Von Zorn snapped his cigar in two.
“I own the picture. I paid him for it. But he was the only man who knew how to make the Zonals work for the camera. See the catch, Tony?”
“You want me to finish the pic. A nice easy job. Why not fake the rest of it?”
“I don’t dare,” Von Zorn admitted frankly. “I’ve already blurbed this as the real thing. It’d raise too big a howl if we used robots. I can imagine what that Carlyle dame would do.”
Quade grinned maliciously.
“Catch-’em-Alive” Carlyle, interplanetary explorer extraordinary, was Von Zorn’s vulnerable point, his heel of Achilles.
“She’s suing me,” Von Zorn said, breathing audibly. “For libel. Says the Gerri Murri cartoons are libelous.”
“Well, aren’t they?” Quade asked. This animated cartoon series, depicting Gerry Carlyle as an inquisitive bug-eyed Venusian Murri, had proved immensely popular with everybody but Gerry. She had created a fair-sized riot in Froman’s Mercurian Theatre when she first recognized her counterpart on the screen.
“We won’t discuss that—that—” Von Zorn gulped and finished weakly, “that tomato. Do you want to see Udell’s film on the Zonals?”
“Might as well,” Quade agreed, getting up. “I may get some ideas about his method.”
“You’d better get some ideas,” Von Zorn said darkly, “or we’ll all be in the soup.”
II
Trip to Titan
The next morning Quade went to the spaceport to examine Udell’s wrecked ship, which had arrived in tow a few hours before. Von Zorn was with him and at the last moment Kathleen, scenting something interesting, attached herself to Quade’s elbow and would not be dislodged.
Quade was not entirely happy about her presence, because of a vague uneasiness he could not name. He had hunches like that occasionally. He felt one strongly now about the wrecked ship and the dangers that might lie dormant there.
“You see, silly, nothing’s wrong,” Kathleen said impatiently as they stood in the great torn hole that had been the ruined ship’s side. The vessel, a small, six-man job, was warped and twisted grotesquely by the impact of the meteor, which had ripped completely through the walls of the control room and emerged into space on the other side. The bodies had been removed, but nothing else was yet touched.
“All the same,” Quade told the girl uneasily, “I don’t like it. I wish you’d stay outside.”
“Ha!” Kathleen said in a sceptical voice and ducked her curly head under the torn wall to peer inside. “Nothing here. Don’t be such a sissy, Tony. What could possibly hurt me?”
“How can I tell? All I know is, wherever you go there’s trouble. Stand back now and let me take a look.”
But he found nothing. Even a careful search of the interior disclosed little to warrant that feeling that something more serious had happened here than a mere chance accident with a meteor. The only thing that puzzled him was the wreckage in the ship.
Bottles, instruments, gauges, seemed smashed more thoroughly than they should be, considering the impact of the meteor. Furniture was splintered, not only in the control room but in every other part of the vessel.
“I don’t get this,” Quade said slowly. “The meteor didn’t cause all this damage. It looks—” He hesitated. “It looks as though Udell and his men had gone on a spree. But there’s no sign of liquor on the ship.”
“Oxygen jag?” Von Zorn suggested.
Quade examined the tanks.
“No, it doesn’t look like it. They didn’t even use oxygen to try to save themselves. Look—they could have blocked off the control room with airtight panels and released oxygen. Or they might at least have got into their spacesuits. There must have been time for that. I’ve got a hunch—”
Von Zorn was examining the cans of film, the casings intact but the film itself spoiled by exposure.
“Eh?” he said. “You have a theory?”
“An idea, that’s all. If Udell and the navigator had been in their right minds, they needn’t have collided with the meteor. Look here—the automatic repulsors are smashed. That’s what caused the trouble.”
“In their right minds?” Von Zorn echoed slowly. “Space-cafard?”
“Hitting all of ’em? Hardly! Is a postmortem being done?”
Von Zorn nodded.
“The report ought to be ready by now if you want to check up.” He chewed his cigar savagely. “If only one man of the crew had lived! We’ve got a smash hit dumped on our laps and goodness knows if we can even film it.”
Kathleen put her head through a wrenched doorframe. She was a little pale.
“Really, Tony, it’s rather horrible. I hadn’t realized—I never saw a space wreck before.”
“Let’s get on the televisor,” Quade said decisively. “I’d like to check on the postmortems.”
He swung out through the half-fused port, and the others followed him into the Patrol office. A few minutes’ conversation with the authorities was all that was necessary when Von Zorn used his name. Then a gaunt face above a white jacket dawned on the screen. There were introductions.
“Did you find anything out of the ordinary?” Quade asked.
The reflected head shook negatively.
“Well, not what you’d expect, anyhow. The crash certainly killed them all, if that’s what you mean. No question of foul play. But—” He hesitated.
“But what?”
“Antibodies,” said the man reluctantly. “Something new. I can’t get any trace of a virus. Apparently some disease attacked the men. Their systems built up antibodies that I never encountered before. Something funny about the neural tissues, too. The cellular structure’s altered a little.”
Von Zorn thrust his head toward the screen.
“But what was it? That’s what we want to know. Were they conscious when they died?”
“I think not. My theory is that Udell and his crew were attacked by some disease native to Titan. Maybe the same disease that turned the Zonals into idiots.”
“I’ve got to go to Titan myself,” Quade said slowly. “Suppose we work there in spacesuits. Could a virus get through metal or glass?”
“I think you’d be safe. Mind you,
