[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Thrilling Wonder Stories October 1948.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Lisabeth stopped screaming because she was tired. Also, there was thisroom to consider. There was a vast vibration, like being plunged aboutin the loud interior of a bell. The room was filled with sighs andmurmurs of travel. She was in a rocket. Suddenly she recalled theexplosion, the plummeting, the Moon riding by in cool space, the Earthgone. Lisabeth turned to a round window deep and blue as a mountainwell. It was filled to its brim with evil swift life, movement, vastspace monsters lurking with fiery arms, hurrying to some unscheduleddestruction. A meteor school flashed by, blinking insane dot-dashcodes. She put her hand out after them.
Then she heard the voices. Sighing, whispering voices.
Quietly, she moved to an iron barred door and peered without a soundthrough the little window of the locked frame.
"Lisabeth's stopped screaming," a tired woman's voice said. It wasHelen.
"Thank heaven," a man's voice sighed. "I'll be raving myself before wereach Asteroid Thirty-six."
A second woman's voice said, irritably, "Are you sure this will work?Is it the best thing for Lisabeth?"
"She'll be better off than she was on Earth," cried the man.
"We might have asked her if she wanted to take this trip, atleast, John."
John swore. "You can't ask an insane sister what she wants!"
"Insane? Don't use that word!"
"Insane she is," John said, bluntly. "For honesty's sake, call a spadea spade. There was no question of asking her to come on this trip. Wesimply had to make her do it, that's all."
Listening to them talk, Lisabeth's white fingers trembled on the cagedroom wall. They were like voices from some warm dream, far away, on atelephone, talking in another language.
"The sooner we get her there and settled on Asteroid Thirty-six,the sooner I can get back to New York," the man was saying in thisincomprehensible telephone talk she was eavesdropping on. "After all,when you have a woman thinking she's Catherine the Great—"
"I am, I am, I am!" screamed Lisabeth out of her window into theirmidst. "I am Catherine!" It was as if she had shot a lightning boltinto the room. The three people almost flew apart. Now Lisabeth ravedand cried and clung drunkenly to the cell bars and shouted out herbelief in herself. "I am, oh, I am!" she sobbed.
"Good heavens," said Alice.
"Oh, Lisabeth!"
The man, with a look of startled concern, came to the window andlooked in with the false understanding of a person looking down upon awounded rabbit. "Lisabeth, we're sorry. We understand. You areCatherine, Lisabeth."
"Then call me Catherine!" screamed the wild thing in the room.
"Of course, Catherine," insisted the man, swiftly. "Catherine, yourHighness, we await your commands."
This only made the pale thing writhing against the door the wilder."You don't believe, you don't really believe. I can tell by your awfulfaces, I can tell by your eyes and your mouths. Oh, you don't reallybelieve. I want to kill you!" She blazed her hatred out at them so theman fell away from the door. "You're lying, and I know it's a lie. ButI am Catherine and you'll never in all your years understand!"
"No," said the man, turning. He went and sat down and put his hands tohis face. "I guess we don't understand."
"Good grief," said Alice.
Lisabeth slipped to the red velv