And to Manool's horror, a half dozen shots cracked and echoed in the narrow confines of the hall. Doc staggered, put out a hand to the bulkhead, coughed and slumped to the floor. Gilligan ran forward and put another bullet in him.
Manool didn't even wait until Gilligan came back into the room. He grabbed up his last box mechanically and ran to the steps. His mind was a chaos of horror; he was choking, his eyes were filling with tears and he was aware of only one thought—to get to the steps before a bullet smacked into his back, too.
He stumbled down the steps and along the corridor, sobbing as he went. They had killed Doc Slade. Killed him in cold blood. They'd kill the other officers, too, if they got the chance. There was no good in them, there was no hope in trying to placate them and appeal to their good nature. At any moment, they'd be likely to take a notion to kill him, too; just for the fun of the thing! He hardly knew what he was doing by the time he entered the tank-room and dropped the box of tooth-powder onto the others and then slammed the door shut and locked it.
For a while he was a little hysterical. He sobbed; he walked the floor; he beat his temples with his fists, and wondered if he could kill himself. He could see before him, with awful clarity, the form of Doc Slade, lying as he had lain in the passageway, with a gradually spreading pool of blood beneath his head.
He covered his face with his hands and wept anew. He kicked savagely at the boxes that were the price of his neutrality in this little war. He felt that he was the lowest, the most despicable coward in history. He wrung his hands and wept again. And at last, in time, his eyes dried and he took a deep breath.
There was a new look in his eyes. The thought had come to him suddenly, that he held the lives of these madmen in his own hand. Of course, he did! He had been worrying so much about the safety of his own paltry life that this thought had been entirely overlooked. He was the farmer on this ship! What was he weeping and wailing for, when every one of them depended for their air on his continued attention to the tanks?
Why, they were a good twenty million miles from the nearest space-port. If he wanted to die, if he was willing to give his life, he could destroy those tanks of vegetation, and not a man on this rocket would live to land on a planet again.
He stood up and threw out his chest. He inhaled deeply—and smothered an involuntary sob. He went to the wash-bowl and washed his face and eyes and combed his lank, black hair. He absently reached for his tooth-brush, then he shuddered. But habit was too great; in spite of the feeling of revulsion that the very thought of tooth-powder brought to him, he wound up by carefully brushing his teeth. Then he felt better.
He started to turn away from the wash-bowl and suddenly stopped. He turned back quickly and seized the can of tooth-powder standing there. He picked it up, poured some of the powder into his hand and let a drop or two of water fall on it. A sinister grin began to spread over his face—if he handled this thing right, the joke they had made in giving him the tooth-powder was going to back-fire with a vengeance.