This World Must Die! | Page 8

would put it that way," sneered Truesdale; "you're homicidal at
heart anyway!" He turned on Donna, wiping perspiration from his
forehead. "Are you going to let him do it?" he shrilled. "Are you going
to help him commit such a crime?"
The girl stared at him with a worried look in her blue eyes but said
nothing.
"Come on, Truesdale," said Phillips, making an effort at a peaceful,
persuasive tone. "It will be either their lives or ours if they spot us--and
millions more if they get by. They'll be too desperate to think of us. Do
you want to die?"
The instant he spoke the last words, he remembered the other's record
and wished he had kept quiet. He saw, a strange, wild expression creep
over Truesdale's features. It changed into a look of hateful cunning as
the youth, began to sidle toward the door.

"I'm not afraid to die!" he boasted in a low-pitched but tense voice.
"But how about you, Phillips? How about the big, brutal space engineer
who is proud of smashing men's skulls against steel walls, who would
like nothing better than to blow up a shipload of innocent people. How
do you really know they're dangerous? But you don't care, do you?"
"Truesdale!" snapped Phillips. "Calm down!"
"I'll calm you down with me!" shouted the other hysterically. "I'll show
you who's afraid to die!"
He ducked through the door toward which he had been backing.
Phillips lunged after him, just barely missing a grip.
"On your toes!" he shouted over his shoulder to Donna, and turned on
all jets.
But Truesdale, driven by his peculiar fury, not only stayed ahead as
they raced along the corridor, but actually gained.
He was fifteen or twenty feet out in front as they reached the midway
point. Phillips, expecting him to take refuge in the rocket room, was
completely fooled when Truesdale leaped for the ladder in the vertical
well. He stumbled, and grabbed a handrail to stop himself. The other
was swarming upward. Phillips sprang to follow.
Hardly had he climbed half a dozen rungs, however, than he saw he
was outdistanced. Truesdale's feet were already disappearing beyond
the hatchway. Phillips waited for the airtight door to slam shut. It
remained open....
Then a thrill of instinctive fear shot through him as he thought of what
Truesdale might do--probably was doing at that very instant!

[Illustration: 4]
Throwing his feet clear of the rungs, he plunged back toward the deck,

guided only by his hands brushing the sides of the ladder. As Phillips
reached the junction of the passages, he kicked desperately away from
the ladder. He landed with a thump that would have hurt had he been in
a calmer state.
Rolling over toward the control room, he came to his feet in time to
glimpse Donna looking out the doorway before a jarring shock floored
him again.
The deafening roar of an explosion resounded in the corridor as a
brilliant light was luridly reflected from somewhere behind him. The
bewildering force hurled him at the deck; he saw he could not prevent
his head from striking--
Phillips found himself on hands and knees, staring stupidly at the deck
a few inches past his nose. As in a nightmare, he seemed to spend an
eternity pushing himself painfully to his feet. Clutching a handrail, he
finally made it.
He saw Donna kneeling in the doorway, hand to head. As he watched,
the girl looked at her hand, and dazedly pulled out a handkerchief to
wipe off the blood.
Then Phillips became aware of a high breeze in his face. Behind him,
the sound of rushing air rose to a moan, then to a shriek. That shocked
him to his senses.
"Button up!" he screamed above the noise, bringing his hands together
in an urgent gesture understood by all spacemen.
As the girl staggered to her feet, he whirled and leaped toward the
junction of the cross corridors. He wasted no time in a vain glance
upwards--he knew what Truesdale had done. Only setting off the
torpedoes' rockets in the enclosed turret compartment would have
caused an explosion just severe enough to rupture the ship's skin; if the
warheads had gone off, he never would have known it.
Diving headlong through the opening in the deck, he experienced a

dizzying shift of gravity as he passed through the plane of the main
deck. When he had his bearings again, he scrambled "up" the ladder
toward the belly turret. By the time he got the airtight hatch open, he
was beginning to pant in the thinning air. He pulled himself through at
last, and sealed the compartment.
Phillips sucked in a deep, luxurious breath while he glanced about. This
turret, he saw, was a duplicate of the other. He