The thing had me shuddering. I must have been murmuring something of my thoughts, for Captain Wilkes retorted:
"If they crash us with a shot they might very easily injure the cargo. More apt to try running in close to us—a boarding party with powered pressure-suits." His fist thumped his desk again. "An' by Heaven, if they try that—you got a gun, Fanning?"
"Yes," I agreed. I had a small weapon of the paralyzer-gun type, efficient at a few feet of range. But of what use against an enemy you couldn't see?
Wilkes presently dismissed me. "You keep your own counsel," he told me. He lowered his voice. "By what your Chief Rankin intimated, there's at least a reasonable possibility that we've some damn' spy on board."
"Well, if that's a fact," I said, "the Phantom won't try cracking us with a long-range gun and killing the spy as well as the rest of us."
"Exactly. That's what I'm counting on. Keep your eyes open and your ears stretched. Report to me anything that looks queer."
I left him presently. Dogged, indomitable old fellow. He was seated grimly at his desk with his astronomical charts as he figured by what ingenuity he could map an emergency course to give the little Seven Stars its greatest speed. The ship was silent as I padded the length of the superstructure roof and went down to the stern triangle. By ship-routine it was now about eleven at night. The Martian Passengers were out of sight, sleeping probably. None of the crew were about, save the man in the aft peak with his small, wide-angle telescope. The wreck of the patrolship was certainly far beyond sight of the naked eye. This stern lookout evidently hadn't spotted it, and in a moment now I knew it would be beyond his range also. The captain and I, doubtless, were the only ones who knew what had happened.
I went forward along the side deck. In the men's smoking lounge, amidships in the superstructure, I heard voices, caught a glimpse as I went past of Arthur Jerome, the television lecturer, and Livingston, the Earth Ambassador to Mars, in there with Green, the ship's purser. Did that mean that Brenda Carson and her brother were still on the forward peak? I went cautiously forward. They were there—the blobs of them, faintly starlit, showed where they were standing together at one of the side bull's-eyes. Upon impulse, instead of joining them, I slid unseen into the shadows of a loading engine.
"Oh, Philip—" The girl's voice was faintly audible in the silence. "I'm so frightened. You think we can do it safely?"