Timmy Gordon awakened to find his immediate world in a chill of killing
frost. Cold water ran down his brow. Johnny Damokles' muttered curses
penetrated his consciousness. "What ... hap ... happened?"
"Don't speaks ... you almost go for rides with Father Charon on one-way
ferryboat. Look!" Johnny turned Tim's head tenderly to one side, and
the young flyer gasped.
"Great flying dragons!"
Timmy's eyes traveled over the squat bulk of a figure clad from head
to foot in heavy synthi-leather. "A Neptunian," he blurted, "but dead.
How? Who did it?"
"I did it ... with toastings fork!"
"What?" Timmy's head went round in circles, "You killed one ton of
concentrated Neptunian-venom with a toasting fork?"
"Sure things, boss. I stick heavy fellers with fork. He go hiss. Then
bad smells. Then fall down ... _woosh!_" Damokles gave a graphic
description in pantomime, and Timmy understood how this seeming miracle
had happened. A Neptunian, accustomed to a mass of seventeen times that
of Earth normal, a normal temperature at minus-180 Centigrade, and
a methane plus solid oxygen atmosphere, would need some insulating,
restricting suit to move about on frail Callisto. Apparently Johnny's
fork had struck a weak spot in the refrigerant-suit, and a mild
Callistonian climate had literally boiled the Neptunian to death.
Timmy staggered to his feet and tramped through the artificial frost to
the Neptunian's side. A tiny mark, distinctive and simple, was branded
on his assailant's collar. "The Tsom clan," said Timmy to himself. "The
Director was right ... but why did he attack me in particular?"
Johnny Damokles pointed, "Look!" he said.
A bulky figure broke from the bushes and darted toward Hangar 6, but
in that darkness, it was unrecognizable. "Get him!" barked Timmy, and
raced down the path.
The figure, whoever and whatever it was, had disappeared by the time
Timmy Gordon reached his ship. A quick inspection showed nothing in
the hangar, and he climbed aboard the _Solabor_.
"About time you came," grumbled Shelton Thurner. He threw an empty
bottle through the door and climbed from his seat in the back of the
ship. "You ready to go?"