"Not against this, you didn't," I told her. I dropped to my knees and took another pair of gloves. Hendrix's head rolled under my grasp. The skull was smashed over the left eye, as if someone had taken a sideswipe at Hendrix with a hammer. No fall had produced that. "You should have warned him about his friends. Must have been killed, then dumped in there." "Murder!" Hal bit the word out in disgust. "You're right, Paul. Not too stupid a way to dispose of the body, either--in another couple of hours, he'd have started dissolving in that stuff, and we'd never have guessed it was murder. That means this poisoning of the plants wasn't an accident. Somebody poisoned the water, then got worried when there wasn't a report on the plants; must have been someone who thought it worked faster on plants than it does. So he came to investigate, and Hendrix caught him fooling around. So he got killed." "But who?" Jenny asked. I shrugged sickly. "Somebody crazy enough--or desperate enough to turn back that he'll risk our air and commit murder. You'd better go after the captain while Hal gets his test equipment. I'll keep watch here." It didn't feel good in hydroponics after they left. I looked at those dead plants, trying to figure whether there were enough left to keep us going. I studied Hendrix's body, trying to tell myself the murderer had no reason to come back and try to get me. I reached for a cigarette, and then put the pack back. The air felt almost as close as the back of my neck felt tense and unprotected. And telling myself it was all imagination didn't help--not with what was in that chamber to keep me company. II Muller's face was like an iceberg when he came down--but only after he saw Hendrix. Before then I'd caught the fat moon-calf expression on his face, and I'd heard Jenny giggling. Damn it, they'd taken enough time. Hal was already back, fussing over things with the hunk of tin and lenses he treated like a newborn baby. Doc Napier came in behind them, but separately. I saw him glance at them and look sick. Then both Muller and Napier began concentrating on business. Napier bent his nervous, bony figure over the corpse, and stood up almost at once. "Murder all right." "So I guessed, Dr. Napier," Muller growled heavily at him. "Wrap him up and put him between hulls to freeze. We'll bury him when we land. Tremaine, give a hand with it, will you?" "I'm not a laborer, Captain Muller!" Napier protested. I started to tell him where he could get off, too. But Jenny shook her head at us. "Please. Can't you see Captain Muller is trying to keep too many from knowing about this? I should think you'd be glad to help. Please?" Put that way, I guess it made sense. We found some rubber sheeting in one of the lockers, and began wrapping Hendrix in it; it wasn't pleasant, since he was beginning to soften up from the enzymes he'd absorbed. "How about going ahead to make sure no one sees us?" I suggested to Jenny.