“Against orders,” he was told. “I’ve got to push along.”
And the man left. But not before Stover had seen that he had a face somewhat like his own—big, straight nose, square jaw, bright blue eyes. The difference was in complexion— black hair and brown skin. And complexion could be changed.
First Stover inspected the contents of the tray. Most of the food was synthetic—meat paste, acid drink, a salad of cellophanelike sheets of roughage. What interested him most was a hunk of butter substitute. Sitting down beside the tray, Stover again produced the pencil from his belt-pouch.
With his strong fingers he split the wood and extracted the soft, crumbly lead. Breaking the black stick in two, he rubbed the two bits together over the butter. The sooty powder fell thickly, and Stover mixed it in with a fork, producing a wad of gleaming oily-black substance. Quickly he rubbed this into his blond hair, smoothing out its curls and plastering them to his skull. The tray, which was of shiny metal, served as a mirror. He looked about as dark-haired as the jailer.
“So far so good,” he approved, and again overhauled the food-stuffs. The cup of acid drink seemed most promising. Once more he explored his pouch. It yielded two cigarettes. Splitting these, he dropped the shreds of tobacco into the cup. Judicious stirring and mixing provided him with a coffee-brown liquid. He made tests on the back of his hand, deepened the tint with the last of his powdered pencil-lead. Finally he doffed his stylish golden garments.
With palmful after palmful of the makeshift dye, he stained his big body and limbs, using the tray as a mirror while he darkened his face and neck as well. His hands and feet were also treated. Now he appeared as a naked, swarthy personage with strangely pale eyes who was not too different from the jailer.
He waited some time longer, to be sure that enough time had passed to insure the fellow being well off duty. Then he sprang to the door, beating on it with his fists.
“Help! Help!” he roared. “I’m penned up! Prisoner’s escaping!”
Answering commotion sounded outside. Then a harsh voice:
“What’s the racket in there, Stover?”
“Stover’s gone,” he made gruff reply. “When I brought him his food, he jumped on me, knocked me out and took my clothes. He got away!”
“Oh, it’s Dellis?” The door was quickly unlocked and opened.
Remembering that the jailor he impersonated had not matched his inches, Stover crouched on the floor. The shifting light of the joy-lamp helped his disguise, and the police guard who looked in was deceived for the moment.
“What happened, did you say?”
“Can’t you see?” Stover yelled in feigned impatience. “He knocked me out and took my uniform. There’s his rig.” He pointed with one stained hand at his own crumpled garments in a corner. “While you stand there, he’s probably clear away.”
“Well, come out of there,” the guard told him. “Wrap a blanket from the cot around you. We’ve got to,make a report, quick!”
Stover wrapped himself up as directed, taking care to slump and so approximate the lesser height of the jailor Dellis. Under the blanket he brought along his felt and pouch. But he did not intend to appear before Congreve or other too-observant officers. Reeling, he supported himself against the door-jamb.
“I still feel shaky.”
“Here, then.” Another guard had come up, and the first guard beckoned him. “Take Dellis to the locker room while I report to the front office. That big society lad, Stover, got away.” Leaning heavily on the newcomer’s arm, and half-swaddling his stained head and body in the blanket, Stover allowed himself to be helped down another corridor and into a long room lined with lockers. Against one wall was a cot, where he dropped with a moan.
“Hurt bad, Dellis?” asked the guard who had brought him.
“I hope not,” sighed Stover. “Let me lie here for a while.”
The other left. As the door closed, Stover sprang up and to a lavatory. Scrubbing violently, he cleansed hair and body of his messy disguise. Then he opened locker after locker. Most of the clothes inside were too small, but he found a drab civilian tunic in one, breeches in another, and boots in a third, all of them fair fits. Thus properly clad, he donned his own pouch and girdle and went to a window.
The level of the cells was still high above the noise and glow of the canal levels. A man less desperate might feel giddy, but Stover had no time for phobias. He must be free to find and convict the true murderer of Malbrook. Only thus could he hope to survive.
Quickly he ripped the blanket into half a dozen strips. Knotting these into a rope, he tied one end to a bracketlike fixture on the outer sill. A moment later he was sliding down into the night.
The gravity of Mars being barely four-tenths that of Earth, Stover’s huge body weighed no more than eighty pounds as it swung to the cord of knotted blankets. Even so, he needed all of his nerve, strength and agility for what he planned to do.
A few seconds brought him to the end of his line, thirty feet below the window-sill. There were no windows or other openings at that point, and no projections on the smooth concrete wall, only a metal tube, barely an inch in diameter, that housed some slender power lines and ran vertically beside him. Every fifty feet or so it was clamped to the wall by a big staple. One such staple held it at the point where Stover dangled.
He looked in the other direction. Ten or twelve yards opposite was another building, with many lighted windows. Given a solid footing, he might have tried to leap. As it was, he must bridge the gap otherwise. He hung to his blanket-cord with one hand while he tugged and tore at the metal tubing. It was none too tough, and broke just at the staple. A jerk parted the wires inside. He tested the broken'tube. It was springy and gave some resistance, but would it be enough? He could only try, with a prayer to all the gods of all the planets.
GRASPING the tube with both hands, he quitted his cord. There he hung for a moment, like a beetle on a grass-stalk. Then the tube began to buckle outward at the staple clamp some fifty feet below. Stover’s eighty pounds of weight swung it out across the chasm. He dared not look at the depths below. His eyes, turned overhead, watched the crawl of Deimos’ disk across the starry sky. The tube was bending swiftly now—he was traveling out and down in a swift arc.
Ping! The tube broke at the lower staple. At the same instant Stover felt his shoulder brush against the wall of the building opposite. He let go of the tube, tried to clutch a window sill, and missed. He felt suddenly sick as he slid down the crag of concrete. His boot-heels smacked on a sill below, flew from it, and he made another desperate grasp. This time he made good his hold, and swung there, staring in.
The sizeable room was garishly lighted. People stood or sat inside, close-packed around tables. There was music from a radio tuned in on Earth, and a cheerful hubbub of everyone talking and laughing. At the table nearest the window were men and women in middle-class celebration clothes.
One of them flourished his loose-clenched fist, then brought it down and whipped it open. Out danced two pale cubes with black spots on their faces.
Dice—a game known when the pyramids were new, perhaps in the precivilized days before. Dice, which in ancient Rome had gained and lost mighty fortunes; which had delighted such rulers as Henry VIII of England, and such philosophers as Samuel L. Clemens of America. Dice, the one gambling game which had lasted to the thirtieth century.
'‘Game-dive,” panted Stover. “Crowded, confused, relaxed. No worry about murders. I’ll go in.”
He worked along the sill, toward the next window. It was too far for his arms to span, but he spun his body sidewise, hooked a boot-toe within, let go and hurled himself across the sill and in.
He was in a private dining-room. A man and a woman sat at a table strewn with dishes, smirking affectionately at each other. As Stover drew himself up, the woman gave a little smoothered cry of alarm and shrank into her chair. The man rose.
“Listen,” he snarled to her, “if you say this is your husband,
I’ll tell you I’m too old for such a blackmail game.
“I’m nobody’s husband,” Stover interrupted. “I just climbed in on a bet. Thought it was a game-dive.”
“You're one window mistaken,” the man said. “Get out of here.”
Stover apologized and walked through a door, into the crowd beyond.
At the large central table, “indemnity” was being played. This old space-pirate game was almost as simple as blackjack and simpler than roulette. Each player could call for a card at each deal, or could refuse. Only those whose cards were of the same color stayed in. When all were satisfied, unretired players totaled the values of their cards, and high man won both stakes and deal. The money, which could be won or lost swiftly, was the chief excitement.
Stover carried a sheaf of value- notes in his pouch, most of them in thousand-unit denominations. Entering the game, he lost twice and then won a big pot and the deal. As he distributed the cards, the radio music ceased.
“Late news,” said an announcer’s voice, and the vision-screen across the room lighted up.
UPON it, huge and stern, appeared WJ a man’s head and uniformed shoulders. Congreve!
“We’re cutting in to enlist the help of all law-abiding listeners,” said Congreve’s magnified voice, and all play ceased as attentions turned to him. “Yesterday a murder occurred in the upper tower section. Mace Malbrook
The rest was momentarily drowned by a chorus of cries. Everyone had heard of Malbrook. Then silence again.
“—but the murderer escaped,” Congreve was informing whatever worlds might hear. “Every officer is searching for him, and a reward of twenty thousand value-units is being offered by Mr. Gillan Fielding, partner of the murdered man, for any information leading to the capture of—”
“Twenty thou!” ejaculated a man near Stover. “I’d like to pick that up. I’d open a dive like this myself.”
“Not me,” chimed in someone else. “I’d try to buy into the water monopoly run by the Malbrook-Fielding combine. That’s where the dough is on Mars. Every year the rates get higher and the demand bigger. Twenty thousand units, invested now—”
“Listen to the description,” growled a man tersely.
“—twenty-three years old, very large and strong,” Congreve was saying. “Six-feet-three, Earth measurement. Terrestrial weight, about two hundred pounds. Martian weight, about eighty. Smooth-shaven, blond hair, strong features. Well educated, a scientist, pleasing personality. Escaped in clothes stolen from police.”
“He sounds like a television hero,” breathed a girl in the crowd.
“To supplement this description, I will exhibit a late photograph of Dillon Stover, accused of the murder of Mace Malbrook.”
Congreve’s hand rose into view, with a rectangular piece of board. The vision-screen concentrated upon it, making it larger and clearer until it filled the entire screen, showing a vivid color-photo, taken three days before. Stover showed erect, tall, smiling and carefree. He was wearing his golden costume, which seemed doubly bright on the screen. The girl who had spoken before now gave vent to a whistle as of admiration.
“What a prince!” she cried.
Congreve’s face returned. “I thank you,” he said. The screen darkened, and the music resumed.
CHAPTER VI The Girl in the Game-Dive
AT ONCE a hubbub of chatter broke out. People of the middle- class section of Pulambar were far noisier and more easily entertained than the bored sophisticates of the High-tower Set. Stover steadied his hands, completing the deal.
“Play cards,” he said.
The man beside him looked at him sharply. “You know, stranger, to judge from that description, you might be the guy they’re after.”
“I was thinking the same thing,” nodded Stover. “I’m about that size and age, and blond. Maybe I ought to turn myself in for the reward. Who wants cards on second deal?”
“But the picture killed it,” went on the man beside him. “That bird in gold wasn't anything like you.”
“Personally, I thought he looked like a sissy,” grunted Stover.
He lost the next hand, cashed in and casually left the table. The brief interlude of play had helped to calm and encourage him. He was free and lost from pursuit, with a plan of campaign beginning to form. He went toward the door.
“Wait, big man,” said a clear voice behind him. It was the girl who had admired his photograph on the vision screen. She was compact but comely, with red-dyed hair and a flashing smile. “Where are you going?” “Your way,” replied Stover promptly, feeling that a girl on his arm would be additional disguise.
They went out together, approaching a series of doors that were marked ELEVATORS, but she drew him away.
“Come along,” she said. “I know an express that will drop us straight to the canal level.”
“Just what I want,” said Stover quite truthfully, and let her lead him along a side-corridor. At the end was a metal door. “What’s your name?” he asked her, to make conversation.
“Call me Gerda,” she said. “Enter. And what shall I call you?”
“Parker,” he improvised. They came into a small, messy-walled room with one barred window and a telephone in a niche. “Here, Gerda, where’s the elevator? And don’t dig your elbow into me like that.”
She laughed. “There’s no elevator, and this isn’t my elbow. It’s a gun.” He sprang away, and the weapon rose in her hand, a vicious electro- automatic. She handled it with a forbidding ease. Her other hand slipped shut the catch on the door.
“Don’t try anything suicidal,” she bade him. “You’re my prisoner, Dillon Stover. That fake dumb stare won’t help. I’ve seen several photos of you besides that one on the televiso, and I had you spotted as soon as you walked into the game-dive.”
“You were sent after me?” demanded Stover, giving up the farce.
“A regiment of us were. We knew you hadn’t gone far. It was my luck to run across you.”
“Congratulations,” said Stover. “But the police will be more flattering than I.”
The girl who called herself Gerda shook her red-dyed head. “Congratulations are nice.. But I know someone who will pay for you with something besides congratulations and twenty thousand value-units.”
“Who?” snapped Stover, for he knew she meant the murderer.
“You’ll see soon enough,” she told him with one of her bright smiles, and put her free hand on the telephone.
“Wait,” he begged. “You speak of cash. More than the twenty thousand value-units the police offer. How much more?”
“Oh,” said Gerda, her eyes wise above the leveled gun. “At least half as much again.”
“I’ll double it,” said Stover, and she drew her hand back from the telephone. “May I take the money from my belt-pouch?”
SHE nodded permission, and he produced his notes. With what he had won at indemnity, he had a little more than the forty thousand he had offered. Counting off the surplus, he folded it and began to return it to his pouch.
“Wait,” said Gerda greedily. “I’ll take the whole thing.”
Stover reluctantly surrendered all his money. She took it, thrust it into her own pouch. Then without lowering her gun, she caught his outstretched left hand in hers. A quick movement and she had snapped something on his wrist.
“Bracelet,” she said. “Police bracelet. Isn’t it pretty?”
Stover lifted his arm, staring at the thing. It was a plain circlet of nickeled steel, with a hinge and a lock. It bore a spherical device with a dial. From that sphere came a soft whirring sound.
“What’s it for?” demanded Stover, angrily.
Gerda chuckled above her gun.
“Police bracelet,” she said again. “It has a radio apparatus tuned to the waves of police headquarters. You don’t feel anything now, but if you go, say, ten miles from here, your whole body will vibrate to the amplified waves, as though you were being subjected to a heavy rush of current. The farther you go
, the more drastic and painful the effect. Fifty miles away, you’d be done for—your nervous system tortured to death.”
She picked up the telephone and called a number.
“This is Gerda,” she said into the transmitter. “You know—police undercover detail. I have somebody you’re interested in.”
“You’re taking my money and now you're selling me to the police!” cried Stover in sudden comprehension. Gerda merely smiled at him.
“Wait,” she said into the instrument, and then to Stover: “Not to the police. To somebody who will pay more. I only put the bracelet on to prevent any accident. Try to get away from me, and you’ll not get far. Now, stand easy—I haven’t finished phoning.”
She turned back to the instrument. “You heard his voice,” she cooed into the phone. “Is your price still offered? Then come at once to —” Stover made a frenzied leap. An electro-automatic pellet zipped its way through his tousled hair even as he twisted the weapon away. Tucking Gerda’s struggling body under one arm, he seized the telephone.
“This is Stover,” he grated into it. “While this she-rat of yours bragged, I jumped her and took her gun away. I’ll get you next. Who is this?”
A gasp over the wire. That was all. “Then I’ll come and get you without any help. You killed Malbrook, didn’t you? You want to kill me before the law learns I’m innocent, don’t you? But it won’t work! Don’t count your Dillon Stovers before they’re dead and buried. Good-by until we meet for the showdown!”
He hung up, thrusting the captured gun into his tunic. Despite Gerda’s frantic resistance, he coolly repossessed the money she had taken from him. Finally he bound her hands with her own belt and gagged her with a strip torn from her skirt. She glared above the gag.
“Good-by, my bewitching little doublecrosser,” he bade her. “Stick to stool-pigeoning. The police will back you—if they don’t catch you cheating. I’m going to catch the blundering killer you tried to sell me to.”
Manly Wade Wellman - Chapbook 02 Page 4