The Witches of Karres

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 told 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