is not quite true. Now, we know that Lieutenant Jervis acted peculiarly after the crew of the Mavis met its mysterious end, and the Medical Corps thinks that whatever is causing the deaths could also cause mental confusion. Therefore, I am remanding you to the custody of the Medical Corps for observation. You’ll be kept in close confinement until this thing is cleared up.”
Wayne frowned bitterly. “Yes, sir,” he said.
* * * *
Peter Wayne sat in his cell in the hospital sector and stared at the wall in confusion. What in blazes was going on? What possible motive would three enlisted men have to frame him in this way? It didn’t make any sense.
Was it possible that he really had gone off his rocker? Had he imagined the little beast under the sand?
He lifted his foot and looked again at the sole. There it was: a little pit about an eighth of an inch deep.
The colonel had explained it away easily enough, saying that he might possibly have stepped on a sharp rock. Wayne shook his head. He knew he wasn’t nuts. But what the hell was going on?
There were no answers. But he knew that the eventual answer, when it came, would have something to do with the mystery of the Mavis’s eight corpses.
It was late that afternoon when Sherri James came storming into the hospital sector. She was wearing a spacesuit, and she was brandishing a pass countersigned by Colonel Petersen himself. She was determined to enter.
“The medics didn’t want to let me in,” she explained. “But I told them I’d wear a spacesuit if it would make them any happier.”
“Sherri! What the devil are you doing here?”
“I just wanted to check on you,” she said. Her voice sounded oddly distorted coming over the speaker in the helmet. “You’re supposed to have blown your wig or something. Did you?”
“No. Of course not.”
“I didn’t think so.” She unscrewed her helmet quickly. “Listen, Peter, there’s something funny going on aboard this ship.”
“I’ve known that a long time,” he said.
“I think Boggs and those other two are trying to frame you,” she said, her voice low. “Do you know of anyone aboard named Masters?”
“Masters?” Wayne repeated. “Not that I know of—why?”
“Well, I overheard Boggs talking to one of the other men. I didn’t hear very clearly, but it sounded as though he said: ‘We’ve got to get Moore out and turn him over to Masters.’ Bill Moore is one of my computermen—tall, skinny fellow.”
Wayne nodded, frowning. “Yeah, but who is Masters? This is the queerest thing I ever heard of.”
Footsteps sounded in the corridor outside.
“Better put your helmet on,” Wayne advised. “Whoever’s coming might not like to see you this way.”
Quickly, she slipped the helmet back on. “I don’t know what’s going on,” she said. “But I intend to find out.”
* * * *
One of the medics entered the cell without knocking and came up to Sherri. “You’ll have to go now, Lieutenant,” he said. “We’re going to perform some tests on the captain now.”
Sherri bristled. “Tests? What kind of tests?”
“Nothing very serious,” the medic said. “Just a routine checkup to clarify some points we’re interested in.”
“All right,” Sherri said. “You won’t find anything the matter with him.” She left.
“Come with me, Captain,” said the medic politely. He unlocked the cell door and, equally politely, drew a needle-beam pistol. “Don’t try anything, please, sir. I have my orders.”
Silently, Wayne followed the medic into the lab. Several other medics were standing around watching him, with Stevelman, the head man, in the back.
“Over this way, Captain,” Stevelman called.
There was a box sitting on a table in the middle of the room. It was full of sand.
“Give me your hand, please, Captain,” the medic said tonelessly.
In a sudden flash of insight, Wayne realized what was in the box. He thought fast but moved slowly. He held out his hand, but just as the medic took it, he twisted suddenly away.
His hand flashed out and grasped the other’s wrist in a steely grip. The medic’s fingers tightened on the needle-beam, and managed to pull the trigger. A bright beam flared briefly against the lab’s plastalloy floor, doing nothing but scorching it slightly. Wayne’s other hand balled into a fist and came up hard against the medic’s jaw.
He grabbed the needle-beam pistol from the collapsing man’s limp hand and had the other three men covered before the slugged medic had finished sagging to the floor.
“All of you! Raise your hands!”
They paid no attention to him. Instead of standing where they were, they began to move toward him. Wayne swore and, with a quick flip of his thumb, turned the beam down to low power and pulled the trigger three times in quick succession.
The three men fell as though they’d been pole-axed, knocked out by the low-power beam.
“The whole ship’s gone crazy,” he murmured softly, looking at the three men slumped together on the lab floor. “Stark, staring, raving nuts.”
He took one step and someone jumped him from behind. The needle-beam pistol spun from his hand and slithered across the floor as Wayne fell under the impact of the heavy body. Apparently the whole Medical Corps was out to knock him down today.
He twisted rapidly as an arm encircled his neck, and rammed an elbow into the newcomer’s midsection. Then he jerked his head back, smashing the back of his skull into his opponent’s nose.
The hold around his neck weakened, and Wayne tore himself loose from the other’s grasp. He jumped to his feet, but the other man was a long way from being unconscious. A stinging right smashed into Wayne’s mouth, and he felt the taste of blood. Hastily he wiped the trickle away with the back of his hand.
With his nose pouring blood, Wayne’s antagonist charged in. His eyes burned with the strange flame that had been gleaming in Boggs’s face out on the desert in the valley. He ploughed into Wayne’s stomach with a savage blow that rocked Wayne back.
He grunted and drove back with a flurry of blows. The other aimed a wild blow at Wayne’s head; Wayne seized the wrist as the arm flew past his ear, and twisted, hard. The medic flipped through the air and came to rest against the wall with a brief crunching impact. He moaned and then lapsed into silence.
* * * *
Quickly, Wayne grabbed the gun off the floor and planted his back to the wall, looking around for new antagonists. But there was evidently no one left who cared to tangle with him, and the four medics strewn out on the floor didn’t seem to have much fight left in them.
Wayne crossed the room in a couple of strides and bolted the door. Then he walked over to the box of sand. If it contained what he suspected—
He stepped over to the lab bench and picked out a long steel support rod from the equipment drawer. He placed the rod gently against the sand, and pushed downward, hard. There was a tinny scream, and a six-inch needle shot up instantly through the surface.
“Just what I thought,” Wayne murmured. “Can you talk, you nasty little brute?” He prodded into the sand—more viciously this time. There was a flurry of sand, and the football-shaped thing came to the surface, clashing its teeth and screaming shrilly.
Wayne cursed. Then he turned the needle gun back up to full power and calmly burned the thing to a crisp. An odor of singed flesh drifted up from the ashes