Sparks stared at him querulously.
“You’re a queer duck, Malcolm. I don’t think you’ve got a nerve in your body.”
“Nerves are a luxury I can’t afford,” replied Greg. “If anything happens—and if there’s time to do so—let me know.” He paused at the door. “Good luck,” he said.
“Clear ether!” said Sparks mechanically. He stared after the other man wonderingly for a long moment, then went back to his control banks, shaking his head and muttering.
* * * *
Gregory Malcolm climbed down the Jacob’s-ladder and strode briskly through the labyrinthine corridors that were the entrails of the space yacht Carefree. He paused once to peer through a perilens set into the ship’s port plates. It was a weird sight that met his gaze. Not space, ebony-black and bejewelled with a myriad flaming splotches of color; not the old, familiar constellations treading their ever-lasting, inexorable paths about the perimeter of Sol’s tiny universe, but a shimmering webwork of light, so tortured-violet that the eyes ached to look upon it. This was the mad typhoon of space-atmospherics through which the Carefree was now being twisted, topsy-turvy, toward a nameless goal.
He moved on, approaching at last the quartzite-paned observation rotunda which was the dining dome of the ship.
His footsteps slowed as he composed himself to face those within. As he hesitated in the dimly-lighted passage, a trick of lights on glass mirrored to him the room beyond. He could see the others while they were as yet unaware of his presence. Their voices reached him clearly.
J. Foster Andrews, his employer and the employer of the ten thousand or more men and women who worked for Galactic Metals Corporation, dominated the head of the table. He was a plump, impatient little Napoleon. Opposite him, calm, graceful, serene, tastefully garbed and elaborately coiffured even here in deep space, three weeks from the nearest beauty shop, sat his wife, Enid.
On Andrews’ right sat his sister, Maud. Not young, features plain as a mud fence, but charming despite her age and homeliness simply because of her eyes; puckish, shrewdly intelligent eyes, constantly aglint with suppressed humor at—guessed Greg—the amusing foibles and frailties of those about her.
She gave her breakfast the enthusiastic attention of one too old and shapeless to be concerned with such folderol as calories and dietetics, pausing only from time to time to share smidgeons of food with a watery-eyed scrap of white, curly fluff beside her chair. Her pet poodle, whom she called by the opprobrious title of “Cuddles.”
On J. Foster’s left sat his daughter, Crystal. She it was who caused Gregory Malcolm’s staid, respectable heart to give a little lurch as he glimpsed her reflected vision—all gold and crimson and cream—in the glistening walls. If Crystal was her name, so, too, was crystal her loveliness.
But—Greg shook his head—but she was not for him. She was already pledged to the young man seated beside her. Ralph Breadon. He turned to murmur something to her as Greg watched; Greg saw and admired and disliked his rangy height, his sturdy, well-knit strength, the rich brownness of his skin, his hair, his eyes.
The sound of his own name startled Greg.
“Malcolm!” called the man at the head of the table. “Malcolm! Now where in blazes is he, anyhow?” he demanded of no one in particular, everyone in general. He spooned a dab of liquid gold from a Limoges preserve jar, tongued it suspiciously, frowned. “Bitter!” he complained.
“It’s the very best Martian honey,” said his wife.
“Drylands clover,” added Crystal.
“It’s still bitter,” said J. Foster petulantly.
His sister sniffed. “Nonsense! It’s delightful.”
“I say it’s bitter,” repeated Andrews sulkily. And lifted his voice again. “Malcolm! Where are you?”
“You called me, sir?” said Malcolm, moving into the room. He nodded politely to the others. “Good morning, Mrs. Andrews...Miss Andrews...Mr. Breadon....”
“Oh, sit down!” snapped J. Foster. “Sit down here and stop bobbing your head like a teetotum! Had your breakfast? The honey’s no good; it’s bitter.” He glared at his sister challengingly. “Where have you been, anyway? What kind of secretary are you? Have you been up to the radio turret? How’s the market today? Is Galactic up or down?”
Malcolm said, “I don’t know, sir.”
“Fine! Fine!” Andrews rattled on automatically before the words registered. Then he started, his face turning red. “Eh? What’s that? Don’t know! What do you mean, you don’t know? I pay you to—”
“There’s no transmission, sir,” said Greg quietly.
“No trans—nonsense! Of course there’s transmission! I put a million credits into this ship. Finest space-yacht ever built. Latest equipment throughout. Sparks is drunk, that’s what you mean! Well, you hop right up there and—”
* * * *
Maud Andrews put down her fork with a clatter. “Oh, for goodness sakes, Jonathan, shut up and give the boy time to explain! He’s standing there with his mouth gaping like a rain-spout, trying to get a word in edgewise! What’s the trouble, Gregory?” She turned to Greg, as Jonathan Foster Andrews wheezed into startled silence. “That?”
She glanced at the quartzite dome, beyond which the veil of iridescence wove and cross-wove and shimmered like a pallid aurora.
Greg nodded. “Yes, Miss Andrews.”
Enid Andrews spoke languidly from the other end of the table.
“But what is it, Gregory? A local phenomenon?”
“You might call it that,” said Greg, selecting his words cautiously. “It’s an ionized field into which we’ve blasted. It—it—shouldn’t stay with us long. But while it persists, our radio will be blanketed out.”
Breadon’s chestnut head came up suddenly, sharply.
“Ionization! That means atmosphere!”
Greg said, “Yes.”
“And an atmosphere means a body in space somewhere near—” Breadon stopped, bit his lip before the appeal in Malcolm’s eyes, tried to pass it off easily. “Oh, well—a change of scenery, what?”
But the moment of alarm in his voice had not passed unnoticed. Crystal Andrews spoke for all of them, her voice preternaturally quiet.
“You’re hiding something, Malcolm. What is it? Is there—danger?”
But Greg didn’t have to answer that question. From the doorway a harsh, defiantly strident voice answered for him. The voice of Bert Andrews, Crystal’s older brother.
“Danger? You’re damn right there’s danger! What’s the matter with you folks—are you all deaf, dumb and blind? We’ve been caught in a space-vortex for hours. Now we’re in the H-layer of a planet we can’t even see—and in fifteen minutes or fifteen seconds we may all be smashed as flat as pancakes!”
The proclamation brought them out of their chairs. Greg’s heart sank; his vain plea, “Mr. Andrews—” was lost in the medley of Crystal’s sudden gasp, Enid Andrews’ short, choking scream, J. Foster’s bellowing roar at his only son.
“Bert—you’re drunk!”
Bert weaved precariously from the doorway, laughed in his father’s face.
“Sure I’m drunk! Why not? If you’re smart you’ll get drunk, too. The whole damn lot of you!” He flicked a derisive hand toward Greg. “You too, Boy Scout! What were you trying to do—hide the bad news from them? Well, it’s no use.