SPACE STATION 1
by FRANK BELKNAP LONG
ACE BOOKS
A Division of A. A. Wyn, Inc.
23 West 47th Street, New York 36, N. Y.
SPACE STATION 1
Copyright 1957, by A. A. Wyn, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
Printed in U. S. A.
[Transcriber's Note: Extensive research did not uncover any
evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
INTRIGUE IN EARTH'S OUTER ORBIT
Tremendous and glittering, the Space Station floated up out of the Big
Dark. Lieutenant Corriston had come to see its marvels, but he soon
found himself entrapped in its unsuspected terrors.
For the grim reality was that some deadly outer-space power had usurped
control of the great artificial moon. A lovely woman had disappeared;
passengers were being fleeced and enslaved; and, using fantastic
disguises, imposters were using the Station for their own mysterious
ends.
Pursued by unearthly monsters and hunted with super-scientific cunning,
Corriston struggles to unmask the mystery. For upon his success
depended his life, his love and the future of Earth itself.
CAST OF CHARACTERS
CORRISTON
He saw all the sights of the Space Station ... in fact, he saw too
much....
HAYES
His decision would mean the beginning or the end for a world.
CLAKEY
This bodyguard needed special protection himself.
CLEMENT
Sometimes it seemed as if he were leading a double life.
HENLEY
With him for a friend one didn't need an enemy.
HELEN RAMSEY
Her father had made her a virtual prisoner.
1
It was a life-and-death struggle--cruel, remorseless, one-sided.
Corriston was breathing heavily. He was in total darkness, dodging the
blows of a killer. His adversary was as lithe as a cat, muscular and
dangerous. He had a knife and he was using it, slashing at Corriston
when Corriston came close, then leaping back and lashing out with a
hard-knuckled fist.
Corriston could hear the swish of the man's heels as he pivoted, could
judge almost with split-second timing when the next blow would come.
He was bleeding from a cut on his right shoulder, and there was a
tumultuous throbbing at his temples, an ache in his groin.
The fact that he had no weapon put him at a terrifying disadvantage. He
had been close to death before, but never in so confined a space or in
such close proximity to a man who had certainly killed once and would
not hesitate to kill again.
His determination to survive was pitted against what appeared to be
sheer brute strength fortified by cunning and a far-above-average
agility. He began slowly to retreat, backing away until a massive steel
girder stopped him. He was battling dizziness now and his heart had
begun a furious pounding.
He found himself slipping sideways along the girder, running his hands
over its smooth, cold surface. To his sweating palms the surface seemed
as chill as the lid of a coffin, but he refused to believe that it
could trap him irretrievably. The girder had to end somewhere.
The killer was coming close again, his shoes making a scraping sound
in the darkness, his breathing just barely audible. Corriston edged
still further along the girder. Inch by inch he moved parallel to it,
fighting off his dizziness, making a desperate effort to keep from
falling. The wetness on his shoulder was unnerving, the absence of
pain incredible. How seriously could a man be stabbed without feeling
any pain at all? He didn't know. But at least his shoulder wasn't
paralyzed. He could move his arm freely, flex the muscles of his back.
How unbelievably cruel it was that a ship could move through space with
the stability of a completely stationary object. How unbelievably cruel
at this moment, when the slightest lurch might have saved him.
The girder was stationary and immense, and in his tormented inward
vision he saw it as a strand in a gigantic steel cobweb, symbolizing
the grandeur of what man could accomplish by routine compulsion alone.
In frozen helplessness Corriston tried to bring his thoughts into
closer accord with reality, to view his peril in a saner light. But
what was happening to him was as hard to relate to immediate reality
as a line half remembered from a play. _See how the blood of Caesar
followed it, as if rushing out of doors to be resolved if Brutus so
unkindly knocked or no...._
But the killer wasn't Brutus. He was unknown and invisible and if
there had been any Brutuslike nobility in him, it hardly seemed likely
that he would have chosen for his first victim a wealthy girl's too
talkative bodyguard and for his second Corriston himself.
The killer was within arm's reach again when the barrier that had
trapped Corriston fell away abruptly. He reeled back, swayed dizzily,
and experienced such wild elation that he cried out in unreasoning
triumph. Swiftly he retreated backwards, not fully realizing that no
real respite had been granted him. He was free only to recoil a few
steps, to crouch and weave about. Almost instantly the killer was
closing in again, and this time there was no escape.
Another metal girder stopped Corriston in midretreat, cutting across
his shoulders like a sharp-angled priming rod, jolting and sobering him.
For an eternity now he could do nothing but wait. An eternity as
brief as a dropped heartbeat and as long as the cycle of renewal and
rebirth of worlds in the flaming vastness of space. Everything became
impersonal suddenly: the darkness of the ships' between-deck storage
compartment; the Space Station toward which the ship was traveling; the
Martian deserts he had dreamed about as a boy.
The killer spoke then, for the first time. His voice rang out in the
darkness, harsh with contempt and rage. It was in some respects a
surprising voice, the voice of an educated man. But it was also a voice
that had in it an accent that Corriston had heard before in verbal
documentaries and hundreds of newsreels; in clinical case histories,
microfilm recorded, in penal institutions, on governing bodies,
and wherever men were in a position to destroy others--or perhaps
themselves. It was the voice of an unloved, unwanted man.
The voice said: "You're done for, my friend. I don't know what the
Ramsey girl told you, but you came looking for me, and it's too late
now for any kind of compromise."
"I wasn't looking for a deal," Corriston said. "If it's any
satisfaction to you, Miss Ramsey told me nothing. But I saw a man
killed; and I couldn't find her afterwards. I think you know what
happened to her. Knife me, if you can. I'll go down fighting."
"That's easy to say. Maybe you _didn't_ come looking for me. But you
know too much now to go on living. Unless you--wait a minute! You
mentioned a deal. If you're lying about the Ramsey girl and will tell
me where she is, I might not kill you."
"I wasn't lying," Corriston said.
"Hell ... you're really asking for it."
"I'm afraid I am."
"It won't be a pleasant way to die."
"Any way is unpleasant. But I'm not dead yet. Killing me may not be as
easy as you think."
"It will be easy enough. This time you won't get past me."
Corriston knew that the conversation was about to end unless something
unexpected happened. And he didn't think there was much chance of that.
Had he been clasping a metal tool, he would have swung hard enough to
kill with it. But he wasn't clasping anything. He was crouching low,
and suddenly he leapt straight forward into the darkness.
His head collided with a bony knee and his hands went swiftly out and
around invisible ankles. He tightened his grip, half expecting the
knife to descend and bury itself in his back. But it didn't. The other
had been taken so completely by surprise that he simply went backwards,
suddenly, and with a strangled oath.
Instantly Corriston was on top of him. He shifted his grip, releasing
both of the struggling man's ankles and remorselessly seizing his
wrists. He raised his right knee and brought it savagely downward,
again and again and again. A cry of pain echoed through the darkness.
The killer, crying out in torment, tried to twist free.
For an instant the outcome remained uncertain, a see-saw contest of
strength. Then Corriston had the knife and the struggle was over.
Corriston made a mistake then of relaxing a little. Instantly, the
killer rolled sideways, broke Corriston's grip, and was on his feet.
He did not attempt to retaliate in any way. He simply disappeared into
the darkness, breathing so loudly that Corriston could tell when the
distance between them had dwindled to the vanishing point.
Corriston sat very still in the darkness, holding on tightly to the
knife. His triumph had been unexpected and complete. It had been close
to miraculous. Strange that he should be aware of that and yet feel
only a dark horror growing in his mind. Strange that he should remember
so quickly again the horror of a man gasping out his life with a
thorned barb protruding from his side.
It had begun a half-hour earlier in the general passenger cabin. It had
begun with a wonder and a rejoicing.
Tremendous and glittering, the Space Station had come floating up out
of the Big Dark like a golden bubble on an onrushing tidal wave. It
had hovered for an instant in the precise center of the viewscreen,
its steep, climbing trail shedding radiance in all directions. Then it
had descended vertically until it almost filled the lower half of the
screen, and finally was lost to view in a wilderness of space.
When it appeared for the second time, it was larger still and its
shadow was a swiftly widening crescent blotting out the nearer stars.
"There it is!" someone whispered.
It had been unreasonably quiet in the general passenger cabin, and for
a moment no other sound was audible. Then the whisper was caught up and
amplified by a dozen awestruck voices. It became a murmur of amazement
and of wonder, and as it increased in volume, the screen seemed to glow
with an almost unbelievable brightness.
Everyone was aware of the brightness. But how much of it was subjective
no one knew or cared. To a man in the larger darkness of space, a dead
sea bottom on Mars, or a moon-landing ship wrapped in eternal darkness
on a lonely peak in the Lunar Apennines may glow with a noonday
splendor.
"They said a space station that size could never be built," David
Corriston said, leaning abruptly forward in his chair. "They quoted
reams of statistics: height above the center of the Earth in
kilometers, orbital velocity, relation of mass to maneuverability. The
experts had a field day. They went far out on a limb to convince anyone
who would listen that a station weighing thousands of tons would never
get past the blueprint stage. But the men who built it had enough
pride and confidence in human skill to achieve the impossible."
The girl at Corriston's side looked startled for an instant, as though
the ironclad assurance of so young a man was as much of a surprise as
his unexpected nearness, and somehow even more disquieting older.
She was certainly somewhat older than he was--about three or four
years. She was an exceptionally pretty girl, her fair hair fluffed out
from under a blue beret, her ship's lounge jacket a youth-accentuating
miracle of casual tailoring that would have looked well on a woman of
any age. She had the kind of eyes Corriston liked best of all in a
woman: longlashed, observant, and bright with glints of humor.
She had the kind of mouth he liked too--a mouth which suggested that
she could be, by turns, capricious, level-headed, and audaciously
friendly with strangers without in any way inviting familiarity.
There was a certain paradoxical timidity in her gaze too. It was
manifesting itself now in an obvious reluctance to be startled too
abruptly by space engineering talk from a young man who had taken
her companionability for granted and who was obviously given to snap
judgments.
She brushed back the hair on her right temple, her brown eyes upraised
to study Corriston more closely.
He hoped that she would realize upon reflection that she was behaving
foolishly. He had taken a certain liberty in talking to her as he would
have talked to an old acquaintance in a long-awaited meeting of minds.
On the big screen a space station that couldn't be built was sweeping
in toward the ship with eighty-five years of unparallelled scientific
progress behind it.
First had come the Earth satellites, eight of them in their neat little
orbits. They had used low-energy fuels, had kept close to the Earth,
and no one had seriously expected them to do more than record weather
information and relay radio signals. For fifteen years they could be
seen with small telescopes and even with the unaided eye on bright,
cloudless nights in both hemispheres.
First had come these small, relatively unimportant artificial moons and
then, on a night in October 1972, the first space platform had been
launched. Soon the sky above the Earth was swarming with radar warning
platforms, a dozen men to operate them, and carrier-based jets equipped
with formidable atomic warheads.
Nevertheless, how could anyone have known that in another twenty years
interplanetary space flight would become a war-averting reality? How
could anyone have known that by the year 2007 there would be human
settlements on Mars and by the year 2022 the actual transportation to
Mars of city-building materials?
2
Corriston was beginning to feel uncomfortable. He wished that the girl
would say something instead of just continuing to stare at him. She
seemed to be interested in his uniform. She appeared to be gazing at
him interrogatively, as if she wanted to know more about him before
promising anything.
He wondered what her unconscious purpose was. Did she see in him
the quiet, determined type who was all set to accomplish something
important. Or was she regretting he wasn't the hard-living, cynical
type who had been everywhere and done everything?
Well, one way to find out was to be himself: a man average in every
way, but with a hard core of idealism in his nature, a creative mind
and enough independence and self-assurance to give a good account of
himself in any struggle which brought his central beliefs under fire
or placed them in long-range jeopardy.
And so Corriston suddenly found himself talking about the Station again.
"Not many people have grasped the importance of it yet," he said. "One
station will service our needs, instead of fifty-seven, one tremendous
central terminal and re-fueling depot for _all_ of the ships. Do you
realize what that could mean?"
Abruptly there was a startling warmth in the girl's eyes, an
unmistakable look of interest and encouragement.
"Just what could it mean?" she asked.
"Any kind of steady growth across the years leads to centralization, to
bigness. And that bigness becomes time-hallowed and magnified out of
all proportion to its original significance. The Space Station is no
exception. It started with the primitive Earth satellites and branched
out into fifty-seven larger stations. Now it's tremendous, a single
central station that can impose its influence in ship clearance matters
with an almost unanswerable finality."
A shadow had come into the girl's eyes. "But not completely without
checks and balances. The Earth Federation can challenge its supremacy
at any point."
"Yes, and I'm glad that the challenge remains a factor to be reckoned
with. As matters stand now the Station's prestige can't be implemented
with what might well become the iron hand of an intolerable tyranny.
As matters stand, the Station is actually a big step forward. People
once talked of centralization as if it were some kind of indecent
human bogey. It isn't at all. It's simply a fluid means to an end,
a necessary commitment if a society is to achieve greatness. If the
authority behind the Station respects scientific truth and human
dignity--if it remains empirically minded--I shall serve it to the best
of my ability. No one knows for sure whether what is good outbalances
what is bad in any human institution, or any human being. A man can
only give the best of himself to what he believes in."
"Sorry to interrupt," an amused voice said, "but the captain wants
you to join him in a last-minute celebration: a toast, a press
photograph--that sort of nonsense. A six hour trip, and he hasn't even
been introduced to you. But if you don't appear at his table in ten
minutes he'll throw the book at me."
Corriston looked up in surprise at the big man confronting them. He had
approached so unobtrusively that for an instant Corriston was angry;
but only for an instant. When he took careful stock of the fellow his
resentment evaporated. There was a cordiality about him which could not
have been counterfeited. It reached from the breadth of his smile to
his gray eyes puckered in amusement. He was really big physically, in
a wholly genial and relaxed way, and his voice was that of a man who
could walk up to a bar, pay a bill and leave an everlasting impression
of hearty good nature behind him.
"Well, young lady?" he asked.
"I'm not particularly keen about the idea, Jim, but if the captain has
actually iced the champagne, it would be a shame to disappoint him."
Corriston was aware that his companion was getting to her feet. The
interruption had been unexpected, but much to his surprise he found
himself accepting it without rancor. If he lost her for a few moments
he could quickly enough find her again; and somehow he felt convinced
that the big man was not a torch-carrying admirer.
"I'll have to stop off in the ladies' lounge first," she said. She
had opened her vanity case and was making a swift inventory of its
contents. "Two shades of lipstick, but no powder! Oh, well."
She smiled at the big man and then at Corriston, gesturing slightly as
she did so.
"We've just been discussing the Station," she said. "This gentleman
hasn't told me his name--"
"Lieutenant David Corriston," Corriston said quickly. "My interest in
the Station is tied in with my job. I've just been assigned to it in
the very modest capacity of ship's inspection officer, recruit status."
The big man stared at Corriston more intently, his eyes kindling with
a sudden increase of interest. "Say, I wonder if you could spare
me a few minutes. When my friends ask me I'd like to be able to
talk intelligently about the terrific headaches the research people
must have experienced right from the start. The expenditure of fuel
alone...."
"See you in the Captain's cabin, Jim," the girl said.
She moved out from her chair, her expression slightly constrained. Was
it just imagination, or had the big man's immoderate expansiveness
grated on her and brought a look of displeasure to her young face?
Corriston couldn't be sure, and his brow remained furrowed as he
watched her cross the passenger cabin and disappear into the ladies'
lounge.
"I'm Jim Clakey," the big man said.
Corriston reseated himself, a troubled indecision still apparent in his
stare. Then gradually he found himself relaxing. He nodded up at the
big man. "Sit down, Mr. Clakey," he said. "Ask me anything you want.
Security imposes some pretty rigid restrictions, but I'll let you know
when you start treading on classified ground."
Clakey sat down and crossed his long legs. He was silent for a moment.
Then he said: "You know who she is, of course."
Corriston shook his head. "I'm afraid I haven't the slightest idea."
"She isn't traveling under her real name only because her father is a
very sensible and cautious man. You'd be cautious too, perhaps, if you
were Stephen Ramsey."
Clakey's gaze had traveled to the ladies' lounge, and for an instant he
seemed unaware of Corriston's incredulous stare.
"You mean I've actually been sitting here talking to Stephen Ramsey's
daughter?"
"That's right," Clakey said, turning to grin amiably at Corriston.
"And now you're talking to her personal bodyguard. I'm not surprised
you didn't recognize her, though; very few people do. She doesn't like
to have her picture taken. Her dad wouldn't object to that kind of
publicity particularly, but she's even more cautious than he is."
The door of the ladies' lounge opened and two young women came out.
They were laughing and talking with great animation and were quickly
lost to view as other passengers changed their position in front of the
viewscreen.
The door remained visible, however--a rectangle of shining whiteness
only slightly encroached upon by dark blue drapes. Corriston found
himself staring at it as his mind dwelt on the startling implications
of Clakey's almost unbelievable statement.
"Biggest man on Mars," Clakey was saying. "Cornered uranium; froze out
the original settlers. They're threatening violence, but their hands
are tied. Everything was done legally. Ramsey lives in a garrisoned
fortress and they can't get within twenty miles of him. He's a damned
scoundrel with tremendous vision and foresight."
Corriston suddenly realized that he had made a serious psychological
blunder in sizing up Clakey. The man was a blabbermouth. True,
Corriston's uniform was a character recommendation which might
have justified candor to a moderate extent. But Clakey was talking
outrageously out of turn. He was becoming confidential about matters
he had no right to discuss with anyone on such short acquaintance.
Corriston suddenly realized that Clakey was slightly drunk.
"Look here," Corriston said. "You're talking like a fool. Do you know
what you're saying?"
"Sure I know. Miss Ramsey is a golden girl. And I'm her bodyguard ...
important trust ... sop to a man's egoism."
An astonishing thing happened then. Clakey fell silent and remained
uncommunicative for five full minutes. Corriston had no desire to
start him talking again. He was appalled and incredulous. He was
debating the advisability of getting up with a frozen stare and a firm
determination to take himself elsewhere when the crazy, loose-tongued
fool leapt unexpectedly to his feet.
"She's taking too long!" he exclaimed. "It just isn't like her. She'd
never keep the captain waiting."
As he spoke, another woman came out of the ladies' lounge. She was
small, dark, very pretty, and she seemed a little embarrassed when she
saw how intently Clakey was staring at her. Then a middle-aged woman
came out, with a finely-modeled face, and a second, younger woman
with haggard eyes and a sallow complexion who was in all respects the
opposite of attractive.
"She's been in there for fifteen minutes," Clakey said, starting toward
the lounge.
"It takes a good many women twice that long to apply makeup properly,"
Corriston pointed out. "I just don't see--"
"You don't know her," Clakey said, impatiently. "I may have to ask one
of those women to go in after her."
"But why? You can't seriously believe she's in any danger. We both saw
her go into the lounge. She made the decision on the spur of the moment
and no one could have known about it in advance. No one followed her
in. You were sitting right here watching the door."
But Clakey was already advancing across the cabin. He was reeling a
little, and a dull flush had mounted to his cheekbones. He seemed
genuinely alarmed. Corriston was about to follow him when something
bright flashed through the air with a faint swishing sound.
A startled cry burst from Clakey's lips. He clutched at his side,
staggered, and half-swung about, a look of incredulous horror in his
eyes.
Corriston's mouth went dry. He stood very still, watching Clakey lose
all control over his legs. The change in the stricken man's expression
was ghastly. His cheeks had gone dead white, and now, as Corriston
stared, a spasm convulsed his features, twisting them into a horrible,
unnatural caricature of a human face--a rigidly contorted mask with a
blanched, wide-angled mouth and bulging eyes.
A passenger saw him and screamed. His knees had given way and his huge
frame seemed to be coming apart at the joints. He straightened out on
the deck, jerking his head spasmodically, propelling himself backwards
by his elbows. Almost as if with conscious intent, his body arched
itself, sank level with the floor, then arched itself again.
It was as though all of his muscles and nerves were protesting the
violence that had been done to him, and were seeking by muscular
contractions alone to dislodge the stiff, thorned horror protruding
from his flesh.
He went limp and the barbed shaft ceased to quiver. Corriston had a
nerve-shattering glimpse of a swiftly spreading redness just above
Clakey's right hipbone. The entire barb turned red, as if its feathery
spines had acquired a sudden, unnatural affinity for human blood.
Corriston started forward, then changed his mind. Several passengers
had moved quickly to Clakey's side and were bending above him. Someone
called out: "Get a doctor!"
Corriston turned abruptly and strode toward the ladies' lounge.
Brushing aside such scruples as he ordinarily would have entertained,
he threw open the door and went inside.
He called out: "Miss Ramsey?" When he received no answer he searched
the lounge thoroughly. There was no one there. He was thinking fast
now, desperately fast. He hadn't seen her come out and neither had
Clakey. He'd seen four women come out: three young women and an elderly
one. None of them faintly resembled the girl he'd been talking to.
The first young woman had emerged almost immediately. He remembered
how intently Clakey had been watching the door. Clakey had sat down to
discuss the Station with him, and in less than two minutes the first
young lady had emerged. Then neither of them had taken their eyes from
the door for five or six minutes. The second young lady had apparently
known someone in the crowd. She had seemed annoyed by Clakey's
persistent stare and had disappeared quickly. The elderly woman had
looked her age. Her walk, her carriage, the lines of her face had borne
the unmistakable stamp of genteel aging, and the dignity inseparable
from it. The last woman had been the drab creature.
Corriston had a poor memory for faces and he knew that he couldn't
count on recognizing any of them--except perhaps the elderly woman--if
he saw them again.
It was good that he could smile, even at his own inanities. It relieved
tension. Almost instantly the smile vanished. His aspect became that
of a man in deadly danger on the brink of a hundred foot precipice, a
man completely in the dark and yet grimly determined not to go over the
edge or take a single step in the wrong direction.
Where, he asked himself, do women ordinarily go when they vanish into
thin air? Wasn't it pretty well established that ghosts were likely to
follow the path of least resistance and fulfill obligations entered
into in the flesh?
The captain's cabin! The captain would be disappointed if she failed to
appear at least briefly at his table; and she had promised to do so.
It was a wild, premeditated assault on the rational, but putting the
irrational aspect of it aside, it was also realistic and reasonable.
If by some incredible miracle she had eluded Clakey's vigilance and
actually slipped from the lounge, she would almost certainly have gone
straight to the captain's cabin.
3
Corriston left the ladies' lounge faster than he had entered it.
He shut the door firmly and stood for an instant staring at the
passengers who had gathered in an even tighter knot around Clakey and
were making it difficult for an alarmed young ship's doctor to get to
him. He was quite sure in his own mind that Clakey would not need the
assistance of a doctor.
Then he turned and headed for the captain's cabin. Anyone could have
gotten in. The door was ajar and there was no one guarding it. He threw
the door wide and everything was just as he'd expected to find it: It
was completely empty.
No guests at all to welcome Corriston to the big, empty cabin. Then he
saw that there was another door opposite.
Corriston was getting scared, really scared. There was an odd,
detached, whimsical feeling at the surface of his mind, but it cloaked
something distinctly sinister. He had more than half-expected the
captain to be absent from his cabin. But something about the silence
and the emptiness chilled him to the core of his being.
With an effort he shook the feeling off. He didn't know where the inner
door led to. He hesitated for an instant, realizing that the mere
existence of a second door could complicate his search to the point
of futility. If it led to a second cabin--well and good. But if it
didn't....
He strained his ears to catch the sound of voices. There were no
voices. He could have simply crossed to the door and looked beyond it.
But the state of his nerves, and an odd habit he had of being precise
and cautious under tension, made him explore the other possibilities
first.
The door might conceivably be a trap. A trap does not have to be
contrived in advance with some clearly defined purpose in mind.
Circumstances can take a door or a window and turn it into a trap. A
glove or a weapon left lying about can be picked up by an innocent man
and snare him most damnably by seeming to point up his guilt.
What purpose did the inner door serve? Did it open on a corridor
leading back to the general passenger cabin? If it did, it wouldn't be
a trap; it would simply have "blind alley" stamped all over it.
Corriston suddenly realized that he was succumbing to a crazy kind of
inaction. The door could lead almost anywhere, and if he had any sense
at all he'd go through it fast.
Go through it he did, in six long strides. He'd been right about one
thing--the blind alley part. He found himself, in not quite total
darkness, in what was unquestionably an intership passageway. There was
just light enough for him to make out the shadowy walls on both sides
of him. Rather they were like metal bulkheads that gave off just enough
reflected light for him to see by.
He wouldn't have considered ten or twelve seconds spent with a pocket
flash a waste of time. But he had no pocket flash. The best he could do
was stretch out both of his arms to determine just how far apart the
bulkheads were. They were less than six feet apart.
Well, no sense in measuring the walls. A girl he'd talked to and liked
instantly had vanished in a dark world, and he knew now that there was
more than mere liking in the way he felt about her. He didn't dare ask
himself how much more, not in so confined a space and with his chances
of finding her again dwindling with every second that passed.
The passageway ended in a blank wall, less than forty feet from its
beginning. Corriston saw the wall and was advancing toward it when he
suddenly realized that the deck itself wasn't continuous. In his path,
and almost directly underfoot, a companionway entrance yawned, so
unexpectedly close that another short step would have sent him plunging
into it. He saw the faint light reflected on its circumference and
halted just in time to avoid a possibly fatal fall.
He knelt and stared down into a spiraling web of darkness. He could see
a faint glimmer of light on metal and knew that he was bending above
either a circular staircase or a companionway ladder. It turned out
to be a staircase. Down it he went, moving cautiously, holding on to
the supporting guide rail as he descended deeper and deeper into the
darkness.
The darkness became almost absolute when the stairs ended. For a
moment, at least, what appeared to be utter blackness engulfed him.
Then gradually his vision became more effective. He could make out
the faint outlines of stationary objects, of depths beyond depths, of
crisscrossing lines and angles.
In utter darkness the glint of metal often seemed to draw the eyes like
a magnet, to make itself known even without illumination. But there
seemed to be a faint glow far off somewhere. He couldn't be sure, but
light there should have been if--as he more than half-suspected--he was
in one of the ship's below-deck ballast or storage compartments.
The deck beneath his feet was straight and level and cluttered with no
impediments. He moved forward warily, testing every step until a wall
of metal stopped him. He halted abruptly, felt along the barrier and
became aware that it was studded with small bolts and was just a little
corrugated. Exhibit A: one supporting metal beam, rough and slightly
uneven in texture. Abruptly he reached the end of it and found himself
underway again, still moving cautiously to avoid unseen pitfalls. He
had not progressed more than a dozen feet when he heard the scrape of
footsteps other than his own, and someone moved up close to him and
blocked his way in the darkness.
For an instant the wild thought went through his mind that the someone
was the captain. But he had seen and talked with the Captain and that
self-contained, blunt-spoken man wasn't nearly as big physically as the
path-blocker seemed to be.
The someone did not speak. But Corriston could sense the enmity flowing
from him, the utter refusal to budge an inch, the determination to make
his nearness a deadly threat in itself. Then the someone moved back a
step. The far-off light could hardly have been an illusion, because for
the barest instant Corriston could dimly make out the huge bulk of the
man and the glint of the knife in his hand.
Two big men in the space of half an hour! The first had ceased to draw
breath and the second was his killer. Corriston was suddenly sure of
it. He knew it instinctively.
Then began the struggle which had almost robbed Corriston of his life,
the cruel, one-sided, impossible-to-win struggle in total darkness.
And Corriston had won it.
* * * * *
Now almost in disbelief, Corriston looked down at the knife he had
taken from the loser, telling himself that it was impossible that so
much could have happened in so short a time and that he could still be
alive at the end of it.
The wound in his shoulder was no longer painless, but it had ceased to
bleed profusely, and his exploring fingers convinced him that the knife
had severed no more than a superficial ligament. He strained his ears
in the sudden quiet, listening for a possible return of his adversary.
He did not think that the defeated man would attempt a second attack.
But there was no telling what he might or might not do. Probably he'd
ascended the companionway by now and was mingling with the other
passengers.
The final link in Corriston's search had snapped. Even while battling
for his life, he had felt close to the vanished girl. The man who
had killed Clakey had been at least a link, a link that, short of
Corriston's total defeat, might have been seized upon with physical
violence and made to yield up its secret.
Now Corriston found himself wondering if the defeated man had been
telling the truth. Had the link been non-existent from the first? Was
the killer as completely in the dark as he was as to the whereabouts
of Ramsey's daughter?
It was difficult to believe that the man had been lying. Despite his
hatred and denials he _had_ offered Corriston a deal: "_Tell me where
the girl is and I may not kill you._" The deal part had been a lie, of
course. He would have gone on and attempted to kill Corriston anyway.
But his plea for information, that tentative, cunning feeler in the
dark had seemed genuine.
What had been the man's purpose in killing Clakey? Why had Clakey been
murdered in the general passenger cabin, in plain view of the other
passengers? Because the killer had seen the girl go into the lounge and
thought she was still there? And because he wanted free and instant
access to her, with Clakey out of the way? It was the only answer that
made sense.
The killer must have known that Clakey was in Ramsey's employ and had
been guarding Ramsey's daughter. Why then had he been unable to take
advantage of his crime in any way? Apparently neither he nor a possible
confederate had succeeded in what almost certainly had been a pattern
of violence directed at Ramsey through his daughter--a plan obviously
worked out in advance, ready to be put into operation the instant a
promising opportunity presented itself.
Into Corriston's mind flashed an ugly picture of the girl pinioned by
strong arms and with a handkerchief pressed to her face. She had ceased
to struggle and was being spirited quickly away. The picture became
even more intolerable when he saw her held captive in a cabin difficult
to locate, at the mercy of men without compassion.
But for some reason he'd never cease to be thankful for, it hadn't
happened that way. Something had gone wrong with the plan, and the
killer didn't even know when and why and how she had vanished. Sharing
Corriston's frustration, he had been struggling simply to save himself,
to keep Corriston from identifying and exposing him. The fury he'd
displayed was not difficult to understand.
Corriston found himself becoming more confident again, less dominated
by despair. The change in his mood surprised him but he seized upon
it gratefully and started building on it. There was only one logical
next move. He must find the captain quickly and enlist his help. He
must take the master of the ship fully into his confidence. With every
gift of persuasion at his command, he must make the captain see how the
danger of Ramsey's daughter was mounting and would continue to mount
with every minute that she remained unfound.
He still felt dizzy, and his head was aching a little, but he moved
quickly through the darkness, his faculties heightened by an intensity
of purpose which enabled him to find the companionway without colliding
with obstacles or taking a wrong turn. Up the stairway he climbed,
still clutching the knife, prepared for a possible second encounter
with its original owner.
An attempt to regain the knife by trickery and stealth would not have
surprised him. In fact, it was not at all difficult for him to picture
a silent form flattened against the stair-rail, waiting for just the
right moment to come hurtling toward him out of the darkness. For a
moment, as he ascended, the strain became almost unendurable. Then the
darkness dissolved above him, and he was advancing toward the captain's
cabin through the narrow passageway which he had spanned with his arms
spread wide.
He did not stop to span it this time. He emerged into the cabin and
stood for an instant blinking in the sudden light. The cabin was still
deserted. It was anybody's guess where the captain had gone or when he
would be returning, and Corriston decided not to wait. He walked to the
door, opened it and stepped out into the general passenger cabin.
No one saw him immediately. There were several passengers fairly close
to him, but they were being attentive for the moment to the words and
gestures of a tall, dignified looking man with observant brown eyes,
a ruddy complexion, and gold braid on his shoulders. The tall man was
Captain John Sanders.
"I'd be a hypocrite and a liar if I said there was no justification
for alarm," Sanders was saying, in a voice loud enough to carry to
where Corriston was standing. "Strict regulations prescribe that sort
of thing. But it's no way for a captain to keep the respect of his
passengers."
Corriston felt himself stepping forward before he even thought about
it. But he halted abruptly when the captain said: "There's a murderer
on the loose aboard this ship. You may as well accept that fact right
now. Each of you has to be on his guard. It's only right and proper
that you should keep your eyes and ears open, and _stay_ worried. If
you do, our chances of catching up with him before the ship berths
should be reasonably good."
The captain paused, then went on quickly: "We'll get him eventually.
You can be sure of that. He'll never get past the inspection each of
you will have to undergo when we reach the Station. But if we catch him
before we reach the Station, you'll be spared an investigative ordeal
distinctly on the rugged side."
Corriston was suddenly aware that he was being stared at. Everyone was
staring at him.
"My God!" the Captain cried out, staring the hardest of all. "Where did
you get that wound? Who attacked you? And what were you doing in my
cabin?"
Corriston walked up to the Captain and said in a voice that trembled
a little. "May I talk to you privately, sir? What I have to say won't
take long."
"Why not?" Sanders demanded. "That uniform you're wearing makes it
mandatory. All right, come back into my cabin."
They went back into the cabin. The captain shut the door and turned to
face Corriston with a shocked concern in his stare.
"You've had it rough, Lieutenant. I can see that."
"Plenty rough," Corriston conceded. "But it's not myself I'm worried
about."
"Did you know that a man has just been murdered?"
"I know," Corriston said.
"With a poisoned barb. A Martian barb. It's a plant found only on Mars.
We have him stretched out on a table in the sick bay now. But he isn't
sick; he's a corpse. Tell me something, Lieutenant, did you just tangle
with the man who did it?"
"I think so," Corriston said. "In fact, I'd stake my commission on it."
"I see. Well, you'd better tell me about it. Tell me everything."
Corriston told him.
The captain was silent for a long moment. Then he said, "But we've
no Miss Ramsey on the passenger list. And I certainly didn't invite
her to drink a toast with me in my cabin. Are you sure of your facts,
Lieutenant?"
Corriston's jaw fell open. He stared at the captain in stunned
disbelief. "Of course I'm sure. Why should I lie to you?"
"How should I know? It's unfair to ask me that. If Ramsey's daughter
was on this ship, you can rest assured I'd have known about it. After
all, Lieutenant--"
"But she _was_ on board and you _didn't_ know. Isn't that obvious?
Look, she was traveling incognito. The trip to the Station takes only
five hours. Perhaps in so short a trip--"
"No 'perhaps' about it. I'd have known."
"But she _is_ on board, I tell you. I talked to her. I talked to
Clakey. Don't make me go over the whole thing again. We've got to find
her. Ramsey's enemies would stop at nothing. I'm afraid to think of
what they might do to his daughter!"
"Nothing will happen to his daughter. She's on Earth right this minute
in her father's house, as safe as any girl that wealthy can ever be.
Lieutenant, listen to me. I've got a great deal of respect for that
uniform you're wearing. Don't make me lose it. When you come to me with
a story like that--"
"All right. You don't believe me. Will you check the passenger list,
just to be sure?"
"I'll do more than that, Lieutenant. I'll assemble all of the
passengers and check them off personally. I'll give you an opportunity
to look them over while I'm doing it. Later you can ask them as many
questions as you wish. There'll be a murderer among them, but that
shouldn't disturb you too much. You've already met. Perhaps you can
identify him for us. Ask each of the men who made a non-existent Miss
Ramsey disappear and the one who turns pale will be our man."
Suddenly the captain reddened. "I'm sorry, Lieutenant, I didn't mean
to be sarcastic. But a murder on my ship naturally upsets me. I'll be
completely frank with you. There's a very remote possibility that Miss
Ramsey actually _is_ on board without my knowledge. She hasn't had much
publicity. I believe I've only seen one photograph of her, one taken
several years ago. But you've got to remember that a captain is usually
the first to get wind of such things. It comes to him by a kind of
grapevine. She's a golden girl--actually the goldenest golden girl on
Earth."
4
Now Corriston was in a steel-walled cell and the captain's voice seemed
only a far-off echo sympathizing with him.
And it was an echo, for the captain was gone and he would probably
never see him again. It was all very simple--that part of it--all very
clear. The captain had faithfully kept his word. The captain hadn't let
him down. But any man can end up a prisoner when everyone disbelieves
him and he has no way of proving that he is telling the truth.
It was hard to believe that a day and a night had passed, and that
the Captain _had_ kept his word and gone ahead with the roll call. It
was even harder to believe that he, Corriston, was no longer on the
ship, but in a sanity cell on the Space Station, and that the ship was
traveling back toward Earth.
He shut his eyes, and the events of the past thirty hours unrolled
before him with a nightmare clarity, and yet with all of the monstrous
distortions which a nightmare must of necessity evoke.
Darkness and time and space. And closer at hand the frowns of
forthright, honest men appalled by mental abnormality in a new recruit,
an officer with a steel-lock determination to keep the truth securely
guarded and safe from all distortion.
There had come the tap on his shoulder and a stern voice saying: "You'd
better come with us, Lieutenant." He had just told the captain the
whole horrible story. He had not been believed.
"Tell me about it," said the recruit in the bunk opposite Corriston.
"It will help you to talk. Remember, we're not prisoners. We mustn't
think of ourselves as prisoners. We can go out and exercise. We can
walk around the Station for a half-hour or so. We've only got to
promise we'll come back and lock ourselves in. They trust us. It could
happen to anyone.
"Space-shock. Not a fancy word at all. I'm getting over it; you've a
certain distance to go. Or so they say. But we're still in very much
the same boat and talking always helps. Talk to me, Lieutenant, the way
you did last night."
Corriston looked at the pale youth opposite him. He had close-cropped
hair and friendly blue eyes, and he seemed a likeable enough lad.
He was Corriston's junior by several years. But there was an aura
of neuroticism about him that made Corriston uneasy. But hell, why
shouldn't he get it off his chest. Talking just _might_ help.
"It's true," Corriston said. "Every word of it."
"I believe you, Lieutenant. But quite obviously _they_ didn't. Why
not strike a compromise. Say I'm one-tenth wrong in believing you and
they're nine-tenths right in not believing you. That means there may be
some little quirk in what happened to you that doesn't quite fit into
the normal pattern. Put that down to space-shock--a mild case of it.
I'm not saying you have it, but you could have it."
The kid was grinning now, and Corriston had to like him.
"Okay," he said. "You can believe this or not. The captain lined all
of the passengers up and checked them off by their cabin numbers. I
_didn't_ see her. Do you understand? She just wasn't there! I thought
I recognized two of the women who had come out of the ladies' lounge,
but I couldn't even be sure of that. One of the two denied ever having
stepped inside the lounge, and the other was vague about it."
"I see."
"The captain really sailed into me for a moment, lost his temper
completely. 'A fine officer you are, Lieutenant. It's painful to be
on the same ship with the kind of officers the training schools turn
out when the Station finds itself short of personnel. Is the Station
planning to trust ships' clearance to hallucinated personnel?
"'All right, you talked to a girl--some girl. She didn't even tell you
she was Ramsey's daughter; Clakey told you. And he's dead. Not only
is he dead, he wasn't listed on the passenger list as Clakey at all.
His name was Henry Ewers. I don't know what you believed, Lieutenant.
I don't care what you think you saw. You tangled with someone and he
stabbed you. _He_ was real enough ... obviously the man who killed
Ewers. But you let him get away, so even that isn't too much to your
credit.'"
"If I had been you," the kid said, "I've had knocked him down."
"No." For the first time Corriston smiled. "To tell you the truth, the
captain is a good guy. He's one of those blunt, moody, terribly human
individuals you encounter occasionally, men who speak their minds on
all occasions and are instantly sorry they did. You have to like them
even when they seem to insult you."
"He made up for it then?"
"I'll say he did. He knew that when we landed the officials would be
breathing right down my neck. He wanted to give me every chance. So he
kept the officials away from me until I'd convinced myself Ramsey's
daughter just couldn't be on board.
"He let me look at every piece of luggage that was taken off the ship.
He had some cargo to unload and he let me inspect that too, every
crate. Most of the crates were too small to conceal a drugged and
unconscious girl--or any girl for that matter. The ones that weren't,
he opened for me and let me look inside.