I shoved aside his leveled projector. "Wait a minute, Miko. Navigate
where?"
"That is our business. When you come out here, I will give you the
course."
I realized that all this parley was a ruse of Miko's to take me alive.
He had made a gesture. Hahn, watching him from the turret window,
doubtless flashed a signal down to the hull corridors. The magnetizer
control under the chart room was altered, our artificial gravity cut
off. I felt the sudden lightness: I gripped the window casement and
clung. Carter was startled into incautious movement. It flung him out
into the room, his arms and legs flailing.
And across the chart room, in the opposite window, I felt rather than
saw the shape of something. A figure, almost invisible but not quite,
was trying to climb in! I flung the empty rifle I was holding. It hit
something solid in the window. In a flare of sparks a blackhooded
figure materialized. A man climbing in! His weapon spat. There was a
tiny electronic flash, deadly silent. The intruder had shot at Carter:
struck him. Carter gave one queer scream. He had floated to the floor;
his convulsive movement when he was hit hurled him to the ceiling. His
body struck; twitched; bounced back and sank inert on the floor grid
almost at my feet.
I clung to the casement. Across the room of the weightless room the
hooded intruder was also clinging. His hood fell back. It was Johnson.
"Killed him, the bully! Now for you, Mr. Third Officer Haljan!"
But he did not dare fire at me. Miko had forbidden it. I saw him reach
under his robe, doubtless for a low-powered paralyzing ray. But he
never got it out. I had no weapon within reach. I leaned into the
room, still holding the casement, and doubled my legs under me. I
kicked out from the window.
The force catapulted me across the space across the room like a
volplane. I struck the purser. We gripped. Our locked, struggling
bodies bounced out into the room. We struck the floor, surged up like
balloons to the ceiling, struck it with a flailing arm or leg and
floated back.
Grotesque, abnormal combat! Like fighting in weightless water. Johnson
clutched his weapon, but I twisted his wrist, held his arm
outstretched so that he could not aim it. I was aware of Miko's voice
shouting on the deck outside.
Johnson's left hand was gouging at my face, his fingers digging at my
eyes. We lunged down.
I twisted his wrists. He dropped the weapon and it sank away, I tried
to reach it but could not.... Then I had him by the throat. I was
stronger than he, and more agile. I tried choking him, I had his thick
bull neck within my fingers. He kicked, scrambled, tore and gouged at
me. Tried to shout, but it ended in a gurgle. And then, as he felt his
breath stopped, his hands came up in an effort to tear mine loose.
We sank again to the floor. We were momentarily upright. I felt my
feet touch. I bent my knees. We sank further. And then I kicked
violently upward. Our locked bodies shot to the ceiling. Johnson's
head was above me. It struck the steel roof of the chart room. A
violent blow. I felt him go suddenly limp. I cast him off and,
doubling my body, I kicked at the ceiling. It sent me diagonally
downward to the window, where I clung.
And I saw Miko standing on the deck with a weapon leveled at me!