"We want you to navigate us. Will you?"
"No."
"Will you help us, Captain Carter? Tell your cub, this Haljan, to yield."
Carter roared, "Get back from there. There is no truce!"
I shoved aside his leveled projector. "Wait a minute, Miko. Navigate where?"
"That is our business. When you come out here, I will give you the course."
I realized that all this parley was a ruse of Miko's to take me alive. He had made a gesture. Hahn, watching him from the turret window, doubtless flashed a signal down to the hull corridors. The magnetizer control under the chart room was altered, our artificial gravity cut off. I felt the sudden lightness: I gripped the window casement and clung. Carter was startled into incautious movement. It flung him out into the room, his arms and legs flailing.
And across the chart room, in the opposite window, I felt rather than saw the shape of something. A figure, almost invisible but not quite, was trying to climb in! I flung the empty rifle I was holding. It hit something solid in the window. In a flare of sparks a blackhooded figure materialized. A man climbing in! His weapon spat. There was a tiny electronic flash, deadly silent. The intruder had shot at Carter: struck him. Carter gave one queer scream. He had floated to the floor; his convulsive movement when he was hit hurled him to the ceiling. His body struck; twitched; bounced back and sank inert on the floor grid almost at my feet.
I clung to the casement. Across the room of the weightless room the hooded intruder was also clinging. His hood fell back. It was Johnson.
"Killed him, the bully! Now for you, Mr. Third Officer Haljan!"