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Title: Voyage 13
Date of first publication: 1938
Author: Ray Cummings (1887?-1957)
Date first posted: June 7 2013
Date last updated: June 7 2013
Faded Page eBook #20130617

This eBook was produced by: Delphine Lettau, Mary Meehan
& the online Distributed Proofreaders Canada team at http://www.pgdpcanada.net




                         VOYAGE 13

                      By RAY CUMMINGS

     _tells of the politics and death that walked the corridors of
     the spaceship WANDERER on--_


                 ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

                    Volume XXI, Number 5

                         JULY, 1938




"By the gods of the Starways, that's a sweet-looking girl," Green said.
"Fling her a look, Jon."

I peered with interest. Wavvy Green, young Helioman of the _Wanderer_,
and I were lounging under the dome near the bridge outside the Control
Room, watching the embarking passengers. The _Wanderer_ was racked in
the big landing stage at Ambelah, Capital of the Venus Free State, ready
now to start for Great New York. The big glassite ports were still
rolled back from the deck dome, and Green and I had a vista down into
the blue-lit stage.

"See her?" Green added.

I saw her presently as she came up the little incline--a small,
pale-blonde girl, with a young man beside her. Both wore the long
cloak-drapes characteristic of the upper caste of the Venus Free
State. The girl's drape was pale blue. As she boarded us, the incline
tube-lights glared on her face. It was a face of delicate, exquisite
beauty--lilylike--with the creamy complexion characteristic of the Venus
nobility.

I was not unduly impressionable to feminine beauty; certainly in my
capacity as Assistant Navigator of the _Wanderer_ I had seen girls
of scores of races and on many planets. But here was something that
quickened my pulse--an ethereal beauty--a purity--and a sort of
helplessness. At the top of the incline she stopped suddenly. Her young
man companion had turned away momentarily. She spoke to him, and he
quickly took her arm.

"She's blind," Green said.

"You know who she is?"

"Normah Velah II, no less," he explained. "The young fellow with her
is her brother, Roberoh. And if you look closely you'll see at least
fourteen men down there on the stage who have bodyguarded them here. And
now that they're on board it's up to Mac."

Our little red-headed helioman always made a point of knowing
everything. I had had no idea we were to have such distinguished
passengers this voyage. As a matter of fact, their embarkation had not
been announced; Wavvy got it from our Purser.

The girl and her tall, dark-haired brother had disappeared now on the
side deck almost directly under us.

"Here's Mac now," Wavvy Green added.

Mack Mackenzie, a big, rawboned, six-foot Scotsman, was an
Anglo-Alliance Shadow Man, detailed from Great-London for duty on the
_Wanderer_ to represent the Interplanetary Police. He always posed as a
passenger. He came lounging toward us.

"I see we've got distinguished guests," I murmured.

"Ye'll be forgettin' it," he retorted softly. "Eavesdroppin' rays have
keen ears."

"The girl knocked Jon dead," Green chuckled. "You could see it on his
face. So now he's a star-crossed lover--moon-struck. I'm a motor-oiler
if he isn't."

"You go wrap up an electric spark," I told him. I moved away from his
gibes and went into the Control Room, to work on the trajectory charts.
And a few minutes later Voyage 13 was under way--a voyage ill-fated for
us as the ancient superstition of the number would indicate.

I am Jon Halory. I was age twenty-five at that time--Assistant Navigator
of the _Wanderer_. With the Earth and Venus well past conjunction,
this was to be our last voyage of the Astronomical Season. By ship's
routine, it was midafternoon when we departed. I went at my duties.
But despite the necessity of tossing long and intricate equations to
calculate the elements of our forthcoming course, I could not get that
Venus girl, Normah Velah II, out of my mind. I had heard of her, of
course. The _Wanderer_, this voyage, had been racked in the stage at
Ambelah for nearly a week.

It had been a tumultuous week in the affairs of the Venus Free State.
For nearly a year trouble had been brewing with the natives of the
outlying, mountainous districts. The hill people were restless, eager
for a governmental change that would benefit their benighted condition.
It was largely the result of their own incapacity; the Liberal
Government of the Free State was doing very well by them. But always
under such circumstances, a leader will arise to capitalize discontent
for his own lust for power.

Such a leader had arisen. He was known as Talone, not even a native of
Venus. Vaguely it was understood that he had come from Mars--ousted from
Ferrok-Shahn for similar activities.

But on Venus, among the ignorant, his bombastic talk gained him a huge
following.

I was not familiar with the details. But this week, when the _Wanderer_
lay racked in Ambelah, open revolt broke out in the city. There was an
attack upon Government House, and President Velah was assassinated.
The mob within a day was in control; and from the hills, Talone came
marching, possessing himself of the Government, proclaiming Interregnum
Law until a new election could be held.

My fellow officers and I were not allowed from the _Wanderer_. The
city was in a turmoil. Vaguely, we were given to understand that
Roberoh, and Normah--the President's young son and daughter--had
escaped from Government House and taken refuge in the living quarters
of the Officials of the Landing Stage. It was under the flag of the
Interplanetary League--and not even the swaggering Talone and his
roistering fellows dared attack it. And now Roberoh and Normah were
embarking for Earth. All that afternoon and evening, I could not get the
vision of that ethereal-faced little blind girl out of my mind.

It was well after the evening meal before the _Wanderer_ rose through
the dense fogs of the Venus atmosphere and emerged into the sunlight of
Interplanetary Space. Captain Jaquero was never one to hurry his ascent;
the comfort of the passengers, to him, was beyond a few hours of the
voyage. Mrs. Reynolds, our Matron, had few cases of pressure sickness.
The _Wanderer_, of all the Starway Fleet, had a reputation for comfort.
Despite the trying Venus atmosphere--with its weird changes and its
interminable moisture content--the _Wanderer_ remained comfortable. We
maintained on board a gravity of Earth .9; temperature 72 F.; interior
air pressure 15.75 lbs. per square inch, with the Erentz pressure
equalizers working perfectly.

It was nine p. m., ship's time--mid-evening--when I finished calculating
the elements of our trajectory. Captain Jaquero and First Officer Peters
approved them; we set the electronic gravity plates and slowly turned,
with the sunlight bathing our stern and the bow a glory of starlight,
prismatic in the black vault of Space.

       *       *       *       *       *

With my job done, I went from the Control Room for a stroll on the
star-gazer's deck, as they call it--a seventy-foot little deck under the
glassite dome. A few of the larger passenger cabins were here, and in
the stern was Green's little helio-radio cubby. We had few passengers
this voyage--no more than six or eight, it seemed. One or two were
standing gazing through the bulls-eyes of the dome.

Then to one side, I saw a little group--Dr. Blake, our Ship's Physician,
seated with Roberoh and Normah Velah. I approached them with my heart
accelerated and a queerly asinine regret within me that this blind girl
could not see that I was a stalwart, fairly handsome fellow, sleek and
efficient-looking in my white linen. Green would have gibed at me, but
there was no one to know how I felt as Dr. Blake introduced me and I sat
quietly in the group, smoking and saying very little.

I recall we talked of nothing in particular. I saw this murdered
President's son as a youth no older than his sister. They were twins in
fact, I learned now. Roberoh was not yet of age--which is twenty-two for
a male in the Venus Free State. He could not have held office.

Dr. Blake--always a blundering fellow--said something like that to
Roberoh. A flush came to the youth's patrician face.

"We do not speak of such things now," he said. "All Venus people are
intuitive linguists;" Roberoh spoke English with the soft, curiously
limpid quality characteristic of his race. "My sister and I--we are
making a voyage to Earth--to forget what we have been through. Dr.
Blake, perhaps, hardly understands. But you do, Mr. Halory?"

"Yes," I murmured.

Our bullet-headed doctor possibly was piqued at the rebuke. At all
events he presently left us. Always, in the offing, the tall figure of
Mac, our A. A. Shadow Man, was visible. I saw him now, clad in a Venus
cloak that looked absurd on his burly figure as he stood alone by a
bulls-eye with the starlight painting him. Apparently he was engrossed
in the glittering dome of the Heavens; in reality I knew he was watching
us.

Normah had said almost nothing. At ease, she sat back in her padded
deck chair, her poor blank eyes, blue with the starlight, gazing
idly--seeing nothing but her own thoughts. She was even more beautiful,
here as I sat with her, than I had pictured. Small, slim as a child, yet
rounded with full maturity, the lines of her figure obvious beneath her
filmy blue-gray dress with its gold cords crossed over her bosom, wound
around her slight waist and dangling with tassels almost to her sandaled
feet.

Perhaps, normally, there would have been nothing unduly pathetic in her
blindness. Certainly she did not seem to feel it morbidly. Roberoh spoke
of things she had read; sculptured works of art she had seen with her
fingertips. And she was a musician, skilled with the lutelike _vicahnah_
of Venus.

"My brother paints me with very glorious colors," she said once. She
laughed, musically as a lute itself. But at once, when her face went
into repose, I could not miss that there was upon it a queer look of
uneasiness. A sort of tense expectancy. As though her mind were not
on what we were saying, but on something else. Something--terrifying
perhaps.

       *       *       *       *       *

Quite suddenly, as Roberoh and I were talking some triviality, she broke
in upon us.

"Would you go to our cabin, Roberoh?" She had suddenly lowered her
voice. She leaned toward me. "I know that we--we can trust you, Mr.
Halory. Could there--could there be any eavesdropping ray upon us now?"

"Quiet, Normah," Roberoh murmured. "You want me to go----"

"Yes, please. Oh hurry--I just feel frightened----"

It was as though some extra-normal sense were warning her of danger,
so that she sat with hands gripping the sides of her chair, her bosom
rising and falling with her quickened breath, her delicate nostrils
dilating.

Roberoh leaped to his feet with his cloak around him.

"I will go see. But it is nothing, Normah."

He moved forward along the starlit deck, and disappeared down a little
half-flight inclined to a balconied recess where his cabin and Normah's
were located side by side almost under the control turret.

Normah and I were left alone. Momentarily Mac had moved away.

"What is it?" I murmured tensely.

"That Dr. Blake who was here----" She was leaning with her hand upon my
arm; her voice was barely a whisper.

"What about him?" I prompted.

"I--I'm afraid of him--I don't like him----".

Well, the burly, bullet-headed Blake had never been any great favorite
of mine. But there had not seemed anything terrifying about him. He was,
however, what they used to call a lady-killer.

"What did he do to annoy you?" I murmured.

"Nothing. I just feel--that he's an enemy. And others--the whole ship
maybe----"

I tried to scoff, but she was so earnest, so obviously terrified that it
made me tense. Why had she sent her brother so hastily to their cabins?

Her hand still gripped me. "We must not talk of it," she murmured, "but
you, I know, we can trust. No more now, please----"

I sat staring at her. And then she smiled.

"Shall we talk?" she murmured. "What do young men--like you--on Earth
talk about when they sit with a young girl in the starlight?"

That wouldn't have been hard for me--under the circumstances she
pictured. But it was hard now, so that I sat suddenly tongue-tied.

"Well----" I said.

"Of music? Of the stars? You have a beautiful Moon, some of the nights
on Earth? I have read about it." She was smiling quizzically.

"Yes," I agreed. "The moonlight and a pretty girl--well you're supposed
to talk about love. I guess it's the same on Venus----"

I checked myself. Her hand had come out; her fingers lightly brushed my
face. She was still smiling.

"Excuse me," she said. "One likes to see to whom one is talking."

There was no pathos. Her smile was faintly quizzical, as she added,
"Being blind is a little disadvantage in the moonlight."

"Not at all," I said. And then impulsively I quoted, "Flinging back a
million starbeams, the vault of Space reminds me of thine eyes."

As her hands went to my shoulders, I stared into her eyes. The blankness
seemed vanished, for they were, in truth, filled with starlight. For
that moment our bantering was gone. Both of us were breathless. But a
little vestige of sanity clung to me.

"A President's daughter," I murmured, "could never be interested in a
ship's officer----"

"You think so? There is no difference--a ship's officer, or a
King--'If you were a King'--there is on Earth a poem like that. You
say it."

"'If I were King'", I murmured.

    _"'Ah love, if I were King,
    What tributary planets I would bring
    To bow before your sceptre, and to swear
    Allegiance to your lips and eyes and hair.
    The stars would be your pearls upon a string,
    Red Mars a ruby for your finger-ring,
    And you could have the Sun and Moon to wear--
    If I were King.'"_

       *       *       *       *       *

It was our moment, so suddenly come as I held her there in the
starlight. And then it was dashed. A step sounded on the deck near us.
I could feel Normah stiffen in my arms. Then she drew away. A man was
coming toward us--one of the passengers. I knew his name, Graeff III.
He was an elderly fellow--a wealthy importer, I understood, in Ambelah.
His dark cloak shrouded him--a tall, but bent figure, bare-headed, with
the starlight gleaming on his mass of gray-white hair, long about his
ears in the Venus fashion. His vacuum-cupped sandals squished on the
metal-grid of the deck as he walked.

"That man Graeff----" Normah was murmuring.

"You've met him, Normah?"

"Yes--this afternoon. Dr. Black introduced him." A shuddering terror was
upon her.

He came past us. I saw that Mac was lounging at a near-by bulls-eye
port. Graeff, as he came abreast of us, turned and came smilingly
forward.

"Ah--it is the beautiful little Normah," he said. His gray-white sagging
face, with queerly heavy jowls, was wrinkled into a smile. His eyes,
deep-set under shaggy white brows, swept me a glance. "One of our young
officers?" he added.

"This is Jon Halory," Norman introduced.

I was on my feet, but I did not offer the chair. Graeff nodded,
teetering on his sandals, unsteady as though with senility.

"The starlight," he said, "is very beautiful. We will have the
Earthlight glow in a night or two." He nodded to me, and passed on;
vanished down a near-by incline to the cabin quarters below.

Mac again had gone. I sat down beside Normah.

"He--of them all--terrifies me," she murmured. "There is evil in him. It
radiates----"

Wordlessly, I could only stare. Was the _Wanderer_, this voyage,
bristling with Talone's spies? Suddenly I felt our helplessness--a
little world here, poised seemingly motionless in the great abyss of
Space. Captain Jaquero was armed; the Control Turret was a little
arsenal. But whom could we trust? Normah's words rang through my
startled mind: "He, of them all, terrifies me." As though this little
blind girl could feel the radiations of evil. And looking back on it
now, I have no doubt that she did.

But why should Talone's spies be here? I knew that by Interplanetary
Law, this girl and youth--both under legal age--could have no bearing
upon the governmental status of the Venus Free State. They could not
appear before the Interplanetary League of Great London in protest at
Talone's usurpation. Why then would he pursue them?

Normah was clinging to me. "My brother," she murmured. "He has not come
back from our cabin! Oh, please--take me there--hurry!"

What was there about her cabin that was so terrifying? She clung to me
as we hurried forward on the starlit deck. At the little half-flight
incline, Roberoh appeared from below.

"It is--all right?" Normah murmured.

"Yes," he said. He flung a glance at me as his arm went around his
sister. He was smiling, but I could not mistake his agitated tenseness,
the pallor of his handsome, boyish face, the look of terror in his eyes.

"It is all right, Normah," he added gently. "Do not be frightened."

I accompanied them to the mid-flight balcony catwalk-upon which their
communicating cubbies opened. At Normah's door we paused. Roberoh
gestured down the spiral to the main cabin corridor close under us.

"That fellow Graeff," he said softly, "was standing down there. When he
saw me, he came and went on deck."

It brought a little cry from Normah. Roberoh drew me aside.

"I follow my sister," he said. "In English you call it intuition. She
has it. She knows we can trust you----"

I nodded. "There is something you want to tell me?"

"No--or at least not now. I thought when we boarded your ship we would
be safe." He was murmuring with swift vehemence; his gaze again swept
down the shadowed tube-lit spiral to the blue corridor under us. "I know
now that we are not safe, Halory. You, we can trust. And the Captain?"

"Of course," I murmured.

"And there is your Shadow Man Mackenzie----"

So they knew about Mackenzie.

"And your First Officer Peters--and your crew----"

That startled me. Of our crew of twelve, seven had been on shore leave
when the trouble broke out in Ambelah. They had vanished. Captain
Jaquero had engaged others--seven new men about whom we knew nothing.

"What do you want me to do?" I said.

"You are armed?"

"Not now. But in my cubby----"

"In the night--I want no prowlers here at our door----"

Normah's cubby was dim behind them. "Goodnight," she murmured. "Of
everyone--it seems perhaps there is only you."

The door closed upon their tense, white faces.

       *       *       *       *       *

The rhythmic hum of the Erentz pressure equalizers sounded dimly through
my silent cubby. Outside my latticed bulls-eye, facing sternward,
the gigantic silver crescent which was Venus still nearly filled the
quadrant of the sky, with the Sun blocked behind it now.

"Of everyone--it seems there is only you." Normah's last words of terror
pounded in my head. Only these two fugitives, and myself to protect
them? But that was absurd, of course. There was old Captain Jaquero; and
Mac----But who else? Wavvy Green, perhaps. I could name no one else. If,
indeed, Talone's spies were here, I could easily fathom that Blake and
Peters could be bribed. And Roberts, the purser? I knew nothing about
him, save that he had always seemed a very decent fellow. We had no more
than five passengers. Who were they, beyond Graeff, Normah and Roberoh?
I did not know.

It was the trinight hour now--midway between midnight and dawn. I had
prowled, Banning gun under my night cloak. But there was nothing. I had
not seen Mac. Once I searched for him, with a sudden impulse to consult
him. But with the skill of years, Mac was like a shadow himself--unseen
when he was prowling.

The little Trinight buzz from the Control Turret sounded through the
silent interior. I knew that the Captain would be at the controls now,
with Collins, our Chief Navigator, beside him. The other officers, like
myself, were off duty.

For another ten minutes I sat tense, pondering. Then again I started for
Normah's cabin. The eerie blue-lit corridors were empty. There was no
one, seemingly, on the star-gazer's little deck. The glassite dome over
it glowed with starlight. Green's cubby was dark.

Silently, cloak around me, I moved forward, went down the half incline
to the catwalk balcony. At Normah's door I listened. There was no sound
from behind its metal panel.

I am no professional prowler. I was tense, jumpy. Was that a moving
shadow in the corridor under me? I thought so. I started down, but if
something had been there, it was gone.

Then, as again I paused at Normah's door, dimly from within I heard a
murmuring voice.

"Normah----"

Then there was an answer in the Venus tongue. It was Normah's agitated
voice, unmistakable. But whose was the other? Not Roberoh's! It was
blurred, throaty--almost a groan.

"Normah--Normah----"

And then I heard Roberoh's voice. Three of them were in there!

For that instant I was shocked into confusion. But my wits came
back, steadied as I realized the existence of a low hum--the tiny,
microphonic, grinding hum of electronic interference.

An eavesdropping ray! You can hear them sometimes, when you are close to
a metal obstruction through which they are passing. An eavesdropping ray
from some near-by point was focused upon Norman's door. It was picking
up the murmur of the three voices and humming a little with the door's
interference.

       *       *       *       *       *

For that second I stiffened, with my Banning gun pointing down the
spiral. Was the eavesdropper down there? Abruptly I was aware that the
hum was gone--as though he had learned what he wanted to know.

I recall that I was part-way down the spiral. And then I heard a groan
from below--a ghastly, gurgling groan as though from a throat and mouth
choked with blood.

And then came my name: "Halory--I'm here----"

It was Mac. He had misjuggled his job, just for once in his life. But
once was too much. I found him lying in a black recess of the lower
corridor. A knife handle protruded from his chest. His hands were
futilely plucking at it.

"Halory--get them--all three of them to the Control Turret----" Blood
was grewsome in his throat. "Halory--I'm gone--you hurry--they know now
he is on board--you get to the Turret--your only chance because all hell
will break loose----"

His words were lost in the blood that gushed from his mouth. Then he
twitched and the light went out of his eyes.

For a second I stood transfixed. And in that second, as Mac had warned,
all hell broke loose. From somewhere in the ship, like a signal, a brief
penetrating little whine sounded. There was a distant scream from the
crew's quarters under me--the sizzling, muffled flash of a Banning
gun--the tramp of running feet--men's shouting voices----

I turned and leaped up the incline to the catwalk balcony--pounded on
Normah's door. They had heard the commotion, of course. The door swung
inward as Roberoh opened it to my imperative voice. In the center of
the dim cabin, Normah stood with her arms around an elderly man. He
was pallid, trembling; his head and one arm were bound with surgical
bandages.

Roberoh swung toward me. "My father," he said swiftly. "He did not die.
The surgeons--were loyal. We pretended he died, you see? Or the mob
would have come again and killed him surely----"

I was barely aware of Roberoh's tense words. The interior of
the _Wanderer_ resounded with the distant commotion. Banning
flashes--several screams now and doors slamming. The aroused passengers
were screaming with terror--screams that turned ghastly with agony as
the bandits struck them down.

"They've killed Mac," I said. "We've got to get to the Control Turret."

Oncoming footsteps thudded in the corridor under us as we went to the
catwalk. A figure was coming up the spiral. I turned sternward. We ran
some thirty feet on the catwalk, then went up another incline to the
upper deck. Forward on the turret bridge, I saw Chief Navigator Collins.
He had a Banning gun in each hand.

"Halory!" he shouted. "Halory--Lord, what's happening?"

The aged President Velah stumbled as Roberoh and I gripped him, half
carrying him. Obviously he was numbed by terror, and by the pain of his
wounds.

"What is this?" he muttered in English. "What is this going on?"

"You're all right," I said. "Just a little further--hurry----"

My arm was around Normah, guiding her. From Green's helio cubby, Wavvy
came dashing at us. "I sent a call for help," he shouted. "Contacted the
Interplanetary Patrol cruise ship. It'll come in a few hours."

       *       *       *       *       *

From across the starlit deck a shadow rose up. A Banning gun spat its
sizzling heat-ray, drilled Green and ended with a violet-red shower of
sparks up on the metal dome-casing. Wavvy flung up his arms silently
and went down. It was Dr. Blake who had drilled him. I saw the running
figure heading sternward--and I didn't miss. My heat-stab went through
him, so clean and swift a drilled little hole that, though he was dead,
his body of its own momentum seemed to keep on running with buckling
legs. Then his head crashed against a metal ventilator.

We shoved the numbed President into the Turret and slid its metal
door-slide. Captain Jaquero had locked the controls and came running at
me. "Halory," he gasped, "murder--death everywhere on my ship--are we
all who have survived?"

Except the traitors. I could not doubt it. Ruthlessly, the passengers
and all our loyal crew had been killed. And here in the Turret there
were only the Captain, Collins, and I; the President, Roberoh, and
Normah. I had taken Normah and her father to a side couch across the
circular little Control Room. The bulls-eye windows gave us a vista
in every direction of the starlit ship. The forepeak--empty save
for the crumpled figure of the lookout lying weltering beside his
electro-telescope--the narrow, empty side-decks between the Turret and
the dome-sides--and sternward, along the empty star-deck where the
figures of Green and Dr. Blake lay sprawled.

Then from the dull glare of Venus-light at the stern, a figure with a
raised handkerchief was slowly advancing. It was Graeff.

"Do not fire," he called. "Will you have a truce so that we may talk? It
may save your lives."

Our microphone picked up his voice and amplified it in the Turret. The
bulls-eye sternward was partly open. Chief Navigator Collins stood there
and raised a handkerchief.

"Very good," Graeff said. "I will trust you."

He had stopped, but again he advanced, his long cloak swinging with his
aged, tottering step. In the center of the deck, again he paused, and I
saw him straighten from his bent, decrepit posture. It was a startling
metamorphosis--the fellow was a skilled actor. His face had been altered
by the disguiser's art. He was still old-looking of countenance as he
stood grinning at us in the starlight. But his bent body had unlimbered;
his sagging shoulders were squared; his legs straightened so that here
was a burly fellow as tall as myself.

"By the Gods----" Collins muttered.

At the open bulls-eye, the angry Captain roared, "You damned
murderer--what do you want?"

"I am Talone," the fellow said. "No murderer." He grinned sardonically
up at us. "This is warfare, not murder. There is a distinction, even if
little of difference. I come for President Velah."

"Well, you don't get him," I said. Behind me I was aware of the wounded
old President coming forward, courageous despite his confusion and his
pain. But I shoved him back.

"Keep him away from the window," I warned Roberoh. "Keep Normah over
there."

"Oh, it is you, Halory," Talone was saying. "So you are yet alive? I
speak with Captain Jaquero."

"Say what you wish and have done," the Captain shouted.

"Thank you. I demand Velah. Do you think I would permit him to reach
Great London and protest me at the Interplanetary League?"

       *       *       *       *       *

They had smuggled the wounded Velah on board to save his life. But it
was true also that if he appeared alive in Great London before the
League, by treaty, all the Planetary Governments would send an armed
Interplanetary Patrol to Venus--to take over the ministration of the
Free State, guaranteeing Velah's government and his personal safety.
There could be no conquest by Talone, no crooked subsequent election of
him later, as of course he planned.

"Well that's what we'll do," the Captain roared. "And jail you and your
murderers."

"You jest with me, Captain," Talone retorted. "I have the ship. Your
controls in the Turret--how can you shift the rocket jets when my men
below are shifting them by the manual levers? Don't you see the heavens
swinging already?"

I was aware of it. Over our stern Venus was slowly mounting; the great
blazing black firmament was swinging.

"I offer you life," Talone was saying. "I can starve you there in the
Turret. I can shut off your air-renewers----"

"That's a lie," I murmured to Roberoh. "We have pressure equalizers and
emergency air renewers here in the Turret. The whole system independent
of the rest of the ship."

"We'll drill any man who comes near us," the Captain roared. "Go back.
We've had enough of your talk."

"Then I will just say I can navigate from below by disconnecting your
controls," Talone retorted. "Already I have done that. We are returning
to Ambelah. But I offer you life. If you toss out your weapons now, I
will put you on an asteroid. Little kings to rule all you survey."

"By the Infernal--go back from the deck, you smidge," the Captain
roared. "I will parley no more with a murderer."

Still grinning, Talone raised his white handkerchief with a derisive
flaunting gesture and backed away. I barely saw his other hand go under
his cloak. I had no time to shout a warning, or even to move. From
beneath Talone's cloak, a flash spat through the fabric--the flash of an
electronic spray gun. At our Turret window its lurid, blue-green bolt
struck with a shower of sparks. Dimly I was aware of the Captain and
Collins as they fell. I was close behind them. Not directly hit--but
the aura of the bolt stunned me. All the world seemed bursting into a
roaring glare of light which faded as I fell, with my senses whirling
off into the soundless, black abyss of unconsciousness.

       *       *       *       *       *

How long I was out I do not know. I recovered consciousness lying upon
the Turret couch, with Normah bending over me. As I stirred, and my
eyelids fluttered up, her fingers felt them.

"Oh," she murmured. "You're all right now?"

My head was roaring, but my strength came rapidly. President Velah was
in a chair across the Turret. The white-faced Roberoh helped me to my
feet. On the Turret floor-grid, Captain Jaquero and Collins lay with
their clothes charred upon them. Both were dead.

"I bolted the bulls-eyes," Roberoh was saying. "No one has come to the
deck. Oh, I am so glad you did not die."

He was grim with terror as he held the pallid Normah against him. In
the chair his wounded old father seemed dazed. Roberoh was only a boy
really; with me unconscious he had felt himself here alone, so that now
with a rush of relief he clung to me.

The star-gazer's deck outside our bolted bulls-eyes was empty. Through
the glassite plates of the enclosing dome I could see the black
firmament. We were still in the cone of Venus' shadow. The great
crescent of the planet lay now in advance of our bow. Talone had turned
us, shifted the rocket jets so that with full drive and gravity added we
were heading back.

The audiphone in the Turret buzzed. I jumped for it.

"This is Talone," the microphonic voice said. "Shall we talk again? Will
you starve? Or shall I shut off your air?"

"You can't," I said. "We have emergencies here."

Talone knew that he could not risk an assault now upon the Turret. The
aluminite walls and the bulls-eyes would resist his weapons. If we fired
out of the ports, some of his attacking party undoubtedly would be
killed.

But of what use for us to keep alive, imprisoned here until the
_Wanderer_ was racked at Ambelah? Talone's men would surround the ship
and starve us out. Or, with the ship abandoned, blow us into Eternity.

He recognized my voice. "Oh--it is you, Halory? Are you yet alive? Will
you stay there, or disarm and let me maroon you on an asteroid?"

I slammed the connection, and turned to Roberoh. The beginnings of a
plan were in my mind, and as I told it to Roberoh, he listened with
dropped jaw. It was so desperate a plan that Normah gasped,

"No--no, please!"

"You'll never get down there," Roberoh murmured. "They'll see you."

"Well I can try," I said. I grinned at him. But in truth I was as
desperately tense as himself. "What else is there to do? If they--seize
me----"

"Kill you," Normah corrected.

"All right--if they kill me, you'll be no worse off here."

As one of the ancient philosophers said, "Desperation doth make heroes
of us all." I felt like that. When one is sure he is going to die it
takes no courage to try and stay alive. Heaven knows, in all my eight
years flying the star-ways, never had I had occasion to jump into Space
from my vessel. But the occasion was here now.

       *       *       *       *       *

The emergency air-suits were hung in a closet of the chartroom. I
drew one out--a double-shell of fabricoid, with the Erentz pressure
equalizing current circulating between the inner and the outer layer.
With Roberoh watching me--and Normah white and silent peering with her
sightless eyes--I donned the suit. From feet to neck it encased me with
its black baggy folds. The mechanism pack was a great lump on my back,
with the goggled helmet hinged back behind my head. For weapons there
was a hook with a length of wire hung at my belt, and a knife stuck
there.

With gloved hand, I clapped Roberoh on the back. "Good luck to us." And
I touched Normah's sleek, blonde head.

Neither of them answered. Roberoh moved the door-slide a little. For a
second I stood peering at the deck. It was only a few feet from here to
the incline opening leading below. With the feeling that a flash from
some near-by shadow would end all my problems, I jumped the few feet and
darted into the companionway. There was no flash. The descending spiral
seemed empty. I passed the catwalk where Normah's cabin door stood
open--went down another flight to the main corridor.

Still there was no encounter. A little further along I came upon a dead
passenger; near the stern, the body of Mrs. Reynolds, the Matron, hung
over a catwalk rail, her head grewsomely dangling with crimsoned slashed
throat.

It seemed a ship of the dead; silent, with just the purring hum of the
Erentz current. I went down another little flight, knife in hand, silent
as a cat on my rubberized soles. I was in the lower part of the hull
now. The door to the lower Control Room, where the rocket-jet controls
were located, stood open. As I stood silently peering I could hear the
murmur of voices--Talone and his men who were gathered in there.

I went down another half flight, into the dim little pressure chamber of
the lower keel-fin. Triumph was within me now. Nothing could stop me
from my purpose. Talone and his men were roistering in the shifter-room,
befuddled now by alcohol so that they had left the upper part of the
vessel unguarded, secure in the belief that none of us would dare
venture from the Turret.

The pressure chamber was almost wholly dark. The lower glassite trap
was closed. I peered down through it at the vast starry abyss of the
firmament. It took me no more than a minute to adjust my helmet and
start the suit mechanisms. The suit bloated with air; my little pressure
current hummed in my ears.

The pumps of the pressure chamber were at the side of the wall. In ten
minutes, with the bulkhead door to the hull closed, I could have emptied
the little chamber of its air. But Heaven knows I had no need to do that
now. With the manual lever, cautiously, I opened the lower trap about an
inch. The ship's air whined as it began going out--the interior pressure
forcing it out into the vacuum of Space.

At the inch-wide slit I knelt, bracing myself against the downward
rush of air. I sucked, whined, then howled as I slid the port a little
farther. I was almost flattened now by the downward pressure. All the
air in the ship--save only the hermetic, independent Turret--had egress
here. The pressure of it had me almost pinned over the slit. I saw my
danger, twisted and slid the big port wide.

       *       *       *       *       *

There was a roar--a giant, tumbling torrent of wind, like water surging
under pressure in a pipe--a cataclysm of outward rushing air. No doubt
in every corner of the vessel the sucking draft and lowering pressure
were at once apparent. And here at the open port it was a maelstrom.
There was a second when I thought I would be hurled down against the
casement of the port, my helmet to be smashed and make an end of me.
Then I was blown down through the center of the opening--hurled outward,
down into Space!

My first sensation was a nauseous feeling of falling. But in a moment it
was gone. In soundless emptiness, I felt nothing--saw myself poised, the
great, black dome of the firmament a vast enclosing shell, everywhere
gem-strewn. But close over me--a hundred feet away perhaps--the hull of
the _Wanderer_ loomed sleek, shining with starlight. The torrent of air
was pouring out of its lower port, but so instantly dissipating into
the vacuum that already I was beyond its force. I had blown a hundred
feet, still moving with small momentum. I saw the ship drifting away,
and desperately threw from me the heavy magneto shoes designed to hold a
man against the ship's outer skin. I still moved. But the gravity of the
vessel was checking my velocity.

Within a minute I was poised. Then I began falling back, rising toward
the ship. I had had a sidewise, diagonal thrust when the mass of the
heavy boots left me. It balanced with the _Wanderer's_ gravity pull so
that my movement now was a curve--an ellipse, with the vessel at one of
its foci.

I was a tiny satellite--and the _Wanderer_ my greater world. It was a
dizzying experience, for slowly I was turning upon an axis of my own, so
that all the firmament and the vessel seemed shifting. Within a minute I
had swung up over the upper dome, where I could see the Turret and its
upper little pressure port at the dome-peak. Then my orbit took me down
the other side, and again under the hull. The port I had opened was a
black rectangle, with the air still an outpouring maelstrom. And as I
stared, a bloated figure like my own came hurtling out. It was Talone.
Of all his roistering fellows, only he had had the knowledge and the
presence of mind to seize an air-suit and don it. Doubtless he had
intended to cling within the ship, but had been blown out.

At all events he was here. He, too, broke the rush of velocity that
would have carried him off into depths of space. Now he was another
little satellite like myself. He was closer to the vessel, revolving
slightly more swiftly, and with a more nearly circular orbit. I stared
down at him as he swung past some twenty feet under me. And doubtless he
stared up. Then he was gone ahead of me, while still I was only passing
over the turret.

Within two rotations he had caught me again. It chanced that I was at
the perihelion of my little orbit here. Talone was no more than ten feet
from me. And suddenly I flung the heavy metal hook which was at my belt.
It struck past his leg, and as I jerked the wire, the hook caught his
ankle. My pulls on the wire hauled us together. I saw the naked knife
blade gleaming with star-sheen as he clutched it in his gloved hand. But
I had him at a disadvantage. He was coming at me feet first, floundering
to twist himself around.

My knife flashed; ripped his bloated suit. It deflated as his air
puffed out; and then, suffocating, with bursting lung tissues and
blood-vessels, he died.

The _Wanderer_ had only one satellite now--Talone and I, the dead and
the living, our bodies merged as we rotated in our new, combined little
orbit.

       *       *       *       *       *

All that was five years ago. I have little to add to my brief narrative
of that ill-starred Voyage 13. I was able to cast my hook, pull myself
down to the dome, and like a fly crawl flattened to the Turret's upper
pressure port. Roberoh had pumped out the air of the tiny upper chamber.
I crawled in, closed the outer slide, and then he let in the air upon me.

It was indeed a ship of death. But in the turret, with emergency air
renewers working, we remained for that day until the Interplanetary
Patrol--seeking us after poor Green's helio call for help--came and
rescued us.

Normah and I have been married for nearly five years now. Her father
appeared before the League in protest at Talone's Government. But he
did not desire to renew his Presidency; he was shattered in health. The
Venus Free State had a fair election, with the Interplanetary League
presiding, so that no duplicate of Talone could come into power.

The Venus Free State is talking now of a union with the great
Anglo-Saxon Alliance of Earth. Normah and I are interested in that,
because in our own small way already we have accomplished it. Our little
son seems to combine the best of both his parent worlds. We are very
proud of him.


[The end of _Voyage 13_ by Ray Cummings]