The Best of by John Wyndham

something to ensure sleep out here. Everyone agreed that it was understandable, though tragic, that he had taken an overdose by mistake.
    It was after Ross Drafte's disappearance that the superstitions began to cluster. He was an odd man with an expression which was frequently taciturn and eyes in which burned feverish enthusiams. A failure might have driven him desperate but under the circumstances, he had everything to live for.
    He was the designer of the Nuntia and she, the dream of his life, was endorsing his every expectation. When we returned to make public the story of our voyage his would be the name to be glorified through millions of radios, his the face which would stare from hundreds of newspapers—the conqueror of gravitation. And he had disappeared.
    The airpressure graph showed a slight dip at one point and Drafte was.no more.
    I saw no trace of suspicion. No one had even looked askance at me nor, so far as I knew, at anyone else. No one had the least inkling that any one man aboard the ship could tell them exactly how those two men had died. There was just the conviction that something queer was afoot.
    And now it was time for another.
    Ward Govern, the chief engineer, was in the chartroom, talking with Captain Tanner. The rest were busy elsewhere. I slipped into Govern's cabin unobserved. His pistol I found in the drawer where he always kept it and I slipped it into my pocket. Then I crossed to the other wall and opened the ventilator which communicated with the passage. Finally, after carefully assuring myself that no one was in sight, I left, closing the door behind me.
    I had not long to wait. In less than a quarter of an hour I heard the clatter of a pair of magnetic shoes on the steel floor and the engineer passed cheerfully by on his way to turn in. The general air of misgiving had had less effect upon him than upon anyone else. I heard the door slam behind him. I allowed him a few moments before I moved as quietly to the ventilator as my magnetic soles would allow.
    I could see him quite easily. He had removed his shoes and was sitting at a small wall desk, entering the day's events in his diary. I thrust the muzzle of the pistol just within the slot of the ventilator and with the other hand began to make slight scratching noises. It was essential that he should come close to me. There must be a burn or at least powder marks.
    The persistent scratching began to worry him. He glanced up in a puzzled fashion and held his head on one side, listening. I went on scratching. He decided to investigate and released the clips which held his weightless body to the chair. Without bothering to put on the magnetic shoes, he pushed himself away from the wall and came floating towards the ventilator. I let him get quite close before I fired.
    There was a clatter of running feet mingling with cries of alarm. I dropped the pistol inside my shirt and jumped around the corner, reaching the cabin door just ahead of a pair who came from the other direction. We flung it open and I dashed in. Govern's body under the impetus of the shot had floated back into the middle of the room. It looked uncanny, lying asprawl in midair.
    "Quick," I yelled, "fetch the Captain...
    One of them pelted to the door. I managed to keep my body between the other and the corpse while I closed the dead fingers around the pistol. A few seconds later everybody had collected about the doorway and the Captain had to push them aside to get in.
    He examined the body. It was not a pleasant sight. The blood had not yet ceased to flow from the wound in the head but it did not drip as it would on Earth. Instead it had spurted forth to form into red spheres, which floated freely close beside the corpse. There was no doubt that the shot had been fired at close range. The Captain looked at the outflung hand which gripped the automatic.
    "What happened?.
    No one seemed to know.
    "Who found him?.
    "I was here first, sir," I said. "Just before the