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."