Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930

I threw the current into my little apparatus. I prayed, if it met interference, that the slight sound would pass unnoticed. George Prince had said he would make opportunity to disconnect the room’s insulation. He had evidently done so. I picked up the interior sounds at once; my headphone vibrated with them. And with trembling fingers on the little dial between my knees as I crouched in the darkness behind the cylinder-case, I synchronized.

“Johnson is a fool.” It was Miko’s voice. “We must have the pass-words.”

“He got them from the helio-room.” A man’s voice; I puzzled over it at first, then recognized it. Rance Rankin.

Miko said, “He is a fool. Walking around this ship as though with letters blazoned on his forehead–‘Watch me–I need watching–’ Hah! No wonder they apprehended him!”

Was George Prince in there? Rankin’s voice said: “He would have turned the papers over to us. I would not blame him too much. What harm–”

“Oh, I’ll release him,” Miko declared. “What harm? That braying ass did us plenty of harm. He has lost the pass-words. Better he had left them in the helio-room.”

Moa was in the room. Her voice said: “We’ve got to have them. The Planetara, upon such an important voyage as this, may be watched. How do we know–”

“It is, no doubt,” Rankin said quietly. “We ought to have the pass-words. When we are in control of this ship…”

It sent a shiver through me. Were they planning to try and seize the Planetara? Now? It seemed so.

“Johnson undoubtedly memorized them,” Moa was saying. “When we get him out–”

“Hahn is to do that, at the signal.” Miko added, “George could do it better, perhaps.”

And then I heard George Prince for the first time. He murmured, “I will try.”

“No need,” said Miko. “I praise where praise is deserved. And I have little praise for you now, George!”

I could not see what happened. A look, perhaps, which Prince could not avoid giving this man he had come to hate. Miko doubtless saw it, and the Martian’s hot anger leaped.

Rankin said hurriedly, “Stop that!”

And Moa: “Let him alone! Sit down, you fool!”

I could hear the sound of a scuffle. A blow–a cry, half suppressed, from George Prince.

Then Miko: “I will not hurt him. Craven coward! Look at him! Hating me–frightened!”

I could fancy George Prince sitting there with murder in his heart, and Miko taunting him:

“Hates me now, because I shot his sister!”

Moa: “Hush!”

“I will not! Why should I not say it? I will tell you something else, George Prince. It was not Anita I shot at, but you! I meant nothing for her, but love. If you had not interfered–”

This was different from what we had figured. George Prince had come in from his own room, had tried to rescue his sister, and in the scuffle, Anita had taken the shot intended for George.

“I did not even know I had hit her,” Miko was saying. “Not until I heard she was dead.” He added sardonically, “I hoped it was you I had hit, George. And I will tell you this: You hate me no more than I hate you. If it were not for your knowledge of radium ores–”

“Is this to be a personal wrangle?” Rankin interrupted. “I thought we were here to plan–”

“It is planned,” Miko said shortly. “I give orders, I do not plan. I am waiting now for the moment–”

He checked himself. Moa said, “Does Rankin understand that no harm is to come to Gregg Haljan?”

“Yes,” said Rankin. “And Dean. We need them, of course. But you cannot make Dean send messages if he refuses, nor make Haljan navigate.”

“I know enough to check on them,” Miko said grimly. “They will not fool me. And they will obey me, have no fear. A little touch of sulphuric–” His laugh was gruesome. “It makes the most stubborn very willing.”

“I wish,” said Moa, “we had Haljan safely hidden. If he is hurt–killed–”

So that was why Miko had tried to capture me? To keep me safe so that I might navigate the ship.

It occurred to me that I should get Carter at once. A plot to seize the Planetara? But when?

I froze with startled horror.

The diaphragms at my ears rang with Miko’s words: “I have set the time for now! In two minutes–”

It seemed to startle both Rankin and George Prince almost as much as I. Both exclaimed:

“No!”

“No? Why not? Everyone is at his post!”

Prince repeated: “No!”

And Rankin: “But can we trust them? The stewards–the crew?”

“Eight of them are our own men! You didn’t know that, Rankin? They’ve been aboard the Planetara for several voyages. Oh, this is no quickly-planned affair, even though we let you in on it so recently. You and Johnson. By God!”

I crouched tense. There was a commotion in the stateroom. Miko had discovered that his insulation was cut off! He had evidently leaped to his feet; I heard a chair overturn. And the Martian’s roar: “It’s off! Did you do that, Prince? By God, if I thought–”

My apparatus went suddenly dead as Miko flung on his insulation. I lost my wits in the confusion; I should have instantly taken off my vibrations. There was interference; it showed in the dark space of the ventilator grid over Miko’s doorway; a snapping in the air there, a swirl of sparks.

I heard with my unaided ears Miko’s roar over his insulation: “By God, they’re listening!”

The scream of a hand-siren sounded from his stateroom. It rang over the ship. His signal! I heard it answered from some distant point. And then a shot; a commotion in the lower corridors…

The attack upon the Planetara had started!

I was on my feet. The shouts of startled passengers sounded, a turmoil beginning everywhere.

I stood momentarily transfixed. The door of Miko’s stateroom burst open. He stood there, with Moa, Rankin and George Prince crowding behind him.

He saw me. “You, Gregg Haljan!”

He came leaping at me.

CHAPTER XII