Let 'Em Breathe Space! by Lester Del Rey (phonics readers TXT) 📕

Dr. Pietro—my contract calls for me to deliver you to Saturn's moon, but it doesn't forbid me to haul you the rest of the way in irons. I won't have this aboard my ship!"

Pietro nodded, his little gray goatee bobbing, his lean body coming upright smoothly. "Quite right, Captain. Nor does it forbid me to let you and your men spend the sixteen months on the moon—where I command—in irons. Why don't you ask Sam what happened before you make a complete fool of yourself, Captain Muller?"

Sam gulped and looked at the crew, but apparently Pietro was right; the little guy had been completely disgusted by Bullard. He shrugged apologetically. "Bullard insulted Dr. Lomax, sir. I yelled for someone to help me get him out of here, and I guess everybody got all mixed up when gravity went off, and Bullard cracked his head on the floor. Just a misunderstanding, sir."

Muller stood there, glowering at the cut on my knuckles, and I could feel him aching for a good excuse to make his threat a reality. But finally, he grunted and swung on his heel, ordering the crew with him. Grundy threw us a final grimace and skulked off behind him. Finally there was only Wilcox, who grinned, shrugged, and shut the door quietly behind him. And we were left with the mess free-fall had made of the place.

I spotted Jenny heading across the room, carefully not seeing the fatuous glances Pietro was throwing her way, and I swung in behind. She nodded back at me, but headed straight for Lomax, with an odd look on her face. When she reached him, her voice was low and businesslike.

"Hal, what did those samples of Hendrix's show up?"

Hendrix was the Farmer, in charge of the hydroponics that turned the carbon dioxide we breathed out back to oxygen, and also gave us a bit of fresh vegetables now and then. Technically, he was a crewman, just as I was a scientist; but actually, he felt more like one of us.

Lomax looked surprised. "What samples, Jenny? I haven't seen Hendrix for two weeks."

"You—" She stopped, bit her lip, and frowned. She swung on me. "Paul, have you seen him?"

I shook my head. "Not since last night. He was asking Eve and Walt to wake him up early, then."

"That's funny. He was worried about the plants yesterday and wanted Hal to test the water and chemical fertilizer. I looked for him this morning, but when he didn't show up, I thought he was with you, Hal. And—the plants are dying!"

"All of them?" The half smile wiped off Hal's face, and I could feel my stomach hit my insteps. When anything happens to the plants in a ship, it isn't funny.

She shook her head again. "No—about a quarter of them. I was coming for help when the fight started. They're all bleached out. And it looks like—like chromazone!"

That really hit me. They developed the stuff to fight off fungus on Venus, where one part in a billion did the trick. But it was tricky stuff; one part in ten-million would destroy the chlorophyll in plants in about twenty hours, or the hemoglobin in blood in about fifteen minutes. It was practically a universal poison.

Hal started for the door, then stopped. He glanced around the room, turned back to me, and suddenly let out a healthy bellow of seeming amusement. Jenny's laugh was right in harmony. I caught the drift, and tried to look as if we were up to some monkey business as we slipped out of the room. Nobody seemed suspicious.

Then we made a dash for hydroponics, toward the rear of the ship. We scrambled into the big chamber together, and stopped. Everything looked normal among the rows of plant-filled tanks, pipes and equipment. Jenny led us down one of the rows and around a bend.

The plants in the rear quarter weren't sick—they were dead. They were bleached to a pale yellow, like boiled grass, and limp. Nothing would save them now.

"I'm a biologist, not a botanist—" Jenny began.

Hal grunted sickly. "Yeah. And I'm not a life hormone expert. But there's one test we can try."

He picked up a pair of rubber gloves from a rack, and pulled off some wilted stalks. From one of the healthy tanks, he took green leaves. He mashed the two kinds together on the edge of a bench and watched. "If it's chromazone, they've developed an enzyme by now that should eat the color out of those others."

In about ten seconds, I noticed the change. The green began to bleach before my eyes.

Jenny made a sick sound in her throat and stared at the rows of healthy plants. "I checked the valves, and this sick section is isolated. But—if chromazone got into the chemicals.... Better get your spectroanalyzer out, Hal, while I get Captain Muller. Paul, be a dear and find Hendrix, will you?"

I shook my head, and went further down the rows. "No need, Jenny," I called back. I pointed to the shoe I'd seen sticking out from the edge of one of the tanks. There was a leg attached.

I reached for it, but Lomax shoved me back. "Don't—the enzymes in the corpse are worse than the poison, Paul. Hands off." He reached down with the gloves and heaved. It was Hendrix, all right—a corpse with a face and hands as white as human flesh could ever get. Even the lips were bleached out.

Jenny moaned. "The fool! The stupid fool. He knew it was dangerous without gloves; he suspected chromazone, even though none's supposed to be on board. And I warned him . . ."

"Not against this, you didn't," I told her. I dropped to my knees and took another pair of gloves. Hendrix's head rolled under my grasp. The skull was smashed over the left eye, as if someone had taken a sideswipe at Hendrix with a hammer. No fall had produced that. "You should have warned him about his friends. Must have been killed, then dumped in there."

"Murder!" Hal bit the word out in disgust. "You're right, Paul. Not too stupid a way to dispose of the body, either—in another couple of hours, he'd have started dissolving in that stuff, and we'd never have guessed it was murder. That means this poisoning of the plants wasn't an accident. Somebody poisoned the water, then got worried when there wasn't a report on the plants; must have been someone who thought it worked faster on plants than it does. So he came to investigate, and Hendrix caught him fooling around. So he got killed."

"But who?" Jenny asked.

I shrugged sickly. "Somebody crazy enough—or desperate enough to turn back that he'll risk our air and commit murder. You'd better go after the captain while Hal gets his test equipment. I'll keep watch here."

It didn't feel good in hydroponics after they left. I looked at those dead plants, trying to figure whether there were enough left to keep us going. I studied Hendrix's body, trying to tell myself the murderer had no reason to come back and try to get me.

I reached for a cigarette, and then put the pack back. The air felt almost as close as the back of my neck felt tense and unprotected. And telling myself it was all imagination didn't help—not with what was in that chamber to keep me company.

II

Muller's face was like an iceberg when he came down—but only after he saw Hendrix. Before then I'd caught the fat moon-calf expression on his face, and I'd heard Jenny giggling. Damn it, they'd taken enough time. Hal was already back, fussing over things with the hunk of tin and lenses he treated like a newborn baby.

Doc Napier came in behind them, but separately. I saw him glance at them and look sick. Then both Muller and Napier began concentrating on business. Napier bent his nervous, bony figure over the corpse, and stood up almost at once. "Murder all right."

"So I guessed, Dr. Napier," Muller growled heavily at him. "Wrap him up and put him between hulls to freeze. We'll bury him when we land. Tremaine, give a hand with it, will you?"

"I'm not a laborer, Captain Muller!" Napier protested. I started to tell him where he could get off, too.

But Jenny shook her head at us. "Please. Can't you see Captain Muller is trying to keep too many from knowing about this? I should think you'd be glad to help. Please?"

Put that way, I guess it made sense. We found some rubber sheeting in one of the lockers, and began wrapping Hendrix in it; it wasn't pleasant, since he was beginning to soften up from the enzymes he'd absorbed. "How about going ahead to make sure no one sees us?" I suggested to Jenny.

Muller opened his mouth, but Jenny gave one of her quick little laughs and opened the door for us. Doc looked relieved. I guessed he was trying to kid himself. Personally, I wasn't a fool—I was just hooked; I knew perfectly well she was busy playing us off against one another, and probably having a good time balancing the books. But hell, that's the way life runs.

"Get Pietro up here!" Muller fired after us. She laughed again, and nodded. She went with us until we got to the 'tween-hulls lock, then went off after the chief. She was back with him just as we finished stuffing Hendrix through and sealing up again.

Muller grunted at us when we got back, then turned to Lomax again. The big chemist didn't look happy. He spread his hands toward us, and hunched his shoulders. "A fifty-times over-dose of chromazone in those tanks—fortunately none in the others. And I can't find a trace of it in the fertilizer chemicals or anywhere else. Somebody deliberately put it into those tanks."

"Why?" Pietro asked. We'd filled him in with the rough details, but it still made no sense to him.

"Suppose you tell me, Dr. Pietro," Muller suggested. "Chromazone is a poison most people never heard of. One of the new scientific nuisances."

Pietro straightened, and his goatee bristled. "If you're hinting . . ."

"I am not hinting, Dr. Pietro. I'm telling you that I'm confining your group to their quarters until we can clean up this mess, distil the water that's contaminated, and replant. After that, if an investigation shows nothing, I may take your personal bond for the conduct of your people. Right now I'm protecting my ship."

"But captain—" Jenny began.

Muller managed a smile at her. "Oh, not you, of course, Jenny. I'll need you here. With Hendrix gone, you're the closest thing we have to a Farmer now."

"Captain Muller," Pietro said sharply. "Captain, in the words of the historical novelists—drop dead! Dr. Sanderson, I forbid you to leave your quarters so long as anyone else is confined to his. I have ample authority for that."

"Under emergency powers—" Muller spluttered over it, and Pietro jumped in again before he could finish.

"Precisely, Captain. Under emergency situations, when passengers aboard a commercial vessel find indications of total irresponsibility or incipient insanity on the part of a ship's officer, they are considered correct in assuming command for the time needed to protect their lives. We were poisoned by food prepared in your kitchen, and were nearly killed by radioactivity through a leak in the engine-room—and no investigation was made. We are now confronted with another situation aimed against our welfare—as the others were wholly aimed at us—and you choose to conduct an investigation against our group only. My only conclusion is that you wish to confine us to quarters so we cannot find your motives for this last outrage. Paul, will you kindly relieve the captain of his position?"

They were both half right, and mostly wrong. Until it was proved that our group was guilty, Muller couldn't issue an order that was obviously discriminatory and against our personal safety in case there was an attack directed on us. He'd be mustered out of space and into the Lunar Cells for that. But on the other hand, the "safety for passengers" clause Pietro was citing applied only in the case of overt, direct and physical danger by an officer to normal passengers. He might be able to weasel it through a court, or he might be found guilty of mutiny. It left me in a pretty position.

Jenny fluttered around. "Now, now—" she began.

I cut her off. "Shut up, Jenny. And you two damned fools cool down. Damn it, we've got an emergency here all right—we may not have air plants enough to live on. Pietro, we can't run the ship—and neither can Muller get through what's obviously a mess that may call for all our help by confining us. Why don't you two go off and fight it out in person?"