"C'mon!" "C'mon in!" "Come look what we got!"
Above, Larsen's voice snarled, "In there!"
It wasn't intended for Horn but for the prisoners, to drive them into a nearly empty hold where they could be locked up safely until the disorganization of the crew wore off or was otherwise adjusted. Larsen had a stun pistol only, but his captives didn't realize the difference, in their despair. It wouldn't have mattered, anyhow. They filed numbly into the hold. But Larsen suddenly snapped, "Not you!" He caught Ginny's arm and jerked her back, then drove the others on. It was utterly dark there. They stumbled. The two children began to cry. Larsen kicked the door shut and put the locking dogs in place.
From below came more voices of men at the air lock door.
"C'mon! Larsen says -"
Larsen said, raging coldly, "Tell him I've got his girl here! Tell him to come in!"'
Babblings. A voice reported, still gleeful because of money a foot deep in the crew's quarters, "He says he wants to make his deal first!"
Larsen considered a bare second. Then he grinned savagely. "Get him!" he commanded from above. "Don't kill him! He won't dare fight. I've got his girl! Go get him!"
Whooping, men leaped down. Two of them. One landed on a writhing, gristly tentacle which whipped around his ankle and bit him. Then a beast, all flailing arms, reared up and embraced him horribly and squeezed. He shrieked. A second man stumbled as he landed and a glistening snakelike thing flashed around his neck and pulled him over backwards. The other men in the air lock seized weapons normally racked by the air lock door. They jumped down, the safeties snapped off the blasters. The blasters made their snapping sounds. Men in motion were seized by pairs and triple monsters who separated from each other to compete for living food.
Men went zestfully into battle. They had killed these beasts for sport. It was instinct to kill a beast in defence of a man. But their eyes were not fully accustomed to the darkness outside the ship. They attacked the monsters with perhaps excessive confidence.
Horn leaped up into the air lock and slammed the door shut behind him. He raced for the companion ladder, blast rifle ready.
The inside of the ship was suddenly and remarkably silent. Men outside fought the writhing monsters. It was practically butchery, but that was because the men fought together, with confidence, and the grey-green creatures fought by instinct only, and singly. But yet it was remarkable that the inside of the ship was so still. There was no sound through the closed air lock door. There was only the sound of Horn's footsteps on the companionway, and the panting of his breath.
Ginny's voice came to him, faintly and desperately, "Don't come! Don't! He's ready."
Horn reached the next landing. It was the stores-messroom-galley level. The ship's lights burned steadily, making the room quite bright. And Larsen stood waiting, with Ginny before him. He had one of her arms twisted behind her back. He grinned at Horn. Horn couldn't shoot. Nobody could risk a blaster bolt at Larsen, standing behind the white-faced girl. The odds were too great that Ginny would get the bolt.
Larsen thrust a weapon around her waist. He pulled the trigger.
Horn heard the waspish humming sound of a stun pistol, which is as effective as a blaster at short range, and very much less messy. He felt the intolerable pins-and-needles prickling sensation of a stun pistol beam. He heard it and felt it for only the fraction of a second, of course. In that small fraction of time, though, he knew such fury, such infinite hatred, and such despair as would make any man go mad if it lasted as long as a minute.
He felt himself falling.
Then he felt nothing.
CHAPTER TEN
HE came back to consciousness in a dreamy state. His mind awoke before the nerves that brought messages to it could begin to operate. But his mind knew that there was something wrong. Something desperately intolerable was going on, and he could not pinpoint what it was. He fought to get back to what he'd known before this strange and dreamy state intervened. Presently he heard a voice saying, "You'd better wake up." It was muted. He heard it as if through many layers of thick felt.
He debated with himself why he should need to wake up. Then another voice came. It sounded desperate. It was Ginny.
"But you can't do that to them! You can't -"
The first voice laughed, a highly unpleasant sound. And suddenly remembrance swept over Horn like a flood. He knew that Ginny was here, and Larsen. He did not try to move. He knew that he had been shot with a stun pistol, and that he should remain motionless if he were to gain anything at all from recovering. His first movement should come after he'd regained control of all his body. Then, perhaps, a sudden, all-out attack. He heard poundings, and knew what they were. He'd been pounding like that on the air lock when Ginny and the rest were forced into the ship and he was locked out of it. Now there were others locked out of the Theban - her crew. They'd gone out to fight the grey-green horrors that seized the first two to go after Horn. Horn himself had slammed the door on them, locking them out so he could do battle with Larsen alone.
The crewmen were still outside. Larsen wasn't admitting them. Larsen was here, with Ginny, waiting for Horn to recover from the stun pistol beam. And the crewmen battered vainly on the air lock door.
Horn felt life returning to his legs. There was something strange about them, but he raced his brain and controlled his breathing lest the fury trying to rise up in him should reveal itself.
"But - but -" Ginny said desperately, "maybe he can't do what you want. Maybe it's impossible. And if it is, you - you can't hurt - not the children, surely."
"It's not impossible," rumbled Larsen. "Not for him!"
Horn stirred. It was very, very quiet inside the Theban. There were those muted, nearly hysterical bangings on the air lock door, but there was not even the whispering of the air freshener or any other noise.
"It's laid in my lap," rumbled Larsen in what was almost a genial tone. "I've got the money from the Danae. I've got rid of my crew so I don't have to split with anybody, and I've got an engineer who can run this scrap heap anywhere in the galaxy."
"But -"
"Everything's breakin' my way! All of it! All I have to do is show Horn where he stands. He'll see you here, with me. You'll tell him what's what. You'll beg him to do whatever I want him to."
"I'll tell him to destroy the ship."
"Yeah?" Larsen's tone went suddenly flat. "I don't haveto hurt you to make him mad enough for that! There are the others. If he tries anything, I'll take one of the Danae crowd out of the hold where I got them locked, and I'll show him what I can do to that one - just to show what I can do to you. You'll beg him to do what I tell him."
Horn risked the faintest possible flutter of his eyelids. He saw where he was - on the floor beside the engines of the Theban - and where Ginny was - white and desperate against a wall - and Larsen at ease in the chair Horn had used when standing watch beside these engines.
"But you wouldn't!" protested Ginny. Terror filled her. "Not - not the children!"
Larsen made amused noises. Then he growled, "Don't tell me what I won't do, or I'll show you!"
He stood up, stretched, turned partly away. And in one swift, savage movement Horn rolled over and launched himself in a headlong leap.
He didn't make it. In midair, he felt a sharp, agonizing pain in his ankle. Something seemed to snap. In mid-leap he checked and came crashing to the floor. He'd been chained by the leg to the Theban's engines. Larsen turned and laughed at him.