It was a space cruiser, a late model. Twin burnished coils encircled its silvery hull-counteractive coils. Norman knew that, beginning now, was an ordeal that could end only in death for himself or whoever manned that ship. It was Johnny's ship. Inside it could not be a friend.
Through the filter glass, lighted with the fire gone, he could see out but they couldn't see in. A port opened in the cruiser's glittering side, steps fell to the jungle floor and three men stepped out. Norman was not surprised. Two of them wore the fiery red uniform of the Mercurian patrol and Norman's eyes narrowed when he saw their companion. Fat, clad in a silk shirt with his electric arm swinging jerkily, down the steps came the Mercurian ambassador, Gorig Sade.
He and his patrolmen strode through the muddy ashes with their guns drawn. Norman's fingers itched for the triggers of his starboard guns. With one burst—! But the guns were empty. Cursing the Venusian woman, he reached for his pistol. He'd shoot it out point blank from the door. Then as his hand moved toward the panel switch to open the door he barely felt the needle enter his back. He saw Keren jump away with the hypodermic needle in her hand.
If she had been a man Norman would have shot her on the spot. Instead, he just looked at her with all the hate in his soul, feeling now the stinging sensation in his back, knowing that something was already seeping into his veins—to knock him out, paralyze him, kill him—just when he had a chance at Sade, just when he had a chance to solve the mystery of Johnny's death sentence and perhaps find something here to save him.
"The crash must have shook 'em up pretty bad," said a voice outside. "We'll have to cut the door open."
Oddly, as Norman stared at the hypodermic syringe in Keren's hand he remembered a trick he'd once pulled on Jupiter. A last ditch trick.
His hand jumped to a lever on the panel and jerked it down. He heard an oath mingled with the hiss of antipyrol as his full extinguishers spurted their jets into the jungle for fifty yards around the ship. When he looked out, he saw Sade and the two red-uniformed patrolmen staggering about blindly in the green rain with their hands covering their eyes.
"They'll be blind as bats for half an hour," Norman laughed, cutting off the spray. He jerked a coil of rope from the panel compartment. "I don't know what you stuck me with," he told Keren, "but if I go out, you are going to be tied up till I come to." In a moment he had her wrists securely tied behind her. Keren remained silent, staring at him with black-cat eyes half closed.
Throwing the door switch, he stepped to the port and found the three men standing in the ashes between the ships, digging at their swollen eyes. "Get out," he ordered the sullen Venusian and she walked down the steps ahead of him.