Chapter VIII

Gavin's first impression was one of numbing cold. He opened his eyes. Pitch blackness engulfed him. He had difficulty orienting himself. Rather hazily, he recalled the shelling of the cantonment by X's men.

Gradually his mind cleared.

The swift Jovian night had fallen, he perceived, and the temperature had dropped sharply. Only his insulating outer garments had saved him from freezing.

He began to grope around for Nadia's body. He found nothing but bare ground, stones, shrubs.

He sat back on his haunches, getting his bearings. The night pressed against his eyeballs; silence rang in his ears. No popping of dum-dum fire was to be heard. Whether the raiders had won, or Cabot was still in possession of his ship, he couldn't tell. But the fight was over.

X, himself, he realized, couldn't possibly have reached Jupiter yet. Even if he had been aboard one of the ships which had pursued the _Nova_ out from Venus, a whole year must elapse before he could arrive. Then, if X's men had attacked the _Nova_, they had been planted here earlier and had been waiting in ambush.

That meant X had been tipped off to the location of the hidden slave cantonment on Jupiter.

Something brushed against Gavin's face! It felt like cold fingertips.

Gavin's arms flailed the air in stark terror. He struck a soft, cold, hairless body. There was a barrage of half-human squeaks. The air was full of the fluttering of wings.

Scavenger bats!

Gavin felt a prickling of cold sweat break through his skin. He began to grope feverishly for the girl's body again, working outward in an ever-widening spiral.

After an hour he had lengthened the radius of his search until he was among the debris of the cantonment. He sat back on his haunches, sure of only one thing. Nadia Petrovna was not there!

The air above the demolished cantonment was thick with the squeaks and wing rushing of the hairless bats. A faint yellow glow heralded the dawn.

If the _Nova_ hadn't sailed, there was still hope.

Gavin drove himself to his feet, prowled the debris in search of the road. He started hundreds of the half-human scavenger bats into whispering, squeaking flight, stumbled across countless bodies. The raiders had been thorough.

At length he found the paved highway, began to follow it by feel.

A wind was blowing across the road. Gavin had to fight it like a man fording a stream against a strong current. The light, though, continued to brighten until he could make out the trace beneath his feet. Then the towering bulk of the _Nova_ loomed dead ahead.

She wasn't gone! Gavin flung himself gasping on the ground, trembling with exhaustion.

He rested only long enough to control his trembling muscles, then began to skirt the ship towards the blind spot in the rear. He stayed out of sight. He had no desire to be spied by a possible watch posted at the scanner.

The disposal chute was just forward of the rear jets. Gavin reached it unobserved, as far as he could see, and began to worm his way up the inside of the tube like a climber ascending a chimney. He reached the lock and got his shoulder beneath it. The lock had been designed to operate in space where the pressure inside the ship helped seal it. Now, aided by Jupiter's dense atmosphere, he succeeded in prying the lock up and scrambling into the trap.

Ten minutes later, he climbed out of the chute directly aft of the galley. The air was warm and light, bringing him the odor of cooking soup.

The passage was deserted.

Gavin slipped into the escape well which led from the engine room to the _Nova's_ outer skin, clambered downward again. He stepped from the escape well softly into the engine room itself.

At first he thought it was deserted. Then he discovered a guard posted beside the sealed door in the aft bulkhead. Gavin had never seen him before. He was a big Terran in coarse outer garments. He was facing half away from the T.I.S. agent, holding a dart-gun.

Gavin slipped his fingers through his brass knucks. He edged cautiously from behind the _Nova's_ cyclotron, crept up on the man with the stealth of a ferret. At the last moment, the fellow heard him and swung around.

Gavin clipped him behind his ear with the weight of his shoulder back of the blow. The guard's head banged against the steel bulkhead. He slipped nervelessly to a sitting posture, tumbled sideways. His breath bubbled with a rattling sound from his mouth. Then he stopped breathing.

* * * * *

Without bothering to check his pulse, Gavin turned to the control panel. The fuel gauge showed a comfortable surplus.

Ears straining to catch any untoward sound, he slowly pulled down the lever which dumped the fuel, watched the gauge with a growing tensity of nerves.

The level in the gauge dropped tantalizingly slowly, as the liquid fuel bubbled out of the tanks onto the surface of Jupiter to saturate the soil. It was still a half-inch from the empty symbol when he heard voices.

Someone was descending the ladder into the engine room.

Gavin's jaw set; his lips thinned. With his left hand he drew his dart-gun, but he didn't release the dumping lever. The gauge showed a three-eighths of an inch, then a quarter. A pair of boots descended into his range of vision followed by the legs and waist of a man.

The man reached the deck, faced around and stared at the T.I.S. agent in astonishment. "Don't move!" began Gavin.

Another voice from up the ladder barked "Drop that gun!"

Gavin's eyes flashed upward. He saw a man's head, shoulder and arm through the circular ladder well. The man seemed to be lying on the deck above covering him through the opening with a dart-gun. Gavin dropped his own automatic.

"Take your hand off that lever!" the man snapped.

Gavin flicked his eye to the gauge. The last of the fuel was flowing from the tanks. He released the lever, straightened his shoulders.

Let them do what they pleased to him now, he thought, they were too late. The _Nova_ was grounded!

The second man descended the ladder and the pair of them regarded him curiously. They were both big men, Terrans in baggy outer garments like the guard whose skull Gavin had cracked.

"Who the hell are you?" asked the first man in a flat voice.

These men were bad. They didn't play at it. They didn't try to be. It was etched in their cold eyes and tight mouths.

Gavin moistened his lips. "Murdock. Third assistant-engineer."

"Another one," exclaimed the second man in faint surprise. "I thought we'd bagged the lot."

The other grunted. "We'd better take him to Y."

Gavin was searched and then hustled up the ladder into the officer's mess. As he was propelled through the door, conversation died in the messroom, and four pairs of eyes turned on him curiously.

Gavin controlled his surprise. Villanowski was there, ironed to his chair, his homely features taut with strain. At the table to the left of Villanowski sat the emaciated factor. He wasn't ironed. Neither was Nadia Petrovna. She had changed into crisp shorts and was leaning forward, lips parted in surprise.

But it was the fourth man who drew the T.I.S. agent's attention.

He sat between Nadia Petrovna and the factor, lolling back in his chair indolently, a sheaf of papers spread on the table before him. His face was like a death mask in which the coloring, the lines had been painted by a machine. It was perfect, but without life.

Then Gavin realized that it was a mask. The man's whole face was a lie, even to the realistic mole on his chin.

He leaned across the table. "Who's this?" he asked in a strong harsh voice.

"He says his name's Murdock. Claims he was third assistant-engineer. We found him down in the engine room. He's killed Peters and dumped all the fuel."

Nadia drew in her breath sharply, looked frightened. The factor's fleshless features blackened with rage. Even Villanowski glanced up, a look of surprise and dawning hope in his eyes. Only the man in the mask didn't change expression.

"Go back to your post," he ordered Gavin's captors. "We'll take care of Mr. Murdock." Then, when they had left, he said, "You were contacted by my--ah--co-worker on Venus, Murdock. Mr. X, he called himself." He chuckled, the noise issuing from between unsmiling painted lips like the voice of an automaton. "For the sake of convenience, you can term me Mr. Y."

Gavin didn't say anything.

"You have presented us with a problem," Mr. Y went on.

"Where's Cabot?" Gavin interrupted.

"Dead."

"The chief astrogator, the crew?"

"All dead. In fact, we thought we'd wiped the slate clean."

The factor suddenly slammed the table with his bony fist. "What are you playing with him for, Y? I've sacrificed everything. The cantonment, the slaves. I demand that he be done away with before he can contrive any more damage."

* * * * *

Y regarded the factor with venomous amber eyes, the only living features in his death mask. "Has it occurred to you to wonder _why_ Mr. Murdock dumped the _Nova's_ fuel?"

The factor started.

"Mr. Murdock," said Y, turning back to Gavin, "what persuaded you to ground the _Nova_?"

Gavin's lips thinned. He didn't say anything. Y continued to regard him a moment. Then he asked Nadia, "I believe you suspected Murdock of being an agent of United Spaceways, Miss Petrovna?"

Before the girl could answer the factor broke in again. "Why can't we use the _Nova's_ special space drive?"

"You're referring to the machinery of the little death," rejoined Y. "But I thought you knew. It can't operate until the _Nova_ has attained a certain velocity. That much we've ascertained from Mr. Villanowski."

"Then we're trapped!" The factor leaped to his feet. His agility in the increased gravity was amazing. Gavin realized that the long years the factor had spent on Jupiter had trained his muscles as well as wrung every ounce of extra flesh from his spare frame.

"I see that you've comprehended our position at last," said Y grimly. "What about the emergency fuel tanks at the cantonment?"

"Gone. Your damned shelling exploded them."

Y nodded. "Just as I thought. If Murdock drained the _Nova's_ tanks, he must be expecting help. It will have considerable bearing on any course we plan to take, just who these aids are, how many they'll be, and when to expect them."

He returned to Gavin. "You'll spare yourself a painful experience, Murdock, if you talk now. You can't gain anything by forcing us to wring the information from you. We won't hesitate to stoop to torture."

"No," Gavin agreed. "I suppose not." He hesitated. United Spaceways and Tri-World were the two corporations most likely to want the _Nova's_ space drive. Nadia suspected that he was an agent of United Spaceways. Therefore ... he moistened his lips. "My work's done, anyway. I'm a Tri-World agent."

"But that's impossible!" Nadia burst out in sudden protest. "We...." She paused, looking confused as she realized she'd been tricked.

Y said, "That was very clever, Murdock. Yes. I'm working for Tri-World. Miss Petrovna and my good friend, the factor, have supplied us with valuable information and help for a price. But the knowledge won't be of any earthly use to you."

Gavin felt no triumph at the confirmation of his suspicions. What Y said was true. As soon as they had squeezed him dry, he would be silenced.

The door opened. A Terran appeared. "The slaves have all been unloaded and dispersed, sir. The bodies of the crew are buried. We're ship-shape and ready to take off."

Y put a forefinger to the chin of his death mask, rubbed the plastic gently. "Establish radio contact with the _Comet_."

"Yes sir," replied the man. "The message, sir?"

"Rendezvous cancelled. Emergency. Proceed to us at once prepared to divide fuel."

"Yes, sir." The man went out, closing the door softly behind him.