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Updated: June 7, 2025
From the audiphone grid Coniston's voice sounded. "I say, Haljan, something's wrong. Hahn doesn't signal." The lookout in the forward tower was clinging to our window. On the deck below our turret a member of the crew appeared, stood lurching for a moment, then shouted and ran, swaying, aimless. From the lower hull corridors our grids sounded with the tramping of running steps.
Weapon in hand, Snap forced the panic-stricken passengers back to their rooms. Snap reassured them glibly; but he knew no more about the facts than I. Moa, with a nightrobe drawn tight around her thin, tall figure, edged up to me. "What has happened, Set Haljan?" I gazed around for her brother Miko, but did not see him. "An accident," I said shortly. "Go back to your room. Captain's orders."
My upflung voice mingled with Snap's agony of protest. Then Miko heard me. His head and shoulders showed up there at the radio room oval. "You Haljan?" Prince shouted, "I have made him yield. He will obey you if you stop that torture." I think that poor Snap must have fainted. He was silent. I called, "Stop! I will do what you command." Miko jeered, "That is good.
Across the room of the weightless room the hooded intruder was also clinging. His hood fell back. It was Johnson. "Killed him, the bully! 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. But he never got it out. I had no weapon within reach.
Anita and I had planned so carefully. And in a few brief minutes of action it had come only to this! "So, Gregg Haljan, you are not as loyal as you pretend!" Miko was livid with suppressed anger. They had stripped the cloak from me, and flung me back in my cubby. Miko was now confronting me: at the door Moa stood watching. And Anita was behind her. I sat outwardly defiant and sullen on my bunk.
If he does, Set Potan, we can blast him from here with a ray. Can't we?" "Yes," Potan agreed. "If he comes within ten miles, I have one powerful enough. We are assembling it now." "And we have thirty men?" Anita persisted. "When we sail down to attack him, it should not be difficult to kill all the Grantline party." "By heaven, Haljan, this girl of yours is small, but very bloodthirsty!"
An improvement indeed over the inactivity of their former peaceful weeks! Grantline mentioned it to me. "Well put up a good fight, Haljan. These fellows from Mars will know they've had a task before they ever sail off with the treasure." I had many moments alone with Anita. I need not mention them. It seemed that our love was crossed by the stars, with an adverse fate dooming it.
She had heard the camp corridors resounding with the shouts that Wilks and Haljan were fighting. She had come upon a suit and helmet by the manual emergency lock, had run out through the lock, confused, with her only idea to stop Wilks and me from fighting. Then she had seen one of us killed. Impulsively, barely knowing what she was doing, she mounted the stairs, frantic to find if I were alive.
But it was Wilks and Haljan in a fight up there on the cliff. The men crowded at the bull's-eye windows. And over all the confusion the alarm siren, with no one thinking to shut it off, was screaming. Grantline, momentarily stricken, stood gazing. One of the figures broke away from the other, bounded up to the summit from the stair platform to which they had both fallen. The other followed.
Something told me to beware. I clung to the casement, 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. It was the tall, lanky Englishman. Sir Arthur Coniston, he as called himself. So he too, was one of Miko's band!
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