"No. No, but--I've heard her." Smith's heavy lips twitched and parted.
The breath sucked through between them, hoarse and slow.
Farrell went down on his knees beside the safe. He put his hands on its
blank and gleaming face and turned to Lundy. He was crying.
"Open it. You've got to open it. She wants to come out. She's
frightened."
Jackie Smith raised the gun, a fraction of an inch. "Open it, Midget,"
he whispered. "She's cold in there."
Lundy stood still. The sweat ran on him and he was colder than a frog's
belly in the rain; and for no reason at all he said thickly,
"No. She's hot. She can't breathe in there. She's hot."
Then he jerked his head up and yelled. He came around to face Smith,
unsteady but fast, and started for him.
Smith's ugly face twisted as though he might be going to cry. "Midget!
I don't want to shoot you. Open the safe!"
Lundy said, "You damned fool," with no voice at all, and went on.
Smith hit the firing stud.
The anaesthetic needles hit Lundy across the chest. They didn't hurt
much. Just a stinging prick. He kept going. No reason. It was just
something he seemed to be doing at the time.
Behind him Farrell whimpered once like a puppy and lay down across the
little safe. He didn't move again. Lundy got down on his hands and
knees and reached in a vague sort of way for the controls. Jackie Smith
watched him with dazed green eyes.
Quite suddenly, Iron Mike blew his guts out.
The control panel let go a burst of blue flame. The glare and heat of
it knocked Lundy backward. Things hissed and snarled and ran together,
and the convertible began to dance like a leaf in a gale. The automatic
safety cut the rockets dead.
The ship began to fall.
Smith said something that sounded like _She_ and folded up in his
chair. Lundy rubbed his hand across his face. The lines of it were
blurred and stupid. His dark eyes had no sense in them.
He began to crawl over the lurching floor toward the safe.
The clouds outside ripped and tore across the ship's nose, and
presently only water showed. Black, still, tideless water dotted with
little islands of floating weed that stirred and slithered with a life
of their own.
Black water, rushing up.
Lundy didn't care. He crawled through Farrell's blood, and he didn't
care about that, either. He pushed Farrell's body back against the
cabin wall and began to scratch at the shiny door, making noises like a
hound shut out and not happy about it.
The ship hit the water with a terrific smack. Spray geysered up, dead
white against the black sea, fell back, and closed in. Presently even
the ripples went away.
Dark green weed-islands twined sinuously upon themselves, a flock of
small sea-dragons flapped their jeweled wings down and began to fish,
and none of them cared at all about the ship sinking away under them.
Not even Lundy cared, out cold in the space-tight cabin, with his body
wedged up against the safe and tears drying with the sweat on his
stubbled cheeks.