Chapter IV

The skin was stretched taut across Gavin's gaunt features, the freckles standing out like pennies.

The air, rapidly growing denser, began to whine like the keening for the dead. He stiffened, straining to catch the sound he had imagined.

It came again. The cough of a rocket tube.

A wild hope flamed in Gavin's blue eyes. The roar of the jets blasted into life. The cabin heeled sharply to starboard. Gavin slid down the sloping deck until he fetched up against the bulkhead, which had suddenly become the floor.

The _Nova_, he realized in a flood of relief, had come out of the fall and was speeding parallel to the surface. He sat down, his joints turning to water. He had a violent urge to be sick.

Gavin's first belief that the attacking ship had been one of Terra's patrol spacers gave way to doubt. In the first place, the _Nova_ hadn't been beyond Venus' thousand-mile-limit. Furthermore, he didn't believe a Terran patrol ship would have waylaid the _Nova_ outward bound when she was innocent of her cargo of slaves.

Then who was it?

He heard a bolt click back. The door through which he had entered was directly overhead. The _Nova_, though, had been constructed for flying either keel-on or stern-down. The passages which previously had been horizontal were now vertical, and the vertical wells running from bow to stern lay horizontal to the angle of flight. A door which had been overhead when they were shooting straight up, now was directly across the cabin.

As Gavin watched, it swung open. Nadia Petrovna was framed in the opening.

She said in a breathless tight voice, "You've got to take over the engine room! Half the black gang are dead or laid up! Captain Cabot sent me to fetch you!"

Her hair, Gavin saw, had come undone and fell about her bare white shoulders like an inky cloud. A trickle of blood drew a crooked red line from a cut above her left eye down across her high cheek bone to her small pointed chin. One of the rose plastic breast plates had been torn completely away, and the rose gown was split up her left hip from sandal to belt.

Gavin plunged for the door.

"This way!" Nadia started aft at a run. "The ladder! The elevators are stalled!"

"Chief engineer?" Gavin grunted. "Where's the chief?"

"Unconscious! Concussion. Don't know how serious," she flung back at him as she dashed along the corridor, her torn skirt streaming out behind her. "The first is dead. The second has a broken leg."

She reached the emergency ladder and threw herself down it with reckless abandon. Gavin followed a little more cautiously.

The engine room, Gavin saw when he and Nadia dropped to the deck, was functioning smoothly enough now, although there was no evidence of the explosion. A smear of blood against a bulkhead caught his eyes, then a twisted body lashed to the deck.

But a jetman, a yellow Venusian girl, naked to the waist, was at her post beside the quartzite windows of the tubes. Sweat poured off her in rivulets as she watched the color of the explosions to check the mixture.

The master mechanic, a fat Terran, was at the bridge televisor. He gave Gavin a relieved glance. "Bridge calling, sir."

Gavin jumped to the televisor. He saw the lean wolfish profile of Captain Cabot on the screen. Cabot's cheek had been laid open to the bone. One arm swung uselessly. His features were bleak as granite.

Gavin said, "Murdock reporting, sir."

"Take over, Mr. Murdock." Cabot's voice sounded harsh, metallic through the instrument. "We're describing an orbit about Venus at an altitude of seven kilometers."

"Check."

"Is Miss Petrovna there?"

"Yes, sir."

"Let me speak to her."

The girl approached the televisor.

Captain Cabot ordered her in a terse voice, "Stay with Murdock. If he shows any signs of treachery, shoot him!"

"Yes, sir," said the girl. She plucked the tiny dart-gun from the spring clip on her leg where it had been visible through the rent in her skirt.

"You heard my orders, Mr. Murdock," Cabot's cold voice issued from the instrument. "Stand by to fire the starboard tube-bank. We're coming out of the clouds again."

"Check."

In spite of himself Gavin couldn't help but admire the coolness of Josiah Cabot. He turned to Nadia. "What happened?" he demanded.

* * * * *

The girl, her long black eyes serious, had her dart-gun leveled at his chest. "I was at the scanner," she replied in an unsteady voice. "We cleared the clouds, making five G's. This ship was right on top of us."

"What ship?"

She shook her head. "She wasn't a patrol spacer. She didn't identify herself. We dodged. Then she cut loose at us with atom shells. The third shot did the damage. I don't know how serious yet, but half the crew are laid up. Captain Cabot cut the jets, which allowed us to fall back into the cloud bank as if we'd been knocked out."

That was quick shrewd thinking, Gavin realized.

The bridge televisor whistled shrilly.

"Bridge calling," came Cabot's voice.

"Engine room."

"Starboard jets. Half blast."

"Check." Gavin pulled the lever on the control board. "Starboard jets!" he yelled above the sudden roar to the half-naked jetman.

The _Nova_ began to nose upward in a slow arc.

"Prime all tubes," came Cabot's crisp voice through the audio. "We'll be above the clouds any moment."

"Check," said Gavin.

A mounting tension gripped them all as the seconds dragged past. Then the televisor whistled again.

"Cut starboard rockets. Half blast ahead." There was another pause and Cabot added with a faint smile, "We're through the cloud bank. No sign of the spacer."

Nadia heaved a sigh of relief and leaned weakly against the ladder.

"Guess we lost her half around the planet," surmised Gavin.

"Course 37.22 x 5," came Cabot's voice once more. "Proceed at one G until we ascertain damage. That is all."

"Check," said Gavin. He snapped off the televisor. "You can put that dart-gun away," he advised Nadia dryly.

The girl snapped erect. She whipped the dart-gun in line with Gavin's chest again. "I haven't been relieved!" She began in a queer voice. The gun trembled. Her knees sagged. She swayed, sat down suddenly on the first rung of the ladder.

"What's the matter?"

She gave a short, half-hysterical laugh. "Matter! I've had the pants scared off me, and you ask what's the matter!" She clenched her teeth, dropped her head in her hands. Her black hair fell like a veil over her face.

Gavin snapped on the televisor.

"Engine room calling."

"Bridge," came Cabot's precise voice.

"Murdock speaking, sir. Advise Miss Petrovna be relieved. She's suffering from shock."

Cabot looked startled. He hesitated. "Tell Miss Petrovna she's relieved. Carry on, Mr. Murdock."

"Check."

Gavin turned to the girl. "You heard the Captain."

She nodded weakly. There was a large greenish bruise on the gleaming flesh of her shoulder which Gavin hadn't noticed before. He said, "You'd better go to your cabin. Patch yourself up." He raised a sandy eyebrow. "That costume could stand a repair job, too."

Nadia glanced at herself, at the missing breast plate, the ripped skirt, and wailed, "Oh, dear. It's ruined."

"You're lucky that you're not, too," drawled Gavin dryly.

"Ruined? Me?" She shot him a glance from her long black eyes. "Why Mr. Murdock, I didn't know you were so impetuous," and fled up the ladder.

Gavin stared after her. He made an uncomplimentary but expressive remark under his breath.

* * * * *

The jetman and master mechanic stood their regular four-hour watches, but Gavin went unrelieved. He spent the first twelve hours examining the _Nova's_ space drive. He could discover nothing extraordinary about it. It was capable of driving the slave ship at an acceleration of five G's, but several of the latest model Terran patrol spacers were able to do as well. It left him completely mystified.

No great damage had been done the _Nova_, but, besides sundry fractured arms, legs, and ribs, seven men had been killed outright. The chief engineer was recovering from a light case of concussion. Gavin was the only qualified engineer aboard able to stand watch.

He drank gallons of coffee during the next twelve hours, trying desperately to stay awake. He brooded over the fact that with one dead engineer and another laid up with a fractured leg, he and the chief would have to stand four on and four off during the entire twelve sidereal months, which was the minimum time required to make the crossing between Venus and Jupiter.

At the conclusion of thirty-four hours, Gavin was groggy with fatigue. His eye-lids felt like sandpaper. He was irritable as a bear. He cursed the jetman and master mechanic whenever they failed to jump fast enough at the rasp of his voice.

His chin dropped against his chest. He snapped his head up, realizing he'd been asleep on his feet, and glanced at the chronometer. He had been on watch for thirty-seven hours.

Someone tapped his shoulder.

Gavin swung around and rubbed his blood-shot eyes. A small wiry man with his head swathed in bandages had descended the ladder without Gavin's hearing him.

"I'm Villanowski," said the man in a cultured voice. "Chief engineer. Sorry I couldn't relieve you sooner."

Gavin shook hands, feeling an almost uncontrollable urge to throw himself on the deck and sleep. He repeated the course and their acceleration mechanically.

"Go on to your cabin," the chief urged. "Get a good sleep. We'll have to stand four hours on and four off the rest of the voyage, but it'll only be two weeks."

"Two weeks!" Gavin echoed. "But that's impossible, sir." His fatigued brain grasped at the puzzle confusedly and then came up with an answer. "We're turning back to Venus?"

"No." Villanowski shook his head. "We're going on to Jupiter."

"But that's a twelve month voyage."

The chief patted his shoulder. "You haven't heard of the little death," he smiled.

"Little death?"

Villanowski nodded. "Never mind trying to understand now. You're out on your feet, Murdock. I'll explain after you've had some rest. But take my word for it. We'll be setting the _Nova_ down on Jupiter in two weeks."

Gavin staggered to his cabin in bewilderment.

He threw himself on his bunk without even bothering to remove his shoes. He thought, _Little death! Jupiter in two weeks! That crack on the skull must have affected the chief engineer's mind!_ Then sleep descended on him like a shroud.