Queer indeed. And even worse, Jamison now told me that several members of the X-87's crew were ill, and one or two had recently died, so that she was starting on her flight tonight with at least five new men....
The little space-ship was to sail at 3 a.m. I had my luggage aboard an hour ahead; and at quarter of three I was loitering on the tube-lit stage watching the passengers bidding good-bye to their friends and then going up the long incline to where the X-87 was cradled forty feet overhead. An S.S. Man, without too much equipment, can hide it all pretty comfortably. Most of my small apparatus was tucked into capacious pockets. And with my square-cut jacket buttoned over my weapon belt, I imagine I looked like any ordinary citizen. I was booked as a mathematics clerk, going to the Moon to take a position in the bookkeeping department of the Blake Company. I'm smallish, and dark—and not too handsome, my friends tell me. Just an unobtrusive fellow whom nobody would particularly notice. I certainly hoped now that that would prove to be so.
"How many passengers this voyage?" I asked young Len Smith, who was standing here on the landing shed beside me. He was a slim, handsome fellow, the X-87's radio-helio operator, ornate and exceedingly dapper in his stiff white-and-gold uniform.
"Damned if I know. Fifteen or twenty maybe. Usually are about that many."
A big seven-foot Martian stopped near us, directing the attendants who were carrying his luggage. "Who's that?" I murmured to Len Smith.
Dr. Frye, the X-87's surgeon—a weazened little fellow with a grim, saturnine face and scraggly iron-gray hair—had joined us. He answered me.
"Set Mokk, he calls himself."
"Going to the Moon, for what?" I persisted.
Dr. Frye shrugged. "Passengers aren't required to give their family history. Set Mokk is a wealthy man in Ferrok-Shahn, I understand. An enthusiastic Interplanetary traveler—"