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Updated: May 5, 2025
"I do wish," Kerim Ruse said uneasily, "that Mr. Maulbow would regain consciousness. It seems so ... so underhanded to be doing these things behind his back!" Gefty grunted noncommittally. He wasn't at all certain by now that he wanted his secretive client to wake up before he'd checked on the contents of the Queen's storage vault.
Gefty took an oversized wrench from the wall, climbed quickly and quietly down the three ladder steps to the floor of the lock, and walked across it to the sill of the giant freight door, which now had swung out and down into the vault hall, fitting itself into a depression of the flooring. He hesitated an instant on the sill, then stepped out into the big dark hall.
If that didn't release them immediately from its influence, he would see what putting the Queen's drives into action would do. "Gefty?" Kerim's voice asked. "Uh-huh?" He could hear her swallow over the intercom. "Those lights are back now." "How many?" "Two," Kerim said. "I think they're only two. They keep crossing back and forth in front of us." She laughed nervously.
From what Maulbow had said, it could live for a while without air, but it still could gain nothing but eventual death from leaving the ship Unless, Gefty thought, the janandra had become aware in some way that he was about to blow their machine out of the Queen.
Two great steel cases the ones Maulbow had taken down to an airless moon surface, loaded up with something and brought back to the Queen were jammed awkwardly into a corner, in a manner which suggested they'd slid into it when the ship was being knocked around. One of them was open and appeared to be empty. Gefty wasn't sure of the other.
The transmitter screen lit up with a blurred jumble of print, colors, a muttering of voices, music and noises. Gefty twisted a dial. The screen cleared, showed a newscast headline sheet. Gefty blinked at it, glanced sideways at Kerim, grimaced. "The something else," he said, his voice a little strained, "was something I was also worried about. Looks like I was more or less right."
If the first aid treatment has pulled him through so far, the autosurgeon probably can fix him up." Kerim's face suddenly took on a guilty expression. "I forgot all about Mr. Maulbow!" She hesitated. "Should I come along?" Gefty shook his head. "I won't need help. And if it's a case for the surgeon, you wouldn't like it. Those things work painlessly, but it gets to be a mess for a while."
He glanced back, saw Maulbow coming out of the half-opened door, something like a twenty-inch, thin, white rod in one hand. Then Gefty went bounding on along the passage, hunched forward and zigzagging from wall to wall to give Maulbow if the thing he held was a weapon and he actually intended to use it as small and erratic a target as possible. Maulbow shouted angrily behind him.
A red spark appeared in the dark viewscreen, high up near the center. A second red light showed on the cubicle bulkhead beside Gefty. Beneath it an oblong section of the bulkhead turned silently away on heavy hinges, became a door two feet in thickness, which stood jutting out at a right angle into the darkness of the cargo lock. A wave of cold air moved through it into the control cubicle.
On the screen, another red spark appeared beside the first one. "Both doors are open now," Gefty murmured to the girl. "The janandra isn't in the vault hall or the lighting would have turned on, but it may have heard the door open and be on its way. So keep watching the screen." "I certainly will!" she whispered shakily.
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