The scene spun, changed dizzily. Once again Mallory was gazing down the corridor where Aiken had stood guard. But Aiken no longer stood before Lady Alice Charwell's door. He lay there, limp, still forever. A smoking hole charred his broad chest, crimson stirred sluggishly from the needle-ray's telltale trail. The door of the stateroom was open.
A hoarse bellow told Dan that the captain was seeing the same scene.
"She did it! She killed him and escaped!"
"No!" roared Mallory. "Smith did it! The man we should have suspected all the time; the man who admitted his guilt, but I was too blind to see it. Kreuther's spy. The renegade space officer—Captain, did you feel that?"
His space-trained senses had felt the swift, tiny moment of jarring repercussion that meant only one thing—that from on
