"You shouldn't ask me--" Her eyes widened. "Why, that couldn't possibly
have anything to do with what's happened!"
He might, Gefty thought, have reassured her a little too much. He said,
"I wouldn't know. But I don't want to just sit here and wonder about it
until Maulbow wakes up. Until we're back in normspace, we'd better not
miss any bets. Because one thing's sure--if this has happened to anybody
else, they didn't turn up again to report it. You see?"
Kerim apparently did. She went pale, then said hesitantly, "Well ... the
sealed cases Mr. Maulbow brought out from the Hub with him had some very
expensive instruments in them. That's all I know. He's always trusted me
not to pry into his business any more than my secretarial duties
required, and of course I haven't."
"You don't know then what it was he brought up from that moon a few
hours ago--those two big cases he stowed away in the vault?"
"No, I don't, Gefty. You see, he hasn't told me what the purpose of this
trip is. I only know that it's a matter of great importance to him."
Kerim paused, added, "From the careful manner Mr. Maulbow handled the
cases with the cranes, I had the impression that whatever was inside
them must be quite heavy."
"I noticed that," Gefty said. It wasn't much help. "Well, I'll tell
_you_ something now," he went on. "I let your boss keep both sets of
keys to the storage vault because he insisted on it when he signed the
charter. What I didn't tell him was that I could make up a duplicate set
any time in around half an hour."
"Oh! Have you--?"
"Not yet. But I intend to take a look at what Mr. Maulbow's got in that
vault now, with or without his consent. You'd better run along and get
dressed while I take him up to the instrument room."
"Why move him?" Kerim asked.
"The instrument room's got an overall safety field. I've turned it on
now, and if something starts banging us around again, the room will be
the safest place on the ship. I'll bring his personal luggage up too,
and you can start looking through it for the keys. You may find them
before I get a new set made. Or he may wake up and tell us where they
are."
Kerim Ruse gave her employer a dubious glance, then nodded, said, "I
imagine you're right, Gefty," and pattered hurriedly out of the
stateroom. A few minutes later, she arrived, fully dressed, in the
instrument room. Gefty looked around from the table-shelf where he had
laid out his tools, and said, "He hasn't stirred. His suitcases are over
there. I've unlocked them."
Kerim gazed at what showed in the screens about the control console and
shivered slightly. She said, "I was thinking, Gefty ... isn't there
something they call Space Three?"
[Illustration]
"Sure. Pseudospace. But that isn't where we are. There're some
special-built Navy tubs that can operate in that stuff if they don't
stay too long. A ship like the _Queen_ ... well, you and I and
everything else in here would be frozen solid by now if we'd got sucked
somehow into Space Three."
"I see," Kerim said uncomfortably. Gefty heard her move over to the
suitcases. After a moment, she asked, "What do the vault keys look
like?"
"You can't miss them if he's just thrown them in there. They're over six
inches long. What kind of a guy is this Maulbow? A scientist?"
"I couldn't say, Gefty. He's never referred to himself as a scientist.
I've had this job a year and a half. Mr. Maulbow is a very considerate
employer ... one of the nicest men I've known, really. But it was simply
understood that I should ask no questions about the business beyond what
I actually needed to know for my work."
"What's the business called?"
"Maulbow Engineering."
"Big help," Gefty observed, somewhat sourly. "Those instruments he
brought along ... he build those himself?"
"No, but I think he designed some of them--probably most of them. The
companies he had doing the actual work appeared to have a terrible time
getting everything exactly the way Mr. Maulbow wanted it--There's
nothing that looks like a set of keys in those first two suitcases,
Gefty."
"Well," Gefty said, "if you don't find them in the others, you might
start thumping around to see if he's got secret compartments in his
luggage somewhere."
"I do wish," Kerim Ruse said uneasily, "that Mr. Maulbow would regain
consciousness. It seems so ... so underhanded to be doing these things
behind his back!"
Gefty grunted noncommittally. He wasn't at all certain by now that he
wanted his secretive client to wake up before he'd checked on the
contents of the _Queen's_ storage vault.
* * * * *
Fifteen minutes later, Gefty Rammer was climbing down to the storage
deck in the _Queen's_ broad stern, the newly fashioned set of vault keys
clanking heavily in his coat pocket. Kerim had remained with her
employer who was getting back his color but still hadn't opened his
eyes. She hadn't found the original keys. Gefty wasn't sure she'd tried
too hard, though she seemed to realize the seriousness of the situation
now. But her loyalty to Mr. Maulbow could make no further difference,
and she probably felt more comfortable for it.
Lights went on automatically in the wide passage leading from the cargo
lock to the vault as Gefty turned into it. His steps echoed between the
steel bulkheads on either side. He paused a moment before the big
circular vault doors, listening to the purr of the _Queen's_ idling
engines in the next compartment. The familiar sound was somehow
reassuring. He inserted the first key, turned it over twice, drew it out
again and pressed one of the buttons in the control panel beside the
door. The heavy slab of steel moved sideways with a soft, hissing sound,
vanished into the wall. Gefty slid the other key into the lock of the
inner door. A few seconds later, the vault entrance lay open before him.
He stood still again, wrinkling his nose. The area ahead was only dimly
illuminated--the shaking-up the _Queen_ had undergone had disturbed the
lighting system here. And what was that odor? Rather sharp, unpleasant;
it might have been spilled ammonia. Gefty stepped through the door into
the wide, short entrance passage beyond it, turned to the right and
peered about in the semidarkness of the vault.
Two great steel cases--the ones Maulbow had taken down to an airless
moon surface, loaded up with something and brought back to the
_Queen_--were jammed awkwardly into a corner, in a manner which
suggested they'd slid into it when the ship was being knocked around.
One of them was open and appeared to be empty. Gefty wasn't sure of the
other. In the dimness beside them lay the loose coils of some very
thick, dark cable--And standing near the center of the floor was a thing
that at once riveted his attention on it completely. He sucked his
breath in softly, feeling chilled.
He realized he hadn't really believed his own hunch. But, of course, if
it hadn't been an unheard-of outside force that plucked the _Queen_ out
of normspace and threw her into this elsewhere, then it must be
something Maulbow had put on board. And that something had to be a
machine of some kind--
It was.
About it he could make out a thin gleaming of wires--a jury-rigged
safety field. Within the flimsy-looking protective cage was a double
bank of instruments, some of them alive with the flicker and glow of
lights. Those must be the very expensive and difficult-to-build items
Maulbow had brought out from the Hub. Beside them stood the machine,
squat and ponderous. In the vague light, it looked misshaped and
discolored. A piece of equipment that had taken a bad beating of some
kind. But it was functioning. As he stared, intermittent bursts of
clicking noises rose from it, like the staccato of irregular gunfire.
For a moment, questions raced in disorder through his mind. What was it?
Why had it been on that moon? Part of another ship, wrecked now ... a
ship that had been at home _here_? Was it some sort of drive?
Maulbow must know. He'd known enough to design the instruments required
to bring the battered monster back to life. On the other hand, he had
not foreseen in all detail what could happen once the thing was in
operation, because the _Queen's_ sudden buck-jumping act had surprised
him and knocked him out.
The first step, in any event, was to get Maulbow awake now. To tamper
with a device like this, before learning as much as one could about it,
would be lunatic foolhardiness. It looked like too good a bet that the
next serious mistake made by anybody would finish them all--
Perhaps it was only because Gefty's nerves were on edge that he grew
aware at that point in his reflections of two minor signals from his
senses. One was that the smell of ammonia, which he had almost stopped
noticing, was becoming appreciably stronger. The other was the faintest
of sounds--a whispering suggestion of motion somewhere behind him. But
here in the storage vault nothing should have moved, and Gefty's muscles
were tensing as his head came around. Almost in the same instant, he
flung himself wildly to one side, stumbling and regaining his balance as
something big and dark slapped heavily down on the floor at the point
where he had stood. Then he was darting up through the entrance passage,
turning, and knocking down the lock switches on the outside door panel.
It came flowing around the corner of the passage behind him as the vault
doors began to slide together. He was aware mainly of swift, smooth,
oiling motion like that of a big snake; then, for a fraction of a
second, a strip of brighter light from the outside passage showed a
long, heavy wedge of a head, a green metal-glint of staring eyes.
The doors closed silently into their frames and locked. The thing was
inside. But it was almost a minute then before Gefty could control his
shaking legs enough to start moving back towards the main deck. In the
half-dark of the vault, it had looked like a big coiled cable lying next
to the packing cases. Like Maulbow, it might have been battered around
and knocked out during the recent disturbance; and when it recovered, it
had found Gefty in the vault with it. But it might also have been awake
all the while, waiting cunningly until Gefty's attention seemed fixed
elsewhere before launching its attack. It was big enough to have
flattened him and smashed every bone in his body if the stroke had
landed.
Some kind of guard animal--a snakelike watchdog? What other connection
could it have with the mystery machine? Perhaps Maulbow had intended to
leave it confined in one of the cases, and it had broken loose--
Too many questions by now, Gefty thought. But Maulbow had the answers.
* * * * *
He was hurrying up the main deck's central passage when Maulbow's voice
addressed him sharply from a door he'd just passed.
"Stop right there, Rammer! Don't dare to move! I--"
The voice ended on a note of surprise. Gefty's reaction had not been too
rational, but it was prompt. Maulbow's tone and phrasing implied he was
armed. Gefty wasn't, but he kept a gun in the instrument room for
emergencies. He'd been through a whole series of unnerving experiences,
winding up with being shagged out of his storage vault by something that
stank of ammonia and looked like a giant snake. To have one of the
_Queen's_ passengers order him to stand where he was topped it off.
Every other consideration was swept aside by a great urge to get his
hands on his gun.
He glanced back, saw Maulbow coming out of the half-opened door,
something like a twenty-inch, thin, white rod in one hand. Then Gefty
went bounding on along the passage, hunched forward and zigzagging from
wall to wall to give Maulbow--if the thing he held was a weapon and he
actually intended to use it--as small and erratic a target as possible.
Maulbow shouted angrily behind him. Then, as Gefty came up to the next
cross-passage, a line of white fire seared through the air across his
shoulders and smashed off the passage wall.
With that, he was around the corner, and boiling mad. He had no great
liking for gunfire, but it didn't shake him like the silently attacking
beast in the dark storage had done. He reached the deserted instrument
room not many seconds later, had his gun out and cocked, and was faced
back towards the passage by which he had entered. Maulbow, if he had
pursued without hesitation, should be arriving by now. But the passage
stayed quiet. Gefty couldn't see into it from where he stood. He waited,
trying to steady his breathing, wondering where Kerim Ruse was and what
had got into Maulbow. After a moment, without taking his eyes from the
passage entrance, he reached into the wall closet from which he had
taken the gun and fished out another souvenir of his active service
days, a thin-bladed knife in a slip-sheath. Gefty worked the fastenings
of the sheath over his left wrist and up his forearm under his coat,
tested the release to make sure it was functioning, and shook his coat
sleeve back into place.
The passage was still quiet. Gefty moved softly over to one of the
chairs, took a small cushion from it and pitched it out in front of the
entrance.
There was a hiss. The cushion turned in midair into a puff of bright
white fire. Gefty aimed his gun high at the far passage wall just beyond
the entrance and pulled the trigger. It was a projectile gun. He heard
the slug screech off the slick plastic bulkhead and go slamming down the
passage. Somebody out there made a startled, incoherent noise. But not
the kind of a noise a man makes when he's just been hit.
"If you come in here armed," Gefty called, "I'll blow your head off.
Want to stop this nonsense now?"
There was a moment's silence. Then Maulbow's voice replied shakily from
the passage. He seemed to be standing about twenty feet back from the
room.
"If you'll end your thoughtless attempts at interference, Rammer," he
said, "there will be no trouble." He was speaking with the restraint of
a man who is in a state of cold fury. "You're endangering us all. You
must realize that you have no understanding of what you are doing."
Well, the last could be true enough. "We'll talk about it," Gefty said
without friendliness. "I haven't done anything yet, but I'm not just
handing the ship over to you. And what have you done with Miss Ruse?"
Maulbow hesitated again. "She's in the map room," he said then. "I ...
it was necessary to restrict her movements for a while. But you might as
well let her out now. We must reach an agreement without loss of time."
Gefty glanced over his shoulder at the small closed door of the map
room. There was no lock on the door, and he had heard no sound from
inside; this might be some trick. But it wouldn't take long to find out.
He backed up to the wall, pushed the door open and looked inside.
Kerim was there, sitting on a chair in one corner of the tiny room. The
reason she hadn't made any noise became clear. She and the chair were
covered by a rather closely fitting sack of transparent, glistening
fabric. She stared out through it despairingly at Gefty, her lips moving
urgently. But no sound came from the sack.