Mark’s eyes were sullen. “To the air-coaster.”
“Oh?”
“I haven’t had a chance to look at it.”
“Why, of course you’ve had a chance,” said Sheffield. “You were watching Fawkes like a hawk on the trip over.”
Mark scowled. “Everyone was around. I want to see if for myself.”
Sheffield felt disturbed. The kid was angry. He’d better tag along and try to find out what was wrong. He said, “Come to think of it, I’d like to see the coaster myself. You don’t mind having me along, do you?”
Mark hesitated. Then he said, “We-ell. If you want to.” It wasn’t exactly a gracious invitation.
Sheffield said, “What are you carrying, Mark?”
“Tree branch. I cut if off with the buss-field gun. I’m taking it with me just in case anyone wants to stop me.” He swung it so that it whistled through the thick air.
“Why should anyone want to stop you, Mark? I’d throw it away. It’s hard and heavy. You could hurt someone.”
Mark was striding on. “I’m not throwing it away.”
Sheffield pondered briefly, then decided against a quarrel at the moment. It would be better to get to the basic reason for this hostility first. “All right,” he said.
The air-coaster lay in a clearing, its clear metal surface throwing back green high lights (Lagrange II had not yet risen.)
Mark looked carefully about.
“There’s no one in sight, Mark,” said Sheffield.
They climbed aboard. It was a large coaster. It had carried seven men and the necessary supplies in only three trips.
Sheffield looked at its control panel with something quite close to awe. He said, “Imagine a botanist like Fawkes learning to run one of these things. It’s so far outside his specialty.”
“I can run one,” said Mark suddenly.
Sheffield stared at him in surprise. “You can?”
“I watched Dr. Fawkes when we came. I know everything he did. And he has a repair manual for the coaster. I sneaked that out once and read it.”
Sheffield said lightly, “Well, That’s very nice. We have a spare navigator for an emergency, then.”
He turned away from Mark then, so he never saw the tree limb as it came down on his head. He didn’t hear Mark’s troubled voice saying, “I’m sorry, Dr. Sheffield.” He didn’t even, properly speaking, feel the concussion that knocked him out.
Twenty-Three
It was the jar of the coaster’s landing, Sheffield later thought, that first brought consciousness back. It was a dim, aching sort of thing that had no understanding in it at first.
The sound of Mark’s voice was floating up to him. That was his first sensation. Then as he tried to roll over and get a knee beneath him, he could feel his head throbbing.
For a while, Mark’s voice was only a collection of sounds that meant nothing to him. Then they began to coalesce into words. Finally, when his eyes fluttered open and light entered stabbingly so that he had to close them again, he could make out sentences. He remained where he was, head hanging, one quivering knee holding him up.
Mark was saying in a breathless, high-pitched voice, “… a thousand people all dead. Just graves. And nobody knows why.”
There was a rumble Sheffield couldn’t make out. A hoarse, deep voice.
Then Mark again, “It’s true. Why do you suppose all the scientists are aboard?”
Sheffield lifted achingly to his feet and rested against one wall. He put his hand to his head and it came away bloody. His hair was caked and matted with it. Groaning, he staggered toward the coaster’s cabin door. He fumbled for the hook and yanked it inward.
The landing ramp had been lowered. For a moment, he stood there, swaying, afraid to trust his legs.
He had to take in everything by instalments. Both suns were high in die sky and a thousand feet away the giant steel cylinder of the Triple G. reared its nose high above the runty trees that ringed it.
Mark was at the foot of the ramp, semi-circled by members of the crew. The crewmen were stripped to the waist and browned nearly black in the ultraviolet of Lagrange I. (Thanks only to the thick atmosphere and the heavy ozone coating in the upper reaches for keeping UV down to a livable range.)
The crewman directly before Mark was leaning on a baseball bat. Another tossed a ball in the air and caught it. Many of the rest were wearing gloves.
Funny, thought Sheffield erratically, Mark landed right in the middle of a ball park.
Mark looked up and saw him. He screamed excitedly, “All right, “ask him. Go ahead, ask him. Dr. Sheffield, wasn’t there an expedition to this planet once and they all died mysteriously?”
Sheffield tried to say, “Mark, what are you doing?” He couldn’t. When he opened his mouth, only a moan came out.
The crewman with the bat said, “Is this little gumboil telling the truth, mister?”
Sheffield held on to the railing with two perspiring hands. The crewman’s face seemed to waver. The face had thick lips on it and small eyes buried under bristly eyebrows. It wavered very badly.
Then the ramp came up and whirled about his head. There was ground gripped in his hands suddenly and a cold ache on his cheekbone. He gave up the fight and let go of consciousness again.
Twenty-Four
He came awake less painfully the second time. He was in bed now and two misty faces leaned over him. A long, thin object passed across his line of vision and a voice, just heard above the humming in his ears, said, “He”ll come to now, Cimon.”
Sheffield closed his eyes. Somehow he seemed to be aware of the fact that his skull was thoroughly bandaged.
He lay quietly for a minute, breathing deeply. When he opened his eyes again, the faces above him were clear. There was Novee’s round face, a small, professionally serious line between his eyes that cleared away when Sheffield said, “Hello, Novee.”
The other man was Cimon, jaws set and angry, yet with a look of something like satisfaction in his eyes.
Sheffield said, “Where are we?”
Cimon said coldly, “In space, Dr. Sheffield. Two days out in space.”
“Two days out-” Sheffield’s eyes widened.
Novee interposed. “You’ve had a bad concussion, nearly a fracture, Sheffield. Take it easy.”
“Well, what hap- Where’s Mark? Where’s Mark?”;
“Easy. Easy now.” Novee put a hand on each of Sheffield’s shoulders and pressed him down.
Cimon said, “Your boy is in the brig. In case you want to know why, he deliberately caused mutiny on board ship, thus endangering the safety of five men. We were almost marooned at our temporary camp because the crew wanted to leave immediately. He persuaded them, the Captain did, to pick us up.”
Sheffield tried to brush Novee’s restraining arm to one side. That fuzzy memory of Mark and a man with a bat. Mark saying “… a thousand people all dead…”
The psychologist hitched himself up on one elbow with a tremendous effort. “Listen, Cimon, I don’t know why Mark did it, but let me talk to him. I’ll find out.”
Cimon said, “No need of that. It will all come out at the trial.”
Sheffield tried to brush Novee’s restraining arm to one side. “But why make it formal? Why involve the Bureau? We can settle this among ourselves.”
“That’s exactly what we intend to do. The Captain is empowered by the laws of space to preside over trials involving crimes and misdemeanors in deep space.”
“The Captain. A trial here? On board ship? Cimon, don’t let him do it. It will be murder.”
“Not at all. It will be a fair and proper trial. I’m in full agreement with the Captain. Discipline demands a trial.”