Chapter II: Part 2

The big ship, Steve saw, was doing precisely that. Its jets had been cut, and the ship fell like a stone. Twice its length separated it from the rubble-strewn pumice when the pilot kicked his jets over again, and something seemed to slap the _Frank Buck_ back up toward the starry sky. The result was a first-rate landing.

"That would be Schuyler showing off," said Teejay wearily. "He must have been born in a tube and weaned on jet-slag, and he sure lets you know it."

Fifteen minutes later, Schuyler Barling and three of his officers entered the _Gordak_.

Barling got out of his vac-suit first, a tall, handsome man of about thirty, with short-cropped blond hair, pale blue eyes and petulant lips. "Captain Moore," he said, bowing slightly from the waist. Making fun of Teejay.

"Mr. Barling." As ever, the woman seemed cool and unruffled.

"With us," said Schuyler Barling, "it's in the family. I work for my father. Obviously, it means something to me whether he succeeds or not. But you, Captain Moore, you're a hired hand. You work for Brody Carmical, on a paycheck. Therefore, your loyalty could not possibly be as strong as mine, and--"

"Get to the point!"

"We arrived here on Ganymede almost simultaneously. One of us will have to leave."

"It didn't look simultaneous to me."

Barling ignored her. "Yes, one will have to leave, because the anthrovac is frightened off easily and unless a hunt is carried on with the utmost precision and timing, no one will catch any anthrovacs."

"Go on," said Teejay. She spoke quietly, but Steve knew the woman well enough to realize her temper was coming to a boil, inside.

"My _Frank Buck_ got here first," Barling told her blandly. "Therefore, you will leave."

"That's a stinking lie!" Teejay cried. "We were here first and you know it."

"Who can prove it? The _Frank Buck_ landed first." Barling's hand flashed down to his waist, came up gripping a neutron gun. "If we have to, we'll force you to leave."

Teejay stood with hands on hips, facing him. "I know I'm not conducting myself like a lady, but then, this is the twenty-second century," she said, smiling--and struck out with her balled right fist. It bounced off Barling's jaw with savage force and the man stumbled back against the wall and crashed to the floor, his neutron gun clattering away. Barling shook himself, tried to rise. He got to hands and knees, then fell forward on his face.

Teejay whirled on his officers. "All right, get him out of here! Come on, move."

* * * * *

The three men looked at each other. None of them did anything.

"You see, boy?" said Kevin, grinning. "That's our Captain and we'll fight for her. She won the beauty pageant five years ago in Cerestown, and she can fight like a man. She's a woman for the stars, and we're proud to--"

"Shut up," said Teejay. "That won't get us anywhere."

By now, Barling had stirred, had come up, dazed, into a sitting position. He rubbed his jaw, winced. "Assuming we return to our ship, we still won't leave Ganymede. Not without our anthrovac."

"Nor will we."

"But you had to hit me! You had to flaunt your--"

"No one told you to draw your gun."

"--flaunt your Amazonian prowess."

"Stop sniveling, Schuyler. I think we'll have to reach some sort of a compromise, but I'll dictate terms, not you."

"Yes?" Barling growled up at her. "Who says we'll obey?"

"Oh, get up off the floor! You look so silly, sitting there and rubbing your chin."

Barling stood up, retrieving his gun but holstering it. Kevin watched him, toying with his own weapon--not pointing it at anyone in particular, but tossing it back and forth idly from hand to hand.

"Give us twenty four hours," said Teejay. "We'll look for our anthrovac. In that time, none of your men is to leave the _Frank Buck_. After that, you get twenty four hours, and we're confined to the _Gordak_. Then us, then you. And so on, till one of us gets his anthrovac. Then he pulls out and the other is left here. Is it a deal?"

Barling considered, said: "Well, yes--with one change. _We_ get the first twenty four hours."

"No."

"Then you can forget your deal, Captain Moore."

"Well, then let's toss for it." Teejay reached into a pocket of her cape, flipped a coin to Steve. "Here, Stedman. You toss it."

"Who gets to call?" Barling demanded.

"Do you want to?"

"Well--"

"Good. Then I will. Ladies first, you know. Go ahead, Stedman."

Steve tossed the coin, and Teejay cried: "Heads!"

Palming the coin, Steve flipped it over on the back of his left hand, peered at it. Staring up at him was the metallic likeness of Angus MacNamara, first man to reach the planet Mars. "Heads," said Steve, and one of Barling's officers came over to verify it.

Barling shook his head stubbornly. "How do I know it isn't a phony, a two-headed coin?"

Teejay glared at him. "That's insulting, Schuyler."

"Well, I'd like to look at it. How do I know--"

"You don't. But I said it's insulting. So, if you want to see the coin, you'll have to fight me!"

"Never mind," said Barling, climbing into his vac-suit. "You get first try." And all of them garbed in their vac-suits once more, the men of the _Frank Buck_ departed.

"Get those beaters out again!" Teejay was calling into her microphone, and Kevin grasped Steve's arm, said:

"Go ahead, boy. Look at the coin."

Steve did. It had two heads.

And later, Teejay said to him: "Listen, Stedman. All the beaters are out now, but frankly, I don't trust Schuyler."

Steve said he did not blame her, and Kevin was there to nod his red head.

"So, Stedman, the beaters have their jobs to do. That's almost everyone. But temporarily at least, it leaves you and Mac here with nothing to do."

"That's true," said Kevin.

"But not for long, Mac. Schuyler may try something, I don't know what. You two are probably the strongest men on this ship. I know what you can do, Mac--and I saw a sample of Stedman at work when he had that little run-in with LeClarc. All right: you two hop into a couple of vac-suits. That is, if Stedman's ready to fight for us if he has to--"

Steve chuckled. "I don't go around carrying two-headed coins, Teejay, but I know a rat when I see one. I'll go, and your friend Schuyler better not try anything." Almost, he was surprised at his own words. Teejay had a way of commanding respect, and if he didn't watch himself, he'd be talking like Kevin soon. Well, perhaps the woman merited it.... His thoughts took him that far, and then he remembered Charlie. "I'll go," he said again, almost growling.

"But you still have a chip on your shoulder--well, never mind. I'll expect quarter-hourly reports from you two."

"You'll get them," said Kevin, and climbed into his vac-suit.

* * * * *

Incredibly, Steve found himself out on the bleak, desolate surface of Ganymede, walking with Kevin past the long, silent length of the _Frank Buck_. And here, outside the confining walls of their spaceship, the Ganymede-fear seemed stronger. Steve felt it as something palpable, clutching at his heart and constricting it, bringing sweat to his forehead and clouding the inside of his helmet with moisture.

Fear--of what?

Not of the frontier world itself, surely. Not of some unknown menace lurking out among the craterlets and ringwalls. No, for while Ganymede was not yet as familiar as Mars or Venus, mankind still had explored it extensively. There were the strange anthrovacs, animals which looked like over-sized and less brutish gorillas but which were not protoplasm creatures and which took their energy directly from sunlight and cosmic radiation. But that was all--no other life existed on Ganymede, and the anthrovacs on their frigid, airless world were something of an oddity.

Then what caused the fear? And was the fear responsible in any way for what had happened to Charlie?

"Hey, Steve--snap out of it!" Kevin's voice, floating in thinly on the intercom.

"Huh? Oh, yeah, Kevin. Sure. It's that fear, sort of gets you out here. You can't help it."

"I know. A ship seems to cut it off to some extent, boy. But it's around, lurking, waiting to get you."

"What do you mean, waiting to get you?"

"Well, not directly. But it makes you make mistakes. Men have died that way--paying so much attention to the fear that they didn't pay enough attention to whatever was happening."

"Kevin, do you know anything about how Charlie died you haven't told me?"

"Maybe. Maybe not. It's kind of vague, boy. Teejay went out alone and when she came back--why, she looked scared. That's common enough on Ganymede--everyone looks scared. But Teejay looked puzzled and confused also, and that's not like her. She wouldn't talk much for a time, and when she did she just said she'd found Charlie Stedman, your brother, dead."

"Where?"

"What do you mean, where? Out here on Ganymede, naturally."

"No, I mean exactly where. What was done with the body?"

"That I don't know," said Kevin, and Steve could picture him frowning inside his helmet.

"Well--listen, Kevin! Do you hear something?"

"Hear something? How can you hear anything on Ganymede, with no air to carry it? Except on the radio, of course. I hear you, but get a grip on yourself, boy."

"No. I hear something. There it is, louder. My God, Kevin! My God--" And clumsily in his vac-suit, Steve began running away across the pumice.

"Hey, come back! Back here, you crazy fool--" Kevin charged after him, taking long, ungainly strides in the light gravity. But Steve was quicker and soon the distance between them increased and Kevin realized he wouldn't be able to overtake Steve at all.

"Come back! What do you hear, boy? At least tell me that."

Steve told him, and ran on. Amazed, Kevin lumbered back toward the _Gordak_.

"But what made him do it?" Teejay demanded, later.

"I told you all I know, Captain. He said he heard something and started running. I chased after him, couldn't catch him. He told me what he heard."

"What?"

"Well, you won't like this, because it doesn't make sense. But he said he heard his brother--calling him. Charlie Stedman, calling."

"Charlie Stedman is dead." Suddenly, Teejay was curt, pre-emptory.

"That's what I thought, too."

"Forget it. It's the Ganymede-fear, Mac. Somehow it got to Stedman stronger than it got to most people. Maybe his brother was hit that way, too. Maybe, right now, Stedman is off his rocker, running out across the pumice somewhere, shouting his brother's name into the soundless void of space."

"We'll have to find him," said Kevin.

"How can we, Mac? He's got air for five or six hours, and Ganymede is big."

"I'm going to take a set of shoulder-jets and go looking for him, Captain. I hope you won't try to stop me. I'm going either way."

Shrugging, Teejay went to a cabinet, handed Kevin a pair of shoulder-jets, which he strapped at once to his vac-suit. The woman took another suit and another pair of jets. "Once I heard voices out here on Ganymede, too," she said. "So did Charlie Stedman. They killed Charlie and they almost killed me. Enough's enough, Mac. I'm going with you."

* * * * *

The ringwall was not very large. Slowed by his vac-suit, a man might cover its diameter in half an hour. But Steve did not traverse the circular area. Instead, he climbed the ringwall laboriously and then made his way down, tumbling and sliding, to the rocky floor of the shallow crater.

The voice came from within it--from within the crater. It could not be! He told himself that more than once. The rock of Ganymede itself might carry sound, but you'd feel it only as a throbbing through the soles of your boots, for the vacuum of space which encroached on all sides could not transmit sound-waves.

That was science. That was elementary. But the voice whispered in his ears, ebbing and flowing, first loud, then soft--and science be damned.

Charlie was calling. _I am Charlie Stedman. I am Charlie Stedman_--That was all, but it was enough. Charlie's name, and Charlie's voice.

"It can't be happening," Steve said, aloud, and heard his own voice roaring inside the helmet. It drove the other voice, the impossible voice, out for a moment, but it returned. Around the inner circumference of the ringwall Steve ran, seeking a source for the impossible. Sobbing, stumbling, he plunged ahead. It was only when he returned to his starting point, a needle-like pinnacle of rock, that he realized his supply of air would be exhausted in three hours.

* * * * *

"He couldn't have gone much farther than this, Mac."

"We've got plenty of air, Captain. I'm not giving up--"

The two figures soared on spurting jets a hundred feet above the surface of Ganymede. When Teejay went higher every few moments, she could barely make out the two spaceships, far away to the left. Occasionally she saw the beaters working in teams of six, cumbersome tanks of oxygen strapped to their backs.

"Did you hear the voice, Mac?"

"No."

"Had Stedman been drinking?"

"That's ridiculous. The boy was with us, and you saw for yourself."

"True. And I've said that the voices of Ganymede are no strangers to me, anyway. Maybe I was trying to rationalize."

"We'll see when we find Steve."

"_If_ we find him. The fear can make you do crazy things out here, Mac. Like going for too long without sufficient oxygen."

"That's what I'm worrying about."

* * * * *

A phonograph needle caught in one groove, spinning out its brief message over and over again--that was the voice. _I am Charlie Stedman._ And the ringwall might have been the record, Steve thought bitterly, except that it was utterly deserted. He hadn't covered its entire rock-strewn area; an army of searchers would be necessary to do that. But he had seen enough to convince him that--

The thought fled.

Coming toward him over the floor of the ringwall was a huge anthrovac, walking erect with a shuffling gait. Charlie's voice grew louder.

* * * * *

"It's no good, Mac. We can't find him."

"As soon as we turn back he's as good as dead."

"Our air won't last forever," Teejay said.

"He's got even less."

"Ten more minutes?"

"All right, ten. But why did you come out here with me if you're ready to give up so easy?"

"Who said I am? I'm trying to be practical, Mac. Listen, I saved Stedman's life once already--and stayed out on the hot side of Mercury longer than a person should, too. I like Stedman, but if we ever find him, better not say that or I'll break your neck, hear? So I want to find him, but I don't want to sacrifice your life or mine in the attempt. Is that clear?"

Kevin said that it was.

A moment later, Teejay climbed higher. Half a thousand feet above the surface of Ganymede she circled. Abruptly, she leveled off at a hundred feet again, said:

"There's something over there, Mac. In that ringwall."

"What?"

"I don't know. Movement. A big figure and a little one. The big one seems too large for a man, but the smaller--well, let's go."

* * * * *

The anthrovac paused a dozen yards from Steve. There had been nothing hostile in its movements to begin with, and now it might have been a statue for all the activity it displayed. From crown of head to small, hand-like feet, it stood almost a yard taller than Steve, but it did not have the great-muscled girth of a gorilla. Instead, it looked quite manlike, except for the incredibly broad shoulders, the thick, matted hair covering its entire body, the too-long arms, the nine feet of height.

Did the voice emanate from it?

Now that the creature had approached him, Steve wasn't sure. The voice continued, pulsing and throbbing in his ears like the Ganymede-fear itself--_but in his ears_. Not from the bleak terrain around him, and certainly not from the anthrovac.

"I'm going crazy," he said, aloud, driving the voice away temporarily. "No. No, I'm not, because I realize it too soon. A crazy man doesn't realize it and doesn't warn himself about it--certainly not at the outset." But did that mean the voice had any real existence? How could it?

_I am Charlie Stedman...._

Smiling bleakly, Steve picked up a loose chunk of rock, tossed it at the anthrovac. The creature merely swung its huge body gracefully at the hips, avoiding the missile. Then it stooped, found a stone for itself, hurled it at Steve. He ducked, feeling completely and tremendously foolish. He should have been prepared, for the anthrovacs are playful and can mime almost any human action.

He did not duck in time. He felt the stone _thunk_ against his helmet, peered with horror at the glassite inches from his face until he saw that it hadn't cracked. Grinning now, he shook his fist at the creature, watched it duplicate the motion with its great hairy hand. It was a game, Steve told himself, a lot like the meaningless conversation Teejay and Kevin had had to dispell the Ganymede-fear.

_But if the anthrovac could mime human actions, perhaps the anthrovac could also mime voices!_ That would necessitate telepathic powers, naturally. But the anthrovac, like many denizens of terrestrial forests and tundras, changed its habits immensely in captivity. A captured anthrovac, one which had been reared with one of the circus troupes, could never tell you what a wild anthrovac was like. And a wild anthrovac, somehow living on airless Ganymede and taking its energy directly from cosmic and solar radiation, might be able to do anything.

_I am Charlie Stedman...._

Steve carried the thought to its logical conclusion. Suppose an anthrovac--_this_ anthrovac which faced him now--had somehow heard Charlie speaking. Charlie might have been introducing himself to someone: "I am Charlie Stedman."

But the hypothesis wasn't much more than a bubble, and it burst completely when Steve remembered he was the only one who could hear the voice.

"Hey, Stedman! You trying to kill yourself?"

Steve whirled, looked up. Two figures, no more than vaguely human in their cumbersome vac-suits, hovered over him, jetting around in circles. The anthrovac had seen them too--and now, apparently alarmed by the twin forms floating just out of reach, the creature turned and bounded away over the uneven terrain.

"What gave you that idea?" Steve called into his intercom. "The anthrovac wasn't looking for trouble."

"I don't mean that, stupid." Teejay had a way of jarring him back to reality with a few words. "I mean, how much air have you left?"

Steve looked at the gauge. "Enough to return to the _Gordak_, provided I get on my horse."

"We'll walk with you, then," said Teejay, and dropped to the ground at his side. "I think I'll hold onto your arm, too. You're liable to go wandering again, and we might not be able to find you."

Kevin alighted, switched off his jets. "How about the voice, boy? Do you still hear it?"

"Why--no! But I did a minute ago, until the anthrovac ran away."

"That's peculiar."

"There's a lot that's peculiar out here on Ganymede, Kevin. I think--"

"Stop thinking and start walking," Teejay told him.

Less than two hours later, they reached the _Gordak_. A vac-suited man met them at the airlock, and Steve saw LeClarc's face through the glassite helmet.

"I'll bet you were worried," said Teejay.

"Sure," LeClarc answered, drawing a neutron gun from his belt. "See, my Captain, I'm so worried I can hardly think straight. Will the three of you please turn around and march over to the _Frank Buck_?"

They were too stunned to do anything else.

* * * * *

"Don't mind me," Kevin said, within the _Frank Buck_. "If I'm confused it's merely because I can't believe this. Not you, LeClarc, not you."

They'd been ushered into the main lounge of the _Frank Buck_, a ship of about the _Gordak_'s dimensions, but two or three years older. LeClarc stood there with his neutron gun, watching them carefully. In a few moments, Schuyler Barling joined them, a greasy salve covering the discoloration on his jaw. The jaw looked painfully swollen too, and Barling rubbed it speculatively. "I won't forget this," he growled briefly to Teejay, then turned to LeClarc. "Kevin McGann I know, but what about this man?"

"Stedman?" said LeClarc. "You'll want him, because he's the extra-zoo man on the _Gordak_. If you took McGann and the woman alone, they still might be able to do their work on Carmical's ship. But with Stedman your prisoner as well, their hands are tied over there."

"What is this?" Teejay demanded defiantly. "What's the meaning of--"

"Will you be quiet and let me do the talking?" Barling interrupted her. "It was LeClarc who radioed and told me your coin had two heads. If you wanted to play the game that way, I wasn't going to stand by and let you. So--"

"So," LeClarc took up the thread for him, "we got together, Mr. Barling and I."

"But you, LeClarc," said Kevin. "You'd jump through a fire-hoop into a pit of acid if Captain Moore told you to."

"Would I?" LeClarc chuckled softly.

"Yes. Yes, you would."

"Perhaps there was a time I'd have done that, McGann. Perhaps. But then I thought the Captain needed me, and wanted me to help her, too. Now, with you and Stedman--well, LeClarc isn't so important, is he?"

"So that's it!" Kevin roared. "You're jealous. Not jealous the way a man should be, when he loves a woman, but jealous because you believed Captain Moore had discarded you--had decided you weren't such an essential cog in the _Gordak_ machine."

"Shut up." LeClarc took a quick step toward Kevin and hit him, hooking his left fist at the bigger man's jaw. Kevin staggered but did not go down. Bellowing, he charged at LeClarc, but the Frenchman waved him off with the neutron gun.

"Stop it, LeClarc!" Barling snapped. "I didn't have you bring them here to make a shambles of the lounge. Just stand off in the corner--that's right, there--and watch them. I'll do the talking."

"You realize, of course," Teejay told him calmly, "that this is kidnapping."

"Is it? Who is to say? You never entered the _Gordak_; LeClarc met you within the airlock. For all your crew knows, the three of you are out on Ganymede somewhere--with not much air left. After a time, they'll have to give you up as dead. With the Captain gone, and the Exec, and the expert on Extra-terrestrial zoology--their expedition won't amount to much. It looks to me like old man Carmical will be without a circus this year, unless he resorts to a strictly terrestrial shindig."

"What happens then?" Teejay wanted to know.

"Well, I'll be frank with you. I haven't decided. I can't simply return you to civilization, of course."

"Of course," Teejay echoed him acidly.

"Then you'd be able to holler 'kidnapper'. It would seem that you give me only one alternative. Ah--excuse me a moment."

A trio of men had entered the lounge and the leader, a stocky man of about thirty-five, was beaming. "We've got three," he said.

"Splendid, splendid. In that case, nothing remains to keep us on Ganymede."

"Chief, I'm sure glad of that. This place can give you the heebies, and you never know why. Those three anthrovacs should be a fine core to build your circus around, though."

"Three anthrovacs?" Teejay cried, her composure fading for the first time. "You've got three anthrovacs?"

Barling nodded. "LeClarc here was good enough to tell us Stedman's plan. A first-rate idea, as you can see, only we were able to carry it out. Frankly, I wasn't so optimistic at first."

"Let's get back to us," Teejay suggested. "You were saying...?"

"Umm-mm, yes. There's only one alternative, and much as I regret--"

"What is it? What's the alternative?"

"Please, must I say it? I think you know, and there's no need for me to--"

"No, I want to hear it."

"Suit yourself," said Barling. "The only solution is this: we'll have to eliminate you."

"When?"

"The sooner the better. But Captain Moore, you're making me feel--"

"That's all I wanted to know!" Teejay cried, and hurled herself at Barling. "We might as well try to escape while we still have a chance."

* * * * *

After that, things happened almost too fast for Steve to follow. Kevin got the idea at once, charging at LeClarc before the Frenchman had time to gather his wits. The neutron gun hissed violently, searing a three-inch chunk out of the ceiling. But then LeClarc was struck by two hundred pounds of Kevin McGann, and went down before the onslaught.

Something exploded against Steve's jaw and he did a quick flip and landed on his back. He'd hardly had time to declare himself in the battle, when one of Barling's men had jumped him. Now the man came down atop him, flailing with both fists, but Steve chopped at his face with short, clubbing blows and scrambled to his feet while the man caught his breath.

Steve didn't wait, plunging toward the man with murder in his eyes--and failed to reach him. An arm circled his neck from behind and he was dragged to the floor again, by the second of the three anthrovac hunters. He rolled over, saw Kevin and LeClarc off to his right, standing toe-to-toe and slugging. And beyond them, Teejay was cuffing Barling around the lounge with lusty, man-sized blows. Barling went down under the onslaught, falling at the woman's feet, but then the third hunter had grasped her swirling black cape from behind, throwing it over her head and tripping her. She fought blindly as she went down, taking the hunter with her; and with Barling, they became a tangled melee of thrashing arms and legs.

Steve rolled out from under the second hunter, but the first one met him halfway and pole-axed him down to the floor again with a hard right hand. Sobbing, clutching at the man's legs, Steve began to pull himself upright and got a knee in his face. He went down again, and this time everything in the room receded into a vague, shadowy fog.

When Steve could see again, there was still no order to the chaos. He hadn't lived a violent life like Kevin or Teejay--such things were not part of his background, although he'd boxed in college and won the light-heavyweight championship, too. But there was something different, something elemental about a free-for-all brawl.

LeClarc lay on his back, supine. He looked out of it for the duration, which still set the odds at four to three against the trio from the _Gordak_. Right now Kevin held his own with the two hunters who'd done Steve in, at least temporarily. But that couldn't last, for both were big, muscular men. And Teejay? She was a woman, so perhaps the odds were even worse. Steve smiled grimly as he clambered to his feet to help Kevin. Teejay was a woman, but she was the new twenty-second century woman, and proud of it. The third hunter kicked and thrashed helplessly on the floor as she held him in a head-scissors and at the same time fended off Barling who was crawling around them and looking for an opening. Teejay, definitely, was an asset.

Steve got to hunter number three quickly, pulling him off Kevin and straightening him with an uppercut. After that, it was a set-up. Steve pounded once and then again with his left hand at the man's midsection, then finished by crossing his right and feeling it crunch against the man's jaw.

"Now I see how you could take care of LeClarc that first day!" Kevin yelled, and promptly polished off the other hunter with a blow that lifted him completely off the floor.

As one, they whirled around to face the other side of the room. Barling and his henchman had finally got the upper hand. Teejay lay on her side, her hands behind her back. Not unconscious, she was completely spent, and an almost equally exhausted Barling was attempting to tie her hands with the black cape. The hunter sat there, dull-eyed, watching them. It was Kevin who lifted the hunter and hurled him away, and when Steve rolled Barling over and pushed him against the wall, the man did not resist.

Teejay climbed to her feet, unsteadily. "I--guess I'm growing--soft," she panted. "Maybe--I don't know--maybe training and muscle-toning from--infancy--aren't the answer. A gal just isn't cut out for rough and tumble fighting." Her hand flashed up to her forehead, the back of it resting against her brow. "Ooo, Steve, catch me--"

She fainted in his arms.

Somehow, they got Teejay into her vac-suit. The walls of the lounge were sound-proofed, and the struggle had attracted no one. Silently they made their way out of the lounge and through the corridors of the _Frank Buck_, heading for the airlock. Steve toted Teejay over his shoulder, and remembering Mercury, felt very good about it. He ached all over from the fight and he knew he'd need some mending. But she'd called him Steve, and that--suddenly and ridiculously--was most important.

"What's going on here?" A crewman met them in the corridor and bellowed his challenge.

Kevin raised the neutron gun he had taken from LeClarc.

He never used it.

A fraction of a second later, the _Frank Buck_ blasted off from the surface of Ganymede, and sudden acceleration threw them all to the floor. As Steve was to learn later, no hands were at the controls. No _human_ hands.

* * * * *

"This, roughly, is the situation," began Barling, pacing back and forth, speaking out of swollen lips and averting the right side of his face with its puffy cheek and blackened eye. "We are all in this together, and--"

"You hypocrite!" cried Teejay. "Six hours ago, you wanted to kill us. Now, because something unexpected pops up, you change your mind. Temporarily, for as long as you can use us, is that it?"

"No. If we can get out of this I'll forget about killing, provided you forget about kidnapping."

"Well...."

"You haven't any other choice, Captain Moore."

"He's right," Kevin admitted. "But what's the trouble we're in, Mr. Barling?"

"Six hours ago you three jumped us and almost made your escape. But the _Frank Buck_ took off; suddenly, without warning. _None of my men was at the controls._"

"That doesn't make sense," Steve objected.

"I didn't think so, either. I almost don't know how to explain it, what I've seen with my own eyes after my men held you in detention here in the lounge."

"Why don't you begin at the beginning?" Teejay said, and yawned.

"Don't be funny. Somehow, the anthrovacs escaped from their bubbles and--"

"What?" This was Steve, more than slightly incredulous. "Anthrovacs are mild creatures and unless they're attacked they won't do anything violent."

"That's what I thought, Stedman. I don't know what to think now. The anthrovacs escaped--and freed all the other animals. We've been out longer than the _Gordak_, we have a couple of dozen prize specimens. Lead by the anthrovacs, they've taken over the ship."

"Now you're joking," Teejay told him. "They're all brainless, those creatures, except for the anthrovacs."

"They _were_ brainless, Captain Moore. But not now. Now they behave logically, with a purpose, and they've taken over the _Frank Buck_ from stem to stern--all except those animals that need a special sort of atmosphere to breathe, and they've remained in their bubbles.

"Otherwise, the animals took over. And I suppose you can imagine--the crew was too astounded to resist, especially since the anthrovacs had gotten hold of neutron guns and seemed to know how to use them. Result--we've all been disarmed, we're prisoners aboard our own ship, and bound for I don't know where."

"Sounds crazy to me," Teejay said, and stalked toward the door.

Steve took a quick step after her, but Barling held him back. "Let her find out for herself, Stedman. Then maybe we can talk sense."

Teejay opened the door, stepped out into the corridor. Tensely, Steve waited, ready to bolt after her at the first indications of trouble. But what he heard was a yelp of surprise from the woman, and then she came running back into the lounge, slamming the door behind her.

"A Martian desert cat!" she cried. "It didn't do anything; it just stood there, all ten feet of it, looking at me!"

"Then you believe me?" Barling demanded. "As I see it, we must have been struck by some cosmic radiation which mutated the animals, and--"

"No," Steve told him bluntly. "That's impossible. First place, any such change would have to be selective. _All_ the animals wouldn't be affected. And more important, mutation takes generations to manifest itself. You never see the change at all in the original creature. Look at Earth, way back in the early years of atomics. Genes were mutated at those two island cities--Nagasaki and, umm-mm, I forget the name of the other. Anyway, genes were mutated, but it took over two hundred years for those mutations to become apparent. See what I mean?"

"I do," said Barling. "And that's precisely why I think we ought to fight this thing together. I had an idea, you helped me with it. We can continue like that."

"Well," Steve nodded, "we have a first-class problem on our hands. We can't do anything about it until we know what's going on--only the mystery's a little deeper than you think. First, I heard a voice out on Ganymede. My brother's voice."

"Your brother's?" Barling scratched his head. "Oh, wait a minute! You must mean Charlie Stedman who was killed out here a few years back?"

"Yeah, Charlie. You can't hear voices on Ganymede, but I heard them, inside my head. Also, don't forget the Ganymede-fear. I'd say the three things will fit together when we begin to learn what's going on."

"Provided we can find out," Teejay told him. "You can keep your scientific mysteries for a while, Steve. What I want to know is this: where are we going, and why?"

"Ask your desert cat out there." Kevin's laughter was sour.

"What we need is a good turncoat," Teejay assured him. "Someone who can go out among the animals and ask questions. I'm joking, of course, but if anyone could do it, it would be that rat, LeClarc."

Steve frowned. "That's not as funny as it sounds. Has anyone seen LeClarc since the fight?"

"No!" Kevin slammed fist against palm.

Steve was about to answer, but quite suddenly the lights blinked out. Somewhere outside, a dozen animals roared their fear. Within the lounge, Kevin commenced cursing lustily and an involuntary moan escaped Barling's lips.

The darkness was the bleak, utter black of deep space. Further, Steve realized, the steady humming of the fission engines had ceased.

Minutes later, impossible pain gripped him and flung him, sobbing to the floor. He'd never felt anything like it, a gripping, grinding, twisting torment which tried to turn him inside out. He heard the others dimly, reeling about the lounge and falling to the floor, and in the darkness someone fell near him.

"Steve? Steve, is that you?" Teejay....

"Yeah." The pain seemed to come in waves, and Steve gritted his teeth when the second turned out to be worse than the first. He reached out with his hand, found Teejay's and squeezed it. "Hold on, kid. It can't last forever."

"It better--not."

When her hand tensed in his, then relaxed, Steve knew she'd fainted. And soon after that, his own senses reeled and deserted him.

* * * * *

Teejay's hand was still tightly clenched in his when he regained consciousness. A dozen feet from them, Kevin sat up, shaking his head slowly back and forth. Schuyler Barling lay stretched out on his stomach.

"Whatever happened," Kevin growled, "I didn't like it."

Teejay extricated her hand, looked at Steve, smiled. "It's still awful quiet outside."

It didn't remain that way for long. As if Teejay's words had been a signal, a voice boomed at them from the wall-microphone. "We have landed. All humans will please file out into the main corridor in an orderly fashion and make their way to the airlock."

Schuyler Barling sat up groggily.

Teejay said, "I could swear I know that voice from somewhere."

"And I," Kevin told them. "It's familiar, though I can't place it."

Steve felt his heart pounding. The voice was Charlie's.

* * * * *

They stood on a flat, grassy plain which stretched halfway to the horizon and then began to undulate into low hills. And far off, shrouded by purple mists, a range of mountains loomed distantly.

Purple mist; a purplish cast to the sky; a fiercely bright blue sun. "What world is this?" said Kevin.

The crew of the _Frank Buck_--a hundred men--stood in a long, thin file outside the ship. They'd balked at first, but silently, the three anthrovacs had ferreted them out with their neutron guns, never uttering a sound, merely motioning with the weapons. Of the other animals Steve saw nothing, but within the corridors of the _Frank Buck_ he'd encountered a sand crawler and a desert cat, both dead.

The seconds fled, became minutes. When half an hour had passed, the crew became restless and some of them ambled off on the grassy plain until one of the anthrovacs herded them back. The _Frank Buck_'s Exec, a short, wiry man, strode within the ship and came out a few moments later, scratching his head. "I can't understand it," he said. "None of the instruments work. I thought we could just pile back into the ship and blast off, but apparently someone has other ideas."

Someone did.

Someone came striding across the plain, a small dot of a figure at first. He came closer.

Steve ignored the anthrovacs, ran forward. "Charlie!" he cried. "Charlie!"

The man was shorter than Steve, and stockier. His eyes searched Steve's face briefly, and he said: "Should I know you?"

"Should you! I'm your brother!"

"Interesting, but quite impossible."

The words hardly registered, and Steve babbled on, "We thought you were dead. It was Teejay here who reported back to Earth saying you'd died on Ganymede. Now you're alive and--" Abruptly he whirled, turned to Teejay. "You lied, damn you! Here's Charlie, see? Charlie was never dead. But you said--"

"I said Charlie was dead." The woman met his gaze levelly. "He was. I know a dead man when I see one. He was dead."

"But--"

"But nothing. I don't know who this is. I can't explain it. That has nothing to do with what happened on Ganymede years ago."

"Yes? Then what did happen? Why did Charlie write once that you must have been spawned in hell? You never did want to tell me what happened on Ganymede, did you? Maybe Charlie can."

"That is my name, Charlie Stedman. It is the name this body has always had, although when I do not inhabit it I assure you I am not Charlie Stedman," the stocky man said. "You see, the original inhabitant of the garment--the body--was destroyed. The name applied to the body as well as the inhabiting mind. The language remained engraved in the brain cells, and impersonal parts of the memory, too. In that sense, I am Charlie Stedman. Does it satisfy you?"

"Hell, no," said Steve, bewildered. Mystery had been piled upon mystery, with no solution in sight. And grim confusion turned to grimmer anger as he faced Teejay once more. "All right, start talking. Just how did you find Charlie? And what made him hate you like that? Talk, damn you!"

"Okay, I will. But I don't know why Charlie hated me, and that's the truth. I only met him once or twice and--unless it was Schuyler here. Hey, Schuyler!"

Barling joined them. "What do you want?"

"Answer this question: do you make a practise of poisoning the minds of your crew against me?"

"Well, I don't know what you mean by poi--"

Teejay grabbed a handful of his shirt and twisted, constricting the collar about his throat. "Answer me," she said. "And no run around."

"I--I guess so. It's only business, Captain Moore. The more they hated you, the more they'd be willing to fight you in the hunt every step of the way."

"How about Charlie Stedman?"

"I don't remember. Probably, it was like that."

Teejay flung him away from her. "Does that satisfy you, Steve?"

"For that part, yes. But what about the rest of it?"

"Not much to tell. I was out alone on Ganymede, a few miles from the ship. I thought I heard voices, sort of inside my head. I went forward to explore, just like you did, and also like you, I almost didn't have enough air to get back. Especially since I found your brother on the way."

"And he was dead?" As he spoke, Steve looked at his brother, standing right there in front of him, and wondered if anyone ever asked a more impossible question.

"Yes. He was dead. I don't know how he died, but I placed my ear against the chest of his vac-suit. The heart-beat is amplified through it, you know. But there wasn't any. After that, I ran back to the _Gordak_, and I had barely enough air to make it. I reported Charlie's death, of course."

Charlie's death. Well, she sounded sincere. But there was Charlie, standing two paces to her right and apparently listening to an account of his own demise.

* * * * *

Charlie cleared his throat. Quite evidently, it wasn't Charlie at all, but Steve could think of the man in no other way, for down to the smallest physical detail, he was Charlie. "That will suffice," he said. Again, it was Charlie's voice, but expressionless. "Enough of bickering. You will all march with me toward those hills, and we have a long journey before sunset."

The nine-foot anthrovacs took up their positions one on each side of the column and one behind it, and no one disobeyed. Once Steve looked back over his shoulder and saw the purple mists had almost completely swallowed the _Frank Buck_.

Then the irony of the situation struck Steve and he smiled--almost. He'd come to Ganymede after anthrovacs. But he'd left the satellite under an anthrovac guard! Fine thing. A mighty hunter was he! Clear across the universe to be bagged by his own game!

Obviously, Steve thought as they marched on, the blue day-star was not Earth's sun. Somehow, in a matter of moments, they'd left the Solar System entirely. He knew that theories had been advanced about traveling through something called sub-space, something which could make flight to the farthest stars almost instantaneous, since sub-space existed outside the space-time continuum. And that wrenching from one spatial plane to another might explain the tremendous pain they'd undergone, too. But surely the _Frank Buck_ had never been equipped for such flight. The whole concept of sub-space flight was strictly theoretical and hadn't even reached the drawing-board stage.

Then how had it happened?

Kevin had some vague, half-formed ideas on the subject, and he let Steve know about them. "It's a puzzler, boy. They took us a long way, space alone knows how far. I don't pretend to know why; we can't figure that out, not yet. But I know this: they could not have done that without help. Someone had to bring the ship."

"The anthrovacs?" Steve suggested.

"Not the anthrovacs. For all their handling neutron guns and taking the _Frank Buck_ over, they're just big apes to me. Maybe they were able to take the ship off Ganymede, but no more than that. They had help, boy, and from the inside."

"Who? Who do you mean?"

"I'm not sure I know. But look at it this way. The _Gordak_ wasn't taken, the _Frank Buck_ was. Why? I'll tell you why, or at least I'll tell you one possibility. There were scores of men on each ship, but while the _Gordak_ had only one animal--the stone worm you got on Mercury--the _Frank Buck_ had dozens. All right so far, boy? Well, here's what I think: _whoever took the ship wanted both men and animals._"

"I still don't understand."

"I'm not sure I do, either. Let's get back a little. The _Frank Buck_, not the _Gordak_, was taken. Strange, isn't it, that just before that happened LeClarc bolted our ranks and joined the enemy! Does that mean LeClarc had to be on the _Frank Buck_ before anything happened? And where'd he get to, anyway? I haven't seen him since the fight; I don't think anyone has. Now, a man spends years idolizing a woman--I've been around, and I think I told you LeClarc would have done anything for Captain Moore. Suddenly, he gets sulky because he's out of favor with her, and decides on a double-cross.

"It smells bad, boy. Sure, he was sulky, but the LeClarc I knew would have come crawling to Captain Moore, anyway. This one didn't." Kevin paused, ran a hand through his red hair. "Maybe it means he isn't the same man. Maybe it means he's something like that thing which calls itself your brother. That's not Charlie Stedman and you know it. Trouble is, boy, you can't admit it to yourself."

"I won't argue about it," Steve replied. "But you're off the beam there. Charlie doesn't remember me, but LeClarc's memory seemed fine."

"That's true, Steve. I can't explain it, except like this: whatever happened to both of them, we don't know a thing about it. Maybe it works in a different way on different people. Maybe because Charlie was dead first, his personal memories were a loss, but LeClarc's weren't because he might have been possessed alive."

"Possessed?"

"Yes, possessed. Oh, not by spirits, that's for sure. But possessed nevertheless. I won't say the anthrovacs were possessed, for we don't know enough about them to begin with. But look at those other animals now, the ones that died. You won't deny that something took over their brains?"

"Damned right I won't. But I still don't see how it all adds up."

"Nor do I," said Kevin. "Unfortunately, the brutes seemed to have perished in transit from Ganymede to here, wherever here is. It could be that the strain on their brain-tissue, with sentience and intelligence taking over where before only sentience had resided, was too great."

Kevin paused, then concluded: "whatever the reason, whatever the reason for all of it--I think you'll find LeClarc knows all about it."

The blue sun had neared the horizon and the purple mists had become cool and chilling at journey's end. It was then that they saw LeClarc.

* * * * *

The column of men had traversed the grassy plain, had climbed steadily through the region of undulating hills. And suddenly, hidden until the last moment by a rise in the terrain and spread out at the foot of the higher mountains, they saw a city. Circular, walled, pleasantly pastel-tinted despite the purple gloom, it lay before them, lights which might or might not have been electricity winking on to dispel the gathering darkness.

And there, at the city's gateway, stood LeClarc. LeClarc--and not LeClarc. The man seemed as much LeClarc as the short stocky figure who led the procession seemed Charlie Stedman. "Welcome to Uashalume," he said, and Steve pulled up short at the sound of his voice. There was something of the volatile Frenchman in it, but something else which was alien.

"You will be billeted in temporary quarters for the night," LeClarc continued. "You will of course have no need for such quarters after tomorrow's bazaar."

"Of course, my foot!" Teejay cried petulantly. "See here, LeClarc, we've been getting orders and directives without knowing what they mean or why they were given or--"

"Must you be so impatient?" LeClarc's smile was almost devoid of mirth. "You've come one hundred thousand light years, and surely you can wait until morning."

"Light years!" This was Steve.

And Kevin, "One hundred thousand!"

The academic problem didn't bother Teejay as much as the human one. She said, defiantly, "What he needs is a good swift kick."

LeClarc failed to wait for that, or anything else. Chuckling, he led the first anthrovac through the high-arched stone gateway and the other two creatures herded the humans in after him. Charlie--although obviously, the man was not Charlie--went on ahead with LeClarc, and Steve had to restrain Teejay with a few terse words.

The purple mists cloaked the city completely now, and as they plodded along a wide roadway, Steve half-saw figures watching them from the darkness. He could not make the figures out, however, and he heard nothing but the sounds their feet made on the stone roadway.

Presently, they came to a smaller, divergent path which led back to the base of the wall. Here, in deepest shadow, was their destination--a squat, rectangular building carved from stone. A gate creaked and clanged open before them; they streamed through, weary after hours of forced march; the gate clanged resoundingly behind them. Charlie had not entered with them, nor LeClarc, nor the anthrovacs. It took Steve only a moment to discover the gate had been securely fastened from the outside.

"I guess we bed down here for the night," he said, grinning ruefully.

Teejay shrugged, wrapped the black cape tightly about her. It was cold and damp in the one large chamber which took up the interior of the building. In the center of the place stood a stone table, and on it a gas lamp which flickered and spluttered and cast grotesque shadows as the men wandered about. There were no beds, no furniture of any sort except for the table. And the two small peep-hole windows were fifteen or more feet off the ground.

The crew of the _Frank Buck_ gathered in small, anxious knots and whispered grimly among themselves. After a time, men circulated between one group and another, and finally one of them, evidently designated as spokesman for the rest, approached Schuyler Barling.

He seemed nervous, frightened, unsure of himself. "Captain Barling, my name's Steiner, and the fellows thought that--well, that I might speak for them. We don't know what's going on, but we do know this much: we don't like it."

"I can't blame you," said Barling.

"Point is, sir, we want you to do something about it."

"Eh? Me? What can I do?"

"We don't know that, sir. But a spaceman's a peculiar individual; some say he's got characteristics you won't find elsewhere, and one of them is this: he has complete confidence in his captain."

"Why, thank you, Steiner."

"Me, I work in fission. I like to have that confidence and the rest of the men, they like to have it too. When they lose it, they're kind of at a loss. We don't want to think we've lost it here, sir."

"What do you want me to do?" Barling was restless, fidgety, twisting his hands together.

"Lead us, sir. Tell us you can get us out of here. Tell us we must be prepared to fight behind you and maybe to die, but lead us."

"But how can you expect me to lead you when I don't know what's happening? How can I plan for escape when I don't know what it is we have to escape from?"

"There's talk among the men, sir," Steiner went on. "Some of them are for you, although I'll be frank. There aren't many, sir. But they need a leader, all of them agree on that. What they want to know is this: are you their man?"

Barling squared his thin shoulders arrogantly. "I'm the _Frank Buck_'s Captain."

"The _Frank Buck_ lies behind us in those purple mists, sir. Could you find it? Finding it, could you make it run again?"

"I don't know."

"Then the fact that you captain the _Frank Buck_ doesn't mean much. We've decided that leaves us without a leader, sir. We need a leader."

Barling smiled coldly. "Are you trying to tell me the men have selected you?"

"No, sir. I'm not. But the majority of the men have their choice--and that is Captain Moore. We who have been with the _Frank Buck_ longest have heard a lot of bad talk about Captain Moore, but that changes completely whenever we make planetfall. The talk in all the frontier towns is all in Captain Moore's favor. When there are decisions to be made, sir, we'd like her to make them."

"A woman? When all your lives may be at stake?"

* * * * *

One of the three hunters who'd fared so poorly in the lounge fight strode forward, saying: "Look at yourself, sir. You're beaten and battered, and that's Captain Moore's work. Did her sex matter then?"

Barling reddened, said nothing.

"We have a pressing need for a leader," Steiner continued. "Our behavior cannot be chaotic. The leader must plan for us, and we must be prepared to carry out those plans with no hesitation. We must have faith in our leader."