The Fifth Golden Age of Science Fiction MEGAPACK ®: Lester del Rey. Lester Del Rey
quite in time.”
“Is the time up?” I asked. It was the only thing I could think of.
Pietro shook his head sickly. “Lottery is off. Muller says we’ll have to hold another, since Storm and Peters were supposed to be safe. But not until tomorrow.”
Eve came in then, lugging coffee. Her eyes found me, and she managed a brief smile. “I gave the others coffee,” she reported to Muller. “They’re pretty subdued now.”
“Mutiny!” Muller helped Jenny’s brother to his feet and began helping him toward the door. “Mutiny! And I have to swallow that!”
Pietro watched him go, and handed Eve back his cup. “And there’s no way of knowing who was on which side. Dr. Napier, could you do something.…”
He held out his hands that were shaking, and Napier nodded. “I can use a sedative myself. Come on back with me.”
Eve and I wandered back to the kitchen. I was just getting my senses back. The damned stupidity of it all. And now it would have to be done over. Three of us still had to have our lives snuffed out so the others could live—and we all had to go through hell again to find out which.
Eve must have been thinking the same. She sank down on a little stool, and her hand came out to find mine. “For what? Paul, whoever poisoned the plants knew it would go this far! He had to! What’s to be gained? Particularly when he’d have to go through all this, too! He must have been crazy!”
“Bullard couldn’t have done it,” I said slowly.
“Why should it be Bullard? How do we know he was insane? Maybe when he was shouting that he wouldn’t tell, he was trying to make a bribe to save his own life. Maybe he’s as scared as we are. Maybe he was making sense all along, if we’d only listened to him. He—”
She stood up and started back toward the lockers, but I caught her hand. “Eve, he wouldn’t have done it—the killer—if he’d had to go through the lottery! He knew he was safe! That’s the one thing we’ve been overlooking. The man to suspect is the only man who could be sure he would get back! My God, we saw him juggle those straws to save Jenny! He knew he’d control the lottery.”
She frowned. “But… Paul, he practically suggested the lottery! Grundy brought it up, but he was all ready for it.” The frown vanished, then returned. “But I still can’t believe it.”
“He’s the one who wanted to go back all the time. He kept insisting on it, but he had to get back without violating his contract.” I grabbed her hand and started toward the nose of the ship, justifying it to her as I went. “The only man with a known motive for returning, the only one completely safe—and we didn’t even think of it!”
She was still frowning, but I wasn’t wasting time. We came up the corridor to the control room. Ahead the door was slightly open, and I could hear a mutter of Jenny’s voice. Then there was the tired rumble of Muller.
“I’ll find a way, baby. I don’t care how close they watch, we’ll make it work. Pick the straw with the crimp in the end—I can do that, even if I can’t push one out further again. I tell you, nothing’s going to happen to you.”
“But Bill—” she began.
I hit the door, slamming it open. Muller sat on a narrow couch with Jenny on his lap. I took off for him, not wasting a good chance when he was handicapped. But I hadn’t counted on Jenny. She was up, and her head banged into my stomach before I knew she was coming. I felt the wind knocked out, but I got her out of my way—to look up into the muzzle of a gun in Muller’s hands.
“You’ll explain this, Mr. Tremaine,” he said coldly. “In ten seconds, I’ll have an explanation or a corpse.”
“Go ahead,” I told him. “Shoot, damn you! You’ll get away with this, too, I suppose. Mutiny, or something. And down in that rotten soul of yours, I suppose you’ll be gloating at how you made fools of us. The only man on board who was safe even from a lottery, and we couldn’t see it. Jenny, I hope you’ll be happy with this butcher. Very happy!”
He never blinked. “Say that about the only safe man aboard again,” he suggested.
I repeated it, with details. But he didn’t like my account. He turned to Eve, and motioned for her to take it up. She was frowning harder, and her voice was uncertain, but she summed up our reasons quickly enough.
And suddenly Muller was on his feet. “Mr. Tremaine, for a damned idiot, you have a good brain. You found the key to the problem, even if you couldn’t find the lock. Do you know what happens to a captain who permits a death lottery, even what I called a legal one? He doesn’t captain a liner—he shoots himself after he delivers his ship, if he’s wise! Come on, we’ll find the one indispensable man. You stay here, Jenny—you too, Eve!”
Jenny whimpered, but stayed. Eve followed, and he made no comment. And then it hit me. The man who had thought he was indispensable, and hence safe—the man I’d naturally known in the back of my head could be replaced, though no one else had known it until a little while ago.
“He must have been sick when you ran me in as a ringer,” I said, as we walked down toward the engine hatch. “But why?”
“I’ve just had a wild guess as to part of it,” Muller said.
* * * *
Wilcox was listening to the Buxtehude when we shoved the door of his room open, and he had his head back and eyes closed. He snapped to attention, and reached out with one hand toward a drawer beside him. Then he dropped his arm and stood up, to cut off the tape player.
“Mr. Wilcox,” Muller said quietly, holding the gun firmly on the engineer. “Mr. Wilcox, I’ve detected evidence of some of the Venus drugs on your two assistants for some time. It’s rather hard to miss the signs in their eyes. I’ve also known that Mr. Grundy was an addict. I assumed that they were getting it from him naturally. And as long as they performed their duties, I couldn’t be choosy on an old ship like this. But for an officer to furnish such drugs—and to smuggle them from Venus for sale to other planets—is something I cannot tolerate. It will make things much simpler if you will surrender those drugs to me. I presume you keep them in those bottles of wine you bring aboard?”
Wilcox shook his head slowly, settling back against the tape machine. Then he shrugged and bowed faintly. “The chianti, sir!”
I turned my head toward the bottles, and Eve started forward. Then I yelled as Wilcox shoved his hand down toward the tape machine. The gun came out on a spring as he touched it.
Muller shot once, and the gun missed Wilcox’s fingers as the engineer’s hand went to his hip, where blood was flowing. He collapsed into the chair behind him, staring at the spot stupidly. “I cut my teeth on tough ships, Mr. Wilcox,” Muller said savagely.
The man’s face was white, but he nodded slowly, and a weak grin came onto his lips. “Maybe you didn’t exaggerate those stories at that,” he conceded slowly. “I take it I drew a short straw.”
“Very short. It wasn’t worth it. No profit from the piddling sale of drugs is worth it.”
“There’s a group of strings inside the number one fuel locker,” Wilcox said between his teeth. The numbness was wearing off, and the shattered bones in his hip were beginning to eat at him. “Paul, pull up one of the packages and bring it here, will you?”
I found it without much trouble—along with a whole row of others, fine cords cemented to the side of the locker. The package I drew up weighed about ten pounds. Wilcox opened it and scooped out a thimbleful of greenish powder. He washed it down with wine.
“Fatal?” Muller asked.
The man nodded. “In that dosage, after a couple of hours. But it cuts out the pain—ah, better already. I won’t feel it. Captain, I was never piddling. Your ship has been the sole source of this drug to Mars since a year or so after I first shipped on her. There are about