The rest of that afternoon and evening were a blank confusion to me.
Anita's words, the touch of my hand on her arm, that vast realm of
what might be for us, like the glimpse of a magic land of happiness
which I had seen in her eyes, and perhaps she had seen in mine--all
this surged within me.
After wandering about the ship, I had a brief consultation with
Captain Carter. He was genuinely apprehensive now. The _Planetara_
carried only a half-dozen of the heat-ray projectors, no long range
weapons, a few side arms, and some old-fashioned, practically
antiquated weapons of explosives, plus hand projectors with the new
Benson curve light.
The weapons were all in Carter's chart room, save the few we officers
always carried. Carter was afraid, but of what, he was not sure. He
had not thought that our plan to stop at the Moon could affect this
outward voyage. He had thought that any danger would occur on the way
back, and then the _Planetara_ would have been adequately guarded and
manned with police-soldiers.
But now we were practically defenseless. I had a moment with Venza,
but she had nothing new to communicate. And for half an hour I chatted
with George Prince. He seemed a gay, pleasant young man. I could
almost have fancied I liked him. Or was it because he was Anita's
brother? He told me how he looked forward to traveling with her on
Mars. No, he had never been there before, he said.
He had a measure of Anita's earnest naive personality. Or was he a
very clever scoundrel, with irony lurking in his soft voice, and a
chuckle that could so befool me?
"Well talk again, Haljan. You interest me--I've enjoyed it."
He sauntered away from me, joining the saturnine Ob Hahn, with whom
presently I heard him discussing religion.
The arrest of Johnson had caused considerable discussion among the
passengers. A few had seen me drag him forward to the cage. The
incident had been the subject of discussion all afternoon. Captain
Carter had posted a notice to the effect that Johnson's accounts had
been found in serious error, and that Dr. Frank for this voyage would
act in his stead.
* * * * *
It was near midnight when Snap and I closed and sealed the radio room
and started for the chart room, where we were to meet with Captain
Carter and the other officers. The passengers had nearly all retired.
A game was in progress in the smoking room, but the deck was almost
deserted.
Snap and I were passing along one of the interior corridors. The
stateroom doors were all closed. The metal grid of the floor echoed
our footsteps. Snap was in advance of me. His body suddenly rose in
the air. He went like a balloon to the ceiling, struck it gently, and
all in a heap came floating down and landed on the floor!
"What in the infernal--"
He was laughing as he picked himself up. But it was a brief laugh. We
knew what had happened: the artificial gravity controls in the base of
the ship, which by magnetic force gave us normality aboard, were being
tampered with! For just this instant, this particular small section of
this corridor had been cut off. The slight bulk of the _Planetara_,
floating in space, had no appreciable gravity pull on Snap's body, and
the impulse of his step as he came to the unmagnetized area of the
corridor had thrown him to the ceiling. The area was normal now. Snap
and I tested it gingerly.