Murder in the Void

by Edmond Hamilton

  The scream came from the throat of the drunken young Earthman who had been eating the orchid. The man's lax handsome face was contorted now in agony, his eyes protruding, his body arched half out of his chair, his hands clawing the air.

  Another ghastly shriek bubbled from his throat into the frozen silence. Then he crashed down across the table.

  Diners sprang to their feet, shouting hoarsely. Stewards and officers came running toward the table. Rab Crane bent swiftly over the young man's body, sniffed at the strange odor that rose from his lips.

  Crane straightened, reached for the salt-cellar on the table, sniffed it. His tablemates watched frozenly.

  "He's dead — poisoned!" Crane said, finally.

  As an officer stooped to lift the body, "Don't touch him with your bare hands!" Crane cried.

  For the body of the poisoned man was beginning to glow faintly, his face giving off a feeble, eerie white light!

  "Gods of Mars!" cried little Kark Al horrifiedly. "Look at that body — look-"

  "This man was poisoned with a super-powerful radium salt," Rab Crane declared to the horrified officers. "He died instantly in awful agony and his whole body is charged with radioactive force now and will have to be handled with lead gloves. Someone substituted the radium salt for the ordinary salt in this salt shaker."

  * * *

  Lalla Dee looked up at Crane with wide, terrified dark eyes.

  "Then maybe it was someone trying to kill you," she said. "The poison couldn't have been intended for any of the rest of us."

  Crane knew what she meant. Only Earthmen, out of all the Solar System's peoples, were habitual users of salt. He knew well that the poison had been intended for him — and that someone at this table had made the substitution!

  Yet he said, shaking his head, "There's no reason why anyone would want to kill me. I'm just an ordinary importer. No, this young fellow must have had some enemy who took this means to kill him."

  "I'll swear that I filled that cellar with ordinary salt today!" said the table-steward hoarsely.

  "The whole affair will have to be investigated by the captain," the third mate of the Vulcan said crisply, "meanwhile send for a hospital detail to remove this man's body."

  As the body was carried out by leadgloved attendants, Kark Al said sickly:

  "I–I guess I'm not hungry after all. I'm going to my cabin."

  "I don't want to eat now either," the white-faced Lalla Dee told Rab Crane. "That awful scream-"

  In fact, they had all risen from the table except Jurk Usk, the Jovian, who kept his seat and was awaiting his dinner with the surly immobility of his race.

  Rab Crane, as he followed the girl toward the door of the noticed that Kin Nilga was already disappearing ahead of them. The Saturnian seemed in a hurry.

  Crane's mind was working 'swiftly. Someone at their table had Doctor Alph's brain. And that someone had tried twice, now, to kill him. Of those two things he was certain. But which one? He thought of those snapped necks — the huge physical strength of the Jovian and Saturnian.

  He lingered behind Lalla Dee.

  "Can you tell me which person at our table came into the dining saloon first tonight?" he asked the shaken table-steward.

  "Kin Nilga, the Saturnian gentleman, sir. He was first at the table."

  "I want to ask him if he noticed anyone lurking by the table when he entered," Crane said, and went on after the Venusian girl.

  But as he moved along the dark promenade deck with Lalla Dee, Crane's excitement was mounting. Kin Nilga, then, had had the best chance of any of them to plant that deadly poison. And Kin Nilga also had the great physical strength that killer must have had.

  Was the solemn-faced Saturnian the diabolical agent who had stolen the brain of Doctor Alph? Crane resolved to find out this very night!

  Lalla Dee had stopped by the transparent glassite wall of the deck, and Crane saw that she was still shivering.

  "That poor young man's face — I'll never forget it!" she said, her dark eyes clouded with horror. "I feel as if there is some horrible monster on this ship, lurking, hidden-"

  "Nonsense! Whoever adopted that devilish method of murder was after one man," Crane told her. "And he' be caught within a few hours." And to distract her attention, he pointed through the glassite wall. "There's a sight you'll never see on Venus."

  * * *

  She looked, and clapped her hands in entranced delight. In the vast black firmament of space burned the eternal stars, glorious blazing jewel in dark space. The ship was rushing through a constellated wilderness of suns. The rocket-tubes had been shut off and only the steady beat-beat-beat of the ventilation pumps came along the dark deck where Crane and the girl stood.

  "It's unreal!" Lalla Dee cried. "I've often dreamed what it would be like to see the stars that we can never see through the cloudy skies of Venus, but I didn't dream it was like this."

  She pointed to a calm, green speck of light shining large and bright, almost due ahead of the ship.

  "That's Earth, isn't it? Is it really as beautiful as everyone says?"

  "I'm an Earthman, and my opinion is biased," Crane nodded. "But I think it's the most beautiful world in the System. Its snowy mountains and deep blue seas; its green fields and quiet forests and rivers and old cities — yes, it's beautiful. Beautiful and worth fighting for, worth dying for-"

  He had spoken half to himself, his eyes brooding on that calm green speck. He became aware that Lalla Dee was looking at him intently.

  "We're always proud of own particular world, aren't we?" he said.

  They stared a little longer at the scene, then Lalla Dee turned from the wall.

  "I think I'll go to bed," she told him. "I'll see you at breakfast, Mr. Idwall."

  "A sweet kid," Crane thought as he left her at her cabin and walked on toward his own. Then the perilous task ahead of him claimed his thoughts. He must search Kin Nilga's cabin.

  As he sat in his own dark cabin, waiting for the liner's passengers to retire, Crane's mind grappled with what lay ahead. If Kin Nilga was the possessor of the stolen brain, then entering the Saturnian's cabin was dangerous.

  But he had to do it! Every hour that passed brought the Vulcan nearer Earth where Kin Nilga could easily trans-ship to another liner and throw him off the trail. And every hour increased the chance that one of the killer's diabolical attacks would take his life. Crane waited two hours, until silence filled the corridor. The last passengers had sought their cabins and only the ship's officers and men on duty in the control and rocket rooms remained up.

  Then quietly the TSS man slipped out of his cabin, his hand resting on the hilt of his beam-pistol.

  Except for the droning throb of the air-pumps, there was no sound as Rab Crane approached the door of Kin Nilga's cabin.

  He stopped abruptly, stiffened, as he came opposite it. That door was slightly open. And from inside the Saturnian's dark cabin came a hoarse, smothered cry!

  Crane shoved the door wide open, pistol aimed. He glimpsed a shadowy figure bending over the bunk, and even as he looked he heard a snap that could be only the dull cracking sound of a breaking neck!

  Crane knew, in one swift flash of insight, that he had been wrong. Kin Nilga was not the killer! The real murderer was this squat, shadowy shape who had just slain Kin Nilga!

  Crane rasped, "Stand where you are or I'll kill you!"

  The shadowy killer turned, started across the dark room toward him with quick, heavy steps"

  "Stop or I'll fire!" Crane warned. And when the shadow did not pause, the TSS man pulled the trigger of his beam gun.

  The thin white beam from his pistol knifed the darkness of the cabin and struck the shadowy, indistinct form of his opponent squarely.

  Yet the killer came on! Though Crane fired his deadly beam again straight into the advancing slayer, the shadow did not even falter as he lunged through the gloom at Crane!

  CHAPTER III

  VOICE OF THE BRAIN

 
Crane was so stupefied by the failure of his beams — which should have killed any living thing at this close range — to halt the killer, that he nearly lost his life. Before he turned to escape the remorseless figure had reached him.

  Hands grabbed Crane in the most powerful grip he had ever felt, bruising his flesh to the bone by the tremendous strength of their grasp. He cried out hoarsely, struggling in the dark against that terrible clutch.

  The grip shifted to his neck as Crane fought futilely to escape. Even as he struggled, the TSS man knew that another moment would see his neck snapped, as those of the guardsmen of Doctor Alph's house had snapped.

  But his cry had been heard, and the alarmed voices of passengers in other cabins were suddenly audible. The killer, apparently alarmed, flung Rab Crane aside and leaped out of the cabin, his heavy steps receding rapidly down the corridor.

  Crane, stunned by the impact and bruised by the other's iron grasp, staggered out of the darkened cabin as the people burst into the corridor and the lights were snapped on. The second mate of the Vulcan cried:

  "What's the matter here-!' He shoved past Crane into the cabin, snapped on a light.

  He stared at the bunk in which Kin Nilga the Saturnian lay dead, his great neck snapped like a straw, then recoiled in horror.

  Then he turned on Rab Crane who was staggering, disheveled and bruised… "Why did you kill the Saturnian?" he snapped.

  "I didn't kill him," said Crane. "I heard a row in here and came in. In the dark, the man who killed Kin Nilga jumped me, then escaped."

  "A likely story!" cried the officer. "There's been a mysterious explosion and two murders on this liner since we left Venus. The explosion was in your corridor, the first murder was at your dining table. And now you're found over the body of the second victim… You're under arrest!" He had drawn his pistol, was covering Crane with it. Stunned by this disastrous turn of events, Crane saw the difficulty of his situation. He dared not tell them he was a TSS man, or that he sought the great secret from the stolen brain of Doctor Alph. This liner was a Venusian ship arid once these Venusians learned the brain was aboard, they'd search to the last corner to get it and its secret for Venus. Then he would be through and the secret lost forever.

  "I'm sure you're wrong about Mr. Idwall," a girl's dismayed voice was telling, the officer. "He was nearly a victim of the radium poison himself, in the dining saloon."

  It was Lalla Dee who was defending him.

  Kark Al, the withered little Martian, nodded corroboration, snapping, "It's stupid to accuse Mr. Idwall of these killings."

  "That will be for the captain to decide," the officer said inflexibly. "You'll have to come to his office at once," he told Crane. "The rest of you people return to your cabins."

  As Rab Crane was forced by the officer's gun through the crowd of curious, horrified passengers, he managed to smile reassuringly at the pale, distressed Lalla Dee.

  The TSS man's eyes were searching the crowd for Jurk Usk, the Jovian who had sat beside Kin Nilga at the dinner table. The Jovian, then, and not the Saturnian, must be, the killer. No one else on the ship, now, but the Jovian had such strength. And he could not see Jurk Usk anywhere.

  * * *

  Half an hour later, in the captain's office, the veteran, space-tanned Venusian who was master of the Vulcan faced Rab Crane.

  "Mr. Idwall, all the evidence points to you as the murderer of Kin Nilga and of the Earthman," he said. "A search of Kin Nilga's effects has revealed that he was a member of the Saturnian Secret Service. It is obvious that you are a criminal he was pursuing, and that you tried to kill him in the dining saloon tonight, failed and succeeded later in killing him in his cabin. A table steward has said you questioned him about Kin Nilga's movements."

  "But how could I have broken his neck like that?" Crane protested desperately. "No Earthman has such strength."

  "I do not know just what means you used to murder him," the captain told him unrelentingly, "but our course is obvious. You will be the ship's brig until we where you will be turned over to the space-court for trial."

  Crane was led away, down to the lowest deck of the great liner, and thrust into a narrow metal cell on a little corridor off the rocket rooms. He sat down heavily on the bunk.

  In the dark cell, silent except for the steady throb of the ventilator, Crane wholeheartedly cursed the turn events had taken. Imprisoned here, he had no chance of securing the stolen brain before the Vulcan reached Earth.

  It was plain now that Jurk Usk was the man he sought; that the squat surly Jovian was the shadowy figure who had stolen Doctor Alph's brain. Kin Nilga, an agent of Saturn, had been on the trail of the brain just as Crane was. Jurk Usk had killed Kin Nilga, and tried to kill Crane. Why, he asked himself, had his beams not affected the Jovian? And had it been Nilga or Usk who had killed the Doctor and his guardsmen?

  Now, Crane thought hopelessly, the Jovian had a clear field. Kin Nilga of Saturn was dead and he, the agent of Earth, was in prison for the rest of the voyage. When the ship landed, Jurk Usk would go free with the brain and its doom-freighted secret.

  That night passed slowly for the tormented TSS man. And after morning came — the morning of a space ship, marked only by the turning on of all the ship's lights — Crane's numbed brain fought frantically for a plan.

  Gradually fierce resolve began repossessing him. The men of the TSS did not give up until they were dead! And this mission of his was the most important any man of the Terrestrial Secret Service had ever been assigned. He must not give up! He would not, while he was alive!

  He stared around the cell with narrowed, desperate eyes. If he could just get out of this rat-trap, just get to the cabin of Jurk Usk…

  He could get out! The inspiration came to Rab Crane's taut brain in a flash. It would be a desperate way of escape, and perilous. Yet it was the only way, and he would try it!

  He was startled out of his quivering intentness by a light knock, a voice outside the locked door. Through the barred opening, Lalla Dee's soft face looked in at him.

  The Venusian girl's dark eyes were troubled and anxious.

  "They let me come down to see you for a few moments!" she said. "Oh, I know you're not guilty of these murders!"

  Crane's nerves relaxed a little. He even managed a grin.

  "Good kid," he told her through the bars. "I'm not guilty and I can prove it when we reach Earth. But there're more important things at stake than my own fate, just now."

  He pressed closer to the bars, lowering voice.

  "Lalla Dee, I want you to do something for me. Will you?"

  * * *

  Her head bobbed, her clear eyes looking anxiously into his.

  "I'll do anything I can," she promised.

  "I want you to find out for me just what cabins are occupied by those who sat at our dining table last night," he said.

  "Why, I don't see — but I can do that, all right. Wait, I'll go now," she said.

  She departed and Crane waited tensely. He had not asked her simply for the location of the Jovian's cabin, because he did not even want her to suspect his paramount interest in Jurk Usk. The girl must not become involved in his desperate scheme.

  She was soon back, obviously still perplexed by his request but with the information he wanted.

  "The cabins are all on the second cabin-deck, like yours and mine," the girl told him. "That of Jurk Usk is two doors off the main corridor, toward the stern. Kark Al, the Martian, is three doors beyond that. And the cabin of the young Earthman who was poisoned is directly opposite the Martian's. You know where the rest are."

  "I know," Crane said swiftly. "You've helped me a lot, Lalla Dee. I want you to go back up now and forget all about this, and no matter what happens to me, don't you say anything that will get you mixed up in this affair."

  "Norman, you sound as though something awful might happen to you," she told him distressedly. "What is it?"

  "I'll be all right," he repeated "And you're a swell girl, Lalla D
ee."

  She left and Crane paced the floor, seething with excitement. If he could just get to Jurk Usk's cabin…

  He waited impatiently for the coming of the ship's night. When finally the lights had been turned off and the passengers had retired, and the whole craft silent except for the occasional passing step of a sailor and the throbbing of the ventilators, Rab Crane began to act. First he removed his shoes and sox.

  Then he twisted with all his strength at one of the metal posts that supported his bunk, until he tore it loose. With this short, thick club in his hand, he climbed upon the now shaky bunk and reached up toward the grating of the ventilator-tube.

  The tube was almost two feet across, a round pipe connected with the main ventilation system which dispersed oxygenized fresh air constantly to every room in the ship. Crane inserted his club in the grating and pried. The grating came loose with a little snap, and he poised, listening. But, apparently, no one had heard.

  He stuffed the club into his trouser band and drew himself up into the ventilating tube. He got one shoulder in, then the other. The tube was a terribly tight fit but he inched steadily forward in it. In his face beat the constant flood of fresh, tangy air, and in his ears throbbed the distant pumps. Soon the tube opened into a vertical pipe, a somewhat larger one leading up to the decks above. Crane climbed slowly up this, bracing himself with bare hands and feet against the smooth sides.

  Blindly he wormed upward in the dark pipe until he came to the place where a branch tube led horizontally into the second cabin-deck, his goal.

  Now he began to count the branch tubes that led off into the separate cabins. Two branches further should be the tube leading to Jurk Usk's cabin. And Jurk Usk, no matter how diabolical his ingenuity, would never expect death to come to him through the ventilator!

  * * *

  Stealthily Crane inched forward and into the second branch tube. At its end was a light grating. Crane peered down through this into the dark cabin of the Jovian, located the dark bulk of the bunk.