he felt her cool hand on his scarred forehead, and she was smiling bravely.
'Tragedies such as these, Quirl, were common in the lives of our ancestors. They were able to bear them, and we can bear them. All his life my poor brother has lived as a gentleman, sheltered, protected by class barriers. When he died of pneumonia caused by the jagged end of a broken rib — so Dr. Stoddard says — I think he had a lively sense of satisfaction that he should end in such a way. If it had not been for me—'
She came to him often, after that, to sit quietly by his side, and to bring his food to him from the big community bowl which even the most fastidious of the prisoners had come to look forward to. She told of her life as the daughter of a capitalist who owned large mine holdings on Titan. It would be about time for the
There was no longer any reason for concealing from her the fact that he himself was a member of the I.F.P., and Quirl told Lenore of the adventurous life he and his companions had led. Of forays to far-away and as yet undisciplined Pluto, of tropical Venus and Mercury, where the rains never cease, of the hostile and almost unknown planet of Aryl, within the orbit of Mercury, where no man has ever seen a true image of the landscape because of the stupendous and never-ending mirages.
As time passed they were drawn together by the bonds of propinquity and mutual interest — this obscure police officer and the daughter of one of the most powerful men in the solar system. But Quirl did not name his love, for always there was the grim present of their captivity, the ghastly uncertainty of the future.
The little 'galley boy' Sorko seemed daily more frail. Apparently the fall he had sustained had done him some internal injury. Often the guard, with many a ribald comment, had to help him get his emptied bowl back up the ladder.
One day he seemed overcome by great weakness. Staggering, he held his hand to his sweat-dewed forehead. Erratically he waltzed across the floor, to crumple in a heap where Quirl and the girl were sitting. Moved by compassion, Lenore composed his body in a more comfortable position, and with a bit of handkerchief moistened the pirate's wrinkled, old-young face with some of Quirl's drinking water. The guard looked on indifferently.
'Guard!' Quirl shouted. 'He's going to die. Come and take him to the lazaret.'
'Sez you!' returned the guard callously. 'Me, I stay on post till relieved. Sorko'll be all right. He's been throwin' them fits right regular.'
Sorko's lips moved feebly, and Lenore bent down to catch his words. They were barely audible:
'I'm all right, lady. You done me a good turn when you made Gore put me down, and I'm doin' you one now. I wouldn't do this for no one else.' He gasped.
'Water!' Lenore exclaimed sharply, and Quirl handed her the rest of his cup.
'Ain't water he wants,' the amused guard observed. 'The blighter's playin' for a good chew of merclite!'[1]
'I ain't as bad as I'm makin' out,' Sorko whispered. 'Got to do it to tell you this, 'cause you was square with me. Gore is fixin' to have a mut'ny. Kill captain, kill all these dubs here — this guy of yourn, too. He wants to take you for his—' the weazened little face twisted in unwonted shy delicacy—'take you for him, pretty lady. I don't want him to. I'm not — a—bad feller—'
'What the hell, Sorko!' the puzzled guard exclaimed over the delay. 'You bandy-legged rat, get up there, or I'll give you a jolt.'
Lenore looked up, indignant.
'You heartless wretch! Would you let this man—'
'Comin'!' Sorko scrambling to his feet, shuffling to the table, where he retrieved his bowl. Quirl and Lenore watched his painful progress up the ladder, until at last he disappeared into the passage.
'Quirl,' she murmured, as her hand sought his, 'take this.'
He felt a small bit of metal, and looking at it cautiously, saw that he had a rough key, filed out of a piece of flat metal.
'The key to that hoop around your waist. He copied it from the one the captain has, I suppose.'
His hopes high all at once, Quirl sought the compact little lock in the small of his back. It took a long time to get the key in, and then it would not turn. It had been unskillfully made, and was probably not a true reproduction. Nevertheless, by constant effort, he succeeded at last in turning it, and was rewarded by hearing a faint click. He tested the hoop, felt it slip, and knew that at any time he chose he could free himself.
'Lenore, dear,' he told her. 'Go with the other women now. We must do nothing to make the guard suspicious. We don't know when this mutiny is to come off, but we are close to Saturn now; it can't be long. Go now.'
'Good-by, dear. Be careful!'
It seemed an eternity until the emanation disk became dim and went out and the prisoners made sleepy sounds. A relief guard took station, and the ship became silent, so that one could hear the rumbling of the propelling rockets. As there were no ports in this hold, there was no light whatever except the faint glow that came from the central passage above the platform. Against this the pirate was outlined as he sat on his stool. As Quirl's eyes became accustomed to the darkness he could see the play of faint highlights on his muscular torso, and so he waited.
He thought over the situation. The safest and easiest course would be to create such a disturbance that Captain Strom would be attracted to the scene. This would probably not involve anything more than a severe beating for himself, and he would then find opportunity to acquaint Strom with the projected mutiny somehow. That Strom would know how to deal with it he never doubted. Lenore might then still be forcibly impressed as a citizen of Strom's new planet, but at least she would not be exposed to the infinitely worse fate of becoming the plaything of Gore and his villainous crew.
The flaw of this plan was that Quirl himself would still be under practical sentence of death. Strom would not let his gratitude carry him so far as to release a man who knew as much as Quirl did, and who would not promise to keep his secrets.
The preferable, though far more dangerous course was to strike before the mutineers could. Quirl knew something about the structure of the ship. It was built around the tubular passage, and every hold or group of rooms opened on this well, from the bow where the navigators were to the stern where the rockets were located. Somewhere there would be a generating room where the invisibility field was being produced. If he could find this and wreck the generators one of the I.F.P. ships with which this part of space doubtless swarmed, would sight them, and after that everything was in the hands of fate.
Quirl nervously waited for the guard to nod. At any moment he expected to hear a hellish bedlam break loose — the beginning of the mutiny. And the guard seemed alert. There was nothing to do but take a chance.
Quirl sighed as if he were turning in his sleep, so that the clink of the released chain would not seem out of place. The guard did not stir. Slowly, very slowly, Quirl crept across the floor. He had been robbed of all his clothing except his torn silk trousers; and his boots were gone, so he was able to move as quietly as a cat.
With tense silence he ascended the ladder, praying that his weight would not send up a warning vibration. But his luck held. He was nearly at the top before it broke.
'Take him off! Take him off!' It was an eery, strangled shriek from one of the male prisoners in the throes of a nightmare. With a startled curse the guard thudded to his feet, peered tensely into the darkness, his weapon sending twin milky beams of the powerful ionizing ray toward the source of the sound.
The dreamer had awakened, still gasping in the grip of fear, and other disturbed sleepers were grumbling.
'Better go easy, you fools,' the pirate warned them. 'Yer just in luck that I didn't let loose a couple bolts on ye. Got a good notion to do it, anyway.' He played the dangerous little spots of light around, amused as the
