by Jerry
Her thin veined hands took up a tiny gold writing instrument which inscribed a message on a small square of plasticized stationery. This she handed to Straker. “It will take you to him with no difficulty.” Straker was about to thank her when her eyes sharpened suddenly and she added, “Of course if you are lying, as Jenny intimated, you will be disposed of when you meet my husband face to face. He will not tolerate cheap publicists or thrill-seekers.”
Straker’s heart was beating with triphammer speed. “I understand, Lady Atlas. I appreciate your trust, and I assure you that your help is for the best. Now if you’ll excuse me. . . .”
“That doorway there,” she indicated. “The first tube to your left takes you to the salon.”
Straker bowed gravely, whirled on his heel and marched out before he discovered his new-found hope reduced to dream-dust by awakening. But it was no fantasy: he was still Straker, and still ready to do murder, and he still carried the pass when he closed the massive door of her chamber and started along the corridor. He felt beneath his tunic. The Disintegrator was in place, ready . . .
Nine yards this side of the glowing inter-deck tube, they were waiting. Officer Nels Effingham and a dozen hard, slab-shouldered men in maroon.
“Far enough,” Effingham said, blocking his path. “Straker, you have made me quite unhappy.”
“That’s unfortunate,” Straker began, shoving his hand beneath his tunic. Effingham reached instantly, whipping up the disintegrator muzzle.
“Keep your hand away!” he exclaimed shrilly. “Take it away, do you hear? I’ll give you exactly five seconds. .
Straker, sweating, still spoke smoothly: “I was about to say it was unfortunate that I’d angered you, because Lady Atlas has given me credentials which will take me straight to Atlas.”
Startled, Effingham scowled, uncertain for a moment. Then his eyes hardened. “That makes no difference to me. I’m going to carry you down to the lowest deck of this ship and spend the next three hours killing you, my friend. Lady Atlas cheated me once. But not a second time.”
“You’re a fool,” Straker countered, sensing rising danger.
“My job is to execute intruders!” Effingham shrilled.
“Your job is apparently to execute intruders who manage to get the best of you, and give your police-state ego an unpleasant jolt,” Straker said. He was gambling, gambling . . .
THE GAMBLING paid handsomely, as Effingham, goaded to fury, whipped his arm back to deliver a crashing blow of anger to Straker’s skull with the disintegrator. When his arm flew down Straker caught it, levered sharply and spun Effingham around. A biting pressure of fingers and Effingham’s disintegrator dropped away. Straker had his own weapon free by then, and his other arm crooked gaggingly around Effingham’s throat. Pressing the disintegrator muzzle into the shaking officer’s side, Straker ordered, “Make your trained animals step aside. We’re going for a stroll to the tube down there, and if you refuse, the dis gun will dig a cave in your side. Understood?”
Effingham gurgled in terror. One of his patsy hands made frantic gestures to his men.
When the maroon-clad rank parted, Straker swung around so that, as he retreated to the tube, Effingham still presented a target for his own men. At the tube’s mouth, with the glare of the constant force beam blazing yellow-white on their faces, Straker cut Effingham free, gave him a spin by the shoulder and employed the officer’s own tactic—a demolishing blow to the skull with the disintegrator butt. Effingham howled and crumpled. Straker dove into the tube with a single leap, letting the glowing column of force shoot him straight upward to the next level. He held the disintegrator tight in one fist, sweat dotting his forehead . . .
This was the moment. This was the moment when he must kill Alexander Atlas X.
Why? demanded the voice in his brain. Why, when it’s not in you to murder in cold blood . . .?
But the hammering compulsion to kill drowned out the pitiful protest, sent it back down deep into the lower levels of Straker’s brain as he crossed the marbled floor of a vast reception hall, tensely thrust the disintegrator out of sight and presented the plasticized pass to the captain of half a dozen guards stationed before massive doors. The captain scrutinized it, then growled, “Mr. Atlas is inside, in the salon. Pull back the doors for this gentleman . . .”
Straker’s nerves tightened another notch. He passed between the ponderous doors and heard them close behind. The awesome gloom of the star salon required a moment of adjustment.
The gigantic chamber, certainly a quarter of a mile long, an eighth of a mile wide, was open to the universe, its curved foot-thick pressure-glass wall and ceiling formed in the natural flow of the lines of the starship’s curved upper surface. Through each section of the mammoth arch of glass could be seen fiery suns and their planets, spread out infinitely on every hand. The chamber seemed remote, isolated, closer to the awesome emptiness of space than to the world of man represented by The Biarritz. There was no illumination save for the starshine and one very tiny, hooded magnesium lamp on a low table, dozens of yards down the chamber, where the salon’s few pieces of furniture stood grouped together in the midst of a vast, polished floor.
Waiting, near the hooded lamp, head thrown back and eyes on the stars, was a man.
The murder-pulse in Straker’s brain became nearly unbearable. He clawed at his tunic, got the disintegrator into his fist, began to walk toward the figure. His breath hissed between his teeth. His footsteps made a dead, hollow echo. Overhead the dumb, incandescent universe slowly wheeled . . .
Straker halted half a dozen feet from the silent shadow-black figure. He asked, “Mr. Atlas?”
Slowly the figure’s head turned. In the weak seepage from beneath the magnesium lamp’s conical hood, Straker had a half-glimpse of this industrial titan: a slender, dehydrated sort of figure, garbed in a poorly-cut, carelessly-woven tunic and breeches. The eyes gleaming at Straker in the starlit dust seemed rheumy and sad. The voice which was the voice of Alexander Atlas X had a despairing, querulous tone: “Thank God you’re here at last Mr. Straker. The waiting . . .”
Atlas shuddered, then went on in his peevish old man’s voice: “My nerves are worn to nothing. Get on.”
Straker blinked. All around him in the chamber with its ceiling of stars he felt mysterious, irrefutable forces pushing and thrusting at his brain. His hand began to shake violently as he raised the disintegrator. He controlled the trembling only by sheer effort of will. Like drumbeats magnified to inhuman proportions came the instructions within his skull: Murder, murder . . .
That feeble voice of conscience, silenced so many times since he had first awakened on a lower deck, uttered its protest once more, forced Straker to say without thinking, “I. . I have come here to kill you, Mr. Atlas. Don’t you understand? To kill you.”
What reaction Straker expected, he did not know. Fear, perhaps. Screaming panic. Sudden struggling and protest. The horror of it lay in Atlas’ dry, puckering sigh of acceptance:
“Just hurry . . .”
Straker goggled at the older man. Then, while every particle of his brain seemed to be wrenched awry, he grunted wordlessly, shook his head and lowered the disintegrator again. The single senseless syllable of negation, which did not begin to reveal the exquisite torture of force against force within his mind, hung vibrating for a moment in the star salon. Alexander Atlas X took two quavering steps forward, extending veined hands, his voice rising shrilly up the scale.
“What is wrong with you, Straker? Are you a weakling? Do what you are supposed to do. Kill me with that dis in your hand. Burn me, Straker. Annihilate me!” Straker shook his head once more. “I . . . I know I am supposed to do that. I can’t.”
“But you must, you must!” the old man whined. “Damn you, what’s gone wrong? What’s gone wrong inside that thick head of yours? Those doctors . . . those damned doctors! I paid them, I paid them royally.” He spat at Straker venomously: “Don’t you understand? Don’t you see? I paid to h
ave your brain fixed!”
A new emotion, a cool anger, began to well into Straker’s mind. He raised his eyes.
“Fixed?”
ALEXANDER ATLAS grew frightened under the dangerous sibilance of Straker’s tone. He took a step away, raising his palsied hands defensively.
“I’ve tried suicide. Don’t you think I haven’t tried a hundred times? Don’t be angry with me—you agreed with the doctors to let yourself be subjected to motivational therapy—to let them condition you and plant the murder impulse in your mind. You have no right to be angry Straker,” he whined. “You agreed, there in that shoddy little town near Capitol Mountain. You said you’d lost your license as an astrogator, got your ship warped to pieces in space, couldn’t get another berth . . . had no money . . . Straker,” the man shrieked, “I was there hiding behind a screen!”
“I don’t remember it,” Straker said coldly. “But you said my mind had been fixed. That’s why I don’t remember it.” He hesitated, a new timbre of certainty in his speech when he continued: “But that makes no difference. I do understand it, a little—not knowing why I must kill you.
“If I made such a bargain, I was a fool not to realize I couldn’t turn into a murderer. That must be why I’ve felt, all along, that I couldn’t . . . skip it.”
Straker tossed the disintegrator on a low table, where it fell clattering.
“In any case,” he said levelly, “your doctors made the wrong choice. Whoever I am—and they’d damn well better restore my past, Mr. Atlas—I’m no killer, in spite of what I said. If I said it at all. You may have brought me aboard this ship to make your death a little easier, but I’m not buying. Not now, knowing what I do. There are others you can find to do the job.” Straker paused again, letting the truth clean out his brain, scour it of the dark artificially-induced drive to kill. That drive still hammered at the back of his mind, but it was growing weaker by the second, feeble and weaker . . .
“I’ll double the fee!” Atlas whined. “Triple it . . .”
“Why didn’t you simply have your doctors commit an illegal euthanasia?”
Atlas crashed a trembling fist to the table-top. “I brought you aboard The Biarritz, damn you, hoping you’d surprise me . . . be clever, and dangerous, and kill me when I didn’t expect it. That was what the doctors guaranteed.” In the starshine Straker saw a trickle of a tear like a silver thread on the old man’s cheek. “But they failed. They didn’t analyze you properly. You walked in here like . . . like an equal, just walked in, holding the dis. Probably because you’re not the sort for subterfuge, because every second your mind went against the planted impulses . . .” Atlas raised his hands imploringly. “I have to die, Straker. I have to die, or be destroyed. Public humiliation . . . scandal the ruination of my holdings . . .”
Straker asked coldly: “Why?” Alexander Atlas took a deep breath, lowered himself into one of the relaxer-chairs, clasped his hands between his knees, answered softly: “The Atlas family goes back over a century and a half. You must know that. My ancestor, an immigrant with an unpronounceable name, took the name of one of the puny—but in that time, monstrous—destructive missiles used in warfare. Took it, and in a small electronics factory began to build components for the first missile-drive ships that eventually reached Luna. There was a progression of sons, all somewhat less honest than the first, and while the holdings of the Atlas family grew to astronomical proportions, those holdings were amassed at the price of the most vicious manipulations and. crimes. Fake buy-outs. Dummy leasing firms. And then, when it came time to ship to the stars, piracy, murder . . . all bringing power, but all putting blood on the name of Atlas.”
The old man raised his face, pleading. “At last The Cartel Tribunal, with its huge data-sorting evidence computers, began to sift through the tons of faked records, bogus papers, illicit deals . . . the job has taken more than four generations, there are so many things for them to learn, so many secrets to uncover. It was inevitable, once electronics were adapted to the processes of justice. I could not corrupt the tribunal, nor could my father, nor my grandfather. In another year at the most the machines will produce their final report. I know it. I have certain sources of information.” His old, mad shoulders slumped helplessly. “I cannot face the result. But I cannot destroy myself, for I am a coward, the weak and diseased blood of a dozen generations of immensely wealthy robbers. That is why . . .” He rose tottering from his chair. “. . . why you must destroy me. I’ll not have the courage to try again . . .”
Straker said, “I’m sorry, I won’t.”
Alexander Atlas uttered a shrill, sobbing cry of anguish. In that instant Straker heard a rap of boots behind him, and he spun around.
His stomach knotted. Lurching along the polished floor of the chamber in a zig-zagging run, backed by more than a dozen of the maroon-uniformed guards, came Effingham, a huge disintegrator rifle braced on his hip. With his free hand Effingham signalled wildly to Atlas, shouting:
“Out of the way, Mr. Atlas. Get back, get back! He’s a killer . . .”
STRAKER WENT for the disintegrator he had thrown down, knowing desperately that he was in the final trap now. Effingham turned sideways, presenting a narrow target, and threw the disintegrator rifle to his shoulder. The rest of his. troops followed suit. Straker lunged to the floor, fingers clawing around his own disintegrator, bringing it into position for a last defense. Effingham’s face was contorted into a mask of pleasure. He fired . . .
Straker, rolling wildly, fired a second after Effingham. The disintegrators of the guards scorched out along Effingham’s beam. Because Straker was moving, the first charge missed, scorching over his head, putting the smell of burned hair in his nostrils. But Effingham took Straker’s charge full .in the chest, jacknifing over, his face hitting against the gleaming floor. He kicked out with his legs in the last throes of death. Straker, belly down on the floor, breathed fast, gaining a second’s advantage before the next volley from the guards. There was a ghastly gurgling sound, somewhere in the darkness behind.
And one by one the guards were dropping their weapons. One gagged, swung around and fled. Then another . . .
Straker rolled over quickly . . . and watched the last remains of Alexander Atlas X disappear in a foul-smelling curl of smoke, generated by Effingham’s blast, the blast that had gone over Straker’s head. For a moment, thinking himself mad, Straker imagined a dry, hideous cackle of laughter floating near the little column of smoke, as though Atlas’ voice alone remained, echoing final salvation. Straker rubbed knuckles in his eyes, then he realized slowly that the wild laugh had come from his own throat. He pushed to his knees. The face of a guard peered in at the chamber’s entrance, drew back again in terror . . .
Straker very nearly fired on the figure advancing from a shadowy sector of the star salon. Only the gleams from the hooded lamp on coppery hair stayed his hand. The girl, ‘Plain’ Jenny Dover, stood a few feet away, regarding him blankly for a moment.
“Well . . .” Straker said thickly, insanely, “Well, I killed him. Atlas. You predicted I would do something like that.” He didn’t know if he wanted to laugh or cry, now.
The lines on the girl’s face softened. The coppery hair shook in negation of his words. “No, it’s not your fault. I heard him talk about his scheme. I saw the fight.” She pointed back along the way she had come. “There, on the left, a concealed lift, tube rises up from the lower decks into an observation room set between this deck and the next below. It’s wired for sound, and has periscope screens in it. I . . . I came up here to see if my premonition had been right. I saw you come in, I heard what my stepfather said. I heard it all.”
Suddenly he saw that her eyes were shining. And she wasn’t plain. Far from plain. The light in her eyes drove some of the panic from his mind, healed it’, calmed it . . .
She extended one hand. “We must tell my mother what has happened. And tell her that, at last, I was right in my appraisal of a man. It . . . it has never happened b
efore,” she added in a voice both pleased and sad.
Straker winced. Overhead the stars wheeled. A comet shot out beyond a distant planet, a hurling streak of light. “How do you know what I am? I have no idea myself.”
“The doctors can undo everything that was planted in your mind.”
“I may not like what I remember. Evidently, I made a deal to do murder.”
“But at the crucial time, in spite of all their mental tricks, you couldn’t do it. That’s what is important.”
“Still . . .” Straker looked hard at her. “Digging out the past can be grim. Very grim.”.
“Let me take the chance, Straker. Please.”
Straker breathed deep. “All right.” He moved to her side. Together they walked out of the star salon, past the tiny knot of terrified guards still frightened at what they had done. In the deserted salon two infinitesimal piles of ashes—Atlas and Effingham—lay beneath the great curved surface of the ship, in the light of stars burning down on last remains of a great family’s heritage of destruction. On the deck below, just entering Lady Atlas’ quarters, Straker lifted his eyes upward and thought, I hope before he ended everything, he was happy once. As happy as I am now.
TEST-TUBE TERROR
Robert Standish
They created a formula which could destroy the world. And now someone wanted to put it to use.
The brief description of myself given here has little or nothing to do with my story. I give it in order to create a “climate of credibility.” My name is Mark Harrowby. I am a bachelor, aged thirty-six, a patent lawyer by profession. You will find my name listed in the London telephone directory at 149, Woolpack Street, Westminster. Among my various clients are numbered several immensely rich, internationally known corporations, the kind which don’t entrust their secrets to blabbermouths. In short, I am a responsible citizen. Just remember that, if, while reading this story, your credulity becomes strained.
Three days after the Russians launched Sputnik No. 1, I received a letter bearing a Geneva postmark. It was written by Giselle Duclos, who, I may say, is responsible for the fact that I am still a bachelor. Giselle is twenty-seven years of age, Swiss by nationality and a willowy, blue-eyed blonde by Nature’s favor. I fell in love with her ten years ago. Her brother, Pierre, is my oldest and closest friend, two years younger than I am. Madame Duclos, their mother, widow of a minor Swiss civil servant, ran a boardinghouse in Geneva for students. I spent some months there in 1939, which is how my life became entangled with theirs.