Earth transit

That wasn't like Makki, he thought as he pulled on his coveralls hastily. Makki was as punctual--and as thorough--as the maze of machinery whose destiny he guided. He was as cold as that machinery, too, when others made a mistake. It made him an efficient spaceship captain and a disliked man.

Lefler shook his head to clear it of dream-haunted memories. He had awakened from a nightmare in which, somewhere, there was angry shouting, to find himself floating midway from floor to ceiling of the centerdeck of the Marsward IV. Somehow, his retaining straps had become unbuckled, letting him float free of his bunk in his sleep.

Not pausing to fold his bunk back against the curving hull, Lefler made his way briskly up the companionway, through the empty and darkened astrogation deck and into the control room.

"Makki," he called to the figure reclining in the control chair. "Makki, I'm due to relieve you. You're forty minutes overtime."

There was no answer. Floating up to the control chair, Lefler recoiled, bouncing painfully off the automatic pilot.

Makki was dead. Death had robbed his wide eyes of their dark scorn and smoothed the bitter lines of his heavy face. His coveralls were charred around the heat-beam burn in his chest.

The heat-gun bumped against Lefler's shoulder and drifted away at an angle across the gravityless control room. Lefler stared after it in horror.

Licking dry lips, he punched the communicator button.

"Blue alert!" he croaked into the microphone. "All hands to control room. Blue alert!"

Anchoring himself to the automatic pilot, he studied Makki's body as dispassionately as he could. The captain was still strapped in the cushioned chair. Oddly, he was wearing gloves.

The log-tape was in the recorder beside the control chair. Clipped to a metal leaf on the stanchion beside the chair was Makki's notepad. Scrawled on it in the captain's handwriting was the notation: "73rd day. Earth transit."

"What's up, Lefler?" asked a voice behind him. Lefler turned to face Taat, the ship's doctor. Taat, a plump, graying man, was wiping his hands on the white smock he wore.

Lefler moved aside, letting Taat see Makki's body. Taat's eyes widened momentarily, then narrowed with a professional gleam. He stepped quickly to Makki's side, made as if to pick up the dead captain's wrist, then turned back to Lefler with a fatalistic flick of his hands.

"What was it, Lefler?" he asked in a low voice. "A fight?"

"I don't know," said Lefler. "I found him that way."

Taat raised his eyebrows.

"Robwood?" he asked softly.

Robwood's head poked up through the companionway, and he floated into the control room. There was a streak of grease across the engineer's thin face.

"Great space!" exclaimed Robwood at once. "What happened to Makki?"

"Obviously, he's been shot," said Lefler in an even voice. "Any idea who did it, Robwood?"

"Wait a minute," objected Taat mildly. "That sounds like you are accusing Robwood, Lefler."

"I'm not," said Lefler hastily. "I'm not leaving you out, Taat. But there are only the three of us. One of you must have killed him."

"Great space, you don't think that I--" began Robwood.

"Just to get the record straight, Lefler," interrupted Taat, "let's put it this way: one of the three of us must have killed him."

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