Chapter III

Joel wasn't taken entirely by surprise. But the ferocity of the attack drove him back a few steps. He wrapped his arms about the man's shoulders and hung on.

A furious animal smell filled his nostrils. The man was berserk, his breath whistling through his teeth as he strove to tear himself free. Then like a mad dog, he sank his teeth in Joel's shoulder.

Joel gave a yelp of surprise, pushed him off, hit him with his clubbed fist.

His assailant reeled backwards, staggered to his knees. He was a giant of a fellow with shaggy black hair and curious yellow-gray eyes.

Joel was on him like a tiger, smashing his fist into the giant's unprotected face.

The man lunged over backwards, rolled to his belly and tried to push himself to his hands and knees.

Joel kicked him behind the ear.

The giant's arms collapsed. His face struck the floor and he lay still.

The other prisoners had drawn back against the bunks. There was a minute of stunned silence. Then with whoops of delight they crowded around slapping his back, shaking his hand.

Joel was too surprised to utter a word.

The man who had been throttled, was sitting up massaging his throat. He regarded Joel with a puzzled expression.

"Thanks," he wheezed painfully, "but what made you risk your neck?"

"Risk my neck?"

"You're new, aren't you?" asked the man, pulling himself to his feet and holding out his hand. "I'm Nick Thorp."

Joel introduced himself. Thorp, he saw, was short and husky with prematurely gray hair and blue eyes bright as bits of china.

"You've made yourself a wicked enemy," Thorp observed, prodding the giant with his toe. "That's Walt Eriss."

"Walt Eriss!" Joel's green eyes widened. Walt Eriss' trial had created the sensation of the decade.

Walt Eriss had been a brilliant surgeon, but with a pathological twist. A modern Jack the Ripper who delighted in torturing his patients. He had killed forty-three women by his own confession before he was apprehended!

Joel stared at the hulking form as if it were some monster. "But why were the others letting him throttle you?" he asked Nick Thorp. "Why didn't they stop him?"

"They're afraid of him."

"But they could've ganged him...." Joel stopped with his mouth open.

A bell had begun to ring with an ear-splitting clangor!

Muttered exclamations burst from the prisoners as they exchanged alarmed glances. The bell continued to ring.

"What's happening?" Joel asked.

Nick Thorp shook his grizzled head. "I don't know. But the bell's a signal for us to line up at our bunks."

Joel realized that the other prisoners had formed in a row down the walls. He glanced about uncertainly.

"There's a vacant bunk beside mine," Nick Thorp suggested.

Joel gratefully took his place beside Thorp. The bell fell silent. Everyone was staring through the wall into the guardroom.

The guards had abandoned their card game, he saw. They were straightening their uniforms, buttoning their tunics. He could see the passage beyond and two men making their way along it.

One, he recognized, was Doctor Chedwick, white-frocked and moon-faced. The other was a short man with a truculent walk. He was wearing the green uniform of a space man.

A low excited buzz arose from the prisoners. Joel caught words here and there. "Asgard! So soon!"

He felt tight with excitement and glanced surreptitiously at the girl beside him.

She was an exotic elfin creature, even in the shapeless gray coveralls. Her black eyes and hair, the smooth olive of her complexion lent her the appearance of an Arab. He wondered what crime she had committed that had condemned her to the Experimental Station.

Then the door to the guardroom was flung violently open. The captain appeared in the entrance and shouted, "Attention!"

* * * * *

The whispering ceased as the guards in their peacock blue and yellow filed into the dormitory. They were carrying a long plastic chain, which they stretched down the center of the floor. About every yard, Joel saw that a metal collar had been linked to the chain.

Doctor Chedwick came through the door with the green-uniformed spaceman beside him.

"This is Sam Mullin," he said indicating the spaceman. "Third mate of the _Zenith_. Mister Mullin will be responsible for you while you're aboard the _Zenith_. You're to be embarked at once...."

Joel's heart leaped against his ribs. Even the archaic title of "mister" had a heady sound. It was a tradition among spacemen, he knew. Only officers of Star Ships were called "mister."

"What's this?" Doctor Chedwick interrupted himself catching sight of the unconscious figure of Eriss on the floor.

"There was a fight, Doctor," the captain hastened to explain. "The new man and Walt Eriss."

"Hakkyt knocked out Eriss?"

The captain nodded.

Doctor Chedwick shot Joel a startled glance. "Watch those fists of yours, young man. You're too free with them." Then to the captain, "Revive Eriss and shackle the prisoners."

Joel noticed that the guards were careful to fasten one of the collars about the ex-surgeon's neck before they broke a vial of some liquid and held it under his nose.

Eriss opened his eyes and sat up groggily. Then his gaze fastened on Joel. With a bellow of rage he was on his feet, charging across the room like a mad bull.

Three men, hanging onto the chain, snubbed him up short!

Eriss wheeled furiously, found himself facing half a dozen drawn paralyzers and brought up with a curse.

Joel could see the veins throb in the giant's temples. But the captain turned indifferently to the other prisoners. "Line up beside the chain."

Joel took his place between the black-haired girl and Nick Thorp. The collar was snapped about his throat. In single file and with a good deal of tripping, the prisoners, chained neck to neck, tramped through the door.

Doctor Chedwick left them at the main corridor, but the Captain and Mister Mullin helped the guards herd them into a lift.

They dropped soundlessly level after level until they were well below the surface. At length the lift stopped, the doors opened.

To his surprise Joel saw that there was a pneumatic station beneath the dome, and a train was waiting in the tube.

They were shepherded into a coach. They had a good deal of trouble arranging themselves in the seats because of the chain linking them together, but at last it was done.

Captain Goplerud blew a whistle and swung inside the car. The door slammed shut. With a powerful surge and a whoosh the train shot off.

Joel found himself beside Nick Thorp. "Where do you suppose we're going?" he asked breathlessly.

"Nu York," Thorp replied. "All the Star Ships berth at the White Plains spaceport. We're lucky. The _Zenith's_ a crack luxury liner. No being battened down in the hold of some stinking freighter for us."

"You've been to space before?"

Thorp turned his incredibly blue eyes on Joel. "For twenty-three years. Rocket ships and Star Ships. I never thought I'd see space again...."

Joel eyed the battered gray-haired spaceman with increased respect. Here was a man who'd seen the stews of Venusport, breathed the murky air of Jovopolis, gazed out on the frigid whiteness of Pluto.

"Then you've been to Asgard?"

"Many's the time. Wait 'til you see it, lad. Jungles and rain and crawling plants that can pluck a man off the ground and devour him quick as a cat!"

Joel was fascinated. The train slid along with a monotonous roar that shut them in a cell of privacy.

"Who's the girl?" he asked, nodding at the elfin sloe-eyed brunette in the seat ahead.

Nick Thorp's eyes twinkled. "Tamis Ravitz. She used to be a dancer. Poisoned her dancing partner in a fit of jealous rage. So I've heard."

Joel was shocked and looked it.

Thorp's battered features cracked into a broad grin. "We're a rum bunch. None of us can afford to throw stones at the others."

Joel felt the rebuke in his words and reddened.

* * * * *

The spaceman had slumped in the seat and closed his eyes. The dull roar of the train had a soothing quality. But Joel was too keyed up to relax.

He kept thinking of the humanoid guard and the fluorescent tattoo mark on his elbow and Doctor Chedwick saying: "The less you know about them, the safer you'll be. Someone will contact you at Asgard. Don't mention our conversation to anyone...."

A buzzer began to whirr softly. The train braked. The guards rose and shouted,

"On your feet! On your feet! Line up in the aisle."

The train wooshed to a soft stop as if it had run into a foam rubber cushion. The doors slid back, letting in a thundering bedlam of sound.

Joel found himself staring out into a vast groined hall lit by harsh violet light. Streams of beetle-like robot trucks, piled high with baggage, darted along elevated roadways. People were everywhere, a crazy throng like a disturbed colony of ants.

He drew a ragged breath, feeling his heart thud against his ribs. The metal collar jerked against his throat and he fell into step.

They shuffled out of the coach onto a long ramp. A huge red sign directly ahead caught Joel's eyes. Its flashing letters were at least ten feet high.

CENTAURUS FLIGHT
TAKE-OFF--15:52
STAR SHIP ZENITH

The file of prisoners made straight for the sign, entered a narrow corridor that sloped downward like a tunnel. From the tunnel they emerged into the maw of a huge pit. Joel rubbed his eyes. He'd never seen the rocket pits before.

The _Zenith_, a dull black, bullet-shaped monster, rested on her fins with her nose pointing straight up towards the starry black firmament. Gangplanks like airy cobwebs spanned the gap between the Star Ship and the blackened concrete walls.

The file of prisoners crawled out along one of the gangplanks. They were in the center of it, when Joel felt Nick Thorp's fingers close like a vise on his shoulder.

"Look! Overhead! We're having distinguished company this voyage!"

Joel glanced up.

* * * * *

Above and to one side another gangplank crossed the gap. A stout man was leaning on the rail and watching the prisoners. Beside him stood a young woman with the warm beautiful face of a Venusian dancing girl.

She was clad in a short green coat with exaggerated square-cut shoulders, and for one shocked moment Joel thought that she didn't have on anything beneath it. Then he realized that she must be wearing shorts which the coat was just long enough to hide.

For the rest, he received a swift impression of long shapely tanned legs, sooty lashes, green eyes and hair. _Green hair!_

Then their eyes met--met and held. There was a swift outleaping of spirit between them, an indescribable feeling of kinship, of recognition. Joel felt shaken, bewitched. A smile was trembling on the girl's half-parted lips.

And then he had been carried into the ship and he couldn't see her any longer.

"Who were they?" he asked unsteadily.

"Humphrey Cameron, Governor of Asgard," Thorp explained. "The girl was his daughter, Priscilla Cameron."

Tamis Ravitz said over her shoulder, "Did you see that hair? _Green!_ She's been the talk of Terra."

Joel thought the dancer sounded envious. They were shuffling single file down a long corridor that led straight into the bowels of the ship. A vague rumbling made the deck tremble beneath his feet. He heard shouted orders, the sound of the gangplank being run in.

His face whitened in the raw violet light. All thoughts of the green haired Priscilla Cameron were driven from his mind.

From the passage the prisoners were herded into a long low chamber outfitted with tables. Here they were unchained.

Mister Mullin glanced at his chronometer. "Take-off in fifteen minutes," he warned. "Strap yourselves into your bunks."

He disappeared at a run. The guards filed out of the prisoner's mess locking the door behind them.

"Come along," Thorp urged Joel as a wild clangor broke out from the stem to stern of the _Zenith_. "We've time for a quick look around before we get settled."

Joel followed him wordlessly into the sleeping quarters. Beyond the fo'cs'le were the washrooms and that was all. A second bell rang just as they flung themselves into empty bunks.

The rumble of the tubes mounted into a furious roar. A trip hammer struck Joel in the chest, pinned him into the cushion. He gasped, strained to inflate his lungs.

The _Zenith_ was off!