Then he stopped. Her eyes were pained and misting. She swayed and
collapsed in his arms.
For a moment he was frantic. What to do? He carried her to her room,
made her comfortable. Fervently, he hoped no bones were broken. But
after a few minutes she opened her eyes and made a face at him.
"I'm not hurt," she said dreamily. "Just a sissy. Go and see what
happened."
Gratefully, he watched her relax. He rubbed his hands thoughtfully and
studied the damage in the control room. The meteor couldn't have hit
very hard--they would have been killed without knowing it. A mere graze!
He reached out fearfully and cut off the blazing rockets. The vision
plates were blackened--no way of knowing which way they were going.
That was his first job, then--to unshutter the vision plates. He
reviewed his knowledge of the mechanism. Evidently the master switch
that controlled them all had been short-circuited. The switch was in
the very tail of the ship. He crawled through the hold and into the
tiny compartment in the tail.
His pocket flash picked out the switch, and he made with the screw
driver. A few seconds later he looked proudly through the opened plate,
feeling like a master mechanic.
But he didn't feel so happy when he saw a swifter-moving point of light
in the star-filled sky.
A spaceship was closing in on the _Chicago_. And goose pimples rose on
his arms when he recognized it as the police ship of Commander Lansfer.
He had to get back to the control room.
The police ship was coming in at a half mile a second, relative to
them. What both ships were doing relative to the system he didn't know,
or care. On his hands and knees in the close cubby, he scrambled around
to get back to the control room. But already it was too late.
Invisible beams of magnetic force leaped into life between the two
vessels, as the law ship clamped down with its Duvals. Barnard was
pitched heavily forward as the beams seized the _Chicago_. His head
crashed into something hard, and he fell into a relaxed bundle.
V
It was cold, and he was beating his way out of a frozen death. He
fought his way up from the floor, a sluggish chill in the marrow of his
bones. Frigid ... and he was sinking back.
Remembrance shocked him into wakefulness. He stared from the port
before his face. The police ship was there, clamped by invisible forces
to the _Chicago_. Dully, he watched the fore rockets blasting for
deceleration.
Deceleration--?
That brought him to frantic life. Were they nearing Pluto? How long had
he been out? And--why was it so cold?
His teeth and knees still chattering, he wriggled down the narrow
passage, pushed his light before him into the room where he had left
Gail. He stared wildly.
She was gone.
Then the police had come aboard while he was unconscious and taken her
aboard their vessel.
Back in the control room, he stood helplessly for a few seconds, his
mind starting to black out again. No power--the ship was leaking its
heat into space. His numbed fingers found the right switches. Heat
started to seep into the room, and life seemed to flow back into his
body.
But Gail--what of her? His distrust of the solemn-faced Lansfer became
suddenly more intense. He had to find out--and he was separated from
the police ship by fifty feet that might as well have been miles.
There was another way. He fumbled in the medicine kit, snatched the
black bottle labeled "_Espine_." He'd take a pill, even if it killed
him in his weakened condition, and use ESP to find out what went on
aboard the other vessel. He tore the stopper from the container and
turned it upside down over his palm.
Nothing came out.
He cursed the empty bottle fervently, because already the only other
answer was coming to his mind. He almost tried not to think of it. But
this was emergency.
In one of his pockets he found the tiny packages of _neoin_ he had
bought while cultivating the peddlers on Mars.
There was a tiny pinch of gray powder in the paper he tore open. One
gram--a normal dose. Full strength, he was sure--the stuff was seldom
cut.
He hesitated. Even one dose of the drug created a craving for more. He
vowed grimly that this first taste would be his last.
But this made his fight personal. He must destroy the source of _neoin_
in sheer self-defense!
Before the gray powder was past his tonsils, he knew he had taken too
much for a beginner. A fantastic lift, a great self-confidence almost
sent his mind out of the world. Grimly he fought to keep down the giddy
exhilaration, and let his thoughts search for Lansfer's ship.
He had trouble coordinating his thoughts, because of the tendency of
his drugged mind to stray. But he caught the control room of the
police ship.
Carefully, he kept away from the minds of the four people there. There
was an added lift when he perceived Gail, small and defiant, facing
Commander Lansfer.
It was Barnard's first experience in extra-sensory perception. With all
the power of his will, he focussed his thoughts on the scene. Gail was
speaking.
"I tell you," she said, "the reporter is on Earth. He said something
about having a big lead. I took the ship into Earth's atmosphere and he
bailed out in a parachute. I was glad to be rid of him."
* * * * *
Barnard hoped that what she said was entirely untrue.
"You say--" Lansfer's face was without expression--"that he forced you
to do this?"
"I said no such thing," Gail told him. "And if you're going to twist my
statements, I'll say nothing more."
Lansfer's palm flicked out and Gail's head reeled. A vivid patch of red
appeared on her cheek. Barnard's fingers tightened around the spongy
arms of his chair.
The commander turned swiftly to Remish and Grady. None of the officers
noticed--but Barnard did--that Gail's fingers were sliding along the
control board.
"Barnard is aboard that ship," Lansfer snapped. "You two couldn't have
searched very thoroughly. This girl is lying--she couldn't possibly
have slowed down enough to let Barnard 'chute to Earth, and still have
come this far."