Space Station 1

Darkness and time and space. And closer at hand the frowns of forthright, honest men appalled by mental abnormality in a new recruit, an officer with a steel-lock determination to keep the truth securely guarded and safe from all distortion.

There had come the tap on his shoulder and a stem voice saying: “You’d better come with us, Lieutenant.” He had just told the captain the whole horrible story. He had not been believed.

“Tell me about it,” said the recruit in the bunk opposite Corriston. “It will help you to talk. Remember, we’re not prisoners. We mustn’t think of ourselves as prisoners. We can go out and exercise. We can walk around the Station for a half-hour or so. We’ve only got to promise we’ll come back and lock ourselves in. They trust us. It could happen to anyone.

“Space shock. Not a fancy word at all. I’m getting over it; you’ve a certain distance to go. Or so they say. But we’re still in very much the same boat and talking always helps. Talk to me, Lieutenant, the way you did last night.”

Corriston looked at the pale youth opposite him. He had close-cropped hair and friendly blue eyes, and he seemed a likeable enough kid. He was Corriston’s junior by several years. But there was an aura of neuroticism about him that made Corriston uneasy. But hell, why shouldn’t he get it off his chest. Talking just might help.

“It’s true,” Corriston said. “Every word of it.”

“I believe you, Lieutenant. But quite obviously they didn’t. Why not strike a compromise. Say I’m one-tenth wrong in believing you and they’re nine-tenths right in not believing you. That means there may be some little quirk in what happened to you that doesn’t quite fit into the normal pattern. Put that down to space shock — a mild case of it. I’m not saying you have it, but you could have it.” The kid was grinning now, and Corriston had to like him. “Okay,” he said. “You can believe this or not. The captain lined all of the passengers up and checked them off by their cabin numbers. I didn’t see her. Do you understand? She just wasn’t there! I thought I recognized two of the women who had come out of the ladies’ lounge, but I couldn’t even be sure of that. One of the two denied ever having stepped inside the lounge, and the other was vague about it.”

I see.

“The captain really sailed into me for a moment, lost his temper completely. ‘A fine officer you are, Lieutenant. It’s painful to be on the same ship with the kind of officers the training schools turn out when the Station finds itself short of personnel. Is the Station planning to trust ships’ clearance to hallucinated personnel?

“‘All right, you talked to a girl — some girl. She didn’t even tell you she was Ramsey’s daughter; Clakey told you. And he’s dead. Not only is he dead, he wasn’t listed on the passenger list as Clakey at all. His name was Henry Ewers. I don’t know what you believed, Lieutenant. I don’t care what you think you saw. You tangled with someone and he stabbed you. He was real enough . . . obviously the man who killed Ewers. But you let him get away, so even that isn’t too much to your credit.’ ”

“If I had been you,” the kid said, “I’ve had knocked him clown.”

“No.” For the first time Corriston smiled. “To tell you the truth, the captain is a good guy. He’s one of those blunt, moody, terribly human individuals you encounter occasionally, men who speak their minds on all occasions and are instantly sorry they did. You have to like them even when they seem to insult you.”

“He made up for it then?”

“Ill say he did. He knew that when we landed the officials would be breathing right down my neck. He wanted to give me every chance. So he kept the officials away from me until I’d convinced myself Ramsey’s daughter just couldn’t be on board.

“He let me look at every piece of luggage that was taken off the ship. He had some cargo to unload and he let me inspect that too, every crate. Most of the crates were too small to conceal a drugged and unconscious girl — or any girl for that matter. The ones that weren’t, he opened for me and let me look inside.

“He let me watch every passenger leave the ship. Then, when all of the passengers had left, he stationed officers in the three main passageways and I went through the ship from bow to stem. I went into every stateroom and into every intership compartment. No one could have kept just a little ahead of me or behind me, dodging back into a compartment the instant I’d vacated it. They would have been instantly spotted by one of the officers.

“The Captain wasn’t to blame at all for what happened later . . . when I tried to convince the commanding officers here that I was completely sane.”

“I see. He must have really liked you.”

“I guess he did. And I liked him.”

The kid nodded. “And the murderer’s still at large. That makes it rough for the sixty odd passengers they’re holding in quarantine. How long do you think they’ll hold them in the Big Cage?”