"Get back!" A Terminal guard stepped in front of the group of onlookers. "Nobody's allowed near the ship!"
Beyond the quickly formed line of guards, Steel saw an excited group of Terminal executives gathered at the ship's open door. What was up? The ship appeared to be okay. It had come in all right.
"What's the trouble?" somebody asked.
The guard was staring anxiously at the ship himself. "Don't know," he said. "When that ship came in, there wasn't nobody on it...."
Steel shouldered his way to the front of the crowd to stare across at the ship's open door. Around him, the crowd buzzed with the news. A woman who had been waiting to meet somebody on the ship started screaming. The ship had come in on the radar beam, on time, but with pilots, stewardesses, twenty passengers, and cargo—missing!
"Pirates!" The word swept through the crowd. The ship had come from Venus. And not five minutes ago the pilot had reported he was arriving on schedule, the trip uneventful. Then the crowd quickly discovered what had happened. A Terminal cop appeared at the ship's door. A hush went over the crowd. In the cop's hand was an ice-bear's claw.
There was a hush, then one whisper in a thousand throats. "The Bear!"
Steel turned to a man beside him. "What was the cargo?"
"That—that's what's so awful," the fellow said. "It was carrying a load of Venusian tungsoid. And there ain't but two things you can make with tungsoid—electrotubes or suffo-gas!"
Suffo-gas! A deadly vapor, its production had been banned on Earth ever since mankind moved underground. One whiff of suffo-gas in New York's ventilation pipes.... Steel turned back through the crowd.