been. The light started blinking red just now as I waslooking at it."
Gefty was silent a moment, his mind racing. Why would the janandra openthe lock? From what Maulbow had said, it could live for a while withoutair, but it still could gain nothing but eventual death from leaving theship--
Unless, Gefty thought, the janandra had become aware in some way that hewas about to blow their machine out of the _Queen_. There were grapplinglines in the cargo lock, and if four or five of those lines were slappedto the circular section of the hull he'd loosened ...
"Kerim," he said.
"Yes?"
"I'm going to blow the deal right now. Got your suit snapped to the wallbraces like I showed you?"
"Yes, Gefty." Her voice was faint but clear.
He turned the cutter away from the line it had dug, sent it rolling offtowards the far wall. He hurried around the circle, checking the fourcharges, lumbered over to the vault passage, stopped just around thecorner. He took the firing box from his suit.
"Ready, Kerim?" He opened the box.
"Ready...."
"Here goes!" Gefty reached into the box, twisted the firing handle.Light flared in the vault. The deck shook below him. He came stumblingout from behind the wall.
Maulbow's machine and its stand of instruments had vanished. Where ithad stood was a dark circular hole. Nothing else seemed to havehappened. Gefty clumped hurriedly over to the mining cutter, swung itaround, started more cautiously back towards the hole. He didn't havethe faintest idea what would come next, but a definite possibility wasthat he would see the janandra's dark form flowing up over the rim ofthe hole. Letting it run into the cutter beam might be the best way todiscourage it from re-entering the _Queen_.
Instead, a dazzling brilliance suddenly blotted out everything. Thecutter was plucked from Gefty's grasp; then he was picked up, suit andall, and slammed up towards the vault ceiling. He had a feeling thatinaudible thunders were shaking the ship. He seemed to be rolling overand over along the ceiling. At last, the suit crashed into somethingwhich showed a total disinclination to yield, and Gefty blacked out.
* * * * *
The left side of his face felt pushed out of shape; his left eye wasn'tfunctioning too well, and there was a severe pulsing ache throughout thetop of his head. But Gefty felt happy.
There were a few qualifying considerations.
"Of course," he pointed out to Kerim, "all we can really say immediatelyis that we're back in normspace and somewhere in the galaxy."
She smiled shakily. "Isn't that saying quite a lot, Gefty?"
"It's something." Gefty glanced around the instrument room. He hadplaced an emergency light on the console, but except for that, thecontrol compartment was in darkness. The renewed battering the _Queen_had absorbed had knocked out the power in the forward section. Theviewscreens were black, every instrument dead. But he'd seen the starsof normspace through the torn vault floor. It was something....
"We might have the light that slugged us to thank for that," he said."I'm not sure just what did happen there, but it could have beenMaulbow's control unit it was attacking rather than the ship. Maulbowsaid the lights were sensitive to the unit. At any rate, we're here, andwe're rid of the gadget--and of the janandra." He hesitated. "I justdon't feel you should get your hopes too high. We may find out we're avery long way from the Hub."
Kerim's large eyes showed a degree of confidence which made him almostuncomfortable. "If we are," she said serenely, "you'll get us backsomehow."
Gefty cleared his throat. "Well, we'll see. If the power shutoff issomething the _Queen's_ repair scanners can handle, the instruments willcome back on any minute. Give the scanners ten minutes. If they haven'tdone it by that time, they can't do it and I'll have to play repairman.Then, with the instruments working, we can determine exactly where weare."
Unless, he told himself silently, they'd wound up in a distant clusternever penetrated by the Federation's mapping teams. And there was theother little question of where they now were in time. But Kerim lookedrosy with relief, and those details could wait.
He took up another emergency light, switched it on and said, "I'll seehow Maulbow is doing while we're waiting for power. If the first aidtreatment has pulled him through so far, the autosurgeon probably canfix him up."
Kerim's face suddenly took on a guilty expression. "I forgot all aboutMr. Maulbow!" She hesitated. "Should I come along?"
Gefty shook his head. "I won't need help. And if it's a case for thesurgeon, you wouldn't like it. Those things work painlessly, but it getsto be a mess for a while."
He shut off the light again when he reached the sick bay which wasrunning on its independent power system. As he opened the cabin doorfrom the dispensary, carrying the autosurgeon, it became evident thatMaulbow was still alive but that he might be in delirium. Gefty placedthe surgeon on the table, went over to the bed and looked at Maulbow.
To the extent that the emergency treatment instruments' cautiousrestraints permitted, Maulbow was twisting slowly about on the bed. Hewas speaking in a low, rapid voice, his face distorted by emotion. Thewords were not slurred, but they were in a language Gefty didn't know.It seemed clear that Maulbow had reverted mentally to his own time, andfor some seconds he remained unaware that Gefty had entered the room.Then, surprisingly, the slitted blue eyes opened wider and focused onGefty's face. And Maulbow screamed with rage.
Gefty felt somewhat disconcerted. For the reason alone that he was underanesthetic, Maulbow should not have been conscious. But he was. Thewords were now ones Gefty could understand, and Maulbow was telling himthings which would have been interesting enough under differentcircumstances. Gefty broke in as soon as he could.
"Look," he said quietly, "I'm trying to help you. I ..."
Maulbow interrupted him in turn, not at all quietly. Gefty listened amoment longer, then shrugged. So Maulbow didn't like him. He couldn'tsay honestly that he'd ever liked Maulbow much, and what he was hearingmade him like Maulbow considerably less. But he would keep the man fromthe future alive if he could.
He positioned the autosurgeon behind the head of the bed to allow thedevice to begin its analysis, stood back at its controls where he couldboth follow the progress it made and watch Maulbow without exciting himfurther by remaining within his range of vision. After a moment, thesurgeon shut off the first-aid instruments and made unobtrusive use of aheavy tranquilizing drug. Then it waited.
Maulbow should have lapsed into passive somnolence thirty secondsafterwards. But the drug seemed to produce no more effect on himmentally than the preceding anesthetic. He raged and screeched on. Geftywatched him uneasily, knowing now that he was looking at insanity. Therewas nothing more he could do at the moment--the autosurgeon's decisionswere safer than any nonprofessional's guesswork. And the surgeoncontinued to wait.
Then, abruptly, Maulbow died. The taut body slumped against the bed andthe contorted features relaxed. The eyes remained half open; and whenGefty came around to the side of the bed, they still seemed to belooking up at him, but they no longer moved. A thin trickle of bloodstarted from the side of the slack mouth and stopped again.
* * *
The control compartment was still darkened and without power when Geftyreturned to it. He told Kerim briefly what had happened, added, "I'm notat all sure now he was even human. I'd rather believe he wasn't."
"Why that, Gefty?" She was studying his expression soberly.
Gefty hesitated, said, "I thought at first he was furious because we'dupset his plans. But they weren't his plans ... they were thejanandra's. He wasn't exactly its servant. I suppose you'd have to sayhe was something like a pet animal."
Kerim said incredulously, "But that isn't possible! Think of howintelligently Mr. Maulbow ..."
"He was following instructions," Gefty said. "The janandra let him knowwhatever it wanted done. He was following instructions again when hetried to kill me after I'd got away from the thing in the vault. Thereal bra
in around here was the janandra ... and it was a real brain.With a little luck it would have had the ship."
Kerim smiled briefly. "You handled that big brain rather well, I think."
"I was the one who got lucky," Gefty said. "Anyway, where Maulbow camefrom, it's the janandra's kind that gives the orders. And the thing is,Maulbow liked it that way. He didn't want it to be different. When thelight hit us, it killed the janandra on the outside of the ship. Maulbowfelt it happen and it cracked him up. He wanted to kill us for it. Butsince he was helpless, he killed himself. He didn't want to