Read The Continent Makers and Other Tales of the Viagens for Free Online

time,” said Gustafson.
    “Sure. Obrigado.”
    Chapman’s next step was to walk off from the dinner table with the pepper shaker in his pocket. When Mpande was absent from the cabin, Chapman emptied the pepper into an ordinary envelope and put the envelope in his pocket. Then he waited until nearly all the passengers were asleep, and Mpande was playing sunburst in the saloon. (On a spaceship there were always some individualists who preferred not to keep to the arbitrary waking-and-sleeping schedule of the majority.)
    He slipped out of his cabin with the brass gadgets in his pockets and went to the baggage room. After looking nervously over his shoulders, he slipped the plain brass finger into the lock and twisted hard. Then he slid the one with the projection into the remaining space in the slot and worked it in and out until all the little split pins inside caught at their opening levels. Click! Chapman opened the door.
    First, making sure that he would not be locking himself in, he closed the door behind him. He was in complete darkness except for the beam of his little pocket flashlight. The compartment was so jammed with baggage that there was little room to move. However, Chapman grinned when his light picked out Bergerat’s big sample trunk in plain sight, with the legend: J.-J. M. B.—Tomaselli of Paris. He had to move only one suitcase to get at it.
    He grinned wickedly at the thought that Monsieur Tomaselli, a notorious pinchfranc, had been unwilling to lay out a couple of grand more to assure a private berth for his samples; how nice! But what now? The trunk had a combination lock: a Kleinwasser, the peculiarity of which was that it had to be locked as well as unlocked by twirling the knob in a certain combination. The idea had been to discourage people from locking the combination into the trunk.
    That knowledge, however, did him no good without the combination. Of course there were the tried-and-true methods of prying, drilling, or blasting. But even the unbrilliant Gustafson would get suspicious if he tried to borrow a jimmy or a drill, and blasting was quite out of the question. What then? Too bad he didn’t have a hypnoscope to pry the combination out of Bergerat.
    What other possibilities? The luscious redhead, Anya Savinkov, might prove pliable. In fact he wouldn’t mind cultivating her on general principles. Although he knew many beauties in Hollywood, they’d all be middle-aged matrons by the time he returned. That was why only people like Celia and himself, without close family ties, went off on jaunts of this sort. In the five months’ subjective time of their voyage, eleven years would be passing on the planets . . .
    He whirled at a sound, snapping off his light. Somebody moved and breathed in the corridor outside. Then the door opened and an arm came through the opening to grope about the inside of the bulkhead for the light switch.
    Chapman saw enough of a shoulder and part of a head, silhouetted against the lighted corridor, to recognize Jean-Jacques Bergerat. In another second the lights would go on, and the trunks were too closely packed for him to hide among them on such short notice.
    With one hand Chapman reached into his blouse pocket and brought out a small fistful of pepper. With the other, having stowed his flashlight, he seized the wrist groping for the switch. He threw the pepper in Bergerat’s face and pulled hard on the wrist, jerking the man forward into the baggage room. Chapman let go his victim and slipped past him out the door, which he closed behind him just as the air was rent by the first of a series of crashing sneezes.
    Half an hour later, a fist knocked on Chapman’s door. “Let me in, Cato! A thing of the most strange has ’appened to me!”
    Chapman looked around the room and took the water carafe out of its bracket on the wall. In a pinch it would do.
    Bergerat, however, seemed entirely friendly, though afflicted with a red face and bloodshot eyes. “My