Space Station 1

He turned back to Corriston. “I’m afraid you’ll have to consider yourself still under guard, Lieutenant. I have only your word that you found Miss Ramsey. I believe you, but there are some regulations even I can’t waive.”

“It’s all right,” Corriston said. “I won’t attempt to leave. But please hurry, sir.”

Commander Clement hesitated, then said with a smile: “I knew about the guard you knocked out, Lieutenant. You’re a very hot-headed young man. That’s really a court martial offense, but perhaps we can smooth it over if you’re telling the truth now. You were in the position of a man imprisoned for a crime he didn’t commit. If he can prove his innocence, the law is very lenient. He can escape and still get a full pardon, even a pardon with apologies. It’s a different matter, of course if he kills a guard to escape. You didn’t.”

Corriston was tempted to say, “I think perhaps I tried to, sir,” but thought better of it. He’d ask Clement later why the guards who had been sent down into the Selector compartment had failed to find him. It wasn’t important enough now to waste a second thought on, but just out of curiosity he would ask.

He didn’t have to. After Clement had departed the executive officer told him. “They made a pretty thorough search for you,’’ he said. “Or so they claimed. But they had been drinking heavily — every one of them. Maintaining discipline can be a terrible headache at times. There’s a lot of objectivity about the commander and he doesn’t try to crack down too hard. He knows what it means to be out here for months with nothing to break the monotony. Hell, if we could send for our wives more often it wouldn’t be so bad.”

Corriston’s palms were cold. He stood very still, wondering how long it would take the commander to return with the news he wanted to hear.

“The question is whether life is really worth living without a woman to talk to,” the executive officer went on. “Just to lie relaxed and watch a pretty girl move slowly around a room. It does something for you.”

Corriston wished the man would keep quiet. Under ordinary circumstances he could have sympathized heartily. He couldn’t now. There was only one girl he wanted to see walk around a room, and she might just as well have been at the opposite end of space.

She wasn’t walking around a room now. She was lying helplessly sprawled out, waiting for rescue to come. .It had to come soon, it had to. The commander wouldn’t just go down alone after her. He’d be accompanied by a half-dozen executive officers who would know exactly how to bundle her into a stretcher and carry her to the sick bay.

But what if a killer just happened to be crouching in one of the corridors, waiting for the stretcher to pass? A killer with a poisoned barb . . .

Corriston couldn’t stand still. He walked back and forth across the control room while the executive officer continued to talk. He paid no heed at all.

Corriston heard a footfall as he paced. He turned and saw that Commander Clement had returned. He was standing in the doorway with a strange look on his face.

Corriston felt bewildered, unable to quite believe that Clement was really back. It was like a dream that had suddenly turned real, a looking glass reversal with a strange quality of distortion about it.

It was real enough. Clement entered and shut the door behind him, very firmly and carefully, as if he wanted to make sure that Corriston would not attempt to escape.

He walked slowly forward, looking at the executive officer as if Corriston had no place at all in his thoughts.

“Everything he told me was a lie,” Clement said. “Everything. There was no girl. The compartment was locked; so was the emergency door leading down to the Selector. The ladder was standing against the wall in the Selector compartment. Miss Ramsey could not have been in the compartment — not at any time. There was nothing to indicate it. She just wasn’t there/'

Corriston moved toward him, his face white. “That’s a lie and you know it. What have you done with her? You’d better tell me. You can have me court-martialed, but you can’t stop me from talking. I can prove she was there. The grate — ”

“The grate? What are you talking about? There was no ripped-out grate. The grate was in place. I feel very sorry for you, Lieutenant. But I can’t let sympathy stand in the way of my duty. In some respects you’re very rational. You can think logically and clearly ... up to a point. But the shock weakness is there. It’s very serious when you start having actual hallucinations.”

The executive officer had drawn his gun. He was holding it rather loosely in his hand now, triggered and ready for any dangerous or suspicious move on Corriston’s part.

There was nothing in Clement’s gaze as he swung about to refute the dark mistrust that had come into the executive officer’s eyes. He seemed intent only on bolstering that mistrust by driving even deeper nails into Corriston’s coffin.