“It could be a vatch?”
“Could be,” Goth acknowledged. “Wouldn’t worry about it. If it’s your vatch, he’s probably just been curious about what you were doing. They get curious about people.”
The captain grunted. “Since when have you had that feeling?”
“Off and on,” Goth said. “On the ship … once or twice in Zergandol.”
He shook his head helplessly.
“Might fade off after a while,” Goth concluded. “He starts making himself at home around here, I’ll let you know.”
“You do that, Goth!” the captain said.
Two watches farther along, it became apparent that not everything that could happen on the Venture had happened so far. What occurred wasn’t vatch work, though for a moment the captain wasn’t so sure. In fact, it was something for which nobody on board had any satisfactory explanation to offer.
Hulik do Eldel gave the alarm. The captain was on duty when the intercom rang. He switched it on, said,
“Yes?”
“Captain Aron,” Hulik told him in an unnaturally composed voice, “I’m locked in my stateroom and need immediate assistance! Knock before you try to enter, and identify yourself, or I’ll shoot through the door.” The captain pressed Goth’s buzzer. “Why would you shoot through the door?” he asked.
“Because,” Hulik said, “there’s some beast loose on the ship.”
“Beast?” he repeated, startled. Goth’s face appeared in her screen, pop-eyed, nodded at him, disappeared. “Beast. Creature. Thing! Monster!” Hulik seemed to be speaking through hard-clenched teeth. “I saw it. Just now. In a passage off the lounge. Be careful on your way here! It’s large, probably dangerous. “
“I’ll be there at once!” the captain promised.
“Bring your gun,” Hulik told him, still in the flat, dead tone of choked-down hysteria. “Several, if you have them. “ She switched off as Goth came trotting out of her cabin, buttoning up her jacket.
“Vatch?” the captain asked hurriedly.
Goth shook her head. “Not a whiff of one around She couldn’t see a vatch anyway if there was one around.”
She looked puzzled and interested.
“Could something else have got on the ship, out of space? Something material?”
“Don’t know,” Goth said hesitantly. “Of course you hear stories about the Chaladoor like that.”
“The do Eldel’s no doubt heard them, too!” commented the captain. He slid his gun into a pocket, felt his nerves tightening up again. “We’ll hope it’s her imagination! Come on.”
They emerged from the control section, moved along the passage to the lounge, wary and listening. Nothing stirred. The lounge was dim, and the captain flipped the lights up to full strength as they entered. They we down a side passage, turned into another, stopped at closed stateroom door.
“Let’s stand aside a bit,” the captain whispered “The way she was talking, she might shoot through the door if she’s startled!” He rapped cautiously on the panel, pressed the door speaker.
“Who’s there?” Hulik’s voice inquired sharply.
“Captain Aron,” announced the captain. “Dani’s with me.”
There were two clicks. The door swung open a few inches and Hulik gazed out at them over a small but practical-looking gun. Her delicate face was drawn and pale, and there was a nervous flickering to the dark eyes that made the captain very uneasy. She glanced along the passage, hissed, “Come in! Quickly!” and opened the door wider.
“I didn’t get too good a look at it,” she was telling them in the stateroom a few seconds later, still holding the gun. “It was in the passage leading back from the lounge, about thirty feet away and in a shadow. A dark shape, moving up the passage towards me.” She shivered quickly. “It was an animal of some kind, quite large!”
“How large?” the captain asked.
She considered. “The body might have been as big as that of a horse. It seemed lumpy, rounded. It was close to the floor, I had the impression it was crouching! The head, big, round, something like tusks or fangs below it.” Hulik’s finger lifted, made five quick, stabbing motions in the air. “Eyes!” she said. “Five eyes in a row along the upper part of the head. Rather small, bright yellow.”
Everyone, with the exception of Olimy, was gathered in the control section; and except for Goth, all of them carried a gun. Hulik’s story couldn’t simply be ignored. It was clear she believed she had seen what she’d described. Vezzarn evidently believed it, too. His face was as pale as the do Eldel’s. Laes Yango was more skeptical.
“I’ve heard tales of ships being boarded by creatures from space in the Chaladoor,” he observed. “I have never felt there was reason to give much credence to them. Overwrought nerves can…”
“My nerves are as good as yours, sir!” Hulik interrupted hotly. “ If they weren’t, I would hardly have looked for passage through the Chaladoor in the first place. I know what I saw!”
Yango shrugged, indicated the viewscreens. “We’re all aware there are very realistic dangers out there,” he said. “Of many kinds. No one can foretell when one or the other of them will be next encountered. Are you proposing that we perhaps leave this child on guard to warn us of whatever may occur, while the rest spend upward of an hour searching every nook and cranny of the ship to locate an apparition?”
Hulik said sharply, “Dani can’t remain here by herself, of course! We must all stay together. And, yes, I say we should search the ship immediately, as a group. We must find that creature and either kill it or drive it back into space.” She looked at the captain. “For all we know, that unfortunate paralyzed person is in imminent danger at this very moment!”
The captain hesitated. To leave the control room unguarded for a considerable length of time certainly was not desirable. On the other hand, the Chaladoor looked as open and placid at the moment as one could wish. No stars, dust clouds, planetary bodies, or asteroid flows which might provide ambush points lay along the immediate course stretch ahead; the detectors had remained immobile for hours…
It shouldn’t, he pointed out to the others, take them an hour to conduct a search of the ship that would be adequate for the purpose. There were few hiding places for a creature of the size described by Miss do Eldel. Further, if the thing was aggressive, there was no reason to expect it would remain hidden. He’d turn on the ship’s automatic alarm system now which would blast a warning over every intercom speaker on board if suspicious objects came within detector range. They’d keep together, move as a group through each compartment of the ship in turn. That could be done in less than twenty minutes. If they encountered nothing, they’d assume, there were no lurking monsters here to be feared.
“After all,” he concluded, “this creature, whatever it was, may have come aboard, looked about, and simply left again shortly after Miss do Eldel saw it…”
Nobody appeared really satisfied with this solution, but they set off from the control section a few minutes later. The Venture’s interior gradually came ablaze with lights as the search party went through the passenger area first, worked on to the back of the ship and the storage, finally checked out the lower deck. But no ungainly beast was flushed to view; nor could they find the slightest traces such a creature might have left, even in the passage where Hulik declared she had seen it. Hulik remained unconvinced.
“What the rest of you do is your own affair!” she stated. “But I intend to go on no-sleep for the next several ship days and remain in my stateroom with the door locked. Vezzarn can bring me my meals. If nothing happens in that time, I shall be satisfied the thing is no longer on board. Meanwhile I advise all of you to take what precautions you can…”
The captain felt Hulik was not being too realistic about the situation. A creature capable of transferring itself through the hull of an armored trader into the interior of the ship presumably would also be capable of transferring itself into any stateroom it selected. Perhaps Hulik simply did not want to admit that to herself. At any rate, no one mentioned the possibility.
As he sat at the control desk near the end of his next watch, Goth whispered suddenly from behind his shoulder, “Captain!”
He started. These had been rather unsettling days in one way and another and he hadn’t heard her come up. He half turned. “Yes?”
“Got any of the intercoms on?” her whisper inquired. She sounded excited about something.
“No. What do…” He checked abruptly. He’d swung all the way around in the chair to look at her. And nobody was standing there.
“Goth!” he said loudly, startled.
“Huh?” inquired the voice. It seemed to come out of thin air not three feet from him. “Oh!” A giggle.