"Then you might start conditioning them to the idea now. From the outer
appearance of the Antares, it may be a real job to cut through inside
her to get to the star hyacinths. We have the three salvage suits. If I
can make it to the generator, shut it off, and it turns out then that I
need some hypnotized brawn down there, Miss Mines will fly over the
shelter as a signal to start marching the men down."
"Why march? At that point, Miss Mines could take us to the wreck within
seconds."
Dasinger shook his head. "Sorry, doctor. Nobody but Miss Mines or myself
goes aboard the Mooncat until we either wind up the job or are forced to
clear out and run. I'm afraid that's one precaution I'll have to take.
When you get to the Antares we'll give each of the boys a full shot of
kwil. The ones that don't go limp on it can start helping."
Dr. Egavine said reflectively, "You feel the drug would still be a
requirement?"
"Well," Dasinger said, "Hovig appears to have been a man who took
precautions, too. We know he had three generators and that he set off
one of them. The question is where the other two are. It wouldn't be so
very surprising, would it, if one or both of them turned out to be
waiting for intruders in the vault where he sealed away the loot?"
* * * * *
The night was cool. Wind rustled in the ground vegetation and the
occasional patches of trees. Otherwise the slopes were quiet. The sky
was covered with cloud layers through which the Mooncat drifted
invisibly. In the infrared glasses Dasinger had slipped on when he
started, the rocky hillside showed clear for two hundred yards, tinted
green as though bathed by a strange moonlight; beyond was murky
darkness.
"Still all right?" Duomart's voice inquired from the wrist communicator.
"Uh-huh!" Dasinger said. "A little nervous, but I'd be feeling that way
in any case, under the circumstances."
"I'm not so sure," she said. "You've gone past the two and a half mile
line from the generator. From what that Graylock monster said, you
should have started to pick up its effects. Why not take your shot, and
play safe?"
"No," Dasinger said. "If I wait until I feel something that can be
definitely attributed to the machine, I can keep the kwil dose down to
what I need. I don't want to load myself up with the drug any more than
I have to."
A stand of tall trees with furry trunks moved presently into range of
the glasses, thick undergrowth beneath. Dasinger picked his way through
the thickets with some caution. The indications so far had been that
local animals had as much good reason to avoid the vicinity of Hovig's
machine as human beings, but if there was any poisonous vermin in the
area this would be a good place for it to be lurking. Which seemed a
fairly reasonable apprehension. Other, equally definite, apprehensions
looked less reasonable when considered objectively. If he stumbled on a
stone, it produced a surge of sharp alarm which lingered for seconds;
and his breathing had quickened much more than could be accounted for by
the exertions of the downhill climb.
* * * * *
Five minutes beyond the wood Dasinger emerged from the mouth of a narrow
gorge, and stopped short with a startled exclamation. His hand dug
hurriedly into his pocket for the case of kwil needles.
"What's the matter?" Duomart inquired sharply.
Dasinger produced a somewhat breathless laugh. "I've decided to take the
kwil. At once!"
"You're feeling ... things?" Her voice was also shaky.
"I'll say! Not just a matter of feeling it, either. For example, a
couple of old friends are walking towards me at the moment. Dead ones,
as it happens."
"Ugh!" she said faintly. "Hurry up!"
Dasinger shoved the needle's plunger a quarter of the way down on the
kwil solution, pulled the needle out of his arm. He stood still for some
seconds, filled his lungs with the cool night air, let it out in a long
sigh.
"That did it!" he announced, his voice steadying again. "The stuff works
fast. A quarter shot...."
"Why did you wait so long?"
"It wasn't too bad till just now. Then suddenly ... that generator can't
be putting out evenly! Anyway, it hit me like a rock. I doubt you'd be
interested in details."
"I wouldn't," Duomart agreed. "I'm crawly enough as it is up here. I
wish we were through with this!"
"With just a little luck we should be off the planet in an hour."
By the time he could hear the lapping of the lake water on the wind, he
was aware of the growing pulse of Hovig's generator ahead of him, alive
and malignant in the night. Then the Fleet scout came into the glasses,
a squat, dark ship, its base concealed in the growth that had sprung up
around it after it piled up on the slope. Dasinger moved past the scout,
pushing through bushy aromatic shrubbery which thickened as he neared
the water. He felt physically sick and sluggish now, was aware, too, of
an increasing reluctance to go on. He would need more of the drug
before attempting to enter the Antares.
To the west, the sky was partly clear, and presently he saw the wreck of
the Dosey Asteroids raider loom up over the edge of the lake arm,
blotting out a section of stars. Still beyond the field of the glasses,
it looked like an armored water animal about to crawl up on the slopes.
Dasinger approached slowly, in foggy unwillingness, emerged from the
bushes into open ground, and saw a broad ramp furred with a thick coat
of moldlike growth rise steeply towards an open lock in the upper part
of the Antares. The pulse of the generator might have been the beating
of the maimed ship's heart, angry and threatening. It seemed to be
growing stronger. And had something moved in the lock? Dasinger stood,
senses swimming sickly, dreaming that something huge rose slowly,
towered over him like a giant wave, leaned forwards....
* * * * *
"Still all right?" Duomart inquired.
The wave broke.
"_Dasinger! What's happened?_"
"Nothing," Dasinger said, his voice raw. He pulled the empty needle out
of his arm, dropped it. "But something nearly did! The kwil I took
wasn't enough. I was standing here waiting to let that damned machine
swamp me when you spoke."
"You should have heard what you sounded like over the communicator! I
thought you were ..." her voice stopped for an instant, began again.
"Anyway," she said briskly, "you're loaded with kwil now, I hope?"
"More than I should be, probably." Dasinger rubbed both hands slowly
down along his face. "Well, it couldn't be helped. That was pretty
close, I guess! I don't even remember getting the hypo out of the case."
He looked back up at the looming bow of the Antares, unbeautiful enough
but prosaically devoid of menace and mystery now, though the pulsing
beat still came from there. A mechanical obstacle and nothing else. "I'm
going on in now."
From the darkness within the lock came the smell of stagnant water, of
old decay. The mold that proliferated over the ramp did not extend into
the wreck. But other things grew inside, pale and oily tendrils
festooning the walls. Dasinger removed his night glasses, brought out a
pencil light, let the beam fan out, and moved through the lock.
The crash which had crumpled the ship's lower shell had thrust up the
flooring of the lock compartment, turned it into what was nearly level
footing now. On the right, a twenty-foot black gap showed between the
ragged edge of the deck and the far bulkhead from which it had been
torn. The oily plant life spread over the edges of the flooring and on
down into the flooded lower sections of the Antares. The pulse of
Hovig's generator came from above and the left where a passage slanted
steeply up into the ship's nose. Dasinger turned towards the passage,
began clambering up.
* * * * *
There was no guesswork involved in determining which of the doors along
the passage hid the machine in what, if Graylock's story was correct,
had been Hovig's personal stateroom. As Dasinger approached that point,
it was like climbing into silent thunder. The door was locked, and
though the walls beside it were warped and cracked, the cracks were too
narrow to permit entry. Dasinger dug out a tool which had once been the
prized property of one of Orado's more eminent safecrackers, and went to
work on the lock. A minute or two later he forced the door partly back
in its tilted frame, scrambled through into the cabin.
Not enough was left of Hovig after this span of time to be particularly
offensive. The generator lay in a lower corner, half buried under other
molded and unrecognizable debris. Dasinger uncovered it, feeling as if
he were drowning in the invisible torrent pouring out from it, knelt
down and placed the light against the wall beside him.
The machine matched Graylock's description. A pancake-shaped heavy
plastic casing eighteen inches across, two thick studs set into its
edge, one stud depressed and flush with the surface, the other extended.
Dasinger thumbed experimentally at the extended stud, found it
apparently immovable, took out his gun.
"How is it going, Dasinger?" Miss Mines asked.
"All right," Dasinger said. He realized he was speaking with difficulty.
"I've found the thing! Trying to get it shut off now. Tell you in a
minute...."
He tapped the extended stud twice with the butt of the gun, then slashed
heavily down. The stud flattened back into the machine. Its counterpart
didn't move. The drowning sensations continued.
Dasinger licked his lips, dropped the gun into his pocket, brought out
the lock opener. He had the generator's cover plate pried partway back
when it shattered. With that, the thunder that wasn't sound ebbed
swiftly from the cabin. Dasinger reached into the generator, wrenched
out a power battery, snapping half a dozen leads.
He sat back on his heels, momentarily dizzy with relief, then climbed to
his feet with the smashed components of Hovig's machine, and turned to
the door. Something in the debris along the wall flashed dazzlingly in
the beam of his light.
Dasinger stared at the star hyacinth for an instant, then picked it up.
It was slightly larger than the one Graylock had carried out of the
Antares with him, perfectly cut. He found four others of similar quality
within the next minute, started back down to the lock compartment with
what might amount to two million credits in honest money, around half
that in the Hub's underworld gem trade, in one of his pockets.
"Yes?"
"Got the thing's teeth pulled now."
"Thank God! Coming right down...."
The Mooncat was sliding in from the south as Dasinger stepped out on the
head of the ramp. "Lock's open," Duomart's voice informed him. "I'll
come aft and help."
* * * * *
It took four trips with the gravity crane to transfer the salvage
equipment into the Antares's lock compartment. Then Miss Mines sealed
the Mooncat and went back upstairs. Dasinger climbed into one of the
three salvage suits, hung the wrist communicator inside the helmet,
snapped on the suit's lights and went over to the edge of the
compartment deck. Black water reflected the lights thirty feet below. He
checked the assortment of tools attached to his belt, nudged the suit's
gravity cutoff to the right, energized magnetic pads on knees, boot tips
and wrists, then fly-walked rapidly down a bulkhead and dropped into the
water.
"No go, Duomart!" he informed the girl ten minutes later, his voice
heavy with disappointment. "It's an ungodly twisted mess down here ...
worse than I thought it might be! Looks as if we'll have to cut all the
way through to that vault. Give Egavine the signal to start herding the
boys down."
Approximately an hour afterwards, Miss Mines reported urgently through
the communicator, "They'll reach the lock in less than four minutes now,
Dasinger! Better drop it and come up!"
"I'm on my way." Dasinger reluctantly switched off the beam-saw he was
working with, fastened it to the belt of the salvage suit, turned in the
murky water and started back towards the upper sections of the wreck.
The job of getting through the tangled jungle of metal and plastic to
the gem vault appeared no more than half completed, and the prospect of
being delayed over it until the Spy discovered them here began to look
like a disagreeably definite possibility. He clambered and floated
hurriedly up through the almost vertical passage he'd cleared, found
daylight flooding the lock compartment, the system's yellow sun well
above the horizon. Peeling off the salvage suit, he restored the
communicator to his wrist and went over to the head of the ramp.
* * * * *
The five men came filing down the last slopes in the morning light,
Taunus and Calat in the lead, Graylock behind them, the winged animal
riding his shoulder and lifting occasionally into the air to flutter
about the group. Quist and Egavine brought up the rear. Dasinger took
the gun from his pocket.
"I'll clip my gun to the suit belt when I go back down in the water with
the boys," he told the communicator. "If the doctor's turning any tricks
over in his mind, that should give him food for thought. I'll relieve
Quist of his weapon as he comes in."
"What about the guns in Graylock's hut?" Duomart asked.
"No charge left in them. If I'm reasonably careful, I really don't see
what Dr. Egavine can do. He knows he loses his half-interest in the
salvage the moment he pulls any illegal stunts."