“But no pilot’s ever seen anything like that, Jim!” Pete protested, with unanswerable logic.
He tapped his brow. “It could be in here, Jim! That’s what I’m afraid of! A sickness of the mind—”
“Don’t start that!” I warned, striking my knee with my fist. “Don’t even think it!”
My voice was getting out of control. I was yelling at him, and there was no reason for it.
He had every right to his opinion.
“What are we goin’ to do, Jim?”
“Check up first!” I snapped. “If I have to use every instrument on the ship—”
I stopped. The door into the pilot room had opened and closed, and a clumping figure was coming toward us across the deck.
I heard Pete suck in his breath. I couldn’t seem to draw a deep breath. There was a physical quality of eeriness in the sight which took me by the throat.
The figure was wearing a light spacesuit, vacuum-sealed at the neck. A transparent headpiece bulged out above the flexible garment, a great glistening globe encasing the head of the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen.
Her hair was piled in a tumbled mass of gold on her head and there was a delicate flush on her skin, visible through the glowing sphere. She was staring at me without seeming to see me, her cheeks shadowed by long, convex lashes.
Some women mature into loveliness; others have it thrust upon them. I didn’t tell myself that straight off. I was too stunned to make up pretty speeches. But later I realized that her hair, eyes, and complexion were as near perfect as they could be without looking artificial.
Her suit was cumbersome, and it weighed her down. But there was something weird, spine-chilling about the way she moved. She walked with a smooth flow of motion, almost as if she were skating across the deck.
I was a little afraid of what Pete might do. He was shaking with excitement, and I could see that he was keyed up to a dangerous pitch. Doubting his own sanity and mine to boot!
But I wasn’t going to be stampeded into fear! I’d been under a tremendous strain, sure. But I knew a flesh-and-blood woman when I saw one! The girl was real! The pulse beating in her forehead was real and so were her eyes and hair! We hadn’t made even a cursory search of the ship. There were plenty of dark little corners where she could have concealed herself.
Suddenly I saw that she’d glided past Pete and was facing away from us, her hands extended toward the control board. A little to the left of the board there was a dull flickering on the bulkhead.
For an instant I mistook the weird glimmer for a shadow cast by her swaying shoulders. I thought she was just reaching for the board to steady herself.
Then I saw her hands moving on the board and knew that a gravity panel was swinging open on the void! I leapt toward her with a warning cry.
If she heard me she gave no sign. You can hear a shout through a thin helmet, but she didn’t even turn. She just darted sideways and then forward—straight through the panel into the utter black emptiness of space! A flash of light—and she was gone!
The panel closed so soundlessly you could have heard a pin drop.
I had trouble with my breath again. For an instant my throat had an iron brace around it. Then I remembered that she hadn’t gone out unprotected into the void. Her suit would keep the cold out, and the magnetic suction disks on her wrists and knees would enable her to cling to the hull, to crawl along it. But if she’d gone out to do a repair job on the hull, she had the kind of courage you read about in the Admiralty Reports.
If I had it, it was glazed over with a thick coating of ice. I stood braced against the bulkhead, the old Adam in me chanting a hymn to life, a hymn to the Sun, and feeling glad I wasn’t in her shoes.
What a way for a guy to feel!
Then something happened to me. I saw her face again, deep in my mind, and it seemed to be pleading with me. It wasn’t just a pleading. There was music and wonder in it!
I could hear the pound of surf on a golden beach, and the sun was warming the sea and the air, and she was in my arms and I was kissing her.
Then it was night and the palms were bending lower over us, and the moonlight was so bright I could hardly see the web of radiance around her head. But I could hear the rise and fall of paddles, and someone singing far off over the water. We were running down the beach toward the pounding surf. Water was glistening on her tanned arms and I could hear her laughter.
Pete had leapt to his feet. He was staring at me, sweat standing out on his forehead in great, shining beads.
“What did I tell you, son?” he groaned. “A sickness of the mind—”
His voice thickened, broke.
The terror in his stare made me realize how close to the brink I was. His refusal to believe the evidence of his eyes was an attempt at rationalization, but it wasn’t a good attempt.
He was assuming the worst, taking his own madness for granted.
I grabbed him by both shoulders. “You’re as sane as I am!” I yelled, shaking him. “That girl was here when we took over! A stowaway! What’s so crazy about that?”
Pete’s throat moved as he swallowed. “Let go of me, Jim! Believe what you want! I’m going crazy—and tryin’ to explain it won’t stop it!”
“Common sense will stop it! Did you notice that vacuum suit she was wearing? It’s as ancient as the ship! It must have come out of the
