Chapter III

Gavin Murdock drew a deep breath. He didn't move. The girl must have carried the gun strapped around her leg above the knee. In that costume it wouldn't have been invisible anyplace else.

He said, "It's your move."

Without answering him, the girl said, "Change of address--Pit Seven."

"Change of address--Pit Seven," the metallic voice of the cab repeated through the speaker overhead.

Gavin felt like a blind man playing chess. He narrowed his pale blue eyes. "Where are we going?"

"The _Nova_." Her voice was unfriendly.

"But the _Nova's_ at Pit Nine."

"Pit Nine's being watched. We're going to use the underground."

Gavin shifted slightly, half-turned towards the girl. "Point that dart gun some other direction," he complained. "My blood's running cold."

She didn't move it.

Gavin's long arm snapped out with the precision of a cat's paw, slapped the gun out of her hands. The girl gasped, "Oh!" snatched for the weapon, but Gavin's hand was already covering it.

The gun in his possession, he asked, "Who's watching the _Nova_?"

"As if you didn't know!"

Gavin considered this, examining the dart-gun at the same time. It was a tiny thing, curved to fit the roundness of a leg. Beautiful as a jewel.

"Oddly enough," he returned dryly, "I don't know."

She glared at him through the semi-gloom without replying. The buildings flowed past the windows, the green glow of lichens and moss illuminating the street with about the same intensity as a full moon's light on Terra.

Gavin made his voice cold as he leaned toward the girl. "Do you want me to loosen your tongue for you? Who's watching the _Nova_?"

Nadia gasped, her hand at her throat. "You know as well as I do. X's men!"

"Who's X?"

"Who's X? You ask that? You went to see him this afternoon. You even made an appointment with him later."

Gavin recalled the words he had spoken for the benefit of X's men as he left the bar--"I'll see you later, then." Captain Cabot was not without his own spy system after all. His estimation of Cabot went up a notch.

"You won't believe this," he said, "but I haven't the foggiest notion who X is. Do you know?"

Nadia's dark eyes looked puzzled. She shook her head, gave a short laugh. "You're going to be a big disappointment to Josiah. I wouldn't care to be in your shoes."

"Josiah ... oh, you're referring to Captain Cabot. So he expects me to be able to tell him who X represents."

"You were talking to him," said the girl bluntly.

Gavin regarded Nadia a moment. Then he asked, "Why has the sailing been advanced?"

She clamped shut her jaws.

"You don't want me to force you to talk, do you?" suggested Gavin.

"You wouldn't dare."

"Wouldn't I?"

Nadia bit her lip. "It doesn't make any difference, I suppose." She shrugged. "You know anyway, if you're working for X. Captain found out that some powerful clique is trying to have the _Nova_ interned. He rushed his clearance through before they had time to act." She paused before adding, "X has bought off Trev."

So it was the Martian who had sold out, not Nadia. He handed back the girl's dart-gun. "Here. See if you can't behave yourself now."

Nadia took the weapon. She pointed it deliberately at Gavin's chest. "Please clasp your hands behind your neck!"

* * * * *

The robot cab drew up at the curb. The door opened. It's voice issued from the loudspeaker. "Pit Seven."

"Get out," Nadia ordered. "Stand back from the door."

Gavin slid out. The buildings were gone, replaced by a wall of structural concrete which disappeared overhead in the clouds. It had begun to rain again, a clammy drizzle. The girl followed him to the curb, shivering as the drops hit her bare shoulders and back.

A green-lighted sign over a door in the concrete wall read:

PIT SEVEN--PASSENGER ENTRANCE

"In there." She motioned at the door.

Gavin, a step in advance, ducked inside and went ahead down a long incline until he fetched up in a mouldy unused waiting room.

"Take the door to the left."

A sign above it read:

MANAGEMENT--PRIVATE

At the girl's direction, Gavin passed through bare offices, smelling of stale air and mildew and into a narrow corridor which led straight as an arrow into the distance in either direction. Walls, ceiling and floor radiated a pale green glow from the fungus.

Gavin, who had been keeping his sense of direction with an effort, realized that the passage led towards Pit Nine. They followed it for a quarter of a mile, passing only one intersecting corridor. They turned in the second passage they met, passed along it a short distance, and came out in the maw of Pit Nine itself.

They were on a balcony a hundred feet from the floor of the pit. The well below was charred black by countless jet blasts. The _Nova_, a dull black bullet-shaped monster, rested on its jets, towering straight up four hundred feet above them. He saw an airy gangplank sloping from the balcony to an open port in the ship. There was a glum Venusian standing guard at the gangplank.

Urged along by the girl, Gavin ascended the gangplank into the ship itself. "I've heard of shanghai-ing," he remarked over his shoulder. "But this is the first case of being shanghai-ed exactly according to your wishes."

Nadia said, "Captain Cabot will talk to you." She indicated an elevator and they ascended rapidly to the ship's control room.

There were three men in the spacious control room: Captain Cabot, the senior astrogator, and a communications man. They faced about, stared at Gavin as the girl prodded him through the door.

"I found him in the Temple of Joy," said Nadia.

Cabot's glance slid over Gavin. His lean wolfish face cracked into a smile. "I haven't time to question him now--" he began, when the communications man interrupted.

"He's up there!" said the communications man. "Directly overhead. But he's beyond the Heaviside layer. I can't make out his class, but he's big. Feels like a patrol ship."

A frown passed across Cabot's face. He snapped on a televisor. "Engine room," came a faint voice.

Cabot glanced at his watch. "Taking off in ten minutes. There's a ship above the clouds. Don't know who she is. Have all jets primed. We may have to dodge her."

"Check," said the voice.

"And, John," Cabot added, "I've got your third aboard. I don't care to trust him until we get beyond the thousand-mile-limit, though, so carry on for a while longer."

"Check," said the voice.

Cabot snapped off the televisor and turned to Nadia. "Lock Mr. Murdock in seventeen. Then report back to the bridge."

"Yes sir," said Nadia.

Gavin was led silently below again. He could hear the rumble of the warming jets. Nadia appeared nervous, jumpy. She wanted to get back to the bridge and an acceleration chair before the take-off, Gavin guessed.

About midway down, she paused before a metal door numbered seventeen, swung it open, disclosing blackness. Gavin stepped inside.

The girl allowed her face to relax. She said in a softer voice, "Lie down. The _Nova's_ take-off is pretty rugged. Five G's." The metal door clanged shut.

Gavin heard a bolt snick into place. Blackness, utter impenetrable blackness engulfed him.

He spent precious minutes searching for the light switch, as the roar of the jets whined up an ascending scale. With a grunt of satisfaction, he found them, snapped them on. The cabin flooded with brilliance.

The body of Trev, the Martian was stretched stark and cold on the metal deck!

* * * * *

Gavin bent shakily over the broker of slaves and scientific secrets. Trev's black eyes were open, glassy. A thin three cornered sliver of metal protruded from his throat. The Martian would never steal the _Nova's_ space drive now. He had been shot with a poisoned dart.

Suddenly, a tremendous weight fell on Gavin's shoulders. He was squashed flat to the deck beside the dead Martian, pinned there. The breath was crushed from his chest, and he struggled wildly to inflate his lungs.

The _Nova_, he realized in desperation, was off!

Gavin managed to roll to his belly, push himself to hands and knees. The pressure didn't relax. He crawled to a corner, got his legs braced against a stanchion. If the strange ship above the clouds should prove unfriendly, the _Nova_ would be bucking like a crazed steer in her efforts to dodge. Anyone caught unprepared would be flipped from bulkhead to bulkhead until he was a bundle of splintered bones.

The acceleration dragged at Gavin's lean flesh. He looked ten years older in the harsh bright light. Sweat burst from his pores; his eye-lids drooped; his mouth sagged.

Then the whine of the jets ceased. The terrific acceleration relaxed. Gavin felt like a toy balloon.

Consternation widened his pale blue eyes. He gripped himself for the buffeting he was almost sure would follow.

In the silence a wild clamor broke out from stem to stern.

The general alarm!

Gavin tensed. He could feel the pulse drumming in his temples. Then it came. The jets burst into a full throated roar. The _Nova_ lurched crazily to the starboard and then swept upward at a tangent.

Again the _Nova_ bucked, this time to port. A sickening circular movement took possession of his prison. The ship, he realized, must be above the clouds in the upper stratosphere and climbing higher in tight spirals.

Suddenly the _Nova_ gave an uncontrolled lurch. A faint far away explosion reached his ears.

They were being fired at! That was an atomic shell bursting off the starboard bow. Sweat coursed down Gavin's cheeks.

Were they going to let him die in the locked cabin like a trapped rat? The crew could escape in space tenders, if the _Nova_ were hit. Another shell burst closer, throwing the gigantic ship sideways as a hurricane tosses a chip.

Something burst in Gavin's brain. He came to his senses, realized he was hammering in berserk terror on the unyielding metal door. His knuckles were streaming blood.

He got a grip on himself, forced himself to sit down again in the corner, back to the bulkhead, feet thrust against the stanchion. The body of the Martian, he saw, was sliding in erratic circles about the deck.

Gavin wet his lips, his blue eyes desperate. He had scarcely settled himself when the third explosion burst. It was so close that there was no sound, only a terrific blast of pressure. The lights dimmed. Gavin was torn from his stanchion and hurled across the cabin against the opposite bulkhead.

Fortunately, he didn't strike the unguarded steel. Instead he was flung against the Martian's body which acted as a pad. Even so the shock was terrific. Blackness welled up behind his eyes. He lost consciousness.

Gavin opened his eyes and realized he couldn't have been unconscious but a second or two. He sprang to his feet. And struck his head and shoulders on the ceiling!

He gave himself a push from the overhead and floated slowly back to the deck.

Then he realized what was wrong. The jets were quiet. A silence so absolute that it rang in his ears blanketed the _Nova_. In all that ship there was no sound anywhere.

The _Nova_ was falling free, falling back to the surface of Venus!