He was trembling a little with fury. "You damned louse. Why don't you make it a clean job by giving it to me, now?"
"I'll need you, now if not before," said the Panclast softly. "Your friends would have stayed alive if that warship hadn't showed its nose. You must understand that. I was forced into counter-measures."
Then Ryd, squirming sidewise in his seat, understood. Those studs had controlled the outer airlocks. And now the men who had been in those locks, the young guardsman and the Shahrazad's pilot and engineer—were no longer there.
"You—need me?" Arliess was briefly incredulous. "Oh—I get it. There have to be three in the crew." Then he sprang like a tiger.
But the moment in which he had thumbed the release and wrenched free of the padded clamps had been too long. Ryd flinched away—but there was no roar, no flame stabbed blue. They grappled an instant, swaying on the tilted floor—and then the pistol, reversed in Mury's hand, chopped down on Arliess' temple, a glancing blow, but fiercely struck.
The astrogator let go, staggering; and the gun swung up again and felled him.
Mury let the pistol drop into his own crew-seat, and, lugging Arliess under the arms, got him into his seat with a grunting heave. He said breathlessly, regretfully, "It was the only way...." The mask came off at once; the shock-pale face that emerged was even more youthful than Ryd had thought. The red trickle across the forehead was startling against its pallor.
Ryd sat staring—unshaken by the thought of yet another murder, but with a knot of fear tightening in his stomach as he thought of the warship somewhere out of their vision, questing nearer with every racing second—while the motors throbbed, the airvalves sang softly, and the gyroscopes whined somewhere.
And Mury's long, brown fingers explored rapidly through the stunned man's blond thatch; he nodded with satisfaction, and then with sure motions secured Arliess in his place. Ryd, on peremptory gesture, did for himself the same, with fingers that were oddly numb and jointless.
Then Mury was back in the pilot's chair. For a moment he sat as if poised, staring into starry space with knitted brows; then he reached far over, in front of the sagging astrogator, and with a decisive flick of the wrist switched on the ship's magnets to their full power.