Chapter VI

In the tense silence, Liedl moved into the mess-room.

"What are you going to do?" Joel demanded hoarsely.

Liedl grinned, his teeth glittering in the subdued night light.

"Spy!" said Tamis.

Liedl shrugged. "The word has a disagreeable sound. I prefer to call myself a Government Investigator."

He was edging past them toward the door to the guardroom. The muzzle of his gun hung to Joel's belly like the needle of a compass.

"Stop him, Joel!" Tamis begged wildly. "You are human. You can kill!"

Liedl had to pass within three feet of Joel down the narrow aisle between the tables in order to reach the guardroom. Joel could see the sweat standing out on his sallow forehead.

"Don't try anything!" the professor croaked and began to slide past.

There was the sound of a step from the fo'cs'le. Then the voice of Nick Thorp sang out softly, "Where are you going, Gus?"

Liedl blanched, jerked his head. For a second his eyes were off Joel.

Joel's hand whipped out, slapped the dart gun. It was torn from Liedl's fingers, went slithering across the deck to fetch up with a clatter against the bulkhead.

Liedl opened his mouth to yell. Joel's big hands closed about his throat.

"Kill him!" said Nick Thorp in a brittle voice.

Liedl clawed wildly, spasmodically, at Joel's wrists. The ex-professor's black goatee stuck straight out like a spear. His mouth was open. His round gray eyes bulged.

The muscles of Joel's forearms stood out like cords. Sweat trickled unheeded down his nose. His face was expressionless, his green eyes narrowed morosely.

The only sounds were Nick Thorp's hoarse breathing and the muted rumble of the jets. Tamis pressed herself against the bulkhead, a fixed, horrified expression on her face.

Liedl's convulsive thrashing grew weaker. Suddenly his knees buckled. He buckled. He slumped to the deck.

Joel followed him down, stooping over him bear-like, never relaxing the throttling pressure. Sweat ran into his eyes.

He became aware of Thorp shaking his shoulder.

"He's dead!" Thorp was saying. "Dead. Do you hear me?"

Joel drew a gasping breath, stood up, wiped the sweat out of his eyes. He didn't look at the crumpled figure on the deck. This was the second man he'd killed. The first had been an accident, but not Gustav Liedl.

Tamis said suddenly, "We can't leave him there!"

"No," Thorp agreed. "We'd better dump him down the waste chute. The reconverters will dispose of him."

He picked up the body like a limp sack of potatoes. "Open the chute."

The girl held up the lid while Thorp slid the body into it. There was a faint swoosh. Tamis let the lid drop.

An awkward silence fell upon them.

"Well," Thorp broke it, "we're in this together. Liedl was a government spy. There'll be hell to pay when he turns up missing."

"But they can't trace it to us," Tamis asked. "Can they?"

"No. The reconverters will take care of that."

Joel stood up abruptly, started for the fo'cs'le.

"Joel!" Tamis said.

He didn't answer.

* * * * *

Walt Eriss, the ex-surgeon, returned eventually from the ship's hospital--a savage-eyed Eriss who obviously had been nursing his grievances. Almost his first act was to confront Joel.

"Hakkyt," he said thinly, "that's twice you've struck me." He fingered his jaw, his curious yellow-gray eyes aflame. "I'll kill you for this."

Everyone stopped talking, stared breathlessly at the shaggy haired giant. Thorp moved beside Joel, but he didn't say anything.

Joel said dryly: "Well--what's stopping you?"

Walt Eriss began to tremble. "No," he said in a harsh voice. "I don't want witnesses."

"Talk," said Joel. "You talk too much to do anything."

The ex-surgeon turned abruptly on his heel and stalked away.

Thorp said, low-voiced, "Watch him. Don't ever let him get behind you."

"He's a bluff."

"No. He's a killer. I've seen his kind before. He'll get you, Joel." The spaceman's blue eyes were cold. "You're not safe while he's alive...."

Joel frowned. "What do you mean?"

"I mean we'd better dump him down the reconverters tonight!"

Joel was shocked. "I'm not a murderer!"

"It's not murder; it's self-defense."

"No!" said Joel and refused to hear any more about it.

The succession of days crept past as alike as beads on a string. Joel tried to draw Tamis out about the Ganelons, but she had been too badly frightened by Liedl's death.

She was afraid of him, too; he could see it in her eyes and it worried him. One sleeping period he asked her about it with characteristic bluntness.

Tamis bit her lip. "I--I never saw a man killed before. I can't get it out of my mind. It's not you, Joel." And then she began to tell him about her early life in the Ganelon village.

It was a life without sham--a simple joyous pagan existence close to the primal forces of nature. Tamis' voice trembled with nostalgia.

Joel was fascinated. He was on fire with impatience to reach Asgard.

On the forty-third day the _Zenith_ came out of the Stellar Drive and began to fire her braking tubes.

Down, down she settled towards the surface of Asgard, second planet of Alpha Centauri A. An electric excitement ran like flames through the Unfit.

Joel couldn't eat. "How much longer?" he asked Thorp for the hundredth time.

"For Saturn's sake, sit down," the ex-spaceman exploded.

Joel dropped into a relaxer, lit a cigarette. His green eyes glittered with anticipation. Tamis gave him an amused glance, but Joel sensed that the Ganelon girl was as excited as himself.

"We should be landing in an hour," she informed him.

Joel felt the _Zenith_ shiver from the violence of her braking blasts. Minutes ticked past like hours. Then a bell began to ring and went on ringing.

After an interminable wait, Joel was shaken by a heavy jar. The _Zenith_ rocked sickeningly. There was another blast of the jets. Another jar.

The roar dwindled and fell silent. A strange hush pervaded the ship.

"Asgard!" Thorp shouted, leaping to his feet and slapping Joel on the shoulder. "We're down!"

* * * * *

The prisoners were led straight from the Star Ship into the spaceport where a robot surface bus was waiting to carry them into Eden. The bus was constructed after a design strange to Joel. It was a half-track with heavy mesh screens at the windows.

When he accidentally touched the screen, he received a jarring electric shock. Tamis, who was seated beside him, giggled.

"Where do they think we'd escape to?" he demanded bitterly.

"They're not to keep us from escaping, Joel."

Just then the bus started smoothly, gathered momentum, burst out into the brilliant light of Asgard's twin suns.

Joel forgot the electrified screens, craning his neck, trying to see everything at once. The spaceport, he realized, must be located at some distance from Eden. The road ran straight ahead--a glittering plastic ribbon cutting a channel through the fantastic jungle.

It was monstrous, that jungle. It writhed, twisted, swayed in great swaths although there wasn't the faintest breeze. Suddenly the bus stopped with a jerk to allow a herd of huge tree-like plants to swarm across the road.

Joel gaped at them in amazement. They had thick flesh-like trunks from which writhing tentacles sprouted like the arms of an octopus. A mass of wriggling squirming thread-like roots propelled the plants forward with startling speed.

"Ugh!" Joel shuddered, turned to Tamis. "What are those?"

"Nigel trees."

Joel wrenched back suddenly from the window. One of the nigel trees had lashed out with a tentacle. It touched the screen. There was a green spark. The tentacle jerked back.

"Now do you see why the screens are electrified?" Tamis asked. "The nigel trees are carnivorous."

The bus started to move again. Joel was regarding the Ganelon girl with a frown. "You actually live in the jungle with those things roaming about?"

"Yes. They don't bother us."

He looked incredulous. "Why not? Don't they like your flavor?"

Tamis giggled. "We can control them--a little. They don't think. They react to external stimuli."

"I see," said Joel. But he didn't.

He heard a wailing siren overhauling them fast from the direction of the spaceport. The bus pulled over to let an escort of guards on armored prowl-cycles roar past. Immediately following them, came a plastic tear-drop tri-wheeler. The governor and his daughter were lounging back in its roomy seats.

Priscilla glimpsed Joel and waved mockingly. Then the procession was gone, a second detachment of guards bringing up the rear.

Buildings, Joel noticed, had begun to replace the jungle, buildings of thick opaque plastic without windows. The moving sidewalks, shaded by gaudy awnings, were crowded with men and women clad in little more than shorts and sandals.

The air, Joel realized, was stifling. The dazzling yellow ball that was Alpha Centauri A rode high in the steel blue sky. Alpha Centauri B was a smaller molten-orange sun swimming just above the horizon. Joel had never felt such heat before. It was like the engine room of a tramp spacer.

The bus slowed down, swung into the curb. Captain Goplerud shouted, "Pile out!"

Joel saw a detachment of guards drawn up at the curb. They wore white uniforms and pith helmets and carried small automatic paralyzers. A crowd began to collect behind the double line of guards, which ran like a gauntlet into a massive prison-like structure. From behind him, Nick Thorp said, "Here's an old friend of yours."

"Who?" He glanced up in surprise, recognized Priscilla Cameron grinning at him with an impish expression.

* * * * *

She was dressed in crisp white shorts and a brief jacket. Her green hair wasn't so startling as it had been aboard ship. Joel had noticed other women on the street of Eden with green hair, with yellow hair, with cerise, vermillion, chartreuse hair. It obviously was the latest mode of Asgard.

"That's the one, Colonel!" he heard Priscilla say to the man beside her. "Be sure to notify me when he comes up for sale."

Joel reddened.

The colonel touched his cap. "I'll be glad to, Miss Cameron." He turned to Captain Goplerud.

"Move them inside, Captain. They're not used to the suns. Have a good crossing?"

"Rotten," said Goplerud. "I'm glad to get 'em off my hands. Watch that fellow Hakkyt, by the way. He's a killer."

Then the line began to move. He had been carried beyond earshot into the dim warmth of the prison.