A large anthology of sci.., p.248
A Large Anthology of Science Fiction, page 248
“When do we start to get out of this sink hole?” he demanded of Conroy.
“It begins to look,” Conroy answered slowly, “as though we don’t! I’ve figured it every way I can—but I can’t see how we can move. I’ve tried rocket blasts on every side, but the gravity field is equal in all directions.”
“Give it all you’ve got,” Blackie snapped. “The blast may free us—”
“And if we use up all that fuel, what happens then?” Conroy demanded. “We shan’t have enough to make the Earth.”
“Blast us out the other way,” Knife suggested. “We might get to the girl’s ship—”
“No use; I’m out of fuel,” she put in.
“This is what comes of having a dame on the ship!” Knife blazed, his voice a screech. “We were all right until you made us divert our path! Do you realize what’ll happen to us?” he went on desperately. “Death! Stuck here in the void! Death!”
“Oh, shut up!” Blackie growled. “Conroy was no more to blame than any of us. Might happen to any navigator . . . But we’ve got to get free,” he finished anxiously. “We can’t stop here—becalmed. Our provisions won’t last out.”
“We might signal a ship,” Conroy speculated. “If we could get aboard and hold up the crew . .
“Might work as a last resort,” Blackie mused. “Damned dangerous, though. Better try figuring again, Conroy. I’m going to have another look around the provision room.”
“What for?” asked Knife malevolently, his eyes smoldering. “I suppose you’re looking for them rocks? Let your hair down, Blackie: you’re as keen on finding those rocks as any of us. For that matter, how do we know you didn’t kill Rays, anyway?”
Blackie leaned over, whirled Knife out of the wall chair, held him steadily.
“Listen, Knife!” His voice was low, deadly. “Any more cracks like that and I’ll be liable to forget you’re my pal. I’ll remember instead that you’re a cheap crook; a back-stabber . . . I’m going to take a proper look for those rocks, sure; but I’ve already told you why. Sit down!” He flung Knife back helplessly into his chair then strode out . . .
AS BEFORE, he found nothing of particular interest. Slowly he wandered round, flashing a torch this time; then just as he was about to give up the beam caught suddenly on a strip of paper wedged in a crack between two of the welded plates. Curious, he jerked it out. It was a thrice folded note, finishing with a hasty slash of the pencil.
“Blackie—this is to warn you I expect death any minute.
There’s a jinx aboard this ship. You must—”
It stopped there. No signature, no hint of who had written it. It was not Rays Walford’s scrawl; that Blackie well know. He frowned over it, biting his lip. Conroy? Impossible. Conroy was still alive. Then who the—
Pen Anderson came in silently, that smile of perpetual innocence on his greasy, round face.
“Anything of interest yet, Blackie?”
“Nope.” Blackie balled the note in his palm then thrust it in his pocket. “But because I haven’t found anything doesn’t say I won’t figure out who killed Rays. And I’ll find where those rocks went too—”
“I know where they are.” Pen smiled blandly. “I’ll even tell you—for a consideration.”
“Yeah? Why so generous? If you know where they are why talk about splitting them. Why tell me anything, in fact?”
Pen regarded his nails. “You misunderstand me, Blackie. I don’t want the rocks: I have no agents who can sell them for me on Earth like you have. All I want is a price for telling you where they are. If you give your word, I know you’ll pay up when you get the money. You’re a square shooter—”
“Listen, you greasy, pot-bellied rat, you don’t trust me any more than I trust you.”
“But I do,” Pen murmured. “You see, unless you pay up I shall be compelled to inform the Earth authorities of certain—er—activities. I’d tell them all about you. That is my profession.”
“What makes you think we’ll ever reach Earth, anyway? You’ll get nothing—unless it’s my fist in your face—”
Blackie stopped dead at a sudden scream from the control room and the voice of Dorothy Wilson raised high in frightened anger.
“Get away from me, you killer! Get away before I—”
Blackie jumped. In a bull rush he hurtled into the control room and was just, in time to see the hapless girl pinned against the wall by Knife Halligan. The wicked blade of his weapon was pointed directly at the girl’s soft throat. Her terrified eyes stared back into his.
“A jinx,” he whispered. “More than a jinx—a dame who knows too much! You can make it easy for yourself in only one way, sister: give me a little cooperation, and—”
“And what?” Blackie roared; then without waiting for an answer he dived.
The knife whipped round, shot towards him unerringly. He jerked his head aside and the knife landed quivering in the back of the wooden chair by the table. That settled it for Blackie. He finished his plunge, gripped Knife by the throat and slammed him round. A terrific uppercut lifted him off his feet, sent him toppling over the table to land against the wall. He stirred weakly, blood trickling from his gashed mouth.
“What happened, kid?” Blackie caught the girl’s round arm.
“He—he went for me,” she panted, her eyes flashing. “I was sitting quiet as you please, but he kept watching me through slits of eyes. Then suddenly he went berserk: I hadn’t a chance to defend myself—”
“Why didn’t you stop him, Conroy?” Blackie demanded.
“Me? I’m not strong enough . . . Besides, I have this problem to work out.”
“It seems,” Blackie said bitterly, gazing at Knife, then at Pen and Conroy, “that I’m the only guardian of this dame. Okay. Any more attacks like this upon her and I’ll put the one who does it permanently out of commission. That clear enough?”
“Aw, go jump through the airlock,” Knife snarled. “One would think you’d fallen for the dame. She’s a jinx, I tell you, and the sooner she’s out cold the better for all of us—”
“To hell with your superstition,” Blackie retorted. “And watch yourself in future. In fact I’ll take your knife to be sure that you do . . .”
HE WHIPPED it out of the chair back, slipped it in his belt. Then he jerked a thumb to the girl.
“Better go and grab that sleep of yours. You’re safe enough.”
She nodded a grateful thanks and stole out. Blackie kicked the chair in position and for a long time sat watching the scowling Knife through his eyelashes. Pen Anderson sat down too, dividing his attention between them; then finally he relaxed and polished his nails gently on his tunic sleeve.
“I’m still open to discussion, Blackie,” he murmured.
“About those rocks? I’m making no terms, Pen. I’ll find them in my own time—”
“So,” Knife whispered, rising up slowly from where he had fallen, “you know where they went, you dirty sneak-thief! You!”
“Sure, and I am prepared to—”
Blackie whipped Halligan’s knife from his belt and aimed the sharp point at Pen’s big stomach.
“Where are they?” he asked ominously.
“Now wait a minute, Blackie. You ought to—”
“I said where are they? Open up, before I make you!”
Pen’s beaming expression changed to sourness. “The girl’s got them,” he growled.
Blackie’s face went livid. “You rotten liar! She wouldn’t do that, and you know it!”
“Wouldn’t she?” Knife breathed, leaning over the table. “I tell you she did, just as I—” He stopped, biting his lip.
There followed an icy silence. Blackie’s cold eyes moved slowly to the knife he was holding. He whipped it suddenly from Pen’s middle and stared at the blade. There were new, faintly brownish marks smearing it.
“So it was you who killed Rays Walford!” he flamed. “You, Knife! I get it now. I didn’t see these marks before because of the dim light in the storage room. Yeah, you killed him, but the girl knew it. That’s why you wanted to kill her, not because she is a jinx. You wanted to stop her before she started to—”
Blackie’s voice trailed off. He stiffened: Knife and Pen became alert too. Conroy seemed to have fallen asleep over his task at the control board . . .
There was a queer sound abroad, the sound of footfalls coming from the sleeping quarters of the vessel. The sounds were interrupted suddenly by the precipitate arrival of the girl. For the first time she looked really scared and wild-eyed.
“I think it’s—it’s Rays Walford!” she gulped, and for a moment looked as though she were going to faint.
Blackie got up, caught her arm and steadied her; then he began to back from the table, facing the door leading to the sleeping quarters. Pen did likewise. Knife remained where he was, his paralyzed gaze fixed on the opening.
Thud—Pause. Thud—Pause. Like feet lifted by strings and dropped again. Like the footfalls of a mannikin—deliberate, implacable. Icy tension settled on the control chamber—then from the shadows of the interdoorway Rays Walford appeared! He remained motionless for a moment or two, arms hanging slackly at his sides. That red stain was still upon his heart; his eyes stared with glassy hate. Suddenly his blue lips began to move.
“Knife Halligan, you killed me! You killed me!”
Knife just stared, hands gripping the table edges, sweat running down his face.
“My God!” Blackie whispered, still clutching the girl. “It is Walford! But how in hell’s name did he—?”
The girl had nothing to say; she was shuddering with fear. As for Pen Anderson, his eyes were nearly popping out of his skull.
“You’re a ghost—a phantom!” Knife chattered, stumbling over his words. “You’ve come back—but you can’t do nothing, see? The dead can’t hurt the living! There’s a gap—a big gap—between life and death! You can’t touch me—”
Just the same he got up and in a blind rush snatched down the heavy rapid fire ray gun from the wall. He pressed the button and directed a withering sheet of fire at Walford.
THE effect was terrible. Clothing and flesh scorched and blackened, but Walford did not flinch. Instead he came forward, without a vestige of Expression on his face. Stunned, Knife dropped the gun, backed into the corner, came up sharp with his back to the wall.
“You can’t do nothing!” he panted. “Y’can’t, I tell you—!”
The answer was immediate. Walford’s hand flashed up, closed round Knife’s throat in a steel grip that all his struggles could not dislodge. Gurgling, choking, grunting, he slid to the floor.
Blackie’s jaws quivered: the girl hid her face on his shoulder. At last there was a dull thud and Walford dropped his length to the floor, motionless—But in the corner beside him lay Knife with protruding tongue and startling eyes . . . strangled.
Blackie dumped the girl in a chair then went over to the two bodies. Utter perplexity settled upon him. Knife was dead all right—but so was Rays Wolford, as dead as he had been when stabbed!
“I don’t get it!” Blackie’s voice was bemused as he stared into Pen Anderson’s dazed eyes. “I don’t get it . . . Space can’t revive a guy from death—unless we’ve never encountered it before. But anyway, he was locked in the refrigerator. Somebody must have opened it. The locks are on this side.”
“But nobody went that way—!” Pen stopped, added softly, “That is, nobody except the girl!”
“Do you think I had anything to do with this?” she nearly shrieked, looking up. “Do you think I was putting on an act, trying to play scared? Not me! I heard him coming and ran for it—Oh, my God, I’ve got to get off this ship! Anything! I’d sooner chuck myself headfirst into space than endure—”
“Easy!” Blackie snapped, going over and shaking her. “Get, yourself in hand! You can’t get off this ship any more than any of us can—There’s an explanation for this. There has to be! Dead men don’t start walking without a reason.” He stopped and thought; then he asked, “Just, what happened when you went to rest again?”
“Why, I—I went to sleep.”
“So soon?”
“I guess so. Then Rays’ footfalls awakened me. I caught a glimpse of him coming and made a dash for it . . .”
“She’s lying, man!” Pen growled. “She’s been back of everything that’s gone wrong so far, so why not this? We got trapped here: she was mixed up in Rays’ murder: now she’s mixed up in him coming back.”
“I’m not!” she shouted desperately. “I swear I’m not!”
“Did you, or did you not, take those mineral rocks from Walford?” Blackie asked deliberately.
She hesitated, gaze averted;, then she slowly nodded.
“Yes, I did. I heard him scream.
I rushed in and saw Knife just about to rob his belt. He dashed out, thinking I hadn’t recognized him in the dim light, I imagine. I examined Walford’s belt to see what Knife had been looking for, found the minerals and realized their value. I took them, hid them in my bunk after you’d finished questioning me, Blackie. Right then I was determined the rocks should be handed in to the Earth-authorities and not left to the mercies of no-account crooks. That was why Knife tried to kill me, in case I knew he had committed the murder . . . But this! I know nothing about it.”
Blackie slowly nodded.
“I believe you, sister,” he said briefly. “God knows why, but I do. Maybe because I think you’re not so tough as you make out . . .”
He turned as Conroy aroused himself, yawned, and went on with his work.
“Hey, Conroy, what do you know about this?”
But Conroy, turning in surprise, had to have all the details having slept through the astounding episode. At the finish he gave a shrug.
“So that’s what happened! I’ve heard of such things before, Blackie, out in space. Of men coming back to life. The radiations out of space do it for a brief time, particularly if the body is well preserved—as it was in the refrigerator.”
“Yeah? How come the bolts got opened on this side?”
“I don’t know. But a man from the dead can have powers that we haven’t got. Will power maybe—”
“Bunk!” growled Pen Anderson, “Only explanation is that he wasn’t really dead, and came back to life long enough to make us believe he was a corpse revived.”
“And yet a heavy ray gun made no impression on him,” the girl said.
PEN ANDERSON moistened his dry lips. “A jinx!” he whispered. “Mebbe Knife wasn’t so far wrong at that!”
“Jinx!” Blackie repeated slowly, starting. He had suddenly remembered the note he had found. “Maybe you’ve got something there . . . First, let’s get these two corpses outside Fire ’em through the safety lock: that oughta stop any chance of them coming back to life!”
Between them, he and Pen dragged the bodies to the apparatus, slammed the percussion trap. Instantly the bodies were propelled into space outside. Bloated, grayish remains floated near the ship. Blackie watched them for a while, then a frown gathered slowly on his face.
“Say, that’s queer! Those corpses are moving away from us! There is a stronger gravity somewheres—If it doesn’t hold them in focus in this four-point hole, it can’t hold us either!”
He spun round, jaw squared. “Conroy, what’s the big idea? We can get free! This proves it—”
“I don’t know how they come to be—”
Blackie elbowed Conroy roughly out of the way, seated himself at the controls and snatched the notes which Conroy had been making. He glanced at them, then his expression became fixed. Slowly from his pocket he dragged the note he had found in the provision chamber.
The writing exactly matched!
But Conroy had written under the imminent expectation of death, had been almost as good as dead when—“What,” Blackie asked ominously, “is the meaning of all this, Conroy? Blast you, spill it!” he finished with a roar.
Conroy looked at the warning message, then at his own notes. His lips compressed. But his face was still dull and expressionless. Before he could speak Pen Anderson gave a little gasp.
“Look!” he whispered, and his trembling hand pointed to a tremendous gash on the back of Conroy’s head, the blood long since congealed. Up to now he had kept himself turned from revealing it. It seemed incredible that a man could move about, even live, with a wound like that. Even live . . .?
“He’s dead!” Pen shrieked, all his nerve snapping. “Dead! That’s the meaning of the note! He did die—and all this time he’s been alive again, holding us in this trap for reasons of his own—Blackie, I can’t stand it!”
He wheeled, raced for the safety lock and climbed inside it. The moment he slammed the percussion cap upon himself the apparatus worked, hurled him as a dead gray corpse into the deeps outside.
Conroy’s dead face seemed to come to life slowly as he gazed at the grimfaced Blackie and frightened girl.
“Okay, what’s the set up?” Blackie whispered. “You’re not scaring me with this return-to-life act—Nor Dots, here.” He flashed a glance at her. “You deliberately anchored us with that phony four point sink hole angle. But it isn’t true. We can get out!”
“Yes,” Conroy admitted slowly, “you can escape—but first there is a proposition for you to consider. I can give you power, my friend—great power. I need an Earthling like you, one without any scruples. A criminal, to put it bluntly. And for that matter an Earth woman like this with no pretensions to sentiment would be an advantage.”
BLACKIE and the girl looked at each other blankly: the girl indeed was looking indignant. Then Blackie snapped,
“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, but spill it just the same, and I’ll tell you if I like it.”
“Conroy,” Conroy stated impartially, “has been dead for some time. He moves about not through his own will, but mine. I am a mind projection from Ildiban—a small, little known asteroid. My comrades and I are interested in the vast plunder that is obtainable on Earth, only we cannot reach that planet on account of its distance. I anchored the ship at this point because it is the limit to which my mind projection can reach. You see, we need ambassadors . . . We learned of this intended prison break through radio. It was decided I should take over the ship’s pilot—Conroy. I did: killed him by shock. He fell and struck his head. Thereafter I have used his body, as I am doing now. But before he died he must have written that note, of which I knew nothing.”
