Slowly a faint siren hum penetrated the cabin, not unlike the sound
of a power plant. A power plant it was too, the ship digging in full
blast as it skirted the pull of Neptune. Ricker turned away from his
garrulous neighbor, saw the sea-tinted planet had doubled in size. It
was a perfect sphere, without a mark on its surface, a ring of solid
hydrogen and helium. A worthless world, thought Ricker; worthless as
was half the universe--because the woman in the seat up front had
killed a man!
"Molly Borden--Benjamin Adison ..." the sourdough mused, apparently
still awed by such infamous company.
"Yep," said Ricker, remembering a line from his last story: "In the
flash of a pistol those names became linked forever...." It was odd, he
reflected. One was a woman nobody at the trial had ever seen before,
the other was a man whose name echoed throughout the spaceways.
Benjamin Adison was to stellar travel what Wright had been to
terrestrial aviation and in his sixtieth year when, at the completion
of his work on planet-warming, he had suddenly become _corpus delicti_
in the perfect telenews story. A stolen secret, a mysterious woman,
a person high in the government--it had all the angles. Then Senator
Trexel was acquitted, Molly Borden confessed. Now she was journeying to
a life sentence on the penal planet.
"Too bad she burned Adison's plans when they trapped her." It was
Ricker's self-appointed traveling companion again.
"We lost the resources of four worlds by that little trick," Bill
agreed. "The police found enough in the ashes to convince them it was
the plans." He smiled to himself slightly, like someone who expected
something but wasn't quite sure he could count on it. He was probably
the only one in the universe who wondered if those ashes really were
the plans. What if they still existed--what if Molly Borden hadn't been
working alone after all--what if those plans for an apparatus that
could heat a whole planet were in the wrong hands--? Well, it would be
a great telenews story at least, worth following this woman all the way
from Earth on a hunch....
The Martian began coughing again and Ricker watched him get up, very
tall, thin, emaciated. He was typically Martian with his dusty brown
face, beaked nose and heavy handsomeness. He walked slowly down the
aisle toward the water fountain.
"Funny how Adison's daughter swore she'd seen Senator Trexel leaving
her pa's laboratory," continued the sourdough.
"Trexel proved he was somewhere else at the time," said Ricker. "He's
got a bad reputation but it's graft--not murder. Dorothy Adison's just
a dizzy debutante. She left for a hunting trip immediately after the
inquest, couldn't be located for the trial. But with Molly Borden's
confession there wasn't--"
It was a sound like a handclap. Ricker glanced up, then stiffened
erect.
The Martian stood in the aisle beside the detective and the woman. He
stared calmly over his shoulder at Ricker and the sourdough and in his
right hand was a pistol leveled generally at them both.
"Please be very quiet," his lips moved in soft, even tones. Then
without taking his snaky eyes from them, he spoke to the woman. "The
key is in his left vest pocket," he said. "We'll take a small boat and
drop out of this before the pilots can be warned."
* * * * *
Ricker stared like he was watching a tele-movie. Molly Borden's face
was expressionless as a doll as she fumbled at the detective. Ricker
heard a click and the fat man toppled out of his seat into the aisle.
His limp body settled awkwardly on the floor, legs under the seat, and
from the back of his head welled a dark stain that seeped into the
carpet.
"He slugged 'im," breathed the sourdough.
"Shut up!" threatened the beady-eyed Martian. "The first sound of alarm
will be your last!" Coughing quietly, he stepped aside to let the woman
pass and she moved up the aisle like a robot. Green eyes straight
ahead, she did not even glance at Ricker as she passed him.
Ricker realized in open space their scheme would be absurd but here,
with the pull of Neptune on their side, they'd fall away in the
darkness before the pilots knew what had happened.
The Martian turned quickly as he passed, kept the gun on them. "Open
the lock and get ready," he told the woman. She threw the lever on a
safety door, entered the boat and reached for the switch to slide the
boat's door shut after the Martian was in.
Both doors close simultaneously, thought Ricker; the boat drops when
the doors close.
The Martian backed slowly through the door like a great dark crawfish.
For an instant his pistol was out of sight.
Ricker sprang from his seat like a panther, dived head first as the
doors slid home.
The pistol roared.
But the flash of the gun was an instant behind the hand that knocked it
aside. It clattered to the hull of the boat as Ricker bowled the man to
the floor.
Both were on their feet like cats. The Martian leaped for the pistol.
The woman flattened against the wall.
Clang!
The door clamped shut and Ricker's stomach rushed into his chest. Blood
suddenly throbbed in his ears. His feet seemed nailed to the floor. The
Martian and the woman swirled dizzily before his darkening eyes. It was
like being in an elevator when the cable broke.
They were hurtling down, down through the darkness toward Neptune....
Weak and sick, when his head quit spinning, Ricker struggled to his
knees. The first thing he saw was a small instrument panel in front of
him. He stared at it a moment, collecting his senses. One register read
"ninety-three" but it didn't sink in at first. Then he gasped.
"Ninety-three _miles_!" They'd fallen that far--straight down! No
wonder he'd gone out. The normal jump of these boats was only twenty
miles before the autobrake took over. The gravity of Neptune--! He
remembered then.
His gaze leaped to the Martian lying in a corner of the cabin. The thin
fellow moaned slightly and his eyes were closed. His pistol lay beside
him and Ricker stepped over, snatched it up as his eyes flickered. When
they opened, the gun barrel was pointed at them.
"Tables're inclined to turn when you take a dive like that." He grinned
at the bewildered man. The woman, crumpled near the door, stirred and
sat up. She stared at them a moment as her ivory face changed from
puzzlement to rage.