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Her face was white and sick, and she had to try twice before she could speak. "The plants!" she gasped out. "Poison! They're dying!" It was chromazone again. Muller had kept most of the gang from coming back to hydroponics, but he, Jenny, Pietro, Wilcox and myself were enough to fill the room with the smell of sick fear. Now less than half of the original space was filled with healthy plants.
I caught the drift, and tried to look as if we were up to some monkey business as we slipped out of the room. Nobody seemed suspicious. Then we made a dash for hydroponics, toward the rear of the ship. We scrambled into the big chamber together, and stopped. Everything looked normal among the rows of plant-filled tanks, pipes and equipment. Jenny led us down one of the rows and around a bend.
You'd better go after the captain while Hal gets his test equipment. I'll keep watch here." It didn't feel good in hydroponics after they left. I looked at those dead plants, trying to figure whether there were enough left to keep us going. I studied Hendrix's body, trying to tell myself the murderer had no reason to come back and try to get me.
I marked it down in my mental files for the investigation I was supposed to make, but let it go for the moment. Muller stood for a minute longer, thinking darkly about the whole situation. Then he moved toward the entrance to hydroponics and pulled out the ship speaker mike. "All hands and passengers will assemble in hydroponics within five minutes," he announced. He swung toward Pietro.
She nodded back at me, but headed straight for Lomax, with an odd look on her face. When she reached him, her voice was low and businesslike. "Hal, what did those samples of Hendrix's show up?" Hendrix was the Farmer, in charge of the hydroponics that turned the carbon dioxide we breathed out back to oxygen, and also gave us a bit of fresh vegetables now and then.
I'll take the other one any way you can get him." He switched off, and waited, pacing the control cabin like a caged animal. Ten minutes later a buzzer sounded. "Hydroponics, boss. All clear." "No sign of them?" "Nothing." Another buzz. "Number seven ore hold. Nothing here." Still another buzz. "Crew's quarters. Nothing, boss." One by one the reports came in.
I suppose it was natural, with only two women among eighteen men for month after month, but right then I probably liked Doc Napier less than the captain, even. I pulled myself away from the corridor to hydroponics, started for observation, and then went on into the cubbyhole they gave me for a cabin. On the Wahoo, all a man could do was sleep or sit around and think about murder.
It was a side corridor, and a blind alley; it ended in a large hatchway marked HYDROPONICS, and there were no branching corridors. If he were discovered here, there would be no place to hide. But he knew that he could never hope to accomplish his purpose here.... A hatch clanged open, and there were more footsteps down the main corridor as a change of guards hurried by.
He turned to the control panel, flipped switches, checked gauges. "Hydroponics are all right. Atmosphere is still good; we can take off these helmets. Fuel looks all right, storage holds ..." He shook his head. "They weren't looting, but they were looking for something, all right. Let's look around and see if they missed anything." It took them an hour to survey the wreckage.
"She told Doc Napier she had some stuff growing in hydroponics she wanted to look at. You're wasting your time on that babe, boy!" "Thanks for nothing," I muttered at him, and got out before I really decided on murder. Jenny Sanderson was our expedition biologist. A natural golden blonde, just chin-high on me, and cute enough to earn her way through a Ph. D. doing modelling.
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