VIII

The rest of that afternoon and evening were a blank confusion to me. Anita's words, the touch of my hand on her arm, that vast realm of what might be for us, like the glimpse of a magic land of happiness which I had seen in her eyes, and perhaps she had seen in mine—all this surged within me.

After wandering about the ship, I had a brief consultation with Captain Carter. He was genuinely apprehensive now. The Planetara carried only a half-dozen of the heat-ray projectors, no long range weapons, a few side arms, and some old-fashioned, practically antiquated weapons of explosives, plus hand projectors with the new Benson curve light.

The weapons were all in Carter's chart room, save the few we officers always carried. Carter was afraid, but of what, he was not sure. He had not thought that our plan to stop at the Moon could affect this outward voyage. He had thought that any danger would occur on the way back, and then the Planetara would have been adequately guarded and manned with police-soldiers.

But now we were practically defenseless. I had a moment with Venza, but she had nothing new to communicate. And for half an hour I chatted with George Prince. He seemed a gay, pleasant young man. I could almost have fancied I liked him. Or was it because he was Anita's brother? He told me how he looked forward to traveling with her on Mars. No, he had never been there before, he said.

He had a measure of Anita's earnest naïve personality. Or was he a very clever scoundrel, with irony lurking in his soft voice, and a chuckle that could so befool me?

"Well talk again, Haljan. You interest me—I've enjoyed it."

He sauntered away from me, joining the saturnine Ob Hahn, with whom presently I heard him discussing religion.

The arrest of Johnson had caused considerable discussion among the passengers. A few had seen me drag him forward to the cage. The incident had been the subject of discussion all afternoon. Captain Carter had posted a notice to the effect that Johnson's accounts had been found in serious error, and that Dr. Frank for this voyage would act in his stead.

It was near midnight when Snap and I closed and sealed the radio room and started for the chart room, where we were to meet with Captain Carter and the other officers. The passengers had nearly all retired. A game was in progress in the smoking room, but the deck was almost deserted.

Snap and I were passing along one of the interior corridors. The stateroom doors were all closed. The metal grid of the floor echoed our footsteps. Snap was in advance of me. His body suddenly rose in the air. He went like a balloon to the ceiling, struck it gently, and all in a heap came floating down and landed on the floor!

"What in the infernal—"

He was laughing as he picked himself up. But it was a brief laugh. We knew what had happened: the artificial gravity controls in the base of the ship, which by magnetic force gave us normality aboard, were being tampered with! For just this instant, this particular small section of this corridor had been cut off. The slight bulk of the Planetara , floating in space, had no appreciable gravity pull on Snap's body, and the impulse of his step as he came to the unmagnetized area of the corridor had thrown him to the ceiling. The area was normal now. Snap and I tested it gingerly.

He gripped me. "That never went wrong by accident, Gregg! Someone—"

We rushed to the nearest descending ladder. In the deserted lower room the bank of dials stood neglected. A score of dials and switches were here, governing the magnetism of different areas of the ship. There should have been a night operator, but he was gone.

Than we saw him lying nearby, sprawled, face down on the floor! In the silence and dim, lurid glow of the fluorescent tubes, we stood holding our breaths, peering and listening. No one here.

The guard was not dead. He lay unconscious from a blow on the head. A brawny fellow. We had him revived in a few moments. A broadcast flash of the call buzz brought Dr. Frank from the chart room.

"What's the matter?"

"Someone was here," I said hastily, "experimenting with the magnetic switches. Evidently unfamiliar with them—pulling one or another to test their workings and so see their reactions on the dials."

We told him what had happened to Snap in the corridor; the guard here was no worse off for the episode, save a lump on the head by an invisible assailant. We left him nursing his head, sitting belligerent at his post, alert to any danger and armed now with my heat-ray cylinder.

"Strange doings this voyage," he told us. "All the crew knows it. I'll stick it out now, but when we get back home I'm done with this star travelin'. I belong on the sea anyway."

We hurried back to the upper level. We would indeed have to plan something at this chart room conference. This was the first tangible attack our adversaries had made.

We were on the passenger deck headed for the chart room when all three of us stopped short, frozen with horror. Through the silent passenger quarters a scream rang out! A girl's shuddering, gasping scream. Terror in it. Horror. Or a scream of agony. In the silence of the dully vibrating ship it was utterly horrible.... It lasted an instant—a single long scream; then was abruptly stilled.

And with blood pounding my temples and rushing like ice through my veins, I recognized it.

Anita!