Gallifa shuddered and swabbed a perspiring brow. The rain was making everything muggy.
He left MacFarland still talking to Dr. Thorndyke, and started back—heading directly for the team shack. Gallifa was obviously worried. He found himself wishing that he could somehow avoid telling the rest of the crew about Samuels.
Damn! Was the Bio team jinxed?
V
Gallifa kept close to the shacks in a futile effort to protect himself from the rain, which was really driving now. A single light burned in the Administration Building, but the rest of the compound was dark and quiet.
He skirted the deserted equipment building and paused for an instant in the lee of a truck to light his pipe. There was a loud tinkle of glass, and the windshield on the vehicle magically spouted a hole.
Gallifa ducked instinctively and only just in time. The windshield spouted a second hole—and then a third. A faint, bluish flash located his attacker. It was uncomfortably close.
Gallifa lashed out, and fell over a crouching figure. In a moment the two men were thrashing in the mud. The unseen attacker was strong and he fought like a maniac. But Gallifa was even stronger and his determined anger quickly gave him the advantage. He wrested the pellet gun from the other's grasp, and brought the butt down hard—brought it down twice. The man slumped, and was still.
Gallifa snapped on his wrist torch and played the tiny, luminous glow over the sprawled figure. The man who had tried to kill him was Cummings. Gallifa numbly wiped the mud from his pipe and lit it with a flickering lighter. The flame made a weird, cameo-like oval of his gaunt face, with the olive-toned skin of his ancestry stretched tightly across the high cheekbones.