her high cheek bone to her small pointed chin. One of the rose plastic breast plates had been torn completely away, and the rose gown was split up her left hip from sandal to belt.

Gavin plunged for the door.

"This way!" Nadia started aft at a run. "The ladder! The elevators are stalled!"

"Chief engineer?" Gavin grunted. "Where's the chief?"

"Unconscious! Concussion. Don't know how serious," she flung back at him as she dashed along the corridor, her torn skirt streaming out behind her. "The first is dead. The second has a broken leg."

She reached the emergency ladder and threw herself down it with reckless abandon. Gavin followed a little more cautiously.

The engine room, Gavin saw when he and Nadia dropped to the deck, was functioning smoothly enough now, although there was no evidence of the explosion. A smear of blood against a bulkhead caught his eyes, then a twisted body lashed to the deck.

But a jetman, a yellow Venusian girl, naked to the waist, was at her post beside the quartzite windows of the tubes. Sweat poured off her in rivulets as she watched the color of the explosions to check the mixture.

The master mechanic, a fat Terran, was at the bridge televisor. He gave Gavin a relieved glance. "Bridge calling, sir."

Gavin jumped to the televisor. He saw the lean wolfish profile of Captain Cabot on the screen. Cabot's cheek had been laid open to the bone. One arm swung uselessly. His features were bleak as granite.

Gavin said, "Murdock reporting, sir."

"Take over, Mr. Murdock." Cabot's voice sounded harsh, metallic through the instrument. "We're describing an orbit about Venus at an altitude of seven kilometers."

"Check."

"Is Miss Petrovna there?"

"Yes, sir."

"Let me speak to her."

The girl approached the televisor.

Captain Cabot ordered her in a terse voice, "Stay with Murdock. If he shows any signs of treachery, shoot him!"

"Yes, sir," said the girl. She plucked the tiny dart-gun from the spring clip on her leg where it had been visible through the rent in her skirt.

"You heard my orders, Mr. Murdock," Cabot's cold voice issued from the instrument. "Stand by to fire the starboard tube-bank. We're coming out of the clouds again."

"Check."

In spite of himself Gavin couldn't help but admire the coolness of Josiah Cabot. He turned to Nadia. "What happened?" he demanded.

The girl, her long black eyes serious, had her dart-gun leveled at his chest. "I was at the scanner," she replied in an unsteady voice. "We cleared the clouds, making five G's. This ship was right on top of us."

"What ship?"

She shook her head. "She wasn't a patrol spacer. She didn't identify herself. We dodged. Then she cut loose at us with atom shells. The third shot did the damage. I don't know how serious yet, but half the crew are laid up. Captain Cabot cut the jets, which allowed us to fall back into the cloud bank as if we'd been knocked out."

That was quick shrewd thinking, Gavin realized.

The bridge televisor whistled shrilly.

"Bridge calling," came Cabot's voice.

"Engine room."

"Starboard jets. Half blast."

"Check." Gavin pulled the lever on the control board. "Starboard jets!" he yelled above the sudden roar to the half-naked jetman.

The Nova began to nose upward in a slow arc.

"Prime all tubes," came Cabot's crisp voice through the audio. "We'll be above the clouds any moment."

"Check," said Gavin.

A mounting tension gripped them all as the seconds dragged past. Then the televisor whistled again.

"Cut starboard rockets. Half blast ahead." There was another pause and Cabot added with a faint smile, "We're through the cloud bank. No sign of the spacer."

Nadia heaved a sigh of relief and leaned weakly against the ladder.

"Guess we lost her half around the planet," surmised Gavin.

"Course 37.22 x 5," came Cabot's voice once more. "Proceed at one G until we ascertain damage. That is all."

"Check," said Gavin. He snapped off the televisor. "You can put that dart-gun away," he advised Nadia dryly.

The girl snapped erect. She whipped the dart-gun in line with Gavin's chest again. "I haven't been relieved!" She began in a queer voice. The gun trembled. Her knees sagged. She swayed, sat down suddenly on the first rung of the ladder.

"What's the matter?"

She gave a short, half-hysterical laugh. "Matter! I've had the pants scared off me, and you ask what's the matter!" She clenched her teeth, dropped her head in her hands. Her black hair fell like a veil over her face.

Gavin snapped on the televisor.

"Engine room calling."

"Bridge," came Cabot's precise voice.

"Murdock speaking, sir. Advise Miss Petrovna be relieved. She's suffering from shock."

Cabot looked startled. He hesitated. "Tell Miss Petrovna she's relieved. Carry on, Mr. Murdock."

"Check."

Gavin turned to the girl. "You heard the Captain."

She nodded weakly. There was a large greenish bruise on the gleaming flesh of her shoulder which Gavin hadn't noticed before. He said, "You'd better go to your cabin. Patch yourself up." He raised a sandy eyebrow. "That costume could stand a repair job, too."

Nadia glanced at herself, at the missing breast plate, the ripped skirt, and wailed, "Oh, dear. It's ruined."

"You're lucky that you're not, too," drawled Gavin dryly.

"Ruined? Me?" She shot him a glance from her long black eyes. "Why Mr. Murdock, I didn't know you were so impetuous," and fled up the ladder.

Gavin stared after her. He made an uncomplimentary but expressive remark under his breath.

The jetman and master mechanic stood their regular four-hour watches, but Gavin went unrelieved. He spent the first twelve hours examining the Nova's space drive. He could discover nothing extraordinary about it. It was capable of driving the slave ship at an acceleration of five G's, but several of the latest model Terran patrol spacers were able to do as well. It left him completely mystified.

No great damage had been done the Nova, but, besides sundry fractured arms, legs, and ribs, seven men had been killed outright. The chief engineer was recovering from a light case of concussion. Gavin was the only qualified engineer aboard able to stand watch.

He drank gallons of coffee during the next twelve hours, trying desperately to stay awake. He brooded over the fact that with one dead engineer and another laid up with a fractured leg, he and the chief would have to stand four on and four off during the entire twelve sidereal months, which was the minimum time required to make the crossing between Venus and Jupiter.

At the conclusion of thirty-four hours, Gavin was groggy with fatigue. His eye-lids felt like sandpaper. He was irritable as a bear. He cursed the jetman and master mechanic whenever they failed to jump fast enough at the rasp of his voice.

His chin dropped against his chest. He snapped his head up, realizing he'd been asleep on his feet, and glanced at the chronometer. He had been on watch for thirty-seven hours.

Someone tapped his shoulder.

Gavin swung around and rubbed his blood-shot eyes. A small wiry man with his head swathed in bandages had descended the ladder without Gavin's hearing him.

"I'm Villanowski," said the man in a cultured voice. "Chief engineer. Sorry I couldn't relieve you sooner."

Gavin shook hands, feeling an almost uncontrollable urge to throw himself on the deck and sleep. He repeated the course and their acceleration mechanically.

"Go on to your cabin," the chief urged. "Get a good sleep. We'll have to stand four hours on and four off the rest of the voyage, but it'll only be two weeks."

"Two weeks!" Gavin echoed. "But that's impossible, sir." His fatigued brain grasped at the puzzle confusedly and then came up with an answer. "We're turning back to Venus?"

"No." Villanowski shook his head. "We're going on to Jupiter."

"But that's a twelve month voyage."

The chief patted his shoulder. "You haven't heard of the little death," he smiled.

"Little death?"

Villanowski nodded. "Never mind trying to understand now. You're out on your feet, Murdock. I'll explain after you've had some rest. But take my word for it. We'll be setting the Nova down on Jupiter in two weeks."

Gavin staggered to his cabin in bewilderment.

He threw himself on his bunk without even bothering to remove his shoes. He thought, Little death! Jupiter in two weeks! That crack on the skull must have affected the chief engineer's mind! Then sleep descended on him like a shroud.

V

When Gavin at length awakened, he rolled out of his bunk groggily, showered and shaved and then made his way to the officer's mess. Nadia Petrovna, dressed in practical coveralls of gray siliconex, was seated at a table eating bacon and eggs.

Bacon and eggs! Gavin stared. Whoever heard of such grub aboard a spacer bound on a year's voyage. And there had been showers, and the cabins were not especially cramped.

Nadia waved a piece of toast at him. "Hello! The crew've been laying bets on when you'd come out of your coma."

He sat down and rang for the messman.

"How long does this last?" he inquired pointing at the fresh food. "When do we start on concentrates?"

"We don't."

"Don't use concentrates! But the bulk! And the water. Isn't it rationed?"

Nadia laughed infectiously. Just then the messman, a huge negro, appeared and took Gavin's order.

The girl said, "We carry only a little over two weeks' supplies."

Gavin recalled the chief engineer's prediction that the Nova would be at Jupiter in two weeks. He glanced at the chart on the forward bulkhead. The Nova's position was marked with a pin. The slaver, he saw, had been traveling at a good clip, but nothing phenomenal.

"We'll have to go faster than that," he said dryly.

Nadia's long black eyes sparkled. "You don't know about the little death yet?"

"The little death? Yes, the chief mentioned it. Just what is this little death?"

Nadia opened her mouth to speak, but closed it. She was peering beyond him, Gavin realized, a frightened expression on her pretty slavic features. Gavin swung around.

Captain Josiah Cabot stood in the door way, swaying slightly.

His eyes were glazed. Fine cruel wrinkles crossed his lean face. He moved stiffly into the messroom, his eyes straight ahead, and sat down at a table like a mechanical doll. He didn't even see them, Gavin realized with a start.

The black man came out of the pantry with a bottle of Terran whiskey and a glass, and set them before the Captain. The negro's eyes rolled, showing the whites. He got back into his pantry as quick as possible.

Nadia leaned across the table to Gavin. "He's drunk. He'll stay drunk until after the little death. It's horrible!"

Suddenly the Captain burst into a roar of laughter. He poured himself a drink and gulped it greedily. He said in an unexpectedly ringing voice:

"I see you, Paula. Why don't you go back to hell where you belong? You can't touch me now," and burst into laughter again, staring at the empty doorway.

A cold chill shivered up Gavin's spine.

Nadia said, "Paula was his mistress. She tried to poison him. He strangled her and threw her body out the disposal chute!"

"Hey," hissed Gavin, "keep your voice down! He can hear you."

"He doesn't even know we're here."

Gavin looked at Nadia thoughtfully. The girl's white features had gone translucent like milk glass. Her long black eyes wore an expression of horror.

She said, "It's just starting. He sees all the ones he's killed. They return and plague him. He can't rid his mind of them. It's a psychological quirk...." She paused unsteadily.

"Go on," Gavin urged.

"You'll see." Her voice was faint.

"You were a handsome tart, Paula," said Cabot, his glazed eyes following some figure invisible to Gavin. "A foul mind in a beautiful body. How many times did you deceive me? But I wasn't fooled." He laughed disagreeably. "I wasn't fooled. How did it feel to wake up with my fingers about your throat?" He paused, lean head cocked to one side, the cruel lines etched deeper about his mouth. "That fine body doesn't do you much good in hell, Paula?" The gloating slowly died from his features, his voice became resigned. "There's no use holding a grudge. You're dead, Paula, and there's nothing you can do about it. It's too bad you can't drink. You were fond enough of it alive. But I'll drink it for you," and he chuckled triumphantly.

"I'm leaving." Nadia sprang to her feet, lips bloodless. "I can't stand it."

Gavin escorted her to the door. He paused to salute Cabot. "Charmed to make your acquaintance, Paula," he added.

Nadia glanced at him in surprise. "How can you make fun of him?"

Gavin regarded the girl somberly. "I'm not making fun of him." His voice was grim. "This girl he murdered—Paula—she might be a person to cultivate."

"My star, you're cold. You're not even human!" Nadia started off, but Gavin laid hold of her arm.

"What happened to Trev, that Martian who sold out to X?"

Nadia faced him again, biting her lip. "Cabot killed him," she replied in a whisper. "His body has been thrown out the disposal chute."

"Who is this mysterious Mr. X?"

"I don't know! I don't know, I tell you!" She wrenched away, fled down the passage.

Gavin watched her until she was out of sight. Nadia had accompanied Cabot that day in Trev's office. The record on Captain Cabot in the T.I.S. file was brief but illuminating. Antecedents unknown. Master of the slave ship, Nova, Venusian registry. Suspected in connection with disappearance of two women: Paula duBois, a Terran of French descent; Aastra, a Martian girl of the house of Cor.

Gavin whistled softly. It wasn't hard to imagine others. A modern bluebeard. Only Cabot didn't hang them in a closet; he threw them out a disposal chute.

Villanowski's face was gray with fatigue when Gavin finally relieved him. The chief was a slight homely man with the quick darting movements of an old maid. His hair was iron gray, untrimmed, rumpled.

He said wearily to Gavin, "We're going on regular watches after all. The second has her leg in a cast. We've rigged a special chair for her."

Gavin nodded. "What's the little death, Mr. Villanowski? I've been hearing more about it, but no one seems inclined to explain."

The chief engineer passed his hand before his blood-shot eyes. "That requires considerable explanation, Mr. Murdock. I'm too tired to attempt it at the moment. Later." He gave Gavin the course and acceleration, adding that Miss Wilde, the second assistant-engineer, would relieve him and disappeared up the ladder.

With the one exception of Nadia Petrovna, the dossier of every man and woman aboard the Nova in the T.I.S. secret file was complete. Gavin almost knew them by heart. John Villanowski was a Terran of Polish descent. A scientist of interplanetary fame, he had held the chair of astrophysics at New Yale for a while. He had been instrumental in the development of the meteor deflector, the robot astrogator, and a radical improvement of the scanner.

General Atomic, though, had stolen all three of his discoveries. Villanowski had sued. False evidence had been trumped against him; his reputation had been blackened. Then General Atomic had used its influence to force him to resign from the university.

The injustice of his disgrace had wrought a shocking change in Villanowski. From a pleasant savant he became an anti-social, a dangerous man. He had fled to Venus where he had dropped from sight for a while, turning up again as chief engineer of the slaver, Nova.

Any startling development of the Nova's space drive, Gavin reasoned, would be due to Villanowski.

The televisor buzzed. Gavin snapped it on. "Engine room."

Nadia's features glowed on the screen. "Bridge calling." She flashed him a smile. "I'll be on the observation deck when I've finished my trick on the bridge, Mr. Murdock." The instrument went dead.

Gavin muttered something under his breath. He caught Jerome Fitz, the master mechanic, eyeing him with a grin and cursed the fat Terran roundly.

"Come here, Fitz."

"Yes sir." The master mechanic left his work and approached.

"What the hell is this little death?"

Fitz scratched his head. "I've been through it twenty-seven times," he confessed, "and I don't rightly know, sir."

"Don't know? What kind of answer is that? What do you do here in the engine room?"

Again the fat Terran shook his head. "Beggin' your pardon, sir, but we're not in the engine room, then."

"What?"

"No, sir. We go to our fo'c'sles. Everybody. Crew and officers. The Nova switches onto the robot pilot...." He hesitated.

"And then?" urged Gavin, impatiently. "What happens then? Speak up, man."

Fitz looked embarrassed. "I'd rather not talk about it, sir."

"Nonsense."

The Venusian girl, who was serving as jetman had approached and was listening.

"It's hard to explain," she interrupted, her green eyes thoughtful. "I think we die, sir."

"What?"

"Yes, sir. I know it sounds ridiculous. You'll have to go through it first before you understand. It's not nice to think about. It's even less fun when it happens. The third, who was here before you, sir—he—he reformed."

"Reformed?"

"Yes, sir. He said he couldn't stand himself after the little death. He's running a mission in Venusport now."

Gavin cracked his knuckles thoughtfully. His gaunt freckled face was sober. He didn't question the pair further, but set to examining the machinery with minute care.

He found nothing until he reached the aft bulkhead. Then his pale blue eyes fell on a faint rectangular line in the rigid steel. A door. But there were neither knobs nor bolts nor any visible means of opening it.

"Look here, Fitz," he called the master mechanic to his side, pointed out the door. "Where does this lead?"

Fitz scratched his head. "I don't know. Never noticed it before."

The Venusian girl had seen it, but had no more idea than Fitz what lay beyond.

Gavin spent most of his four-hour watch trying to ascertain the secret of its mechanism. He was still sweating over it profusely when Sally Wilde, the second assistant-engineer, arrived in her wheel chair to relieve him.

The second was a tall, gray-eyed blonde, handsome after a rangy fashion. One of her long legs was propped straight ahead of her in a plastic cast. She was wheeled down by the relieving watch and shook hands with Gavin like a man.

"I've been curious about what you were like," she informed him with a roguish smile. She wore a green wrapper thrown about her indifferently, and that was all. She caught the direction of his eye. "Damned nuisance to dress with this lump of plastic on my leg."

She was, Gavin perceived, the arch type of emancipated female whom he detested so heartily. He mumbled something about being glad she was doing so nicely.

"The last third," she explained, "was a disappointment. But you're a pleasant surprise, Mr. Murdock. So virile." She thumped the transparent plastic cast. "When I get rid of this we'll do something about it."

Gavin fled up the ladder.

He came out on the observation deck and recognized Nadia in her gray coveralls seated in a deck chair and staring upward at the stars. They floated in the void like gems on black velvet.

He came up behind her saying, "Some day man will conquer outer space as he has the planetary system."

Nadia sat up, her black eyes provoked. "What are you? A fish? After all I'm supposed to have a passion for you. Didn't I say back in Trev's office that we had a lot to talk over, Mr. Gavin Murdock, ex-chief engineer of the Europa?"

Gavin pulled up a deck chair. His blue eyes wary, he asked in a flat voice, "Why did you vouch for me? You never worked for Transplanet. Why did you lie?"

"No," she replied slowly. "No, I never was third mate aboard any of Transplanet's ships. But I wasn't lying. I did know you." She laughed teasingly. "And I did have a crush on you, Mr. Gavin Murdock, ex-first assistant-engineer of Tri-World's ship, the Saturn!"

Gavin controlled an inclination to jump. His face hardened. It was true he had been first assistant-engineer of the Saturn. He had left her to join the T.I.S.

"I was a cadet aboard the Saturn," Nadia explained. "Now just exactly what are you? And what do you want aboard the Nova?"

Gavin was silent a moment. "Now you're going to lie," accused the girl angrily.

"No. On the contrary, I'm going to ask you the same question. Your own position can't be too secure. That's why you had to back me up with that artistic lie in Trev's office. You were afraid they'd start asking you questions ... I wouldn't be surprised if you were a T.I.S. agent!"

The girl looked startled. A flush suffused her pale cheeks. She said, "So that's how you plan to shut my mouth. You devil! You know that if Cabot even suspected such a thing he'd kill me."

"Well," said Gavin coolly. "I don't know that any of us can afford to take a chance if you're a T.I.S. agent."

"Hush!" pleaded Nadia in agony.

"Look what it would mean. We'd be condemned to the Lunar Corrective Colony."

She gripped his arm desperately. "But I'm not! I'm not!" She regained her composure with an effort and went on in a low bitter tone, "I have been proscribed! Does that answer your questions? I killed a man. He was a high official of Tri-World. The corporation put a price on my head."

The Terran government was humanitarian. Capital punishment had been abolished along with a score of other institutions such as marriage, divorce and the family.

But the big corporations were the real rulers. Feudal in character, they maintained their power by purges that would have made the bloody twentieth century snow white by comparison. Their property, their officials were inviolate. Their law was a tooth for a tooth, and their gunmen hung on the trail of an offender whom they had proscribed until they caught up with him.

If the girl was telling the truth, she was as good as dead. Sooner or later, ten—twenty years, it made no difference, the agents of Tri-World would catch up with her.

"Why did you kill him?"

"He—he...." She glanced at the deck, flushed faintly.

"Nonsense," said Gavin. "People don't get killed for that any more. Why did you kill him?"

She looked at him, startled. "He caught me drawing a plan of Tri-World's magnetic ore-loader. It was a corporation secret. I was just a kid, a cadet aboard the Saturn. I—I was offered a lot of money for the plans...." She halted lamely.

"Who offered you the money?"

"Trev." Her voice was a whisper.

Gavin was surprised only at the fact that Nadia had confessed such a thing. She had placed herself completely in his power as long as she lived.

"I didn't ask you here to tell you that," she broke in on his speculations. Her voice was unsteady. "But to show you something. Look." And she pointed behind them towards Venus.

Gavin at first could see nothing except the yellow sun with its spectacular corona. Then he discovered a faint streak like the luminous trail of a meteor. After a second he made out a second and a third.

"We're being followed," Nadia said. "They've been on our trail ever since we left Venus. The chief astrogator figured their speed. They'll overtake us in five sidereal days. Only, they'll be too late."

"Why?"

"The little death!" she explained.

A premonition of danger made a cold track in his brain. He swung around.

Nadia Petrovna stood very straight not four feet from him. Big tears stood like drops of crystal in her long black eyes. She was holding her tiny dart-gun at Gavin's chest.

"May God rest your soul." She uttered the words in a choked voice, and pulled the trigger.

Gavin was caught completely flatfooted. He glimpsed a flash as the splinter of steel zipped at his chest and knew he was a dead man.

The dart struck his breast and stood straight out from his blouse. He stared down at it in panic.

But no fire of poison coursed through his veins.

He remembered his dart-proof plastic vest with a flood of relief. Another needle stuck through his blouse into the vest as Nadia pulled the trigger a second time.

Gavin crumpled slowly forward.

Then his knees stiffened. His hand snapped out to close about Nadia's slim wrist, dragging her down with him. Savagely, he wrenched the gun from her fingers. She began to sob.

Sitting on the deck, he plucked the two poisoned darts from the front of his plastic vest. "It's good to know who your friends are," he said dryly and got to his feet. "Don't try it again. I won't be so lenient next time."

VI

By the sixth day, Gavin Murdock was no nearer the solution of the little death than he had been at the start.

It was Villanowski's watch below. Gavin sat on the observation deck, watching the three streaks in the void which betrayed their pursuers. They had closed the gap until they were almost on top of them. If the Nova possessed a unique spacedrive, Gavin reflected, she'd better be unlimbering it. The three ships were almost in atomic shell range.

His thoughts wrestled for the hundredth time with the little death. Villanowski had become suspicious and clammed up. The officers frankly didn't like to discuss it. They evaded his questions, insisting he must first experience it.

Suddenly, Gavin started to his feet, his eyes searching the void. In toward the sun he had glimpsed the hair line of a rocket ship's jets. He thought he could distinguish five separate streaks of light, but they were so faint and far away that they blended into one streak. Five trails! That could only mean a flight of patrol spacers blasting after the three pursuers of the Nova.

Gavin heard a step behind him and twisted sideways, his hand rising to his shoulder holster.

Nadia Petrovna came out on the observation deck. She caught sight of Gavin and started to withdraw. Then an expression of determination took possession of her features. She flushed and said, "Let's call off the war."

"Sure." Gavin's voice was without mockery, but his hand still hovered close to his chest.

The girl came across the deck, her expression flooded with relief. "I'm glad now I didn't kill you. I—I was frightened. You believe that?"

"Sure."

"I've never dared tell anybody what I was forced to tell you. I've lived for two years in absolute terror. I was desperate."

"Sure."

"You don't believe me?"

"Not altogether," he admitted. His hand didn't leave his chest. "Why should I?"

Nadia bit her lip. Then she slipped her hand in the breast of her coveralls, brought out her diminutive dart-gun. She brought it out very slow and holding it by the barrel because Gavin was covering her with his own automatic.

"Drop it," he commanded. "Push it to me with your foot."

"Now," she said, "can we talk without suspicion? I'm unarmed."

"Are you?"

Her black eyes widened in surprise.

"Yes. Of course. I wouldn't...."

"Wouldn't you?" asked Gavin stonily.

She sighed faintly. "You can search me."

Gavin moved around behind her. He searched her impersonally, but thoroughly. If she'd been concealing so much as a postage stamp he was convinced he would have found it.

"All right," he said with a grin. "Now I trust you."

She dropped to a deck chair. "I've been trying to work up enough courage," she confessed, "to—to talk to you. But you've been so grim you've frightened me off."

"Why? D'you want another try at me?"

"That's not fair." Her eyes sought the deck. "I'm afraid. Cabot has been ... he's ... I think he suspects me of working with X."

"Are you?"

"No." Her voice was shocked.

"But Trev was?"

She nodded.

"And you were working with Trev?"

"I wasn't working with him," she protested. "Only that one time. He offered me five thousand credits to copy the Saturn's loader."

"How did you connect with the Nova?"

"Do you mean how did I happen to get the job as third mate? But I told you. I was a cadet aboard the Saturn. I simply asked Cabot for the job."

Gavin said, "That lie wouldn't fool a school kid. If you were proscribed by Tri-World you wouldn't have dared approach Cabot in the open. Someone hid you out. Someone with enough influence with Cabot got you aboard the Nova—"

The general alarm cut loose with its strident clangor. Gavin sprang to his feet. "What's that for?"

"The little death!" Nadia said with a shudder.

As suddenly as the bell started it was stilled. A harsh voice came through the public address system, "Go to your quarters immediately! All personnel report immediately to your quarters and take to your bunks." The voice brayed forth the commands three more times at short intervals.

Gavin started at a run for the interior of the ship.

"Wait! Wait for me," Nadia cried.

He paused. "You better run for your cabin."

"I'm scared," she confessed in a trembling voice. "Let me come with you."

"I'm going to the engine room."

"But...." Her black eyes opened wide. Then she said defiantly, "I don't care. I—I want to come, too."

The jets fell silent.

"There she goes over to the robot pilot. If you're coming with me you'll have to stretch a leg." Without another word, he plunged off down the corridor.

A peculiar whine began to make itself heard. It was so high it hurt his ears. The atmosphere within the ship was growing foggy. A yellow-tinged mist eddied sluggishly like ink discoloring a glass of water.

He reached the engine room. There he halted so abruptly that Nadia pitched against him.

The engine room was deserted. But the strange door in the aft bulkhead stood open.

"What is it?" Nadia whispered.

"Don't know." He blinked his eyes, trying to pierce the gathering yellow fog. He caught a glimpse of a bank of switches, the base of a spherical tube, big as man. Then Villanowski passed across the opening from left to right.

Gavin began to creep toward the door. Halfway there a blinding flash stabbed at the base of his skull. He swayed dizzily, thought, "Nadia!" Half drawing his dart-gun, he turned laboriously around.

But the girl lay stretched on the deck, her long black lashes fluttering.

Gavin paused, tried to turn back to the door. It was like moving through syrup. A second flash burst in his brain. He pitched to the deck.

"Nine years!" said a man's stifled voice. It reached Gavin, vaguely distorted like an image through wavy glass. "My orbit, it's been nine years!"

Through the open window came a wailing chant of imported black laborers from Terra.

"But I didn't do it. You can't take me back now." The man's face was sweating and yellow-white. His fingers twitched. He spread them nervously on the desk top. "I'm proscribed. Jordon was a stockholder in Amalgamated Plastic. They'll kill me! Even in the Lunar Corrective Colony, they'll kill me."

"Sorry."

The cold unfeeling tone of his own voice shocked Gavin.

"But it's been nine years," the man persisted as if the time meant anything. Gavin had been sent out by the T.I.S. to get him. Twenty years wouldn't have made any difference.

"Even if I was guilty, I've proved I don't need corrective psychiatry. I'm not an incorrigible."

"Look," Gavin interrupted. "I've got a job. I don't know whether you're guilty or not and I don't care. I don't even blame you for killing Jordon, if you did...."

Gavin's sense of strangeness increased. This had all happened once before during his first year in the T.I.S. This man had been accused of murdering a minor official of Amalgamated Plastic and had fled. After nine years the T.I.S. had learned that he was at a remote trading post on Ganymede. Gavin had been sent to fetch him back for trial.

Only Gavin wasn't dreaming all this now. He was re-living it!

He was inside himself, yet outside, judging, appraising his own actions with the detachment of an impersonal observer.

"I can make you rich. Millions of credits." The man's voice became low, wheedling. "There's a deposit of pitchblende back in the hills. It's fabulous...."

"It's no use," said Gavin harshly. "Hell, man, I'd always know that six or seven years from now another T.I.S. agent might tap me on the shoulder like I've done you. Besides, I'm satisfied. I'm a...."

"Manhunter!"

"If you like. I'm a manhunter. You might as well ask a cat to turn loose a mouse. It's against his nature. Come along now."

"Murderer," said the man with disconcerting calmness. "I'm innocent—and you're killing me just as surely as if you shot me with that dart-gun. Do you think Amalgamated Plastic has forgotten? I'm proscribed. Their agents will get me. Why don't you shoot me outright?" His voice ran up the scale, half-hysterical with fright as he read his sentence in Gavin's cold, unblinking eyes. "You're not human. Go ahead. Kill me now. I'm not coming. Do you hear? I'm not coming."

Gavin saw himself reach suddenly across the desk and rap the fugitive on the skull with the butt of his dart-gun.

From its peculiar vantage point, the detached half of Gavin's personality knew the inexorable sequence of events to follow. He would haul the fellow back to Terra, where he would be murdered by agents of Amalgamated Plastic at his trial.

For the first time, Gavin realized, he was seeing himself as he must appear to others. A gaunt, hollow-cheeked, sandy-haired man, with implacable blue eyes, tight-lipped, hard-faced. Manhunter!

He felt the cold deck under his fingers. He opened his eyes. He was still in the Nova's engine room. The yellow mist had dissipated. He saw Villanowski standing over him. The chief's homely features were cold.

"What the hell are you doing here?"

Gavin pulled himself together with an effort and scrambled to his feet.

"Curious," he admitted frankly. From the corner of his eyes, he saw Nadia sit up, holding her temples.

Villanowski's eyes narrowed. "What did you see?"

"Nothing," Gavin said in a disappointed voice. He could feel the perspiration break through his pores. Villanowski was no fool. "The mist caught us at the foot of the ladder." He paused. "Next time we go into the little death, I'd like to be in the control room with you."

"You saw the control room?"

"Oh, the door was open." Gavin summoned all his histrionic ability to sound convincing. "I saw you and started in. Then—then I fainted, I guess."

Indecision was reflected on Villanowski's face. Finally he growled, "Get out, the pair of you. Don't come down here again except on your watch."

Gavin followed the girl up the ladder, his palms slippery with sweat on the cold bars. He wasn't sure whether he'd fooled Villanowski or not. They entered the mess room, helped themselves to coffee. He realized the girl hadn't uttered a word since the little death. He saw she was regarding him with a half-frightened, half-perplexed frown.

"How did the little death affect you?" he asked her.

"I had a dream. At least, I think it was." She bit her lip.

"What was it about?"

"Something in the future." She laughed. "It's silly, isn't it, to be so frightened at a dream. Especially one so fantastic."

"I don't know," Gavin replied dryly. "Mine didn't leave me so comfortable ... but you haven't told me what yours was."

Nadia rubbed her temples. "I dreamed we were all captured on Jupiter and sent to the Penal Colony." She laughed at herself. "It's so silly, because you—you"—again she gave a low laugh—"you were a T.I.S. agent!"

Gavin felt his mouth go dry. He stared at her in consternation. He moistened his lips and started to ask for more particulars, when the chief astrogator entered the messroom.

The Nova's astrogator nodded perfunctorily at them and went across to the solar chart. Very deliberately, he pulled out the pin marking the Nova's position, moved it across the map to within a week's voyage of Jupiter.

Gavin couldn't believe his eyes. "That's impossible! We weren't unconscious but a few seconds during the little death...."

"An hour," Nadia corrected. "The effects last an hour. So Villanowski claims."

"An hour, then. What difference does it make? The Nova couldn't have gone that distance in an hour, nor in a thousand hours! Why man, that's faster than the speed of light!"

The chief astrogator grunted. "Impossible or not, that's our position. If you don't think so, go on out on the observation deck and take a look."

Gavin leaped to his feet and plunged through the door. When he came out on the quartzite enclosed deck, he flung his gaze aloft.

The entire aspect of the heavens had changed. The three streaks denoting the pursuing space craft were absent. The sun had diminished to the size of a lemon. And dead ahead loomed the huge banded disc of Jupiter.

It was true. In the space of a few moments the Nova had traversed the void between Venus and Jupiter. Even though the planets were in a superior conjunction, the feat was unthinkable.

No wonder the big corporations were fighting like wildcats to get hold of the Nova's spacedrive!

Gavin dropped weakly in a deck chair, overawed by the possibilities. A new era of space travel was being inaugurated!

VII

Gavin Murdock was on watch below, when the Nova sliced into the upper strata of Jupiter's atmosphere. She dived in at a slant on the opposite side of the planet for Jovopolis and was quickly smothered from view by the thick translucent air.

To the early astronomers, Jupiter had appeared enormous although it was only about a third denser than water. But the Huygen expedition in the first years of interplanetary travel had resolved the enigma. Jupiter consisted of a small solid core surrounded by an intensive and very dense atmosphere. The force of gravity at the surface was only between two and three times that on Terra.

Nominally, Jupiter was a colony of the Terran empire. But every attempt at settlement had proved disastrous. Today Jovopolis was an outpost, consisting of rotting shacks, a trading post, and one modern structure which housed the Huygen Memorial Institute of Science. Even the interplanetary patrol had made no attempt to install a permanent base. The officers and men lived in their ship while they were assigned to the station.

The Nova began to settle Jove-ward. Gavin never left the bridge televisor, pulling switches, relaying orders to the jetman and master mechanic as the clumsy monster performed the ticklish job of landing.

Villanowski, who had been routed out of his bunk by the landing alarm, paced back and forth the length of the engine room, his eyes everywhere. He didn't interfere, though.

Then the Nova struck with a bump which threw the chief engineer to his hands and knees.

He scrambled up, brushing off his shorts. "Nice landing." He patted Gavin's shoulder. "Nice landing."

It was a nice landing. Gavin's bony freckled features relaxed. Broken ankles, bruises and sprains were only too frequent when setting a ship down without the benefit of spaceways.

"How long will it take us to load?"

"Five days," Villanowski replied. "Jovian time."

The Jovian day, Gavin knew, was only nine hours and fifty-five minutes long. That meant the Nova would be on Jupiter forty-nine hours. Gavin made a hasty mental calculation. It cut the margin of success to the barest minimum time. He would have to act and act quickly.

He started for the ladder, feeling the increased gravity tug at his flesh.

"Not so fast, lad," said Villanowski.

Gavin paused.

The chief engineer's attitude had undergone such a remarkable change that Gavin's own suspicions had been aroused. It dated from the second meal following the little death. Nadia had regaled the officers with her dream—the one in which Gavin had been a T.I.S. agent and contrived the capture of them all on Jupiter.

Villanowski's homely face had clouded. Then he had remarked with a wry expression that stranger things could happen.

Oddly enough, however, he no longer evinced the slightest suspicion of Gavin. But an occasional joshing reference to Murdock, the T.I.S. agent, revealed that he hadn't forgotten Nadia's dream.

Gavin said, "Yes sir," in a doubtful tone. He couldn't afford to arouse any doubts now.

"The Captain wants to see you before you go ashore."

"Yes, sir."

Wondering what Cabot wanted with him, he struggled up the ladder. Sweat began to pour from his skin. It was like climbing with the old man of the sea anchored to his back.

By the time he reached his cabin he was exhausted. He stretched out on his bunk, drew his breath in sobbing gasps. No wonder colonization of Jupiter had proved so difficult.

At length, he drove himself to his feet. The plan, which had been hatched in the head office of the T.I.S., would brook no delay. Captain Cabot would have to wait.

Stooping, he pulled a bundle of tough, specially-treated fiberoid, a material used in the construction of space suits, from under his bunk, slung it across his shoulder. Next, he dragged forth a clock-like instrument to which had been attached a magnesium flare, and lastly a cylinder of hydrogen.

The hydrogen Gavin had refined from water by a crude electrolysis. The rest of the equipment he had slipped from the engine room, working on it during leisure moments since the little death.

He opened his door. The corridor was deserted.

Twice during the ascent topside, Gavin had to stop and rest. Even breathing was an effort. At length he reached the arched outer skin of the monster, pried open an escape hatch.

The thick yellow air of Jupiter poured down upon him like soup. It smelled and tasted faintly like swamp gas. He had a momentary fear that he would strangle. A spasm of coughing seized him as he gulped in the first breaths.

Then, his lungs having adjusted themselves, he clambered to the outer shell.

A hundred feet below, he could make out the surface, only sketchily visible through the yellow pea-soup air. Slave pens and cantonments were all swallowed by the dense fog.

He set to work assembling his instruments. The cold knifed to his bones. A wind was blowing, too. It pushed against him like the sluggish current of a river.

The fiberoid package, unfolded, proved to be a balloon almost ten feet in diameter. It had a safety valve in it to neutralize the pressure when the bag reached the stratosphere. Gavin attached the clock and flare, started the clock in operation, inflated the bag. The instant it tugged at his numbed fingers, he shut off the hydrogen, cast it free.

It was scarcely a fifth inflated, but the heavy pressure caused it to float slowly, upward out of sight.

The clock was timed to ignite the flare when the balloon reached the stratosphere. Observatories on Io, Europa, Callisto, and Ganymede had their instruments trained on Jupiter. As soon as the flare was discovered, a check was to be made of the prevailing winds in that area. A simple parabola would indicate the balloon flare's probable course. The information then would be relayed to a flight of five patrol spacers held in readiness on the nearer moon.

That was the way it had been planned. But now Gavin was not so sure. So many things could interfere. He closed the trap overhead and retreated back to his cabin.

Sweating profusely, he flung himself on his bunk. He was still there, his breath rasping in his throat, when his door was pushed silently open from the outside.

Gavin whipped his dart-gun from its spring clip and slipped it under his pillow. He didn't move, but lay still with his eyes closed except for the barest fraction of an inch.

The door yawned wider.

Then the figure of Nadia Petrovna slipped soundlessly inside, eased the door shut. She stood over him, watching him with a desperate intentness. Satisfied that he slept, she set to work searching his cabin.

Gavin lay quiet, observing her skill appreciatively. The girl was efficient. She went rapidly through his closet, his chest, his bags.

She probed the lone chair cushion with a long needle, peered under his bed, then vanished in the shower. After a moment she reappeared, stood over him again, a puzzled expression on her pretty slavic features.

"No luck, eh?" murmured Gavin pleasantly. He opened his eyes and sat up.

Nadia gasped.

Gavin narrowed his eyes and roared in a suddenly harsh voice, "What the hell are you prying through my luggage for?"

The girl jumped. "I—I ..." she began, and then lapsed into confusion.

He waited.

"It sounds so foolish," she confessed, her long black eyes on the deck. Her fingers were twining about each other nervously. "But I can't get that dream out of my mind." She glanced up at him with a frightened expression.

"What dream?"

"The little death. When you turned out to be a T.I.S. agent. I—I begged you to give me a chance, let me try to escape."

"Yes," asked Gavin with a show of interest. "What did I do?"

"You laughed at me. I can't forget it."

"I wouldn't laugh at you," he replied somberly.

The girl's eyes softened. They were remarkable eyes, long and black and lustrous, the lashes half-hiding them.

"Why, Gavin, I believe you're flirting with me."

There was an odd little laugh in the words. It was the first time she'd called him Gavin.

"Don't be too sure," said Gavin gruffly. His arms went around her waist. He pulled her to a seat beside him and kissed her roughly.

Someone rapped at the door. Nadia sprang to her feet. Gavin called out, "Who is it?"

"The steward, sir. The Captain sent me to fetch you to the messroom."

When Gavin entered the officer's mess, he saw the Captain seated across a table from the thinnest man he had ever encountered.

"This is Hendricks," Cabot introduced them. The Captain was cold sober and hard-eyed. "He's the factor here at the cantonment."

Gavin shook hands. The factor had an amazing grip. His flesh hung on in tough strings. He looked more like an animated skeleton than a man, but Gavin was conscious of a tremendous wiry strength in him.

"You going ashore, Mr. Murdock?" the factor inquired.

Gavin nodded. "Miss Petrovna and I were planning to visit the cantonment." He saw a glance pass between Cabot and the factor.

The factor said, "Splendid," and rubbed his emaciated hands together. "Allow me to play host. The officers are already at my establishment."

Gavin thanked him.

"But let me warn you," went on the factor. "Don't wander off. The gravity aboard the ship here is bad enough. The atmosphere is much worse. It's easy to get lost, I've known newcomers to die of exhaustion only a few steps from the cantonment."

Gavin thanked him again, started to withdraw when the factor halted him.

"I've bearers waiting outside," he explained. "They're at your service while you're here. I really advise you not to walk any more than necessary."

This time Gavin made good his escape. He had been politely instructed not to pry, he realized. Villanowski might be confident of him, but not the Captain.

Gavin was smiling when he met Nadia at the main port, but his eyes were hard. Both of them had donned outer insulating garments of thermal cloth.

"We're going to be carried in litters like ancient Oriental potentates," he informed her.

Nadia laughed. "You've never been to Jupiter before?"

He shook his head.

They passed through the lock into the swirling yellow air. It was like swimming. They crept down the gangplank. The bearers were standing patiently at the surface.

Gavin had seen Jovian dawn men before, but they never failed to excite his curiosity. Huge, almost seven feet tall, and muscled like gladiators, they were imposing as Greek gods. Their skin was the vivid blue of polished turquoise, their long manes as yellow as a sunburst.

"There's a double litter," Nadia pointed out. "Let's take that."

Gavin followed her inside. The litter was cushioned like a divan. One was borne along in a semi reclining position. Nadia clapped her hands and cried, "Cantonment!"

Four naked blue giants swung the litter to their shoulders and started off at a rapid trot. In a few paces, the ship had disappeared. They were like a tiny raft, alone in a welter of yellow oppressive fog.

Gavin, peering over the edge, saw that the giants were following a paved road. After a moment they began to pass an endless procession of dawn men, chained ankle to ankle and moving sluggishly toward the Nova.

Already the loading had started.

Gavin stared at the half-men curiously. They crept along, features drawn, their yellow manes matted with dirt. There was a haunted look in their eyes like caged animals.

Thirty percent would die in the crossing, he knew. Within a year ninety percent of the rest would be dead, victims of home-sickness, of pneumonia and measles and Venusian lung rot, not to mention a score of other diseases. The terrible rate of fatality was good business for the slavers. It held up the demand.

"They aren't really human," said Nadia in a faint voice as if reading his thoughts. "They're sub-men."

Gavin nodded. Some place along the evolutionary scale the Jovians had taken a wrong turning. They would never evolve into true homo sapiens. But even cattle weren't treated as they were.

The walls of the cantonment hove suddenly in view through the murky atmosphere. The giants paused before a massive entrance like the gate of a feudal castle.

Gavin climbed out of the litter and started to help Nadia down. Somewhere off in the distance he heard a faint popping.

"What is it?" cried the girl, struck by his strained air of attention.

"It sounds like the dum-dum fire. Listen!"

They both fell silent.

From the direction of the Nova came faintly a sound like a string of fire-crackers going off together. "It is dum-dum fire!"

"But it can't be! It's impossible."

The sound of explosions drifted to them again.

Gavin sprang back into the litter.

"Wait here," he cried. "Something's wrong at the ship." He knew that it couldn't be the Terran patrol spacers attacking. The balloon hadn't time to rise into the stratosphere yet.

A great fear for the Nova's safety gripped him. Whatever the cost, the ship must be preserved intact so that Terra's scientists could examine her space drive. It had become the paramount issue, over-shadowing in importance even the detestable slave trade.

"No!" Nadia cried. "Don't go back there." She flung herself on him, pressing her body flat against his. "Please, for my sake, Gavin!"

He pushed her rudely aside.

Just then the chief astrogator burst upon them, running from inside the cantonment. His strides were labored, his breath wheezing in his chest. He saw Gavin and shouted: "The ship's being attacked! They've radioed the cantonment for help!"

"Who by?"

"X's men!" The chief astrogator began to run down the paved highway toward the Nova and was swallowed by the fog.