It was the same smell that had clung to the humanoid guard!
Joel's nostrils flared, but the odor was so faint that he couldn't tell from whence it came. It might be emanating from any one of the gray figures placidly asleep in the gray bunks.
He moved to his own bunk and lay down, but he couldn't sleep. That strange scent had acted like a dash of cold water.
He didn't know how long he lay there. Hours, it seemed. There was no sound beyond the muted rumble of the Zenith's jets, the snores of some of the prisoners.
The temperature had dropped automatically when the lights were extinguished. He adjusted the thermal unit in his sleepers and closed his eyes.
A faint noise from across the fo'cs'le brought them open again instantly.
The gray elfin figure of Tamis Ravitz, the dancer, he saw, was rising cautiously from her bunk. She was barefooted, clad in the loose sleepers. She put her hand to her eyes. When it came away, she swept the fo'cs'le with a brief glance.
Joel almost forgot to breathe.
The dancer had done something to her eyes because they glowed faintly with an eerie flame!
Joel's pulse throbbed in his ears. Tamis, he saw, was moving to the next bunk with a soundless cat-like glide. She pointed a slender metal cylinder at the man who lay sleeping there. A bright green spot sprang out on the man's arm!