"God in heaven!" muttered Rab Crane. "Whoever came to get Doctor Alph's secret, got it — by stealing his brain!"
Rab Crane was aghast. He knew that in these days the removal of a living brain from a man's body, and keeping it living in special serum, was child's play to anyone versed in surgery.
And he knew, too, that such preserved, living brains could be made to think and remember; that they could be communicated with by microphonic and loudspeaker electrical connections to their hearing and speech nervecenters. Whoever had taken Doctor Alph's brain had come here intending to steal it, and had brought a special serum-case for its transportation!
And the brain-thief might be already aboard the Vulcan, ready to leave Venus with his ghastly loot. Once away from Venus, it would not take him long to make the living brain give up its secret, and that meant that the planet the thief served would acquire the dead scientist's terrible secret weapon!
Rab Crane looked swiftly at his watch again. The Vulcan sailed at nine. It was a little after eight. He would have just time enough to get aboard the spaceliner before it took off — if he were not stopped.
He must get aboard! Somewhere on that ship was the stolen brain whose terrific secret might spell conquest of and doom for Earth. His one slim chance now was to get on the liner, yet he had but forty minutes to reach the spacestation on the other side of the great Venusian metropolis!
The big clock over the spacestation showed just ten minutes short of nine when the TSS man fought through the crowd to the gangway of the Vulcan. People were waving farewell to departing friends, sweating dockhands were hustling last-minute freight into the ports, ship's officers were bawling orders. Over the crowd and flaring lights loomed the vast, cigar-like metal bulk, waiting in its cradle for the moment of its flaming leap into space.
Rab Crane, gripping his suitcase in one hand and interplanetary passport and ticket in the other, ran up the gangplank into the glassite-walled promenade deck where the Venusian ship's officer on duty was being beset by passengers wanting various services.
A shriveled, red-skinned little Martian with enormous spectacles was fussing at the office. "I want my crate of machinery samples in my cabin, not in the hold. They're valuable!"
A squat, huge-shouldered Jovian was thrusting rudely past others to make his complaints heard, and a handsome young Earthman who had evidently had too much of the intoxicating "blue force," was asking plaintively, "Where's the vibration-bar?"
The harassed officer glanced at Rab Crane's passport hurriedly.
"Norman Idwall, citizen of Earth, importer. Okay, Mr. Idwall," he said.
A steward ran along the deck banging a gong and crying, "Five minutes to take-off time! All passengers in their cabins!"
Rab Crane, his heart still hammering from his race to the spacestation, had a steward find his cabin. Once in it, the TSS man locked the door and lay down on the bunk as required.
He was on the ship, at least! But who among its scores of passengers could be the spy who had the brain of Doctor Alph? How could he hope to identify him?
Suddenly, in the little cabin, a hoarse, loud voice spoke to Rab Crane. "Crane, I see I failed to kill you at Doctor Alph's," the voice rasped.
Rab Crane bounded to his feet, his beam-pistol leaping into his hand. He glanced around the cabin; there was no one in it but himself. He flung open the door, but no one was in the corridor.
That harsh voice was speaking, seemingly from the air beside him.
"There are still two minutes left before the Vulcan starts. Unless you leave the ship, you will die one minute after the take-off."
The menacing voice ceased abruptly. But this time Crane had traced it. It came from his own coat pocket!
He thrust his hand into the pocket and drew out a small watchlike metal instrument, apparently a super-compact radio receiver and loud-speaker. Someone on deck must have dropped it in his pocket as he boarded the line Crane stared at the thing, thinking fast. This meant that the brain-thief had seen him come abroad, meant to kill him to get him off the trail. But how could the man hope to kill him here in his locked cabin.
He could hear the space-doors of the liner slowly grinding shut. The beat-beat-beat of the ventilation system began. There was a breathless hush throughout the ship. Then with a tremendous roar and quivering shock, the vista outside Crane's cabin window vanished as the Vulcan roared out to ward space.
Crane crouched, rocking from the shock of starting, his beam-gun gripped in his hand, his bronzed face drawn in a mirthless grin. The harsh voice spoke again, from the watch-shape thing in his other hand.
"You were not wise enough to get off the ship. Therefore you die-now!"'
CHAPTER II
DEATH SHIP
Before that rasping voice had ceased to sound, Rab Crane knew how he was about to be murdered. It seared across his brain in a flash even as his muscles sprang into action.
He plunged for the cabin door, tore it open and hurled the watch-like thing in his hand far down the corridor. Before it even hit the floor, it exploded in a blinding flash of atomic force and light!
"God, why didn't I see it before!" exclaimed Rab Crane hoarsely as he wiped his glistening brow. "He had an atomic charge planted in that thing, where he could detonate it by remote control whenever he wanted."
Then he saw that the blinding flash of force had eaten a hole in one inner wall of the corridor but had done no other damage. Excited voices were crying in alarm and heads were sticking out of doors along the corridor.
Stewards and officers came running into the corridor even as Rab Crane drew back into his cabin.
Listening, he heard the officers finish their futile examination and depart, remarking that the atomic bomb must have been planted in the ship earlier. The excited passengers dispersed, reassured that no harm had been done the ship.
Crane found himself shaken a little, despite his steel-hard nerves. The ingenuity of the attempt against his life had been diabolical. Undoubtedly his unknown antagonist was the most deadly he had ever challenged.
Yet Crane's determination to wrest Doctor Alph's stolen brain from the other spy was strengthened rather than weakened. That weirdly living brain was a doom hanging over Earth!
When he dressed for dinner, Crane put his beam-pistol inside his coat, and the feel of it was comforting as he walked into the big, brilliantly lighted dining saloon. Laughing, chatting men and women of several planets, expensively garbed and gowned and jewelled, filled the room. Under the conversation, a Venusian orchestra was softly playing haunting popular melodies.
The steward who led Rab Crane to a table in a corner apologized for its obscure position.
"It's not a very good table, sir, but it was all we had left for last-minute passengers like yourself."
His words made Crane study the others at the table closely as they introduced themselves. The spy who had the stolen brain would be a last-minute passenger, too. He must be at this table!
The four other men at the table were of four different worlds. One was Kin Nilga, a Saturnian rocket engineer, with solemn green face, pale, big eyes and the great-boned body of his race.
Next to him sat Jurk Usk, a Jovian shipping-magnate, squat, huge-shouldered and heavy-browed like all men of Jupiter ' and as surly and sparing of words as most of his compatriots.
The other two were Kark Al, the thin, wisp-like, spectacled little Martian salesman whom Crane had heard complaining about his machinery samples; and Donn Ennimer, the handsome, drunken young Earthman he had noticed when he boarded ship.