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Updated: May 19, 2025
The twin doors of A20 and A22 were before me. The invisible eavesdropper had gone into one of these rooms! I listened at each of the panels, but there was only silence within. The interior of the ship was suddenly singing with the steward's siren the call to awaken the passengers. It startled me. I moved swiftly away.
I realized that we passed the deck door and window of A22. But they were dark, and evidently sealed on the inside. The dim lounge was in a turmoil; passengers standing at their cabin doors. I shouted, "Go back to your rooms! We want order here keep back!" We came to the twin doors of A22 and A20. Both were closed. Dr. Frank was in advance of Snap and me now.
It was in a transverse corridor similar to A22. The corridor was forward of the lounge: it opened off the small circular library. The library was unoccupied and unlighted, dim with only the reflected lights from the nearby passages. I crouched behind a cylinder case. The door of Miko's room was in sight. I waited perhaps five minutes. No one entered.
Frank evidently was having little trouble with pressure sick passengers. The Planetara's equalizers were fairly efficient. Prowling through the silent metal lounges and passages, I went to the door of A22. It was on the deck level, in a tiny transverse passage just off the main lounging room. Its name-grid glowed with the letters: Anita Prince.
The deck here was patched as always, with silver radiance from the deck ports. The empty deck chairs stood about. The scream was stilled, but now we heard a commotion inside the rasp of opening cabin doors; questions from frightened passengers. I found my voice. "Anita! Anita Prince!" "Come on!" shouted Snap. "In her stateroom, A22!" He was dashing for the lounge archway. Dr. Frank and I followed.
We were standing back against the wall of the superstructure. A passenger was near us the Martian whom Dr. Frank had called Miko. He was loitering here, quite evidently watching this girl come aboard. But as I glanced at him, he looked away and casually sauntered off. The girl came up and reached the deck. "I am in A22," she told the carrier. "My brother came aboard a couple of hours ago." Dr.
She eyed me and then retreated. Snap was threatening everybody with his cylinder. Balch dashed up. "What in hell! Where is Carter?" "In there." I pounded on A22. It opened cautiously. I could see only Carter, but I heard the murmuring voice of Dr. Frank through the interior connecting door to A20. The Captain rasped, "Get out, Haljan! Oh, is that you, Balch? Come in."
Her left lung." "Shot her?" "Yes. But she did not see who did it. Nor did Prince. Her scream awakened him, but the intruder evidently fled out the corridor door of A22, the way he entered." I stood weak and shaken at the chart room entrance. Anita dying, perhaps; and all my dreams were fading into a memory of what might have been. I was glad enough to get away.
But Anita's room had a window and a door which gave upon the deck. I went through the lounge, out its arch and walked the deck length. The deck door and window of A22 were closed and dark. The deck was dim with white starlight from the side ports. Chairs were here but they were all empty. From the bow windows of the arching dome a flood of moonlight threw long, slanting shadows down the deck.
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