Muller's face was like an iceberg when he came down--but only after he
saw Hendrix. Before then I'd caught the fat moon-calf expression on
his face, and I'd heard Jenny giggling. Damn it, they'd taken enough
time. Hal was already back, fussing over things with the hunk of tin
and lenses he treated like a newborn baby.
Doc Napier came in behind them, but separately. I saw him glance at
them and look sick. Then both Muller and Napier began concentrating on
business. Napier bent his nervous, bony figure over the corpse, and
stood up almost at once. "Murder all right."
"So I guessed, Dr. Napier," Muller growled heavily at him. "Wrap him
up and put him between hulls to freeze. We'll bury him when we land.
Tremaine, give a hand with it, will you?"
"I'm not a laborer, Captain Muller!" Napier protested. I started to
tell him where he could get off, too.
But Jenny shook her head at us. "Please. Can't you see Captain Muller
is trying to keep too many from knowing about this? I should think
you'd be glad to help. Please?"
Put that way, I guess it made sense. We found some rubber sheeting in
one of the lockers, and began wrapping Hendrix in it; it wasn't
pleasant, since he was beginning to soften up from the enzymes he'd
absorbed. "How about going ahead to make sure no one sees us?" I
suggested to Jenny.
Muller opened his mouth, but Jenny gave one of her quick little laughs
and opened the door for us. Doc looked relieved. I guessed he was
trying to kid himself. Personally, I wasn't a fool--I was just hooked;
I knew perfectly well she was busy playing us off against one another,
and probably having a good time balancing the books. But hell, that's
the way life runs.
"Get Pietro up here!" Muller fired after us. She laughed again, and
nodded. She went with us until we got to the 'tween-hulls lock, then
went off after the chief. She was back with him just as we finished
stuffing Hendrix through and sealing up again.
Muller grunted at us when we got back, then turned to Lomax again. The
big chemist didn't look happy. He spread his hands toward us, and
hunched his shoulders. "A fifty-times over-dose of chromazone in those
tanks--fortunately none in the others. And I can't find a trace of it
in the fertilizer chemicals or anywhere else. Somebody deliberately
put it into those tanks."
"Why?" Pietro asked. We'd filled him in with the rough details, but it
still made no sense to him.
"Suppose you tell me, Dr. Pietro," Muller suggested. "Chromazone is a
poison most people never heard of. One of the new _scientific_
nuisances."