Chapter V

When Gavin at length awakened, he rolled out of his bunk groggily, showered and shaved and then made his way to the officer's mess. Nadia Petrovna, dressed in practical coveralls of gray siliconex, was seated at a table eating bacon and eggs.

Bacon and eggs! Gavin stared. Whoever heard of such grub aboard a spacer bound on a year's voyage. And there had been showers, and the cabins were not especially cramped.

Nadia waved a piece of toast at him. "Hello! The crew've been laying bets on when you'd come out of your coma."

He sat down and rang for the messman.

"How long does this last?" he inquired pointing at the fresh food. "When do we start on concentrates?"

"We don't."

"Don't use concentrates! But the bulk! And the water. Isn't it rationed?"

Nadia laughed infectiously. Just then the messman, a huge negro, appeared and took Gavin's order.

The girl said, "We carry only a little over two weeks' supplies."

Gavin recalled the chief engineer's prediction that the _Nova_ would be at Jupiter in two weeks. He glanced at the chart on the forward bulkhead. The _Nova's_ position was marked with a pin. The slaver, he saw, had been traveling at a good clip, but nothing phenomenal.

"We'll have to go faster than that," he said dryly.

Nadia's long black eyes sparkled. "You don't know about the little death yet?"

"The little death? Yes, the chief mentioned it. Just what is this little death?"

Nadia opened her mouth to speak, but closed it. She was peering beyond him, Gavin realized, a frightened expression on her pretty slavic features. Gavin swung around.

Captain Josiah Cabot stood in the door way, swaying slightly.

* * * * *

His eyes were glazed. Fine cruel wrinkles crossed his lean face. He moved stiffly into the messroom, his eyes straight ahead, and sat down at a table like a mechanical doll. He didn't even see them, Gavin realized with a start.

The black man came out of the pantry with a bottle of Terran whiskey and a glass, and set them before the Captain. The negro's eyes rolled, showing the whites. He got back into his pantry as quick as possible.

Nadia leaned across the table to Gavin. "He's drunk. He'll stay drunk until after the little death. It's horrible!"

Suddenly the Captain burst into a roar of laughter. He poured himself a drink and gulped it greedily. He said in an unexpectedly ringing voice:

"I see you, Paula. Why don't you go back to hell where you belong? You can't touch me now," and burst into laughter again, staring at the empty doorway.

A cold chill shivered up Gavin's spine.

Nadia said, "Paula was his mistress. She tried to poison him. He strangled her and threw her body out the disposal chute!"

"Hey," hissed Gavin, "keep your voice down! He can hear you."

"He doesn't even know we're here."

Gavin looked at Nadia thoughtfully. The girl's white features had gone translucent like milk glass. Her long black eyes wore an expression of horror.

She said, "It's just starting. He sees all the ones he's killed. They return and plague him. He can't rid his mind of them. It's a psychological quirk...." She paused unsteadily.

"Go on," Gavin urged.

"You'll see." Her voice was faint.

"You were a handsome tart, Paula," said Cabot, his glazed eyes following some figure invisible to Gavin. "A foul mind in a beautiful body. How many times did you deceive me? But I wasn't fooled." He laughed disagreeably. "I wasn't fooled. How did it feel to wake up with my fingers about your throat?" He paused, lean head cocked to one side, the cruel lines etched deeper about his mouth. "That fine body doesn't do you much good in hell, Paula?" The gloating slowly died from his features, his voice became resigned. "There's no use holding a grudge. You're dead, Paula, and there's nothing you can do about it. It's too bad you can't drink. You were fond enough of it alive. But I'll drink it for you," and he chuckled triumphantly.

"I'm leaving." Nadia sprang to her feet, lips bloodless. "I can't stand it."

Gavin escorted her to the door. He paused to salute Cabot. "Charmed to make your acquaintance, Paula," he added.

Nadia glanced at him in surprise. "How can you make fun of him?"

Gavin regarded the girl somberly. "I'm not making fun of him." His voice was grim. "This girl he murdered--Paula--she might be a person to cultivate."

"My star, you're cold. You're not even human!" Nadia started off, but Gavin laid hold of her arm.

"What happened to Trev, that Martian who sold out to X?"

Nadia faced him again, biting her lip. "Cabot killed him," she replied in a whisper. "His body has been thrown out the disposal chute."

"Who is this mysterious Mr. X?"

"I don't know! I don't know, I tell you!" She wrenched away, fled down the passage.

Gavin watched her until she was out of sight. Nadia had accompanied Cabot that day in Trev's office. The record on Captain Cabot in the T.I.S. file was brief but illuminating. _Antecedents unknown. Master of the slave ship, Nova, Venusian registry. Suspected in connection with disappearance of two women: Paula duBois, a Terran of French descent; Aastra, a Martian girl of the house of Cor._

Gavin whistled softly. It wasn't hard to imagine others. A modern bluebeard. Only Cabot didn't hang them in a closet; he threw them out a disposal chute.

* * * * *

Villanowski's face was gray with fatigue when Gavin finally relieved him. The chief was a slight homely man with the quick darting movements of an old maid. His hair was iron gray, untrimmed, rumpled.

He said wearily to Gavin, "We're going on regular watches after all. The second has her leg in a cast. We've rigged a special chair for her."

Gavin nodded. "What's the little death, Mr. Villanowski? I've been hearing more about it, but no one seems inclined to explain."

The chief engineer passed his hand before his blood-shot eyes. "That requires considerable explanation, Mr. Murdock. I'm too tired to attempt it at the moment. Later." He gave Gavin the course and acceleration, adding that Miss Wilde, the second assistant-engineer, would relieve him and disappeared up the ladder.

With the one exception of Nadia Petrovna, the dossier of every man and woman aboard the _Nova_ in the T.I.S. secret file was complete. Gavin almost knew them by heart. John Villanowski was a Terran of Polish descent. A scientist of interplanetary fame, he had held the chair of astrophysics at New Yale for a while. He had been instrumental in the development of the meteor deflector, the robot astrogator, and a radical improvement of the scanner.

General Atomic, though, had stolen all three of his discoveries. Villanowski had sued. False evidence had been trumped against him; his reputation had been blackened. Then General Atomic had used its influence to force him to resign from the university.

The injustice of his disgrace had wrought a shocking change in Villanowski. From a pleasant savant he became an anti-social, a dangerous man. He had fled to Venus where he had dropped from sight for a while, turning up again as chief engineer of the slaver, _Nova_.

Any startling development of the _Nova's_ space drive, Gavin reasoned, would be due to Villanowski.

The televisor buzzed. Gavin snapped it on. "Engine room."

Nadia's features glowed on the screen. "Bridge calling." She flashed him a smile. "I'll be on the observation deck when I've finished my trick on the bridge, Mr. Murdock." The instrument went dead.

Gavin muttered something under his breath. He caught Jerome Fitz, the master mechanic, eyeing him with a grin and cursed the fat Terran roundly.

"Come here, Fitz."

"Yes sir." The master mechanic left his work and approached.

"What the hell is this little death?"

Fitz scratched his head. "I've been through it twenty-seven times," he confessed, "and I don't rightly know, sir."

"Don't know? What kind of answer is that? What do you do here in the engine room?"

Again the fat Terran shook his head. "Beggin' your pardon, sir, but we're not in the engine room, then."

"What?"

"No, sir. We go to our fo'c'sles. Everybody. Crew and officers. The _Nova_ switches onto the robot pilot...." He hesitated.

"And then?" urged Gavin, impatiently. "What happens then? Speak up, man."

Fitz looked embarrassed. "I'd rather not talk about it, sir."

"Nonsense."

The Venusian girl, who was serving as jetman had approached and was listening.

"It's hard to explain," she interrupted, her green eyes thoughtful. "I think we die, sir."

"What?"

"Yes, sir. I know it sounds ridiculous. You'll have to go through it first before you understand. It's not nice to think about. It's even less fun when it happens. The third, who was here before you, sir--he--he reformed."

"Reformed?"

"Yes, sir. He said he couldn't stand himself after the little death. He's running a mission in Venusport now."

Gavin cracked his knuckles thoughtfully. His gaunt freckled face was sober. He didn't question the pair further, but set to examining the machinery with minute care.

He found nothing until he reached the aft bulkhead. Then his pale blue eyes fell on a faint rectangular line in the rigid steel. A door. But there were neither knobs nor bolts nor any visible means of opening it.

"Look here, Fitz," he called the master mechanic to his side, pointed out the door. "Where does this lead?"

Fitz scratched his head. "I don't know. Never noticed it before."

The Venusian girl had seen it, but had no more idea than Fitz what lay beyond.

* * * * *

Gavin spent most of his four-hour watch trying to ascertain the secret of its mechanism. He was still sweating over it profusely when Sally Wilde, the second assistant-engineer, arrived in her wheel chair to relieve him.

The second was a tall, gray-eyed blonde, handsome after a rangy fashion. One of her long legs was propped straight ahead of her in a plastic cast. She was wheeled down by the relieving watch and shook hands with Gavin like a man.

"I've been curious about what you were like," she informed him with a roguish smile. She wore a green wrapper thrown about her indifferently, and that was all. She caught the direction of his eye. "Damned nuisance to dress with this lump of plastic on my leg."

She was, Gavin perceived, the arch type of emancipated female whom he detested so heartily. He mumbled something about being glad she was doing so nicely.

"The last third," she explained, "was a disappointment. But you're a pleasant surprise, Mr. Murdock. So virile." She thumped the transparent plastic cast. "When I get rid of this we'll do something about it."

Gavin fled up the ladder.

He came out on the observation deck and recognized Nadia in her gray coveralls seated in a deck chair and staring upward at the stars. They floated in the void like gems on black velvet.

He came up behind her saying, "Some day man will conquer outer space as he has the planetary system."

Nadia sat up, her black eyes provoked. "What are you? A fish? After all I'm supposed to have a passion for you. Didn't I say back in Trev's office that we had a lot to talk over, Mr. Gavin Murdock, ex-chief engineer of the _Europa_?"

Gavin pulled up a deck chair. His blue eyes wary, he asked in a flat voice, "Why did you vouch for me? You never worked for Transplanet. Why did you lie?"

"No," she replied slowly. "No, I never was third mate aboard any of Transplanet's ships. But I wasn't lying. I did know you." She laughed teasingly. "And I did have a crush on you, Mr. Gavin Murdock, ex-first assistant-engineer of Tri-World's ship, the _Saturn_!"

Gavin controlled an inclination to jump. His face hardened. It was true he had been first assistant-engineer of the _Saturn_. He had left her to join the T.I.S.

"I was a cadet aboard the _Saturn_," Nadia explained. "Now just exactly what are you? And what do you want aboard the _Nova_?"

Gavin was silent a moment. "Now you're going to lie," accused the girl angrily.

"No. On the contrary, I'm going to ask you the same question. Your own position can't be too secure. That's why you had to back me up with that artistic lie in Trev's office. You were afraid they'd start asking you questions ... I wouldn't be surprised if you were a T.I.S. agent!"

The girl looked startled. A flush suffused her pale cheeks. She said, "So that's how you plan to shut my mouth. You devil! You know that if Cabot even suspected such a thing he'd kill me."

"Well," said Gavin coolly. "I don't know that any of us can afford to take a chance if you're a T.I.S. agent."

"Hush!" pleaded Nadia in agony.

"Look what it would mean. We'd be condemned to the Lunar Corrective Colony."

She gripped his arm desperately. "But I'm not! I'm not!" She regained her composure with an effort and went on in a low bitter tone, "I have been proscribed! Does that answer your questions? I killed a man. He was a high official of Tri-World. The corporation put a price on my head."

The Terran government was humanitarian. Capital punishment had been abolished along with a score of other institutions such as marriage, divorce and the family.

But the big corporations were the real rulers. Feudal in character, they maintained their power by purges that would have made the bloody twentieth century snow white by comparison. Their property, their officials were inviolate. Their law was a tooth for a tooth, and their gunmen hung on the trail of an offender whom they had proscribed until they caught up with him.

If the girl was telling the truth, she was as good as dead. Sooner or later, ten--twenty years, it made no difference, the agents of Tri-World would catch up with her.

"Why did you kill him?"

"He--he...." She glanced at the deck, flushed faintly.

"Nonsense," said Gavin. "People don't get killed for that any more. Why did you kill him?"

She looked at him, startled. "He caught me drawing a plan of Tri-World's magnetic ore-loader. It was a corporation secret. I was just a kid, a cadet aboard the _Saturn_. I--I was offered a lot of money for the plans...." She halted lamely.

"Who offered you the money?"

"Trev." Her voice was a whisper.

* * * * *

Gavin was surprised only at the fact that Nadia had confessed such a thing. She had placed herself completely in his power as long as she lived.

"I didn't ask you here to tell you that," she broke in on his speculations. Her voice was unsteady. "But to show you something. Look." And she pointed behind them towards Venus.

Gavin at first could see nothing except the yellow sun with its spectacular corona. Then he discovered a faint streak like the luminous trail of a meteor. After a second he made out a second and a third.

"We're being followed," Nadia said. "They've been on our trail ever since we left Venus. The chief astrogator figured their speed. They'll overtake us in five sidereal days. Only, they'll be too late."

"Why?"

"The little death!" she explained.

A premonition of danger made a cold track in his brain. He swung around.

Nadia Petrovna stood very straight not four feet from him. Big tears stood like drops of crystal in her long black eyes. She was holding her tiny dart-gun at Gavin's chest.

"May God rest your soul." She uttered the words in a choked voice, and pulled the trigger.

Gavin was caught completely flatfooted. He glimpsed a flash as the splinter of steel zipped at his chest and knew he was a dead man.

The dart struck his breast and stood straight out from his blouse. He stared down at it in panic.

But no fire of poison coursed through his veins.

He remembered his dart-proof plastic vest with a flood of relief. Another needle stuck through his blouse into the vest as Nadia pulled the trigger a second time.

Gavin crumpled slowly forward.

Then his knees stiffened. His hand snapped out to close about Nadia's slim wrist, dragging her down with him. Savagely, he wrenched the gun from her fingers. She began to sob.

Sitting on the deck, he plucked the two poisoned darts from the front of his plastic vest. "It's good to know who your friends are," he said dryly and got to his feet. "Don't try it again. I won't be so lenient next time."