"You don't really believe those spooky voyageur stories, do you?" he
said tolerantly.
"Sure I do--and so will you some day!" Peer promised him. "I'll tell
you a few true ones just before your next sleep-period!"
"No, you won't," Channok said firmly. "Aside from space-ghosts, though,
that crate has a downright creepy look to her. But I suppose I'd better
go over and check, as soon as she slows down enough so we can latch on.
And you're going to stay on the _Asteroid_, Peer."
"In a pig's eye, I am!" Peer said indignantly. And though Channok
wished to know if she had forgotten that he was the _Asteroid's_
skipper, it turned out that this was one time he'd have to yield.
"Because, Channy dear," Peer said, her big dark eyes welling slow
tears, "I'd just die if something happened to you over there and I was
left all alone in space!"
"All you'd have to do," Channok said uncomfortably, "is to head the
_Asteroid_ for New Gyrnovaan, and you know it. Well--you've got to
promise to stay right behind me, anyway!"
"Of course," promised Peer, the tears vanishing miraculously. "Santis
says a wife should always stick with her husband in space, because he
might lead her into a jam, all right, but nothing like the !!****!;
!**!! jams she's likely to run into if she strays around by herself."
"Whereas Ship's Regulation 66-B says," said Channok with grim
satisfaction, "that crew-member Peer gets her mouth washed out with
soap just before the next sleep-period because of another uncontrolled
lapse into vituperous profanity--and what was that comment?"
"That one was under my breath," said Peer, crestfallen, "so it doesn't
count!"
* * * * *
Without making any particular remarks about it, both of them had
fastened a brace of guns to their jet-harnesses. At close range--held
thirty feet away against the _Asteroid's_ ring-bumpers by a set of dock
grapnels--the _Ra-Twelve's_ yawning lock looked more than ever like the
black mouth of a cavern in which something was lurking for them.
Channok went over first, propelled by a single squirt of his jets,
and landed a little heavier than he had intended to. Peer, following
instructions to keep right behind him, came down an instant later in
the middle of his back. They got untangled hurriedly, stood up and
started swiveling their helmet beams about the _Ra-Twelve's_ storage
lock.
It was practically empty. So was the big rack that had held the ship's
single big lifeboat. There were some tools scattered around. They
kicked at them thoughtfully, looked at each other and started forward
through an open door up a dark passageway, switching their lights
ahead and from side to side.
There was a locked door which probably led into the _Ra-Twelve's_
engine section, and then four cabins, each of which had been used by
two men. The cabins were in considerable disorder, but from what one
could tell in a brief look-around, each of the occupants had found time
to pack up about what you would expect a man to take along when he was
planning on a lifeboat trip. So whatever had happened probably hadn't
been entirely unexpected.
The mess-room, all tidied up, was next; two locked doors were at
the back of it, and also an open entrance to the kitchen and food
storage. They glanced around at everything, briefly, and went on to the
control room.
It was considerably bigger than the one on the _Asteroid_ and
luxuriously equipped. The pilot's section was in a transparently walled
little office by itself. The instruments showed both Dardrean and
Empire markings and instructions. Channok switched the dead drives off
first and then reached out, quite automatically, for the spot above the
control desk where a light button ought to be--
Light instantly flooded the interior of the _Ra-Twelve_.
The intruders jumped a foot. It was as if the ship had suddenly come
alive around them! Then they looked at each other and grinned.
"Automatic," Channok sighed.
"Might as well do it the easy way!" Peer admitted. She slid the Ophto
Needle she'd half-drawn back into its holster.
* * * * *
The _Ra-Twelve_ had eighteen fully charged drive batteries still
untouched. With some system of automatic power transfer working, she
could have gone cruising along on her course for months to come.
However, she hadn't been cruising, Channok discovered next; the speed
controls were set to "Full Emergency".... An empty ship, racing through
space till the battery she was operating on went dead--
He shook his head. And then Peer was tapping his arm.
"Look what I found! I think it's her log!"
It was a flat steel box with an illuminated tape at its front end,
on which a date was printed. A line of spidery Dardrean script was
engraved on a plate on the top of the box.
"_Ra-Twelve_," Peer translated. "That's her name."
"So it's a Dardrean ship! But they're using the Empire calendar,"
Channok pointed out, "which would make it an Empire crew.... How do you
work this thing? If it is her log, it might give us an idea of what's
happened."
"Afterwards, Channy! I just found another door leading off the other
end of the control room--"
The door opened into a second passage, parallel to the one by which
they had come forward, but only half as long and very dimly lit. Filled
with uneasy speculations, Channok forgot his own instructions and let
Peer take the lead.
"More cabins!" her voice said, just as he became aware of the wrecked
door-frame out of which the light was spilling ahead of her.
A woman had been using that cabin. A woman who had liked beautiful and
expensive things, judging by what was strewn about. It looked, Channok
thought, as if she hadn't had time to finish her packing.
"Her spacesuit's gone, though," Peer's voice announced from the
interior of a disordered closet.
Channok was inspecting the door. This was the first indication that
there had been any violence connected with whatever had happened on the
_Ra-Twelve_. The door had been locked from without and literally ripped
open from within by a stream of incandescence played on it by a gun
held probably not much more than a foot away. That woman had wanted out
in an awful hurry!
Peer came over to watch him. He couldn't quite read her expression, but
he had a notion she wanted to bawl.
"Let's take a quick look at the rest of it and get back to the
_Asteroid_," he suggested, somewhat disturbed himself. "We ought to
talk this over."
The one remaining cabin lay just beyond the point where the passage
angled back into the ship. There was light in that one, too, and the
door was half open. Channok got there first and pushed it open a little
farther. Then he stood frozen in the door-frame for a moment.
"What's stopping you?" Peer inquired impatiently, poking his ribs from
behind.
He stepped back into the passage, pulled the door shut all the way,
scooped her up and heaved her to his shoulder. His space-boots felt
like iron anchors as he clunk-clunked hastily back through the passages
to the derelict's lock. There was nothing definite to run from any
more; but he knew now what had happened on the _Ra-Twelve_, and he felt
nightmare pacing after him all the way.
He crossed to the _Asteroid's_ control room lock in a jump, without
bothering with his jets.
* * * * *
"Close the outer lock!" he told Peer hoarsely, reaching up for the
switch marked "Decontaminant" above him.
A fourfold spray of yellowish Killall was misting the trapped air in
the lock about them an instant later.
"What was it?" Peer's voice came out of the fog.
"Antibiotic," Channok said, his scalp still crawling. "What you--what
voyageurs call a lich, I think. I don't know that kind. But it got the
guy in that last cabin."
The occupant of the last cabin had looked as if somebody had used a
particularly vicious sort of acid gun on him, which somehow had missed
damaging his clothing. To the grisly class of life-forms that produced
that effect, an ordinary spacesuit offered exactly no resistance.
"A lich can't last more than an hour or so in space, Channy," Peer's
voice came shakily after a pause. "It's a pretty awful way to get it,
but that stuff over there must have been dead for a long time now."
"I know," said Channok. He hesitated, and then cut off the Killall
spray and started the blowers to clear the lock. "I guess I just
panicked for a moment. But I'm going to go over that ship with
decontaminant before we do any more investigating! And meanwhile you'd
better get in a few hours of sleep!"
"Wouldn't hurt any," Peer agreed. "How do you suppose the lich got on
board?"
He could tell her that. He'd seen a heavy, steel-framed glassite
container in a corner of the cabin, opened. They must have been
transporting some virulent form of antibiotic; and there might have
been an accident--
Five hours later, they had come to the conclusion that it had been
no accident. Four hours of that time, Channok had been engaged in
disinfecting the _Ra-Twelve_, even her engine sections. He'd given the
one man left on board space-burial in one of the _Asteroid's_ steel
cargo crates. The crate hadn't been launched very far and presently
hung suspended some eighty yards above the two ships, visible as a
black oblong that obscured the stars behind it.
It and its contents were one of the reasons Channok was anxious to get
done with the job of salvaging the _Ra-Twelve_. She was a stream-lined,
beautiful ship; but after what had happened, he knew he would never be
able to work up any liking for her. She seemed to be waiting sullenly
and silently for a chance to deal with the two humans who had dared
come on board her again.
He sealed her up presently, filled her with a fresh airmix and, having
once more checked everything he could think of, let Peer come over
again for a final briefing on their run to Old Nameless.
Peer wandered promptly into the cabin where the dead man had been and
there discovered the wall-safe.