"He won't die," said Calhoun grimly, "but he won't come out
fighting--unless somebody wakes him earlier. And of course, he is a
murderer!"
"_Chee!_" agreed Murgatroyd.
He reached up a furry paw and took hold of Calhoun's hand. They walked
out into the street together.
It is notorious that the streets of a city at night are ghostly and
strange. That is true of a city whose inhabitants are only asleep.
There is more and worse of eeriness in a deserted city, whose
inhabitants are dead. But a city which has never lived, which lies
lifeless under the stars because its people never came to live in
it--that has the most ghastly feel of all.
Calhoun and Murgatroyd walked hand in paw through such a place. That
the invaders felt the same eeriness was presently proved. Calhoun found
a place where a light shone and voices came out into the tiny, remote
night sounds of Maris III. Men were drinking in an unnecessarily small
room, as if crowding together to make up for the loneliness outside. In
the still night they made a pigmy tumult with their voices. They banged
drunkenly on a table and on the floor.
Calhoun stood in the doorway and held the paint-gun trigger down. He
traversed the room twice. Whirling rings of invisible vapor filled the
place. Men gasped.
Calhoun waited a long time, because he had put a great deal of
dextrethyl into a small space. But presently he went in and bent over
each man in turn, while Murgatroyd watched with bright, inquisitive
eyes. He arranged one figure so that it seemed to have been stricken
while bending over another, fallen companion. The others he carried
out, one at a time, and placed at different distances as if they had
fallen while fleeing from a plague. One he carried quite a long
distance, and left him with dusty knees and hands as if he had tried to
crawl when strength failed him.
"They'd have been immunized at pretty well the same time, before they
were shipped on this job," Calhoun told Murgatroyd. "It'll seem very
plaguelike for them to fall into comas nearly together. If I found
men like this, and didn't know what to do, I'd suspect that it was a
delayed-action effect of some common experience--like an immunization
shot. We'd better try the ship, Murgatroyd."
On the way he passed close to the control-building of the landing grid.
There was a light inside it, too. There were four men on watch. Two
remained inside, very, very still, when Calhoun went on. The others
seemed to have fled and collapsed in the act. They breathed, to be
sure. Their hearts beat solidly. But it would not be possible to rouse
them to consciousness.
Calhoun didn't get into the ship, though. A chance happening
intervened, which seemed an unfavorable one. Its port was locked and
his cautious attempt to open it brought a challenge and a blaze of
lights.
He fled for the side of the landing grid with blaster-bolts searing the
ground all about him. Murgatroyd leaped and pranced with him as he ran.