t was big enough to have
flattened him and smashed every bone in his body if the stroke had
landed.

Some kind of guard animal--a snakelike watchdog? What other connection
could it have with the mystery machine? Perhaps Maulbow had intended to
leave it confined in one of the cases, and it had broken loose--

Too many questions by now, Gefty thought. But Maulbow had the answers.

* * * * *

He was hurrying up the main deck's central passage when Maulbow's voice
addressed him sharply from a door he'd just passed.

"Stop right there, Rammer! Don't dare to move! I--"

The voice ended on a note of surprise. Gefty's reaction had not been too
rational, but it was prompt. Maulbow's tone and phrasing implied he was
armed. Gefty wasn't, but he kept a gun in the instrument room for
emergencies. He'd been through a whole series of unnerving experiences,
winding up with being shagged out of his storage vault by something that
stank of ammonia and looked like a giant snake. To have one of the
_Queen's_ passengers order him to stand where he was topped it off.
Every other consideration was swept aside by a great urge to get his
hands on his gun.

He glanced back, saw Maulbow coming out of the half-opened door,
something like a twenty-inch, thin, white rod in one hand. Then Gefty
went bounding on along the passage, hunched forward and zigzagging from
wall to wall to give Maulbow--if the thing he held was a weapon and he
actually intended to use it--as small and erratic a target as possible.
Maulbow shouted angrily behind him. Then, as Gefty came up to the next
cross-passage, a line of white fire seared through the air across his
shoulders and smashed off the passage wall.

With that, he was around the corner, and boiling mad. He had no great
liking for gunfire, but it didn't shake him like the silently attacking
beast in the dark storage had done. He reached the deserted instrument
room not many seconds later, had his gun out and cocked, and was faced
back towards the passage by which he had entered. Maulbow, if he had
pursued without hesitation, should be arriving by now. But the passage
stayed quiet. Gefty couldn't see into it from where he stood. He waited,
trying to steady his breathing, wondering where Kerim Ruse was and what
had got into Maulbow. After a moment, without taking his eyes from the
passage entrance, he reached into the wall closet from which he had
taken the gun and fished out