"See what you can make out of this tangle," he ordered. But Dane's shoulders went back as if some weight had been lifted from them. The old easiness was still lacking, but he was no longer exiled to the outer darkness of Van Rycke's displeasure.

Holding the microtape as if it were a first grade Koros stone Dane went back to his own cabin, snapped the tape into his reader, adjusted the ear b.u.t.tons and lay back on his bunk to listen.

He was deep in the intricacy of a deal so complicated that he was lost after the first two moves, when he opened his eyes to see Ali at the door panel. The Engineer-apprentice made an emphatic beckoning wave and Dane slipped off the ear b.u.t.tons.

"What is it?" His question lacked a cordial note.

"I've got to have help." Ali was terse. "Kosti's blacked out!"

"What!" Dane sat up and dropped his feet to the deck in almost one movement.

"I can't shift him alone," Ali stated the obvious. The giant jetman was almost double his size. "We must get him to his quarters. And I won't ask Stotz--"

For a perfectly good reason Dane knew. An a.s.sistant--two of the apprentices--could go sick, but their officers' continued good health meant the most to the Queen. If some infection were aboard it would be better for Ali and himself to be exposed, than to have Johan Stotz with all his encyclopedic knowledge of the ship's engines contract any disease.

They found the jetman half sitting, half lying in the short foot or so of corridor which led to his own cubby. He had been making for his quarters when the seizure had taken him. And by the time the two reached his side, he was beginning to come around, moaning, his hands going to his head.

Together they got him on his feet and guided him to his bunk where he collapsed again, dead weight they had to push into place. Dane looked at Ali--

"Tau?"

"Haven't had time to call him yet." Ali was jerking at the thigh straps which fastened Kosti's s.p.a.ce boots.

"I'll go." Glad for the task Dane sped up the ladder to the next section and threaded the narrow side hall to the Medic's cabin where he knocked on the panel.

There was a pause before Craig Tau looked out, deep lines of weariness bracketing his mouth, etched between his eyes.

"Kosti, sir," Dane gave his bad news quickly. "He's collapsed. We got him to his cabin--"

Tau showed no sign of surprise. His hand shot out for his kit.

"You touched him?" At the other's nod he added an order. "Stay in your quarters until I have a chance to look you over--understand?"

Dane had no chance to answer, the Medic was already on his way. He went to his own cabin, understanding the reason for his imprisonment, but inwardly rebelling against it. Rather than sit idle he snapped on the reader--but, although facts and figures were dunned into his ears--he really heard very little. He couldn't apply himself--not with a new specter leering at him from the bulkhead.

The dangers of the s.p.a.ce lanes were not to be numbered, death walked among the stars a familiar companion of all s.p.a.cemen. And to the Free Trader it was the extra and invisible crewman on every ship that raised.

But there were deaths and deaths--And Dane could not forget the gruesome legends Van Rycke collected avidly as his hobby--had recorded in his private library of the folk lore of s.p.a.ce.

Stories such as that of the ghostly "New Hope" carrying refugees from the first Martian Rebellion--the ship which had lifted for the stars but had never arrived, which wandered for a timeless eternity, a derelict in free fall, its port closed but the warning "dead" lights on at its nose--a ship which through five centuries had been sighted only by a s.p.a.cer in similar distress. Such stories were numerous. There were other tales of "plague" ships wandering free with their dead crews, or discovered and shot into some sun by a patrol cruiser so that they might not carry their infection farther. Plague--the nebulous "worst" the Traders had to face.

Dane screwed his eyes shut, tried to concentrate upon the droning voice in his ears, but he could not control his thoughts nor--his fears.

At a touch on his arm he started so wildly that he jerked the cord loose from the reader and sat up, somewhat shamefaced, to greet Tau. At the Medic's orders he stripped for one of the most complete examinations he had ever undergone outside a quarantine port. It included an almost microscopic inspection of the skin on his neck and shoulders, but when Tau had done he gave a sigh of relief.

"Well, you haven't got it--at least you don't show any signs yet," he amended his first statement almost before the words were out of his mouth.

"What were you looking for?"

Tau took time out to explain. "Here," his fingers touched the small hollow at the base of Dane's throat and then swung him around and indicated two places on the back of his neck and under his shoulder blades. "Kosti and Mura both have red eruptions here. It's as if they have been given an injection of some narcotic." Tau sat down on the jump seat while Dane dressed. "Kosti was dirt-side--he might have picked up something--"

"But Mura--"

"That's it!" Tau brought his fist down on the edge of the bunk. "Frank hardly left the ship--yet he showed the first signs. On the other hand you are all right so far and you were off ship. And Ali's clean and he was with you on the hunt. We'll just have to wait and see." He got up wearily. "If your head begins to ache," he told Dane, "you get back here in a hurry and stay put--understand?"

As Dane learned all the other members of the crew were given the same type of inspection. But none of them showed the characteristic marks which meant trouble. They were on course for Terra--but--and that but must have loomed large in all their minds--once there would they be allowed to land? Could they even hope for a hearing? Plague ship--Tau must find the answer before they came into normal s.p.a.ce about their own solar system or they were in for such trouble as made a broken contract seem the simplest of mishaps.

Kosti and Mura were in isolation. There were volunteers for nursing and Tau, unable to be in two places at once, finally picked Weeks to look after his crewmate in the engineering section.

There was doubling up of duties. Tau could no longer share with Mura the care of the hydro garden so Van Rycke took over. While Dane found himself in charge of the galley and, while he did not have Mura's deft hand at disguising the monotonous concentrates to the point they resembled fresh food, after a day or two he began to experiment cautiously and produced a stew which brought some short words of appreciation from Captain Jellico.

They all breathed a sigh of relief when, after three days, no more signs of the mysterious illness showed on new members of the crew. It became routine to parade before Tau stripped to the waist each morning for the inspection of the danger points, and the Medic's vigilance did not relax.

In the meantime neither Mura nor Kosti appeared to suffer. Once the initial stages of headaches and blackouts were pa.s.sed, the patients lapsed into a semi-conscious state as if they were under sedation of some type. They would eat, if the food was placed in their mouths, but they did not seem to know what was going on about them, nor did they answer when spoken to.

Tau, between visits to them, worked feverishly in his tiny lab, a.n.a.lyzing blood samples, reading the records of obscure diseases, trying to find the reason for their attacks. But as yet his discoveries were exactly nothing. He had come out of his quarters and sat in limp exhaustion at the mess table while Dane placed before him a mug of stimulating caf-hag.

"I don't get it!" The Medic addressed the table top rather than the amateur cook. "It's a poison of some kind. Kosti went dirt-side--Mura didn't. Yet Mura came down with it first. And we didn't ship any food from Sargol. Neither did he eat any while we were there. Unless he did and we didn't know about it. If I could just bring him to long enough to answer a couple of questions!" Sighing he dropped his weary head on his folded arms and within seconds was asleep.

Dane put the mug back on the heating unit and sat down at the other end of the table. He did not have the heart to shake Tau into wakefulness--let the poor devil get a slice of bunk time, he certainly needed it after the fatigues of the past four days.

Van Rycke pa.s.sed along the corridor on his way to the hydro, Sinbad at his heels. But in a moment the cat was back, leaping up on Dane's knee.

He did not curl up, but rubbed against the young man's arm, finally reaching up with a paw to touch Dane's chin, uttering one of the soundless, mews which were his bid for attention.

"What's the matter, boy?" Dane fondled the cat's ears. "You haven't got a headache--have you?" In that second a wild surmise came into his mind.

Sinbad had been planet-side on Sargol as much as he could, and on ship board he was equally at home in all their cabins--could he be the carrier of the disease?

A good idea--only if it were true, then logically the second victim should have been Van, or Dane--whereas Sinbad lingered most of the time in their cabins--not Kosti. The cat, as far as he knew, had never shown any particular fondness for the jetman and certainly did not sleep in Karl's quarters. No--that point did not fit. But he would mention it to Tau--no use overlooking anything--no matter how wild.

It was the sequence of victims which puzzled them all. As far as Tau had been able to discover Mura and Kosti had nothing much in common except that they were crewmates on the same s.p.a.cer. They did not bunk in the same section, their fields of labor were totally different, they had no special food or drink tastes in common, they were not even of the same race. Frank Mura was one of the few descendants of a mysterious (or now mysterious) people who had had their home on a series of islands in one of Terra's seas, islands which almost a hundred years before had been swallowed up in a series of world-rending quakes--j.a.pan was the ancient name of that nation. While Karl Kosti had come from the once thickly populated land ma.s.ses half the planet away which had borne the geographical name of "Europe." No, all the way along the two victims had only very general meeting points--they both shipped on the Solar Queen and they were both of Terran birth.

Tau stirred and sat up, blinking bemusedly at Dane, then pushed back his wiry black hair and a.s.sumed a measure of alertness. Dane dropped the now purring cat in the Medic's lap and in a few sentences outlined his suspicion. Tau's hands closed about Sinbad.

"There's a chance in that--" He looked a little less beat and he drank thirstily from the mug Dane gave him for the second time. Then he hurried out with Sinbad under one arm--bound for his lab.

Dane slicked up the galley, trying to put things away as neatly as Mura kept them. He didn't have much faith in the Sinbad lead, but in this case everything must be checked out.

When the Medic did not appear during the rest of the ship's day Dane was not greatly concerned. But he was alerted to trouble when Ali came in with an inquiry and a complaint.

"Seen anything of Craig?"

"He's in the lab," Dane answered.

"He didn't answer my knock," Ali protested. "And Weeks says he hasn't been in to see Karl all day--"

That did catch Dane's attention. Had his half hunch been right? Was Tau on the trail of a discovery which had kept him chained to the lab? But it wasn't like the Medic not to look in on his patients.

"You're sure he isn't in the lab?"

"I told you that he didn't answer my knock. I didn't open the panel--"