Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 Part 22

"Yield? No! I am in command here, you pirate! Brigand--murderer!"

I pushed him back. "Careful!"

He was spluttering, and over it Miko's sardonic laugh sounded. "Very well--but you will talk? Shall we argue about it?"

I stood up. "What do you want to say, Miko?"

Behind him the tall, thin figure of his sister showed. She was plucking at him. He turned violently.

"I won't hurt him! Gregg Haljan--is this a truce? You will not shoot?"

He was s.h.i.+elding Moa.

"No," I called. "For a moment, no. A truce. What is it you want to say?"

I could hear the babble of pa.s.sengers who were herded in the cabin with brigands guarding them. George Prince, bareheaded, but shrouded in his cloak, showed in a patch of light behind Moa. He looked my way and then retreated into the lounge archway.

Miko called, "You must yield. We want you, Haljan."

"No doubt," I jeered.

"Alive. It is easy to kill you."

I could not doubt that. Carter and I were little more than rats in a trap, here in the chart-room. But Miko wanted to take me alive: that was not so simple. He added persuasively:

"We want you to help us navigate. Will you?"

"No."

"Will you help us, Captain Carter? Tell your cub, this Haljan, to yield.

You are fools. We understand that Haljan has been handling the s.h.i.+p's mathematics. Him we need most."

Carter roared: "Get back from there! This is no truce!"

I shoved aside his levelled bullet-projector. "Wait a minute!" I called to Miko. "Navigate--where?"

"Oh," he retorted, "that is our business, not yours. When you lay down your weapons and come out of there, I will give you the course."

"Back to the earth?" I suggested.

I could fancy him grinning behind the sheen of his barrage at my question.

"The earth? Yes--shall we go there? Give me your orders, Gregg Haljan.

Of course I will obey them."

His sardonic words were interrupted. And I realized that all this parley was a ruse of Miko's to take me alive. He had made a gesture. Hahn, watching from the turret window, doubtless flashed a signal down to the hull-corridors. The magnetizer control under the chart-room was altered, our artificial gravity cut off. I felt the sudden lightness; I gripped the window cas.e.m.e.nt and clung. Carter was startled into incautious movement. It flung him out into the center of the chart-room, his arms and legs grotesquely flailing.

And across the chart-room, in the opposite window, I felt rather than saw the shape of something. A figure--almost invisible, but not quite--was trying to climb in! I flung the empty rifle I was holding. It hit something solid in the window; in a flare of sparks a black-hooded figure materialized. A man climbing in! His weapon spat. There was a tiny electronic flash, deadly silent. The intruder had shot at Carter; struck him. Carter gave one queer scream. He had floated to the floor; his convulsive movement when he was. .h.i.t hurled him to the ceiling. His body struck, twitched; bounced back and sank inert on the floor-grid almost at my feet.

I clung to the cas.e.m.e.nt. Across the s.p.a.ce of the weightless room the hooded intruder was also clinging. His hood fell back. It was Johnson.

He leered at me.

"Killed him, the bully! Well, he deserved it. Now for you, Mr. Third Officer Haljan!"

But he did not dare fire at me--Miko had forbidden it. I saw him reach under his robe, doubtless for a low-powered paralyzing ray such as Miko already had used on me. But he never got it out. I had no weapon within reach. I leaned into the room, still holding the cas.e.m.e.nt, and doubled my legs under me. I kicked out from the window.

The force catapulted me across the s.p.a.ce of the room like a volplane. I struck the purser. We gripped. Our locked, struggling bodies bounced out into the room. We struck the floor, surged up like balloons to the ceiling, struck it with a flailing arm or a leg and floated back.

Grotesque, abnormal combat! Like fighting in weightless water. Johnson clutched his weapon, but I twisted his wrist, held his arm outstretched so that he could not aim it. I was aware of Miko's voice shouting on the deck outside.

Johnson's left hand was gouging at my face, his fingers plucking at my eyes. We lunged down to the floor, then up again, close to the ceiling.

I twisted his wrists. He dropped the weapon and it sank away. I tried to reach it, but could not. Then I had him by the throat. I was stronger than he, and more agile. I tried choking him, his thick bull-neck within my fingers. He kicked, scrambled, tore and gouged at me. Tried to shout, but it ended in a gurgle. And then, as he felt his breath stopped, his hands came up in an effort to tear mine loose.

We sank again to the floor. We were momentarily upright. I felt my feet touch. I bent my knees. We sank further.

And then I kicked violently upward. Our locked bodies shot to the ceiling. Johnson's head was above me. It struck the steel roof of the chart-room. A violent blow. I felt him go suddenly limp. I cast him off, and, doubling my body, I kicked at the ceiling. It sent me diagonally downward to the window, where I clung and regained stability.

And I saw Miko standing on the deck with a weapon levelled at me!

CHAPTER XIII

_The Torture_

"Haljan! Yield or I'll fire! Moa, give me the smaller one. This cursed--"

He had in his hand too large a projector. Its ray would kill me. If he wanted to take me alive, he would not fire. I chanced it.

"No!"

I tried to draw myself beneath the window. An automatic bullet projector was on the floor where Carter had dropped it. I pulled myself down.

Miko did not fire. I reached the revolver. The dead bodies of the captain and purser had drifted together on the floor in the center of the room.

I hitched myself back to the window. With upraised weapon I gazed cautiously out. Miko had disappeared. The deck within my line of vision was empty.

But was it? Something told me to beware. I clung to the cas.e.m.e.nt, ready upon the instant to shove myself down. There was a movement in a shadow along the deck. Then a figure rose up.

"Don't fire, Haljan!"

The sharp command, half appeal, stopped the pressure of my finger on the trigger of the automatic. It was the tall lanky Englishman, Sir Arthur Coniston, as he called himself. So he too was one of Miko's band! The light through a dome-window fell full on him.