Page:Astounding Stories of Super Science (1930-03).djvu/54

Rh He added, so softly I could barely hear him, "That makes you, I think, almost my friend. And you thought you were my enemy."

I held my answer. An incautious tongue running under emotion is a dangerous thing. And I was sure of nothing.

E went on, "Almost my friend. Because—we both loved her, and she loved us both." He was hardly more than whispering. "And there is aboard—one whom we both hate."

"Miko!" It burst from me.

"Yes. But do not say it."

Another silence fell between us. He brushed back the black curls from his forehead. And his dark eyes searched mine.

"Have you an eavesdropping microphone, Haljan?"

I hesitated. "Yes."

"I was thinking" He leaned closer toward me. "If, in half an hour, you could use it upon Miko's cabin—I would rather tell you than the captain or anyone else. The cabin will be insulated, but I shall find a way of cutting off that insulation so that you may hear."

So George Prince had turned with us! The shock of his sister's death—himself allied to her murderer!—had been too much for him. He was with us!

Yet his help must be given secretly. Miko would kill him in an instant if it became known.

He had been watchful of the deck. Me stood up now.

"I think that is all."

As he turned away, I murmured, "But I do thank you"

HE name Set Miko glowed upon the small metal door. It was in a transverse corridor similar to A 22. The corridor was forward of the lounge; it opened off the small circular library.

The library was unoccupied and unlighted, dim with only the reflected lights from the nearby passages. I crouched behind a cylinder-case. The door of Miko's room was in sight, being some thirty feet away from me.

I waited perhaps five minutes. No one entered. Then I realized that doubtless the conspirators were already there. I set my tiny eavesdropper on the library floor beside me; connected its little battery; focussed its projector. Was Miko's room insulated? I could not tell. There was a small ventilating grid above the door. Across its opening, if the room were insulated, a blue sheen of radiance would be showing. And there would be a faint hum. But from this distance I could not see or hear such details, and I was afraid to approach closer. Once in the transverse corridor, I would have no place to hide, no way of escape; if anyone approached Miko's door, I would be discovered.

I threw the current into my little apparatus. I prayed, if it met interference, that the slight sound would pass unnoticed. George Prince had said he would make opportunity to disconnect the room's insulation. He had evidently done so. I picked up the interior sounds at once; my headphone vibrated with them. And with trembling fingers on the little dial between my knees as I crouched in the darkness behind the cylinder-case, I syncronized.

"Johnson is a fool." It was Miko's voice. "We must have the pass-words."

"He got them from the hello-room." A man's voice; I puzzled over it at first, then recognized it. Ranee Rankin.

IKO said, "He is a fool. Walking around this ship as though with letters blazoned on his forehead—'Watch me—I need watching—' Hah! No wonder they apprehended him!"

Was George Prince in there? Rankin's voice said: "He would have turned the papers over to us. I would not blame him too much. What harm—"

"Oh, I'll release him," Miko declared.