Corriston found himself becoming more confident again, less dominated by despair. The change in his mood surprised him but he seized upon it gratefully and started building on it. There was only one logical next move. He must find the captain quickly and enlist his help. He must take the master of the ship fully into his confidence. With every gift of persuasion at his command, he must make the captain see how the danger of Ramsey's daughter was mounting and would continue to mount with every minute that she remained unfound.
He still felt dizzy, and his head was aching a little, but he moved quickly through the darkness, his faculties heightened by an intensity of purpose which enabled him to find the companionway without colliding with obstacles or taking a wrong turn. Up the stairway he climbed, still clutching the knife, prepared for a possible second encounter with its original owner.
An attempt to regain the knife by trickery and stealth would not have surprised him. In fact, it was not at all difficult for him to picture a silent form flattened against the stair-rail, waiting for just the right moment to come hurtling toward him out of the darkness. For a moment, as he ascended, the strain became almost unendurable. Then the darkness dissolved above him, and he was advancing toward the captain's cabin through the narrow passageway which he had spanned with his arms spread wide.
He did not stop to span it this time. He emerged into the cabin and stood for an instant blinking in the sudden light. The cabin was still deserted. It was anybody's guess where the captain had gone or when he would be returning, and Corriston decided not to wait. He walked to the door, opened it and stepped out into the general passenger cabin.
No one saw him immediately. There were several passengers fairly close to him, but they were being attentive for the moment to the words and gestures of a tall, dignified looking man with observant brown eyes, a ruddy complexion, and gold braid on his shoulders. The tall man was Captain John Sanders.
"I'd be a hypocrite and a liar if I said there was no justification for alarm," Sanders was saying, in a voice loud enough to carry to where Corriston was standing. "Strict regulations prescribe that sort of thing. But it's no way for a captain to keep the respect of his passengers."
Corriston felt himself stepping forward before he even thought about it. But he halted abruptly when the captain said: "There's a murderer on the loose aboard this ship. You may as well accept that fact right now. Each of you has to be on his guard. It's only right and proper that you should keep your eyes and ears open, and _stay_ worried. If you do, our chances of catching up with him before the ship berths should be reasonably good."
The captain paused, then went on quickly: "We'll get him eventually. You can be sure of that. He'll never get past the inspection each of you will have to undergo when we reach the Station. But if we catch him before we reach the Station, you'll be spared an investigative ordeal distinctly on the rugged side."
Corriston was suddenly aware that he was being stared at. Everyone was staring at him.
"My God!" the Captain cried out, staring the hardest of all. "Where did you get that wound? Who attacked you? And what were you doing in my cabin?"
Corriston walked up to the Captain and said in a voice that trembled a little. "May I talk to you privately, sir? What I have to say won't take long."
"Why not?" Sanders demanded. "That uniform you're wearing makes it mandatory. All right, come back into my cabin."
They went back into the cabin. The captain shut the door and turned to face Corriston with a shocked concern in his stare.
"You've had it rough, Lieutenant. I can see that."
"Plenty rough," Corriston conceded. "But it's not myself I'm worried about."
"Did you know that a man has just been murdered?"
"I know," Corriston said.
"With a poisoned barb. A Martian barb. It's a plant found only on Mars. We have him stretched out on a table in the sick bay now. But he isn't sick; he's a corpse. Tell me something, Lieutenant, did you just tangle with the man who did it?"
"I think so," Corriston said. "In fact, I'd stake my commission on it."
"I see. Well, you'd better tell me about it. Tell me everything."
Corriston told him.
The captain was silent for a long moment. Then he said, "But we've no Miss Ramsey on the passenger list. And I certainly didn't invite her to drink a toast with me in my cabin. Are you sure of your facts, Lieutenant?"
Corriston's jaw fell open. He stared at the captain in stunned disbelief. "Of course I'm sure. Why should I lie to you?"
"How should I know? It's unfair to ask me that. If Ramsey's daughter was on this ship, you can rest assured I'd have known about it. After all, Lieutenant--"
"But she _was_ on board and you _didn't_ know. Isn't that obvious? Look, she was traveling incognito. The trip to the Station takes only five hours. Perhaps in so short a trip--"
"No 'perhaps' about it. I'd have known."
"But she _is_ on board, I tell you. I talked to her. I talked to Clakey. Don't make me go over the whole thing again. We've got to find her. Ramsey's enemies would stop at nothing. I'm afraid to think of what they might do to his daughter!"
"Nothing will happen to his daughter. She's on Earth right this minute in her father's house, as safe as any girl that wealthy can ever be. Lieutenant, listen to me. I've got a great deal of respect for that uniform you're wearing. Don't make me lose it. When you come to me with a story like that--"
"All right. You don't believe me. Will you check the passenger list, just to be sure?"
"I'll do more than that, Lieutenant. I'll assemble all of the passengers and check them off personally. I'll give you an opportunity to look them over while I'm doing it. Later you can ask them as many questions as you wish. There'll be a murderer among them, but that shouldn't disturb you too much. You've already met. Perhaps you can identify him for us. Ask each of the men who made a non-existent Miss Ramsey disappear and the one who turns pale will be our man."
Suddenly the captain reddened. "I'm sorry, Lieutenant, I didn't mean to be sarcastic. But a murder on my ship naturally upsets me. I'll be completely frank with you. There's a very remote possibility that Miss Ramsey actually _is_ on board without my knowledge. She hasn't had much publicity. I believe I've only seen one photograph of her, one taken several years ago. But you've got to remember that a captain is usually the first to get wind of such things. It comes to him by a kind of grapevine. She's a golden girl--actually the goldenest golden girl on Earth."
4
Now Corriston was in a steel-walled cell and the captain's voice seemed only a far-off echo sympathizing with him.
And it was an echo, for the captain was gone and he would probably never see him again. It was all very simple--that part of it--all very clear. The captain had faithfully kept his word. The captain hadn't let him down. But any man can end up a prisoner when everyone disbelieves him and he has no way of proving that he is telling the truth.
It was hard to believe that a day and a night had passed, and that the Captain _had_ kept his word and gone ahead with the roll call. It was even harder to believe that he, Corriston, was no longer on the ship, but in a sanity cell on the Space Station, and that the ship was traveling back toward Earth.
He shut his eyes, and the events of the past thirty hours unrolled before him with a nightmare clarity, and yet with all of the monstrous distortions which a nightmare must of necessity evoke.
Darkness and time and space. And closer at hand the frowns of forthright, honest men appalled by mental abnormality in a new recruit, an officer with a steel-lock determination to keep the truth securely guarded and safe from all distortion.
There had come the tap on his shoulder and a stern voice saying: "You'd better come with us, Lieutenant." He had just told the captain the whole horrible story. He had not been believed.
"Tell me about it," said the recruit in the bunk opposite Corriston. "It will help you to talk. Remember, we're not prisoners. We mustn't think of ourselves as prisoners. We can go out and exercise. We can walk around the Station for a half-hour or so. We've only got to promise we'll come back and lock ourselves in. They trust us. It could happen to anyone.
"Space-shock. Not a fancy word at all. I'm getting over it; you've a certain distance to go. Or so they say. But we're still in very much the same boat and talking always helps. Talk to me, Lieutenant, the way you did last night."
Corriston looked at the pale youth opposite him. He had close-cropped hair and friendly blue eyes, and he seemed a likeable enough lad. He was Corriston's junior by several years. But there was an aura of neuroticism about him that made Corriston uneasy. But hell, why shouldn't he get it off his chest. Talking just _might_ help.
"It's true," Corriston said. "Every word of it."