A man brushed past her. “Your hair’s mussed up—”
Instinctively Andrea lifted a hand, only to be checked by the hard plastic curve of her Helmet. It was an old gag, but she forced herself to smile. The necessity of wearing Helmets in space had become a joke to most of the passengers. Probably only the officers realized the true danger of the Plutonian mind-vampires.
Everyone in the salon, of course, wore a Helmet—even the Man in the Moon, under his disguise. Cumbersome as they looked, they rested lightly on the wearers’ shoulders, and were actually so light that one easily became accustomed to them. Andrea studied her reflection in a nearby mirror. Her small, heart-shaped face seemed dwarfed by the Helmet. Experimentally, like an interested child, she pressed a stud and saw the transparent, airtight shield slide into place an inch from her nose. Within the ship the shields were not necessary, nor were complete spacesuits. But the Helmets were vital.
Andrea knew little or nothing of the technical details. The secret of the Helmets lay in the luminous, intertron knob atop each one. It was this that provided a two-way hookup with the Varra. She remembered what an officer had told her, when she had first donned a Helmet at the Atlantic Spaceport.
“Never done it before, eh, miss? Well, don’t be frightened. Let me help you.” He had adjusted the bulky Helmet. “The power won’t be turned on till we hit the Heaviside Layer. The Varra can’t safely enter our atmosphere, you know.”
“I didn’t know. It seems so strange—”
The officer chuckled. “Not really. It’s like being in radio communication with somebody. You see, when the juice is turned on, a Varra instantly hooks itself up to your Helmet. You can even talk to him—it—if you like. They’re intelligent; nice people, in fact.”
“Can they read thoughts?”
“Everybody asks me that. No, they can’t. The idea is that without a Helmet, you’d be exposed to the Plutonian mind-vampires. As it is, the Varra throws up a mental shield that protects you.”
Andrea hesitated. “It doesn’t always work, though, does it?”
“Almost always. You were warned of that—” His manner became officially rigid. “You signed a release blank, in case of accident. But there’s no danger to speak of. Space flight is exhausting; you’ll feel pretty bad by the time we hit Mars. Somehow there’s an energy drain that even the Varra can’t neutralize.”
“The Plutonians?”
“We think so. But without the Helmets—” He grinned in a comforting fashion. “You’ll be okay, miss.”
Later, at the Heaviside Layer, the power had been turned on in each Helmet. There was no apparent change, except for the sudden luminosity of the intertron knobs. But a voice, friendly despite its curious alienage, had spoken wordlessly inside Andrea’s brain.
“I’m taking over now. Don’t remove your Helmet or turn off the power till you’re in atmosphere again.”
“Atmosphere—” Andrea had spoken aloud without realizing it. The Varra answered her.
“Each planet has a Heaviside Layer, an electronic barrage that disrupts mental-energy vibrations. We find it dangerous to pass that Layer, but so do the Plutonians.”
Another passenger had told Andrea somewhat more—that the Varra, even before space travel, were not unknown to science. Charles Fort had been one of the first to collect data about them—inexplicable balls of fire appearing on Earth, with their life-forces warped and harmed by the Heaviside Layer, moving at random out of their native element.
Two hours after crossing the Lunar Line Andrea slipped noiselessly into the radio room. The long space trip had told on her; like all the others, she was conscious of exhaustion and mental drain. Glancing at her chronometer, she realized that in a few minutes Saul would make contact with the Maid.
She clicked off the power in her Helmet. She wanted no Varra spying on her now.
The radio operator did not turn. He had not seen her or heard her silent approach. Andrea’s hand poised over an intricate array of wires and tore the cables free.
A lance of cold fire plunged into her brain. It was too quick for pain. Her terrified thought, The Plutonians! was cut off instantly. Her mind drowned, as in dark water, chill and horrible.
The radio operator whirled, startled, at the thud of Andrea’s falling body.
III
Destination—Death!
“C.Q.X.! C.Q.X.! Calling Maid of Mercury!”
Saul Duncan looked up from the mike. “No answer. Their radio’s dead.”
“Your wife did her job,” Olcott grunted, fingering his mustache. He had regained his usual impassivity, though Hartman, in the background, had not. The scientist, without his daily quart of khlar, was a nervous wreck, puffing cigarette after cigarette in a vain attempt to calm himself.
“There she is.” Duncan nodded at the visiplate, where the bulk of the Maid lay, occulting stars. “We’ll use visual signals. First, though, we’ll have to—”
His fingers moved swiftly. A four-inch blaster cannon sent its bolt of electronic energy ravening through space, across the Maid’s bow. Lights on the cruiser’s hull blinked into rainbow colors.
Paralleling the Maid, steadily drawing closer, the smaller ship kept on its course.
Duncan said, “They noticed that. They’ll be watching the visiplate—”
“What are you telling them?”
“To send over the radium, or we’ll blast ’em to hell.”
“Good!”
But Duncan’s lips were tight. He was bluffing, of course. Blasting an unarmed ship full of passengers—well, if it came to a showdown, he could not do it, even if Andrea had not been on board. However, the Maid’s captain couldn’t know that. He wouldn’t dare take the risk.
Answering lights flashed on the larger ship’s hull. Duncan read them aloud with the ease of long practice.
“No radium aboard. Is this a joke?”
“Send another blast,” Olcott suggested.
Duncan’s response was to fire a bolt that melted two of the Maid’s stern tubes into slag. That didn’t harm anyone in the passenger ship, but it showed that he was presumably in earnest. And he had to get Andrea aboard
