Spiders spun threads, she explained, and spiders got in everywhere. Even a very suspicious spy probably wouldn’t give much attention to a spider thread or two even if he noticed them.
They brought a couple of well-nourished spiders aboard the ship and attached a few threads to the camouflaged camera in the engine room. Anyone doing anything at all to the camera was going to break a thread.
Vezzarn, of course, couldn’t be completely counted out now as a potential spy. The old spacer’s experience might make him very useful on the run; but if it could be made to seem that it was his own decision, they’d leave him on Uldune.
Vezzarn scratched his gray head.
“Sounds like the Chaladoor’s acting up kind of bad right now, at that!” he agreed innocently. “But I’ll come along anyway, skipper, if it’s all right with you.”
So Vezzarn also came along. If they’d discharged him just before starting on the trip for which he’d been hired, people would have been wondering again.
On the night before take-off, Daalmen in an unmarked van brought two sizable crates out to the Evening Bird and loaded them on the ship at the captain’s directions. One crate went into a brand-new strongbox in the storage vault with a time lock on it. When it was inside, the captain set the lock to a date two weeks ahead. The other crate went into a stateroom recently sealed off from the rest of the passenger compartment. The first contained the crystalloid object which had been on Olimy’s ship; and the other contained Olimy himself.
They’d completed all preparations as well as they could.
After they’d been aloft twelve hours, Goth went down to the engine room with one of the spiders in a box in her pocket, and looked into the locked compartment. The camera hadn’t come into action, but the two almost imperceptible threads attached to it were broken. Someone had been there.
She had the spider attach fresh threads and came back up. None of their expensive bugs had been disturbed. The engine room prowler should be a spy of experience.
When they checked again next day, someone had been there again.
It didn’t seem too likely it had been the same someone. The bugs still had recorded no movement. They had two veteran spies on board then — perhaps three. The Totisystem Toy might have had a third visitor before the spider threads were reattached to the camera. But the camera hadn’t gone into action even once.
Short of putting all three suspects in chains, there wasn’t much they could do about it at the moment. The closer they got to the Chaladoor, the less advisable it would be for either of them to be anywhere but in the control section or in their cabins, which opened directly on the control section, for any considerable length of time. The spies, whether two or three, might simply give up. After all, the only mystery drive to be found on the ship was a bundle of wires in a drawer of the bedside table in Goth’s cabin. Plus Goth.
On the fourth ship-day something else occurred…
* * *
The captain was in the control chair, on watch, while Goth napped in her cabin. The Chaladoor had opened up awesomely before them, and the Venture was boring through it at the peak thrust of her souped-up new drives. Their supersophisticated detection system registered occasional blips, but so far they’d been the merest flickers. The captain’s gaze shifted frequently to the forward screens. A small, colorful star cluster hung there, a bit to port, enveloped in a haze of reddish-brown dust against the black of space. It was the first of their guideposts through the uncertainties of the Chaladoor, but one it was wise to give a wide berth to — the reputed lair, in fact, of his old acquaintances, the Megair Cannibals.
He tapped in a slight course modification. The cluster slid gradually farther to port. Then the small desk screen beside him, connected to the entrance to the control section, made a burring sound. He clicked it on and Vezzarn’s face appeared.
“Yes?” said the captain.
Vezzarn’s head shifted as he glanced back along the empty passage behind him. “Something going on you ought to know about, skipper!” he whispered hoarsely.
The captain simultaneously pressed the button which released the entrance door and the one which brought Goth awake in her cabin.
“Come in!” he said.
Vezzarn’s face vanished. The captain slipped his Blythe gun out of a desk drawer and into his pocket, stood up as the little spaceman hastily entered the control room. “Well?” he asked.
“That NO ADMITTANCE door back of the passenger section, skipper! Looks like one of ’em’s snooping around in there.”
“Which one?” asked the captain as Goth appeared in the control room behind Vezzarn.
Vezzarn shrugged. “Don’t know! No one in the lounge right now. I was coming by, saw the door open just a crack—”
“You didn’t investigate?”
“No, sir!” Vezzarn declared virtuously. “Not me. Not without your permission, I wouldn’t go in there! Thought I’d better tell you right away though.”
“Come along,” the captain told Goth. He snapped the control entrance door shut on lock behind the three of them, and they hurried along the passage to the lounge. Goth stayed there to keep an eye on the Chaladoor through the lounge screens. The captain and Vezzarn hastened on, stopped at the door to the sealed passage, at the far end of which Olimy sat unmoving in his dark stateroom.
“Closed now!” Vezzarn said.
The captain glanced at him, drawing the key to the passage from his pocket. “Sure you saw it open?” he asked.
Vezzarn looked hurt. “Sure as I’m standing here, skipper! Just a bit. But it was open!”
“All right.” Whoever had been prowling about the ship before might have investigated the passage and the stateroom, discovered Olimy there — which should be a considerable shock to most people — and hurriedly left again. “You go wait with Dani in the lounge,” he said. “I’ll check.”
The key turned in the lock. The captain twisted the handle. The door flew open, banging into him; and he caught Hulik do Eldel by the arm as she darted out. She twisted a dead-white face up to him, eyes staring. Then, before he could say anything, her mouth opened wide and she screamed piercingly.
* * *
The scream brought Vezzarn back to the scene, Laes Yango lumbering behind him. Hulik was babbling her head off. The captain shoved the passage door shut, said curtly, “Let’s get her to the lounge…”
It was an awkward situation, but by the time they got to the lounge he had a story ready. The motionless figure Miss do Eldel had seen was simply another passenger and no cause for alarm. The man, whose name the captain was not at liberty to disclose, suffered from a form of paralysis for which a cure was to be sought on Emris. Some very important personages of Uldune were involved; and for reasons of planetary politics, the presence of the patient on board the Evening Bird was to have been a complete secret. It was unfortunate that Miss do Eldel had allowed her curiosity to take her into an off limits section of the ship and discover their fellow-passenger. He trusted, the captain concluded, that he could count on the discretion of those present to see that the story at least got no farther…
Laes Yango, Vezzarn, and Hulik nodded earnestly. Whatever Hulik had thought when she turned on a light in Olimy’s stateroom, she seemed to accept the captain’s explanations. She was looking both relieved and very much embarrassed as he went off to relock the stateroom and passage doors… not that locking things up on the ship seemed to make much difference at present -
“If I could see you in the control section, Miss do Eldel,” he said when he came back. “Vezzarn, you’d better stay at the viewscreens till Dani and I take over up front…”
In the control room he asked Hulik to be seated. Goth already was at the console. But the detector system had remained reassuringly quiet, and the Megair Cluster was dropping behind them. The captain switched on the intercom, called Vezzarn off the lounge screens. Then he turned back to the passenger.
“I really must apologize, Captain Aron!” Hulik to
ld him contritely. “I don’t know what possessed me. I assure you I don’t make it a practice to pry into matters that are not my business.”
“What I’d like to know,” the captain said, “is how you were able to unlock the passage door and the one to the stateroom.”
Hulik looked startled.
“But I didn’t!” she said. “Neither door was locked and the one to the passage stood open. That’s why it occurred to me to look inside… Couldn’t Vezzarn — no, you hadn’t told Vezzarn about this either, had you?”
“No, I hadn’t,” said the captain.
“You’re the only one who has keys to the door?”
He nodded. “Supposedly.”
“Then I don’t understand it. I swear I’m telling the truth!” Hulik’s dark eyes gazed at him in candid puzzlement. Then their expression changed. “Or could the — the unfortunate person in there have revived enough to have opened the doors from within?” Her face said she didn’t like that idea at all.
The captain told her he doubted it. And from what Goth knew of the disminded condition, it was in fact impossible that Olimy’s shape could have moved by itself, let alone begun unlocking doors. Otherwise, it seemed the incident hadn’t told them anything about the shipboard prowlers they didn’t already know. Hulik do Eldel looked as though she were telling the truth. But then an experienced lady spy would look as if she were telling the truth, particularly when she was lying…
He’d had an alarm device set up in the control desk which would go off if anyone tampered with the strongbox containing Olimy’s crystalloid in the storage vault. He was glad now he had taken that precaution, though it still did seem almost unnecessary — the time lock on the strongbox was supposed to be tamper-proof; and the storage vault itself had been installed on the ship by the same firm of master craftsmen who’d designed the vaults for the Daal’s Bank.
* * *
Most of the next ship-day passed quietly — or in relative quiet. They did, in fact, have their first real attack alert, but it was not too serious a matter. A round dozen black needle-shapes registered suddenly in the screens against the purple glare of a star. Stellar radiation boiling through space outside had concealed the blips till then… and not by accident; it was a common attack gambit and they’d been on the watch for it whenever their course took them too near a sun. The black ships moved at high speed along an interception course with the Venture. They looked wicked and competent.
The buzzer roused Goth in her sleep cabin. Thirty seconds later one of the desk screens lit up and her face looked out at the captain. “Ready!” her voice told him. She raked sleep-tousled brown hair back from her forehead. “Now?”
“Not yet.” Sneaking through the sun system, he hadn’t pushed the Venture; they still had speed in reserve. “We might outrun them. We’ll see… Switch your screen to starboard—”
The ship’s intercom pealed a signal. The passenger lounge. The captain cut it in. “Yes?” he said.
“Are you aware, sir,” Laes Yango’s voice inquired, “that we are about to be waylaid?”
The captain thanked him, told him he was, and that he was prepared to handle the situation. The trader switched off, apparently satisfied. He must have excellent nerves; the voice had sounded composed, no more than moderately interested. And sharp eyes, the captain thought — the lounge screens couldn’t have picked up the black ships until almost the instant before Yango called.
It was too bad though that he was in the lounge at the moment. If the Sheewash Drive had to be used, the captain would slap an emergency button first, which, among other things, blanked out the lounge screens. Nevertheless, that in itself was likely to give Yango some food for thought…
But perhaps it wouldn’t be necessary. The captain watched the calculated interception point in the instruments creep up. Still three minutes away. The black ships maintained an even speed. Four of them were turning off from the others, to cut in more sharply, come up again from behind… He shoved the drive thrust regulator slowly flat to the desk. The drives howled monstrous thunder. A minute and a half later, they flashed through the interception point with a comfortably sixty seconds to spare. The black ships had poured on power at the last moment, too. but the Venture was simply faster.
His watch ended, and Goth’s began. He slept, ate, came on watch again…
Chapter SEVEN
It was time to rouse Goth once more… past time by twenty minutes or so. But let her sleep a little longer, the captain thought. This alternate-watch arrangement would get to be a grind before the Chaladoor run was over! If he could only trust one of the others on board…
Well, he couldn’t.
He sniffed. For a moment he’d fancied a delicate suggestion of perfume in the air. Imagination. Hulik do Eldel used perfume, but it was over twenty-four hours since she’d been in the control room. Besides she didn’t use this kind.
Something stirred in his memory. Who did use this kind of perfume? Wasn’t it -
“Do you have a few minutes to spare for me, Captain Aron?” somebody purred throatily behind him. He started, spun about in the chair.
Red-headed Sunnat leaned with lazy, leggy grace against the far wall of the control room, eyes half shut, smiling at him. Her costume was the one which most of all had set the captain’s pulses leaping rapidly, when she’d slid off her cloak and revealed it to him, back in Zergandol.
He started again, but less violently.
“Not bad!” he remarked. He cleared his throat. “You were off on the voice though and pretty far off, I’d say, on the perfume.”
Sunnat stared at him a moment, smile fading. “Hm!” she said coldly. She turned, swayed into Goth’s cabin. Goth came out a moment later, half frowning, half grinning.
“Thought I was her pretty good!” she stated. “Voice, too!”
“You were, really!” the captain admitted. “And just what, may I ask, was the idea?”
Goth hitched herself up on the communicator table and dangled her legs. “Got to practice,” she explained. “There’s a lot to it. Not easy to hold the whole thing together either!”
“Light waves, sound waves, and scents, eh? No, I imagine it wouldn’t be. That’s all you do?”
“Right now it’s all,” nodded Goth.
The captain reflected. “Another thing — if you saw that costume of hers, you were doing some underhanded snooping-around in Zergandol!”
“Looked like you might need help,” Goth said darkly.
“Well, I didn’t!”
“No.” She grinned. “Couldn’t know that, though. Want me to do Hulik? I got her down just right.”
“Another time.” The captain climbed out of the chair, adjusted the seat for her. “I’d better get some sleep. And you’d better forget about practicing and keep your eyes pinned to those screens! There’ve been a few flickers again.”
“Don’t worry!” She slipped down from the table, started over to him. Then they both froze.
There were short, screeching whistles, a flickering line of red on the console. An alarm -
“Strongbox!” hissed Goth.
* * *
They raced through the silent ship to the storage. The lounge was deserted, its lights dim. It had been ship-night for two hours.
The big storage door was shut, seemed locked, but swung open at the captain’s touch. The automatic lighting inside was on — somebody there! Cargo packed the compartment to the ship’s curved hull above. The captain brought out his gun as they went quickly down the one narrow aisle still open along the length of the storage, then came in sight of the vault at the far end to the left. The vault door — that massive, burglar-proof slab — stood half open.
Vezzarn lay face down in the door opening, legs within the vault as if he had stumbled and fallen in the act of emerging from it. He didn’t move as they scrambled past him. The interior of the vault hummed like a hive of disturbed giant insects. The strongbox stood against one wall, its top section tilted up. A number
of unfamiliar tools lay on the floor about it. The humming poured up out of the box.
It was like wading knee-deep through thick, sucking mud to get to it! The captain’s head reeled in waves of dizziness. The humming deepened savagely. He heard Goth shout something behind him. Then he was bending over the opened box. Gray light glared out of it; cold fire stabbed — he seemed to be dropping forward, headlong into cold, gray distances, as his hands groped frantically about, found the tough, flexible plastic wrapping which had been pulled away from the crystal’s surface, wrenched, tugged it back into place.
In seconds they had it covered again, the plastic ends twisted tightly together; they stood gasping and staring at each other as the angry humming subsided. It was as if something that had been coming awake had gone back to sleep.
“Just in time here — maybe!” panted the captain. “Let’s hurry!”
They couldn’t get the strongbox closed all the way, left it as it was — top pulled down, a gap showing beneath it. They hauled Vezzarn clear of the vault door, shoved the door shut, spun its triple locks till they clicked back into position. The captain wrestled Vezzarn up to his shoulder. The old spacer might be dead or merely unconscious; in any case, he was a loose, floppy weight, difficult to keep a grasp on.
They got the storage door locked. Then Goth was off, darting back to the control section, the captain hurrying and stumbling after her with Vezzarn. There was still no sign of the two passengers — but that didn’t necessarily mean they were asleep in their staterooms.
He let Vezzarn slide to the control room floor and joined Goth at the instruments. The glittering dark of the Chaladoor swam about them but nothing of immediate importance was registering. Most particularly, nothing which suggested the far-off Worm World knew Olimy’s crystal had been uncovered again on a ship thundering along its solitary course through space. They exchanged glances.
“Might have been lucky!” the captain said. “If there’re no Nuris anywhere around here—” He drew in a long breath, looked back at Vezzarn. “Let’s try to get that character awake!”
The Witches of Karres Page 15