The Winds Of Time

: The Winds Of Time

He contracted for a charter trip--but the man

who hired his spacer wasn't quite a man, it

turned out--and he wanted more than service!





Gefty Rammer came along the narrow passages between the Silver Queen's

control compartment and the staterooms, trying to exchange the haggard

look on his face for one of competent self-assurance. There was nothing

to gain by letting his two passengers suspe
t that during the past few

minutes their pilot, the owner of Rammer Spacelines, had been a bare

step away from plain and fancy gibbering.



He opened the door to Mr. Maulbow's stateroom and went inside. Mr.

Maulbow, face very pale, eyes closed, lay on his back on the couch,

still unconscious. He'd been knocked out when some unknown forces

suddenly started batting the Silver Queen's turnip-shape around as the

Queen had never been batted before in her eighteen years of

spacefaring. Kerim Ruse, Maulbow's secretary, knelt beside her employer,

checking his pulse. She looked anxiously up at Gefty.



"What did you find out?" she asked in a voice that was not very steady.



Gefty shrugged. "Nothing definite as yet. The ship hasn't been

damaged--she's a tough tub. That's one good point. Otherwise ... well, I

climbed into a suit and took a look out the escape hatch. And I saw the

same thing there that the screens show. Whatever that is."



"You've no idea then of what's happened to us, or where we are?" Miss

Ruse persisted. She was a rather small girl with large, beautiful gray

eyes and thick blue-black hair. At the moment, she was barefoot and in a

sleeping outfit which consisted of something soft wrapped around her

top, soft and floppy trousers below. The black hair was tousled and she

looked around fifteen. She'd been asleep in her stateroom when something

smacked the Queen, and she was sensible enough then not to climb out

of the bunk's safety field until the ship finally stopped shuddering and

bucking about. That made her the only one of the three persons aboard

who had collected no bruises. She was scared, of course, but taking the

situation very well.



Gefty said carefully, "There're a number of possibilities. It's obvious

that the Queen has been knocked out of normspace, and it may take some

time to find out how to get her back there. But the main thing is that

the ship's intact. So far, it doesn't look too bad."



Miss Ruse seemed somewhat reassured. Gefty could hardly have said the

same for himself. He was a qualified normspace and subspace pilot. He

had put in a hitch with the Federation Navy, and for the past eight

years he'd been ferrying his own two ships about the Hub and not

infrequently beyond the Federation's space territories, but he had never

heard of a situation like this. What he saw in the viewscreens when the

ship steadied enough to let him pick himself off the instrument room

floor, and again, a few minutes later and with much more immediacy, from

the escape hatch, made no sense--seemed simply to have no meaning. The

pressure meters said there was a vacuum outside the Queen's skin.

That vacuum was dark, even pitch-black but here and there came

momentary suggestions of vague light and color. Occasional pinpricks of

brightness showed and were gone. And there had been one startling

phenomenon like a distant, giant explosion, a sudden pallid glare in the

dark, which appeared far ahead of the Queen and, for the instant it

remained in sight, seemed to be rushing directly towards them. It had

given Gefty the feeling that the ship itself was plowing at high speed

through this eerie medium. But he had cut the Queen's drives to the

merest idling pulse as soon as he staggered back to the control console

and got his first look at the screens, so it must have been the light

that had moved.



But such details were best not discussed with a passenger. Kerim Ruse

would be arriving at enough disquieting speculations on her own; the

less he told her, the better. There was the matter of the ship's

location instruments. The only set Gefty had been able to obtain any

reading on were the direction indicators. And what they appeared to

indicate was that the Silver Queen was turning on a new heading

something like twenty times a second.



Gefty asked, "Has Mr. Maulbow shown any signs of waking up?"



Kerim shook her head. "His breathing and pulse seem all right, and that

bump on his head doesn't look really bad, but he hasn't moved at all.

Can you think of anything else we might do for him, Gefty?"



"Not at the moment," Gefty said. "He hasn't broken any bones. We'll see

how he feels when he comes out of it." He was wondering about Mr.

Maulbow and the fact that this charter had showed some unusual features

from the beginning.



Kerim was a friendly sort of girl; they'd got to calling each other by

their first names within a day or two after the trip started. But after

that, she seemed to be avoiding him; and Gefty guessed that Maulbow had

spoken to her, probably to make sure that Kerim didn't let any of her

employer's secrets slip out.



Maulbow himself was as aloof and taciturn a client as Rammer Spacelines

ever had picked up. A lean, blond character of indeterminate age, with

pale eyes, hard mouth. Why he had selected a bulky semifreighter like

the Queen for a mineralogical survey jaunt to a lifeless little sun

system far beyond the outposts of civilization was a point he didn't

discuss. Gefty, needing the charter money, had restrained his curiosity.

If Maulbow wanted only a pilot and preferred to do all the rest of the

work himself, that was certainly Maulbow's affair. And if he happened to

be up to something illegal--though it was difficult to imagine

what--Customs would nail him when they got back to the Hub.



But those facts looked a little different now.



* * *



Gefty scratched his chin, inquired, "Do you happen to know where Mr.

Maulbow keeps the keys to the storage vault?"



Kerim looked startled. "Why, no! I couldn't permit you to take the keys

anyway while he ... while he's unconscious! You know that."



Gefty grunted. "Any idea of what he has locked up in the vault?"



"You shouldn't ask me--" Her eyes widened. "Why, that couldn't possibly

have anything to do with what's happened!"



He might, Gefty thought, have reassured her a little too much. He said,

"I wouldn't know. But I don't want to just sit here and wonder about it

until Maulbow wakes up. Until we're back in normspace, we'd better not

miss any bets. Because one thing's sure--if this has happened to anybody

else, they didn't turn up again to report it. You see?"



Kerim apparently did. She went pale, then said hesitantly, "Well ... the

sealed cases Mr. Maulbow brought out from the Hub with him had some very

expensive instruments in them. That's all I know. He's always trusted me

not to pry into his business any more than my secretarial duties

required, and of course I haven't."



"You don't know then what it was he brought up from that moon a few

hours ago--those two big cases he stowed away in the vault?"



"No, I don't, Gefty. You see, he hasn't told me what the purpose of this

trip is. I only know that it's a matter of great importance to him."

Kerim paused, added, "From the careful manner Mr. Maulbow handled the

cases with the cranes, I had the impression that whatever was inside

them must be quite heavy."



"I noticed that," Gefty said. It wasn't much help. "Well, I'll tell

you something now," he went on. "I let your boss keep both sets of

keys to the storage vault because he insisted on it when he signed the

charter. What I didn't tell him was that I could make up a duplicate set

any time in around half an hour."



"Oh! Have you--?"



"Not yet. But I intend to take a look at what Mr. Maulbow's got in that

vault now, with or without his consent. You'd better run along and get

dressed while I take him up to the instrument room."



"Why move him?" Kerim asked.



"The instrument room's got an overall safety field. I've turned it on

now, and if something starts banging us around again, the room will be

the safest place on the ship. I'll bring his personal luggage up too,

and you can start looking through it for the keys. You may find them

before I get a new set made. Or he may wake up and tell us where they

are."



Kerim Ruse gave her employer a dubious glance, then nodded, said, "I

imagine you're right, Gefty," and pattered hurriedly out of the

stateroom. A few minutes later, she arrived, fully dressed, in the

instrument room. Gefty looked around from the table-shelf where he had

laid out his tools, and said, "He hasn't stirred. His suitcases are over

there. I've unlocked them."



Kerim gazed at what showed in the screens about the control console and

shivered slightly. She said, "I was thinking, Gefty ... isn't there

something they call Space Three?"






"Sure. Pseudospace. But that isn't where we are. There're some

special-built Navy tubs that can operate in that stuff if they don't

stay too long. A ship like the Queen ... well, you and I and

everything else in here would be frozen solid by now if we'd got sucked

somehow into Space Three."



"I see," Kerim said uncomfortably. Gefty heard her move over to the

suitcases. After a moment, she asked, "What do the vault keys look

like?"



"You can't miss them if he's just thrown them in there. They're over six

inches long. What kind of a guy is this Maulbow? A scientist?"



"I couldn't say, Gefty. He's never referred to himself as a scientist.

I've had this job a year and a half. Mr. Maulbow is a very considerate

employer ... one of the nicest men I've known, really. But it was simply

understood that I should ask no questions about the business beyond what

I actually needed to know for my work."



"What's the business called?"



"Maulbow Engineering."



"Big help," Gefty observed, somewhat sourly. "Those instruments he

brought along ... he build those himself?"



"No, but I think he designed some of them--probably most of them. The

companies he had doing the actual work appeared to have a terrible time

getting everything exactly the way Mr. Maulbow wanted it--There's

nothing that looks like a set of keys in those first two suitcases,

Gefty."



"Well," Gefty said, "if you don't find them in the others, you might

start thumping around to see if he's got secret compartments in his

luggage somewhere."



"I do wish," Kerim Ruse said uneasily, "that Mr. Maulbow would regain

consciousness. It seems so ... so underhanded to be doing these things

behind his back!"



Gefty grunted noncommittally. He wasn't at all certain by now that he

wanted his secretive client to wake up before he'd checked on the

contents of the Queen's storage vault.



* * * * *



Fifteen minutes later, Gefty Rammer was climbing down to the storage

deck in the Queen's broad stern, the newly fashioned set of vault keys

clanking heavily in his coat pocket. Kerim had remained with her

employer who was getting back his color but still hadn't opened his

eyes. She hadn't found the original keys. Gefty wasn't sure she'd tried

too hard, though she seemed to realize the seriousness of the situation

now. But her loyalty to Mr. Maulbow could make no further difference,

and she probably felt more comfortable for it.



Lights went on automatically in the wide passage leading from the cargo

lock to the vault as Gefty turned into it. His steps echoed between the

steel bulkheads on either side. He paused a moment before the big

circular vault doors, listening to the purr of the Queen's idling

engines in the next compartment. The familiar sound was somehow

reassuring. He inserted the first key, turned it over twice, drew it out

again and pressed one of the buttons in the control panel beside the

door. The heavy slab of steel moved sideways with a soft, hissing sound,

vanished into the wall. Gefty slid the other key into the lock of the

inner door. A few seconds later, the vault entrance lay open before him.



He stood still again, wrinkling his nose. The area ahead was only dimly

illuminated--the shaking-up the Queen had undergone had disturbed the

lighting system here. And what was that odor? Rather sharp, unpleasant;

it might have been spilled ammonia. Gefty stepped through the door into

the wide, short entrance passage beyond it, turned to the right and

peered about in the semidarkness of the vault.



Two great steel cases--the ones Maulbow had taken down to an airless

moon surface, loaded up with something and brought back to the

Queen--were jammed awkwardly into a corner, in a manner which

suggested they'd slid into it when the ship was being knocked around.

One of them was open and appeared to be empty. Gefty wasn't sure of the

other. In the dimness beside them lay the loose coils of some very

thick, dark cable--And standing near the center of the floor was a thing

that at once riveted his attention on it completely. He sucked his

breath in softly, feeling chilled.



He realized he hadn't really believed his own hunch. But, of course, if

it hadn't been an unheard-of outside force that plucked the Queen out

of normspace and threw her into this elsewhere, then it must be

something Maulbow had put on board. And that something had to be a

machine of some kind--



It was.



About it he could make out a thin gleaming of wires--a jury-rigged

safety field. Within the flimsy-looking protective cage was a double

bank of instruments, some of them alive with the flicker and glow of

lights. Those must be the very expensive and difficult-to-build items

Maulbow had brought out from the Hub. Beside them stood the machine,

squat and ponderous. In the vague light, it looked misshaped and

discolored. A piece of equipment that had taken a bad beating of some

kind. But it was functioning. As he stared, intermittent bursts of

clicking noises rose from it, like the staccato of irregular gunfire.



For a moment, questions raced in disorder through his mind. What was it?

Why had it been on that moon? Part of another ship, wrecked now ... a

ship that had been at home here? Was it some sort of drive?



Maulbow must know. He'd known enough to design the instruments required

to bring the battered monster back to life. On the other hand, he had

not foreseen in all detail what could happen once the thing was in

operation, because the Queen's sudden buck-jumping act had surprised

him and knocked him out.



The first step, in any event, was to get Maulbow awake now. To tamper

with a device like this, before learning as much as one could about it,

would be lunatic foolhardiness. It looked like too good a bet that the

next serious mistake made by anybody would finish them all--



Perhaps it was only because Gefty's nerves were on edge that he grew

aware at that point in his reflections of two minor signals from his

senses. One was that the smell of ammonia, which he had almost stopped

noticing, was becoming appreciably stronger. The other was the faintest

of sounds--a whispering suggestion of motion somewhere behind him. But

here in the storage vault nothing should have moved, and Gefty's muscles

were tensing as his head came around. Almost in the same instant, he

flung himself wildly to one side, stumbling and regaining his balance as

something big and dark slapped heavily down on the floor at the point

where he had stood. Then he was darting up through the entrance passage,

turning, and knocking down the lock switches on the outside door panel.



It came flowing around the corner of the passage behind him as the vault

doors began to slide together. He was aware mainly of swift, smooth,

oiling motion like that of a big snake; then, for a fraction of a

second, a strip of brighter light from the outside passage showed a

long, heavy wedge of a head, a green metal-glint of staring eyes.



The doors closed silently into their frames and locked. The thing was

inside. But it was almost a minute then before Gefty could control his

shaking legs enough to start moving back towards the main deck. In the

half-dark of the vault, it had looked like a big coiled cable lying next

to the packing cases. Like Maulbow, it might have been battered around

and knocked out during the recent disturbance; and when it recovered, it

had found Gefty in the vault with it. But it might also have been awake

all the while, waiting cunningly until Gefty's attention seemed fixed

elsewhere before launching its attack. It was big enough to have

flattened him and smashed every bone in his body if the stroke had

landed.



Some kind of guard animal--a snakelike watchdog? What other connection

could it have with the mystery machine? Perhaps Maulbow had intended to

leave it confined in one of the cases, and it had broken loose--



Too many questions by now, Gefty thought. But Maulbow had the answers.



* * * * *



He was hurrying up the main deck's central passage when Maulbow's voice

addressed him sharply from a door he'd just passed.



"Stop right there, Rammer! Don't dare to move! I--"



The voice ended on a note of surprise. Gefty's reaction had not been too

rational, but it was prompt. Maulbow's tone and phrasing implied he was

armed. Gefty wasn't, but he kept a gun in the instrument room for

emergencies. He'd been through a whole series of unnerving experiences,

winding up with being shagged out of his storage vault by something that

stank of ammonia and looked like a giant snake. To have one of the

Queen's passengers order him to stand where he was topped it off.

Every other consideration was swept aside by a great urge to get his

hands on his gun.



He glanced back, saw Maulbow coming out of the half-opened door,

something like a twenty-inch, thin, white rod in one hand. Then Gefty

went bounding on along the passage, hunched forward and zigzagging from

wall to wall to give Maulbow--if the thing he held was a weapon and he

actually intended to use it--as small and erratic a target as possible.

Maulbow shouted angrily behind him. Then, as Gefty came up to the next

cross-passage, a line of white fire seared through the air across his

shoulders and smashed off the passage wall.



With that, he was around the corner, and boiling mad. He had no great

liking for gunfire, but it didn't shake him like the silently attacking

beast in the dark storage had done. He reached the deserted instrument

room not many seconds later, had his gun out and cocked, and was faced

back towards the passage by which he had entered. Maulbow, if he had

pursued without hesitation, should be arriving by now. But the passage

stayed quiet. Gefty couldn't see into it from where he stood. He waited,

trying to steady his breathing, wondering where Kerim Ruse was and what

had got into Maulbow. After a moment, without taking his eyes from the

passage entrance, he reached into the wall closet from which he had

taken the gun and fished out another souvenir of his active service

days, a thin-bladed knife in a slip-sheath. Gefty worked the fastenings

of the sheath over his left wrist and up his forearm under his coat,

tested the release to make sure it was functioning, and shook his coat

sleeve back into place.



The passage was still quiet. Gefty moved softly over to one of the

chairs, took a small cushion from it and pitched it out in front of the

entrance.



There was a hiss. The cushion turned in midair into a puff of bright

white fire. Gefty aimed his gun high at the far passage wall just beyond

the entrance and pulled the trigger. It was a projectile gun. He heard

the slug screech off the slick plastic bulkhead and go slamming down the

passage. Somebody out there made a startled, incoherent noise. But not

the kind of a noise a man makes when he's just been hit.



"If you come in here armed," Gefty called, "I'll blow your head off.

Want to stop this nonsense now?"



There was a moment's silence. Then Maulbow's voice replied shakily from

the passage. He seemed to be standing about twenty feet back from the

room.



"If you'll end your thoughtless attempts at interference, Rammer," he

said, "there will be no trouble." He was speaking with the restraint of

a man who is in a state of cold fury. "You're endangering us all. You

must realize that you have no understanding of what you are doing."



Well, the last could be true enough. "We'll talk about it," Gefty said

without friendliness. "I haven't done anything yet, but I'm not just

handing the ship over to you. And what have you done with Miss Ruse?"



Maulbow hesitated again. "She's in the map room," he said then. "I ...

it was necessary to restrict her movements for a while. But you might as

well let her out now. We must reach an agreement without loss of time."



Gefty glanced over his shoulder at the small closed door of the map

room. There was no lock on the door, and he had heard no sound from

inside; this might be some trick. But it wouldn't take long to find out.

He backed up to the wall, pushed the door open and looked inside.



Kerim was there, sitting on a chair in one corner of the tiny room. The

reason she hadn't made any noise became clear. She and the chair were

covered by a rather closely fitting sack of transparent, glistening

fabric. She stared out through it despairingly at Gefty, her lips moving

urgently. But no sound came from the sack.



Gefty called angrily, "Maulbow--"



"Don't excite yourself, Rammer." There was a suggestion of what might be

contempt in Maulbow's tone now. "The girl hasn't been harmed. She can

breathe easily through the restrainer. And you can remove it by pulling

at the material from outside."



Gefty's mouth tightened. "I'll keep my gun on the passage while I do

it--"



Maulbow didn't answer. Gefty edged back into the map room, tentatively

grasped the transparent stuff above Kerim's shoulder. To his surprise,

it parted like wet tissue. He pulled sharply, and in a moment Kerim came

peeling herself out of it, her face tear-stained, working desperately

with hands, elbows and shoulders.



"Gefty," she gasped, "he ... Mr. Maulbow--"



"He's out in the passage there," Gefty said. "He can hear you." His

glance shifted for an instant to the wall where a second of the

shroudlike transparencies was hanging. And who could that have been

intended for, he thought, but Gefty Rammer? He added, "We've had a

little trouble."



"Oh!" She looked out of the room towards the passage, then at the gun in

Gefty's hand, then up at his face.



"Maulbow," Gefty went on, speaking distinctly enough to make sure

Maulbow heard, "has a gun, too. He'll stay there in the passage and

we'll stay in the instrument room until we agree on what should be done.

He's responsible for what's happened and seems to know where we are."



He looked at Kerim's frightened eyes, dropped his voice to a whisper.

"Don't let this worry you too much. I haven't found out just what he's

up to, but so far his tricks have pretty much backfired. He was counting

on taking us both by surprise, for one thing. That didn't work, so now

he'd like us to co-operate."



"Are you going to?"



Gefty shrugged. "Depends on what he has in mind. I'm just interested in

getting us out of this alive. Let's hear what Maulbow has to say--"



* * * * *



Some minutes later Gefty was trying to decide whether it was taking a

worse risk to believe what Maulbow said than to keep things stalled on

the chance that he was lying.



Kerim Ruse, perched stiffly erect on the edge of a chair, eyes big and

round, face almost colorless, apparently believed Maulbow and was

wishing she didn't. There was, of course, some supporting evidence ...

primarily the improbable appearance of their surroundings. The

pencil-thin fire-spouter and the sleazy-looking "restrainer" had a

sufficiently unfamiliar air to go with Maulbow's story; but as far as

Gefty knew, either of them could have been manufactured in the Hub.



Then there was the janandra--the big, snakish thing in the storage which

Maulbow had brought back up from the moon along with the battered

machine. It had been, he said, his shipboard companion on another

voyage. It wasn't ordinarily aggressive--Gefty's sudden appearance in

the vault must have startled it into making an attack. It was not

exactly a pet. There was a psychological relationship between it and

Maulbow which Maulbow would not attempt to explain because Gefty and

Kerim would be unable to grasp its significance. The janandra was

essential, in this unexplained manner, to his well-being.



That item was almost curious enough to seem to substantiate his other

statements; but it didn't really prove anything. The only point Gefty

didn't question in the least was that they were in a bad spot which

might be getting worse rapidly. His gaze shifted back to the screens.

What he saw out there, surrounding the ship, was, according to Maulbow,

an illusion of space created by the time flow in which they were moving.



Also according to Maulbow, there was a race of the future, human in

appearance, with machines to sail the current of time through the

universe--to run and tack with the winds of time, dipping in and out of

the normspace of distant periods and galaxies as they chose. Maulbow,

one of the explorers, had met disaster a million light-years from the

home of his kind, centuries behind them, his vehicle wrecked on an

airless moon with damaged control unit and shattered instruments. He had

made his way to a human civilization to obtain the equipment he needed,

and returned at last with the Silver Queen to where the time-sailer

lay buried.



Gefty's lip curled. No, he wasn't buying all that just yet--but if

Maulbow was not lying, then the unseen stars were racing past, the

mass of the galaxy beginning to slide by, eventually to be lost forever

beyond a black distance no space drive could span. The matter simply had

to be settled quickly. But Maulbow was also strained and impatient, and

if his impatience could be increased a little more, he might start

telling the things that really mattered, the things Gefty had to know.

Gefty asked slowly, as if hesitant to commit himself, "Why did you bring

us along?"



The voice from the passage snapped, "Because my resources were nearly

exhausted, Rammer! I couldn't obtain a new ship. Therefore I chartered

yours; and you came with it. As for Miss Ruse--in spite of every

precaution, my activities may have aroused suspicion and curiosity among

your people. When I disappeared, Miss Ruse might have been questioned. I

couldn't risk being followed to the wreck of the sailer, so I took her

with me. And what does that mean against what I have offered you? The

greatest adventure--followed, I give you my solemn word, by a safe

return to your own place and time, and the most generous compensations

for any inconvenience you may have suffered!"



Kerim, looking up at Gefty, shook her head violently. Gefty said, "We

find it difficult to take you on trust now, Maulbow. Why do you want to

get into the instrument room?"



Maulbow was silent for some seconds. Then he said, "As I told you, this

ship would not have been buffeted about during the moments of transfer

if the control unit were operating with complete efficiency. Certain

adjustments will have to be made in the unit, and this should be done

promptly."



* * *



"Where do the ship instruments come in?" Gefty asked.



"I can determine the nature of the problem from them. When I was ...

stranded ... the unit was seriously damaged. My recent repairs were

necessarily hasty. I--"






"What caused the crack-up?"



Maulbow said, tone taut with impatience, "Certain sections of the Great

Current are infested with dangerous forces. I shall not attempt to

describe them ..."



"I wouldn't get it?"



"I don't pretend to understand them very well myself, Rammer. They are

not life but show characteristics of life--even of intelligent life. If

you can imagine radiant energy being capable of conscious hostility...."



There was a chill at the back of Gefty's neck. "A big, fast-moving

light?"



"Yes!" Sharp concern showed suddenly in the voice from the passage. "You

... when did you see that?"



Gefty glanced at the screens. "Twice since you've been talking. And

once before--immediately after we got tumbled around."



"Then we can waste no more time, Rammer. Those forces are sensitive to

the fluctuations of the control unit. If they were close enough to be

seen, they're aware the ship is here. They were attempting to locate

it."



"What could they do?"



Maulbow said, "A single attack was enough to put the control unit out of

operation in my sailer. The Great Current then rejected us instantly. A

ship of this size might afford more protection, which is the reason I

chose it. But if the control unit is not adjusted immediately to enable

it to take us out of this section, the attacks will continue until the

ship--and we--have been destroyed."



Gefty drew a deep breath. "There's another solution to that problem,

Maulbow. Miss Ruse and I prefer it. And if you meant what you said--that

you'd see to it we got back eventually--you shouldn't object either."



The voice asked sharply, "What do you mean?"



Gefty said, "Shut the control unit off. From what you were saying, that

throws us automatically back into normspace, while we're still close

enough to the Hub. You'll find plenty of people there who'll stake you

to a trip to the future if they can go along and are convinced they'll

return. Miss Ruse and I don't happen to be that adventurous."



There was silence from the passage. Gefty added, "Take your time to make

up your mind about it, if you want to. I don't like the idea of those

lights hitting us, but neither do you. And I think I can wait this out

as well as you can...."



The silence stretched out. Presently Gefty said, "If you do accept,

slide that fire-shooting device of yours into the room before you show

up. We don't want accidents."



He paused again. Kerim was chewing her lips, hands clenched into small

fists in her lap. Then Maulbow answered, voice flat and expressionless

now.



"The worst thing we can do at present," he said, "is to prolong a

dispute about possible courses of action. If I disarm, will you lay

aside your gun?"



"Yes."



"Then I accept your conditions, disappointing as they are."



He was silent. After a moment, Gefty heard the white rod clatter lightly

along the floor of the passage. It struck the passage wall, spun off it,

and rolled into the instrument room, coming to rest a few feet away from

him. Gefty hesitated, picked it up and laid it on the wall table. He

placed his own gun beside it, moved a dozen steps away. Kerim's eyes

followed him anxiously.



"Gefty," she whispered, "he might ..."



Gefty looked at her, formed the words "It's all right" with his mouth

and called, "Guns have been put aside, Maulbow. Come on in, and let's

keep it peaceable."



He waited, arms hanging loosely at his side, heart beating heavily, as

quick footsteps came up the passage. Maulbow appeared in the entrance,

glanced at Gefty and Kerim, then about the room. His gaze rested for a

moment on the wall table, shifted back to Gefty. Maulbow came on into

the room, turning towards Gefty, mouth twisting.



He said softly, "It is not our practice, Rammer, to share the secrets of

the Great Current with other races. I hadn't foreseen that you might

become a dangerous nuisance. But now--"



His right hand began to lift, half closed about some small golden

instrument. Gefty's left arm moved back and quickly forwards.



The service knife slid out of its sheath and up from his palm as an

arrow of smoky blackness burst from the thing in Maulbow's hand. The

blackness came racing with a thin, snarling noise across the floor

towards Gefty's feet. The knife flashed above it, turning, and stood

hilt-deep in Maulbow's chest.



* * * * *



Gefty returned a few minutes later from the forward cabin which served

as the Queen's sick bay, and said to Kerim, "He's still alive, though

I don't know why. He may even recover. He's full of anesthetic, and that

should keep him quiet till we're back in normspace. Then I'll see what

we can do for him."



Kerim had lost some of her white, shocked look while he was gone. "You

knew he would try to kill you?" she asked shakily.



"Suspected he had it in mind--he gave in too quick. But I thought I'd

have a chance to take any gadget he was hiding away from him first. I

was wrong about that. Now we'd better move fast ..."



He switched the emergency check panel back on, glanced over the familiar

patterns of lights and numbers. A few minor damage spots were indicated,

but the ship was still fully operational. One minor damage spot which

did not appear on the panel was now to be found in the instrument room

itself, in the corner on which the door of the map room opened. The

door, the adjoining bulkheads and section of flooring were scarred,

blackened, and as assortedly malodorous as burned things tend to become.

That was where Gefty had stood when Maulbow entered the room, and if he

had remained there an instant after letting go of the knife, he would

have been in very much worse condition than the essentially fireproof

furnishings.



Both Maulbow's weapons--the white rod lying innocently on the wall table

and the round, golden device which had dropped from his hand spitting

darts of smoking blackness--had blasted unnervingly away into that area

for almost thirty seconds after Maulbow was down and twisting about on

the floor. Then he went limp and the firing instantly stopped.

Apparently, Maulbow's control of them had ended as he lost

consciousness.



It seemed fortunate that the sick bay cabin's emergency treatment

accessories, gentle as their action was, might have been designed for

the specific purpose of keeping the most violent of prisoners

immobilized--let alone one with a terrible knife wound in him. At the



angle along which the knife had driven in and up below the ribs, an

ordinary man would have been dead in seconds. But it was very evident

now that Maulbow was no ordinary man, and even after the eerie weapons

had been pitched out of the ship through the instrument room's disposal

tube, Gefty couldn't rid himself of an uncomfortable suspicion that he

wasn't done with Maulbow yet--wouldn't be done with him, in fact, until

one or the other of them was dead.



He said to Kerim, "I thought the machine Maulbow set up in the storage

vault would turn out to be some drive engine, but apparently it has an

entirely different function. He connected it with the instruments he had

made in the Hub, and together they form what he calls a control unit.

The emergency panel would show if the unit were drawing juice from the

ship. It isn't, and I don't know what powers it. But we do know now that

the control unit is holding us in the time current, and it will go on

holding us there as long as it's in operation.



"If we could shut it off, the Queen would be 'rejected' by the

current, like Maulbow's sailer was. In other words, we'd get knocked

back into normspace--which is what we want. And we want it to happen as

soon as possible because, if Maulbow was telling the truth on that

point, every minute that passes here is taking us farther away from the

Hub, and farther from our own time towards his."



Kerim nodded, eyes intent on his face.



"Now I can't just go down there and start slapping switches around on

the thing," Gefty went on. "He said it wasn't working right, and even if

it were, I couldn't tell what would happen. But it doesn't seem to

connect up with any ship systems--it just seems to be holding us in a

field of its own. So I should be able to move the whole unit into the

cargo lock and eject it from there. If we shift the Queen outside its

field, that should have the same effect as shutting the control unit

off. It should throw us back into normspace."



Kerim nodded again. "What about Mr. Maulbow's janandra animal?"



Gefty shrugged. "Depends on the mood I find it in. He said it wasn't

usually aggressive. Maybe it isn't. I'll get into a spacesuit for

protection and break out some of the mining equipment to move it along

with. If I can maneuver it into an empty compartment where it will be

out of the ..."



* * *



He broke off, expression changing, eyes fastened on the emergency panel.

Then he turned hurriedly, reached across the side of the console for the

intership airseal controls. Kerim asked apprehensively, "What's the

matter, Gefty?"



"Wish I knew ... exactly." Gefty indicated the emergency panel. "Little

red light there, on the storage deck section--it wasn't showing a minute

ago. It means that the vault doors have been opened since then."



He saw the same half-superstitious fear appear in her face that had

touched him. "You think he did it?"



"I don't know." Maulbow's control of the guns had seemed uncanny enough.

But that was a different matter. The guns were a product of his own time

and science. But the vault door mechanisms? There might have been

sufficient opportunity for Maulbow to study them and alter them, for

some purpose of his own, since he'd come aboard....



"I've got the ship compartments and decks sealed off from each other

now," Gefty said slowly. "The only connecting points from one to the

other are personnel hatches--they're small air locks. So the janandra's

confined to the storage deck. If it's come out of the vault, it might be

a nuisance until I can get equipment to handle it. But that isn't too

serious. The spacesuits are on the second deck, and I'll get into one

before I go on to the storage. You wait here a moment, I'll look in on

Maulbow again before I start."



If Maulbow wasn't still unconscious, he was doing a good job of feigning

it. Gefty looked at the pale, lax face, the half-shut eyes, shook his

head and left the cabin, locking it behind him. It mightn't be Maulbow's

doing, but having the big snake loose in the storage could, in fact,

make things extremely awkward now. He didn't think his gun would make

much impression on anything of that size, and while several of the

ship's mining tools could be employed as very effective close-range

weapons, they happened, unfortunately, to be stored away on the same

deck.



He found Kerim standing in the center of the instrument room, waiting

for him.



"Gefty," she said, "do you notice anything? An odd sort of smell...."



Then the odor was in Gefty's nostrils, too, and the back of his neck

turned to ice as he recognized it. He glanced up at the ventilation

outlet, looked back at Kerim.



He took her arm, said softly, "Come this way. Keep very quiet! I don't

know how it happened, but the janandra's on the main deck now. That's

what it smells like. The smell's coming through the ventilation system,

so the thing's moving around in the port section. We'll go the other

way."



Kerim whispered, "What will we do?"



"Get ourselves into spacesuits first, and then get Maulbow's control

unit out of the ship. The janandra may be looking around for him. If it

is, it won't bother us."



* * * * *



He hadn't wanted to remind Kerim that, from what Maulbow said, there

might be more than one reason for getting rid of the control unit as

quickly as possible. But it had been constantly in the back of his mind;

and twice, in the few minutes that passed after Maulbow's strange

weapons were silenced, he had seen a momentary pale glare appear in the

unquiet flow of darkness reflecting in the viewscreens. Gefty had said

nothing, because if it was true that hostile forces were alert and

searching for them here, it added to their immediate danger but not at

all to the absolute need to free themselves from the inexorable rush of

the Great Current before they were carried beyond hope of return to

their civilization.



But those brief glimpses did add to the sense of urgency throbbing in

Gefty's nerves, while events, and the equally hard necessity to avoid a

fatally mistaken move in this welter of unknown factors, kept blocking

him. Now the mysterious manner in which Maulbow's unpleasant traveling

companion had appeared on the main deck made it impossible to do

anything but keep Kerim at his side. If Maulbow was still capable of

taking a hand in matters, there was no reasonably safe place to leave

her aboard the Queen.



And Maulbow might be capable of it. Twice as they hurried up the narrow,

angled passages along the Queen's curving hull towards an airseal

leading to the next compartment, Gefty caught a trace of the

ammonia-like animal odor coming over the ventilating system. They

reached the lock without incident; but then, as they came along the

second deck hall to the ship's magazine, there was a sharp click in the

stillness behind them. Its meaning was disconcertingly apparent. Gefty

hesitated, turned Kerim into a side passage, guided her along it.



She looked up at his face. "It's following us?"



"Seems to be." No time for the spacesuits in the magazine now--something

had just emerged from the air lock through which they had entered the

second deck not many moments before. He helped the girl quickly down a

section of ladderlike stairs to the airseal connecting the second deck

with the storage, punched a wall button there. As the lock door opened,

there was another noise from the passage they had just left, as if

something had thudded briefly and heavily against one of the bulkheads.

Kerim uttered a little gasp. Then they were in the lock, and Gefty

slapped down two other buttons, stood watching the door behind them snap

shut and, a few seconds later, the one on the far side open on the dark

storage deck.



They scrambled down another twelve feet of ladder to the floor of a side

passage, hearing the lock snap shut behind them. As it closed, they were

in complete darkness. Gefty seized Kerim's arm, ran with her up the

passage to the left, guiding himself with his fingertips on the left

bulkhead. When they came to a corner, he turned her to the left again. A

few seconds later, he pulled open a small door, bundled the girl

through, came in himself, and shut the door to a narrow slit behind

them.



Kerim whispered shakily, "What will we do now, Gefty?"



"Stay here for the moment. It'll look for us in the vault first."



And it should go to the storage vault first where it had been guarding

Maulbow's machine, to hunt for them there. But it might not. Gefty eased

the gun from his pocket on the far side of Kerim. Across the dark

compartment was another door. They could retreat a little farther here

if it became necessary--but not very much farther.



They waited in a silence that was complete except for their unsteady

breathing and the distant, deep pulse of the Queen's throttled-down

drives. He felt Kerim trembling against him. How did Maulbow's creature

move through the airseal locks? The operating mechanisms were simple--a

dog might have been taught to use them. But a dog had paws....



There came the soft hiss of the opening lock, the faintest shimmer of

light to the right of the passage mouth he was watching through the

door. A heavy thump on the floor below the locks followed, then a hard

click as the lock closed and complete darkness returned.



The silence resumed. Seconds dragged on. Gefty's imagination pictured

the thing waiting, its great, wedge-shaped head raised as its senses

probed the dark about it for a sign of the two human beings. Then a

vague rushing noise began, growing louder as it approached the passage

mouth, crossing it, receding rapidly again to the left.



Gefty let his breath out slowly, eased the door open and stood listening

again. Abruptly, there was reflected light in the lock passage, coming

now from the left. He said in a whisper, "It's moving around in the main

hall, Kerim. We can go on the other way now, but we'll have to be fast

and keep quiet. I've thought of how we can get rid of that thing."



* * *



The cargo lock on the storage deck had two inner doors. The one which

opened into the side of the vault hall was built to allow passage of the

largest chunks of freight the Queen was likely to be burdened with; it

was almost thirty feet wide and twenty high. The second door was just

large enough to let a man in a spacesuit climb in and out of the side of

the lock without using the freight door. It opened on a tiny control

cubicle from which the lock's mechanisms were operated during loading

processes.






Gefty let Kerim and himself into the cubicle from one of the passages,

steered the girl through the pitch blackness of the little room to the

chair before the control panel and told her to sit down. He groped for a

moment at the side of the panel, found a knob and twisted it. There was

a faint click. A scattering of pale lights appeared suddenly on the

panel, a dark viewscreen, set at a tilt above them, reflecting their

gleam.



Gefty explained in a low voice, "Left side of that screen covers the

lock. Right one covers the big hall outside. No lights in either at the

moment, so you don't see anything. Only way the cargo door to the hall

can be opened or closed is with these switches right here. What I want

to do is get the janandra into the lock, slam the door on it and lock

down the control switches. Then we've got it trapped."



"But how are you going to get it to go in there?"



"No real problem--I'll be three jumps ahead of it. Then I duck back up

into this cubicle, and lock both doors. And it'll be inside the lock.

You have the picture now?"



Kerim said unsteadily, "I do. But it sounds awfully risky, Gefty."



"Well, I don't like it either," Gefty admitted. "So I'll start right now

before I lose my nerve. As soon as I move out into the vault hall, the

lighting will go on. That's automatic. You watch the right side of the

screen. If you see the janandra coming before I do, yell as loud as you

can."



He shifted the two inner door switches to the right. A red spark

appeared in the dark viewscreen, high up near the center. A second red

light showed on the cubicle bulkhead beside Gefty. Beneath it an oblong

section of the bulkhead turned silently away on heavy hinges, became a

door two feet in thickness, which stood jutting out at a right angle

into the darkness of the cargo lock. A wave of cold air moved through it

into the control cubicle.



On the screen, another red spark appeared beside the first one.



"Both doors are open now," Gefty murmured to the girl. "The janandra

isn't in the vault hall or the lighting would have turned on, but it may

have heard the door open and be on its way. So keep watching the

screen."



"I certainly will!" she whispered shakily.



Gefty took an oversized wrench from the wall, climbed quickly and

quietly down the three ladder steps to the floor of the lock, and walked

across it to the sill of the giant freight door, which now had swung out

and down into the vault hall, fitting itself into a depression of the

flooring. He hesitated an instant on the sill, then stepped out into the

big dark hall. Light filled it immediately in both directions.



He stood quiet, intent on the storage vault entrance far up the hall to

his left. He could see the vault was open. The janandra might still be

inside it. But the seconds passed, and the dark entrance remained silent

and there was no suggestion of motion beyond it. Gefty glanced to the

right, moved a dozen steps farther out into the hall, hefted the wrench

and spun it through the air towards the ventilator frame on the opposite

bulkhead.



The heavy tool clanged loudly against the frame, bounced off and thudded

to the floor. Gefty started slowly over to it, heart pounding, with the

vault entrance still at the edge of his vision.



Kerim's voice screamed, "Gefty, it's--"



He spun around, sprinted back to the cargo lock. The janandra had come

silently out of the nearest side passage behind him, was approaching

with the remembered oiling swiftness of motion, its great head lifted a

yard from the floor. Gefty plunged through the lock, jumped for the top

of the cubicle door steps, came stumbling into the cubicle. Kerim was on

her feet, staring. He swung the cubicle door switch to the left,

slapping it flat to the panel. The door snapped back into the wall

behind him with a force that shook the floor.



On the screen, the janandra's thick, dark worm-shape was swinging around

in the dim lock to regain the open hall. It had seen the trap. But the

freight door switch went flat beside the other, and the freight door

rose with massive swiftness. The heavy body smashed against it, went

sliding back to the floor as the door slammed shut and the screen

section showing the cargo lock turned dark.



"Got it--got it--got it!" Gefty heard himself whispering exultantly. He

switched on the lock's interior lights.



Then he swore softly, and, beside him, Kerim sucked in her breath.



* * * * *



The screen showed the janandra in violent but apparently purposeful

motion inside the lock ... and it was also apparent now that it was a

more complexly constructed creature than the long worm-body and heavy

head had indicated. The skin, to a distance of some eight feet back of

the head, had spread out into a wide, flexible frill. From beneath the

frill extended half a dozen jointed, bone-white arms, along with waving,

ribbonlike appendages less easy to define. The thing was reared half up

along the hall door, inspecting its surface with these members; then

suddenly it flung itself around and flashed over to the outer lock door.

Three arms shot out; wiry fingers caught the three spin-locks

simultaneously, began to whirl them.



Gefty said, staring, "Kerim, it's going to ..."



The janandra didn't. The motion checked suddenly, was reversed. The

locks drew tight again. The janandra swung back from the door, lifting

half its length upwards, big head weaving about as it inspected the tool

racks overhead. An arm reached suddenly, snatched something from one of

the racks. Then the thing turned again; and in the next instant its head

filled the viewscreen. Kerim made a choked sound of fright, jerking back

against Gefty. The bulging, metal-green eyes seemed to stare directly at

him. And the screen went black.



Kerim whispered, "Wha ... what happened, Gefty?"



Gefty swallowed, said, "It smashed the view pickup. Must have guessed we

were watching and didn't like it...." He added, "I was beginning to

think Maulbow must be some kind of superman. But it wasn't any

remote-control magic of his that let the janandra out of the vault, and

opened the intership locks when it came up to the main deck and followed

us down again. It was doing all that for itself. It's Maulbow's partner,

not his pet. And it's probably got at least as good a brain as anyone

else on board behind that ugly face."



Kerim moistened her lips. "Can it ... could it get out again?"



"Into the ship?" Gefty shook his head decidedly. "Uh-uh. It could dump

itself out on the other side--and it almost did before it realized where

it was and what it was about to do. But the inner lock doors won't open

until someone opens them right on this panel. No, the thing's safely

trapped. On the other hand ..."



On the other hand, Gefty realized that he wouldn't now be able to bring

himself to eject the janandra out of the cargo lock and into the Great

Current. Its intentions obviously hadn't been friendly, but its level of

intelligence was as good as his own, and perhaps somewhat better; and at

present it was helpless. To dispose of it as he'd had in mind would

therefore be the cold-blooded murder of an equal. But so long as that

ugly and formidable shipmate of Maulbow's stayed in the cargo lock, the

lock couldn't be used to get rid of the control unit in the vault.



A new solution presented itself while Gefty was making a rapid and

rather desperate mental review of various heavy-duty tools which might

be employed as weapons to force the janandra into submission and haul it

off for confinement elsewhere in the ship. Not impossible, but a highly

precarious and time-consuming operation at best. Then another thought

occurred: the storage vault lay directly against the hull of the

Queen--



How long to cut through the hull? The ship's mining equipment was on

board, and the tools were self-powered. Climb into a spacesuit, empty

the air from the entire storage deck, leaving the janandra imprisoned in

the cargo lock ... with Maulbow incapacitated in sick bay, and Kerim

back in the control compartment and also in a suit, for additional

protection. Then cut ship's power to this deck to avoid complications

with the Queen's involved circuitry and work under space

conditions--half an hour if he hurried.



* * *



"Shouldn't take more than another ten minutes," he informed Kerim

presently over the suit's intercom.



"I'm very glad to hear it, Gefty." She sounded shaky.



"Anything going on in the screens?" he asked.



She hesitated a little, said, "No. Not at the moment."



Gefty grunted, blinked sweat from his eyes, and took hold of the

handgrips of the heavy mining cutter again, turning it nose down towards

the vault floor. The guide light found the point he was working on, and

the slice beam stabbed out, began nibbling delicately away to extend the

curving line it had eaten through the Queen's thick skin. He had drawn

a twenty-five foot circle around Maulbow's battered control unit and the

instruments attached to it, well outside the fragile-looking safety

field. The circle was broken at four points where he would plant

explosives. The explosives, going off together, should shatter the

connecting links with the hull and throw the machine clear. If that

didn't release them immediately from its influence, he would see what

putting the Queen's drives into action would do.



"Gefty?" Kerim's voice asked.



"Uh-huh?"



He could hear her swallow over the intercom. "Those lights are back

now."



"How many?"



"Two," Kerim said. "I think they're only two. They keep crossing back

and forth in front of us." She laughed nervously. "It's idiotic, of

course, but I do get the feeling they're looking at us."



Gefty said hesitantly, "Everything's set but I need another minute or

two to get this last connection whittled down a little more. If I blow

the charge too soon, it mightn't take the gadget clean out of the ship."



Kerim said, "I know. I'll just watch ... they just disappeared again."

Her voice changed. "Now there's something else."



"What's that?"



"You know you said to watch the cargo lock lights on the emergency

panel."



"Yes."



"The outer lock door has just been opened."



"What!"



"It must have been. The light started blinking red just now as I was

looking at it."



Gefty was silent a moment, his mind racing. Why would the janandra open

the lock? From what Maulbow had said, it could live for a while without

air, but it still could gain nothing but eventual death from leaving the

ship--



Unless, Gefty thought, the janandra had become aware in some way that he

was about to blow their machine out of the Queen. There were grappling

lines in the cargo lock, and if four or five of those lines were slapped

to the circular section of the hull he'd loosened ...



"Kerim," he said.



"Yes?"



"I'm going to blow the deal right now. Got your suit snapped to the wall

braces like I showed you?"



"Yes, Gefty." Her voice was faint but clear.



He turned the cutter away from the line it had dug, sent it rolling off

towards the far wall. He hurried around the circle, checking the four

charges, lumbered over to the vault passage, stopped just around the

corner. He took the firing box from his suit.



"Ready, Kerim?" He opened the box.



"Ready...."



"Here goes!" Gefty reached into the box, twisted the firing handle.

Light flared in the vault. The deck shook below him. He came stumbling

out from behind the wall.



Maulbow's machine and its stand of instruments had vanished. Where it

had stood was a dark circular hole. Nothing else seemed to have

happened. Gefty clumped hurriedly over to the mining cutter, swung it

around, started more cautiously back towards the hole. He didn't have

the faintest idea what would come next, but a definite possibility was

that he would see the janandra's dark form flowing up over the rim of

the hole. Letting it run into the cutter beam might be the best way to

discourage it from re-entering the Queen.






Instead, a dazzling brilliance suddenly blotted out everything. The

cutter was plucked from Gefty's grasp; then he was picked up, suit and

all, and slammed up towards the vault ceiling. He had a feeling that

inaudible thunders were shaking the ship. He seemed to be rolling over

and over along the ceiling. At last, the suit crashed into something

which showed a total disinclination to yield, and Gefty blacked out.



* * * * *



The left side of his face felt pushed out of shape; his left eye wasn't

functioning too well, and there was a severe pulsing ache throughout the

top of his head. But Gefty felt happy.



There were a few qualifying considerations.



"Of course," he pointed out to Kerim, "all we can really say immediately

is that we're back in normspace and somewhere in the galaxy."



She smiled shakily. "Isn't that saying quite a lot, Gefty?"



"It's something." Gefty glanced around the instrument room. He had

placed an emergency light on the console, but except for that, the

control compartment was in darkness. The renewed battering the Queen

had absorbed had knocked out the power in the forward section. The

viewscreens were black, every instrument dead. But he'd seen the stars

of normspace through the torn vault floor. It was something....



"We might have the light that slugged us to thank for that," he said.

"I'm not sure just what did happen there, but it could have been

Maulbow's control unit it was attacking rather than the ship. Maulbow

said the lights were sensitive to the unit. At any rate, we're here, and

we're rid of the gadget--and of the janandra." He hesitated. "I just

don't feel you should get your hopes too high. We may find out we're a

very long way from the Hub."



Kerim's large eyes showed a degree of confidence which made him almost

uncomfortable. "If we are," she said serenely, "you'll get us back

somehow."



Gefty cleared his throat. "Well, we'll see. If the power shutoff is

something the Queen's repair scanners can handle, the instruments will

come back on any minute. Give the scanners ten minutes. If they haven't

done it by that time, they can't do it and I'll have to play repairman.

Then, with the instruments working, we can determine exactly where we

are."



Unless, he told himself silently, they'd wound up in a distant cluster

never penetrated by the Federation's mapping teams. And there was the

other little question of where they now were in time. But Kerim looked

rosy with relief, and those details could wait.



He took up another emergency light, switched it on and said, "I'll see

how Maulbow is doing while we're waiting for power. If the first aid

treatment has pulled him through so far, the autosurgeon probably can

fix him up."



Kerim's face suddenly took on a guilty expression. "I forgot all about

Mr. Maulbow!" She hesitated. "Should I come along?"



Gefty shook his head. "I won't need help. And if it's a case for the

surgeon, you wouldn't like it. Those things work painlessly, but it gets

to be a mess for a while."



He shut off the light again when he reached the sick bay which was

running on its independent power system. As he opened the cabin door

from the dispensary, carrying the autosurgeon, it became evident that

Maulbow was still alive but that he might be in delirium. Gefty placed

the surgeon on the table, went over to the bed and looked at Maulbow.



To the extent that the emergency treatment instruments' cautious

restraints permitted, Maulbow was twisting slowly about on the bed. He

was speaking in a low, rapid voice, his face distorted by emotion. The

words were not slurred, but they were in a language Gefty didn't know.

It seemed clear that Maulbow had reverted mentally to his own time, and

for some seconds he remained unaware that Gefty had entered the room.

Then, surprisingly, the slitted blue eyes opened wider and focused on

Gefty's face. And Maulbow screamed with rage.



Gefty felt somewhat disconcerted. For the reason alone that he was under

anesthetic, Maulbow should not have been conscious. But he was. The

words were now ones Gefty could understand, and Maulbow was telling him

things which would have been interesting enough under different

circumstances. Gefty broke in as soon as he could.



"Look," he said quietly, "I'm trying to help you. I ..."



Maulbow interrupted him in turn, not at all quietly. Gefty listened a

moment longer, then shrugged. So Maulbow didn't like him. He couldn't

say honestly that he'd ever liked Maulbow much, and what he was hearing

made him like Maulbow considerably less. But he would keep the man from

the future alive if he could.



He positioned the autosurgeon behind the head of the bed to allow the

device to begin its analysis, stood back at its controls where he could

both follow the progress it made and watch Maulbow without exciting him

further by remaining within his range of vision. After a moment, the

surgeon shut off the first-aid instruments and made unobtrusive use of a

heavy tranquilizing drug. Then it waited.



Maulbow should have lapsed into passive somnolence thirty seconds

afterwards. But the drug seemed to produce no more effect on him

mentally than the preceding anesthetic. He raged and screeched on. Gefty

watched him uneasily, knowing now that he was looking at insanity. There

was nothing more he could do at the moment--the autosurgeon's decisions

were safer than any nonprofessional's guesswork. And the surgeon

continued to wait.



Then, abruptly, Maulbow died. The taut body slumped against the bed and

the contorted features relaxed. The eyes remained half open; and when

Gefty came around to the side of the bed, they still seemed to be

looking up at him, but they no longer moved. A thin trickle of blood

started from the side of the slack mouth and stopped again.



* * *



The control compartment was still darkened and without power when Gefty

returned to it. He told Kerim briefly what had happened, added, "I'm not

at all sure now he was even human. I'd rather believe he wasn't."



"Why that, Gefty?" She was studying his expression soberly.



Gefty hesitated, said, "I thought at first he was furious because we'd

upset his plans. But they weren't his plans ... they were the

janandra's. He wasn't exactly its servant. I suppose you'd have to say

he was something like a pet animal."



Kerim said incredulously, "But that isn't possible! Think of how

intelligently Mr. Maulbow ..."



"He was following instructions," Gefty said. "The janandra let him know

whatever it wanted done. He was following instructions again when he

tried to kill me after I'd got away from the thing in the vault. The

real brain around here was the janandra ... and it was a real brain.

With a little luck it would have had the ship."



Kerim smiled briefly. "You handled that big brain rather well, I think."



"I was the one who got lucky," Gefty said. "Anyway, where Maulbow came

from, it's the janandra's kind that gives the orders. And the thing is,

Maulbow liked it that way. He didn't want it to be different. When the

light hit us, it killed the janandra on the outside of the ship. Maulbow

felt it happen and it cracked him up. He wanted to kill us for it. But

since he was helpless, he killed himself. He didn't want to be

healed--not by us. At least, that's what it looks like."



He shrugged, checked his watch, climbed out of the chair. "Well," he

said, "the ten minutes I gave the Queen to turn the power back on are

up. Looks like the old girl couldn't do it. So I'll--"



The indirect lighting system in the instrument room went on silently.

The emergency light flickered and went out. Gefty's head came around.



Kerim was staring past him at the screens, her face radiant.



"Oh, Gefty!" she cried softly. "Oh, Gefty! Our stars!"



* * * * *



"Green dot here is us," Gefty explained, somewhat hoarsely. He cleared

his throat, went on, "Our true ship position, that is--" He stopped,

realizing he was talking too much, almost babbling, in an attempt to

take some of the tension out of the moment. The next few



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