Vezzarn lay face down in the door opening, legs within the vault as if he had stumbled and fallen in the act of emerging from it. He didn’t move as they scrambled past him. The interior of the vault, hummed like a hive of disturbed giant insects. The strongbox stood against one wall, its top section tilted up. A number of unfamiliar tools lay on the floor about it. The humming poured up out of the box.
It was like wading knee-deep through thick, sucking mud to get to it! The captain’s head reeled in waves of dizziness. The humming deepened savagely. He heard Goth shout something behind him. Then he was bending over the opened box. Gray light glared out of it; cold fire stabbed, he seemed to be dropping forward, headlong into cold, gray distances, as his hands groped frantically about, found the tough, flexible plastic wrapping which had been pulled away from the crystal’s surface, wrenched, tugged it back into place.
In seconds they had it covered again, the plastic ends twisted tightly together; they stood gasping and staring at each other as the angry humming subsided. It was as something that had been coming awake had gone back to sleep.
“Just in time here maybe!” panted the captain, “Let’s hurry!”
They couldn’t get the strongbox closed all the way left it as it was, top pulled down, a gap showing beneath it.
They hauled Vezzarn clear of the vault door, shove the door shut, spun its triple locks till they clicked back into position. The captain wrestled Vezzarn up to his shoulder. The old spacer might be dead or merely unconscious; in any case, he was a loose, floppy weight difficult to keep a grasp on.
They got the storage door locked. Then Goth was off darting back to the control section, the captain hurrying and stumbling after her with Vezzarn. There was still no sign of the two passengers but that didn’t necessarily mean they were asleep in their staterooms.
He let Vezzarn slide to the control room floor and joined Goth at the instruments. The glittering dark of the Chaladoor swam about them but nothing of immediate importance was registering. Most particularly, nothing which suggested the far-off Worm World knew that Olimy’s crystal had been uncovered again on a ship thundering along its solitary course through space. They exchanged glances.
“Might have been lucky!” the captain said. “If there’re no Nuris anywhere around here….” He drew a long breath, looked back at Vezzarn. “Let’s try to get that character awake!”
Spluttering, swallowing, coughing, Vezzarn woke up a few minutes later. The captain pulled back the flask strong ship brandy he’d been holding to the little spacer’s mouth, recapped it and set it on the floor.” Can you hear me, Vezzarn?” he asked loudly.
“Aaa-eee,” sighed Vezzarn. He looked around and his face seemed to crumple. He blinked up at the captain, started to lift a hand to wipe his tear-filled eyes, and discovered handcuffs on his wrists. “Uh?” he muttered, frightened, then tried to meet the captain’s gaze again and failed. He cleared his throat. “Uh-what’s happened, skipper?”
“You’re going to tell us,” said the captain coldly. “Look over there, Vezzarn!”
Vezzarn turned his head in the indicated direction, saw the inner port of the control section lock yawning open, looked back apprehensively at the captain.
“Dani,” said the captain, nodding at Goth who sat sideways to them at the communicator table, an instrument case with dials on it before her, “is playing around with a little lie detector of ours over there! The detector is focused on you now.”
“I wouldn’t he to you, skipper!” Vezzarn interrupted earnestly. “I just wouldn’t! Anything you want to know….”
“We’ll see. If the detector says you’re lying…” the captain jerked his thumb at the lock. “You go out, Vezzarn! That way. I won’t listen to explanations. Out into the Chaladoor, as you are!” He moved back a step, put his hands on his hips, and gave Vezzarn a glare for good measure. “Start talking!”
Vezzarn didn’t wait to ask what he should talk about. Hurriedly he began spilling everything he could think of about what had been told him of Captain Aron’s mystery drive, the voice who employed him, the change in assignment, his own plans, and events on the ship. “Now I’ve, uh, seen your drive, sir,” he concluded, voice quivering reminiscently, “I wouldn’t want the hellish thing! Not as a gift from you. I wouldn’t want to come anywhere near it again. I’m playing it honest. I’m your man, sir, until we’re through the Chaladoor and berthed safe on Emris. Believe me!”
The captain moved to the desk, turned down a switch. The lock sealed itself with a sharp snap. Vezzarn started, then exhaled in heavy relief.
“We seem to have a passenger on board who’s interested in the same thing,” the captain remarked. It wouldn’t hurt if Vezzarn believed the crystalloid was the mystery drive. That he wasn’t going near it again if he could help it was obvious. Apparently he’d fainted in sheer fright as he was trying to scramble out of the vault. “Which of them?”
“Both of them, I’d say,” Vezzarn told him speaking a little more easily. “I couldn’t prove it, but they’ve both been moving around where they shouldn’t be.”
The captain studied him a moment. “I was assured,” he said then, “that short of a beam that could melt battlesteel, nobody would be able to force a way into that vault or to open that box until the time lock opened it…”
Vezzarn cleared his throat, produced a small, modest smile.
“Well, sir,” he said, “it’s possible you could find two men on Uldune who’re better safecrackers than I am. I’m not saying you would. It’s possible. But I’ll guarantee you couldn’t find three… I guess that explains it, sir!”
“I guess it does,” the captain agreed. He considered. Hulik do Eldel and Laes Yango weren’t at all likely to be in the same lofty safecracking class, but… “Could you fix the vault and the strongbox so you couldn’t get in again?” he asked.
“Huh?” Vezzarn looked reflective for a moment. “Yeah,” he said slowly, “that could be done….”
“Fine,” said the captain. “Get up. We’ll go do it light now.”
Vezzarn paled. “Skipper,” he stated uncomfortably, “I’d really rather not go anywhere near…”
“The forward lock over there,” warned the captain, “can be opened awfully quick again!”
Vezzarn climbed awkwardly out of the chair. “ I’ll go, sir,” he said.
Worm Weather appeared in the screens seven hours later…
It was very far away, but it was there, fuzzily rounded specks of yellowness drifting across the stars. They picked up five or six of the distant dots almost simultaneously, not grouped but scattered about the area. There seemed to be no pattern to their motion, either in relation to one another or to the Venture.
Within another half-hour there might have been nearly fifty in the screens at a time, to all sides of the ship. It was difficult to keep count. They moved with seeming aimlessness, dwindled unnaturally, were gone in the distance. Others appeared…. Goth had set up the Drive, and came back to join the captain. The lounge screens had been cut off from the beginning. Laes Yango called on intercom to report the fact and was told of a malfunction that would presently be corrected.
And still the Nuri globes came no closer. The encounter might have been a coincidence, but the probability remained that Vezzarn’s exposure of the crystal in the strongbox had drawn the swarms towards this area of space. They seemed to have no method of determining the Venture’s moment-to-moment position more exactly. But sheer chance might bring one near enough to reveal the ship to them.
“You scared?” Goth inquired by and by in a subdued voice.
“Well, yes…. You?”
“Uh-huh. Bit.”
“The Drive will get us out of it if necessary,” he said.
“Uh-huh.”
In another while there seemed fewer of the globes around. The captain waited some minutes to be sure, then commented on it. Goth had noticed it, too. Their number dwindled farther. At last one or two doubtful specks remained in space, now far behind the ship. But neither of them felt like leaving the screens.
“Being a witch,” sighed the captain, “can get to be quite a job!”
“Sometimes,” Goth agreed.
He reflected. “Well, maybe things will quiet down for a spell…. Almost everything that could happen on board has happened by now!” He considered again, chuckled. “Unless one of those, what did you call them, vatches joins the party!”
Goth cleared her throat carefully. “Well, about that, Captain-“
He gave her a quick, startled look.
“Can’t say there’s one around,” Goth said. “Can’t say there isn’t though, either.”
“One around! I thought you’d know!”
“They come close enough, I do. This one doesn’t. If it’s a vatch. Just get a feeling there’s been something watching.” She waved a hand at the Chaladoor in the screens. “From a ways off…”