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
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
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
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
“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
“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
“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 -
“
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
