And as for the Earthman—well, just to be safe Dorvis Graal decided to pick him up. He had seemed just a little too eager to get into the tunnel.
Into the tube he said, “There’s an Earthman coming into the tunnel now. He’s also got a pass, but I want you to pick him up and hold him for questioning. Got that?”
“Yes, sir.”
Dorvis Graal broke the contact and sat back. He wondered which one was lying, the Mercurian or the Earthman—or both. And just what would happen if an assassin reached Darrien.
Perhaps, Dorvis Graal thought, it might mean I’d reach power. Perhaps.
He sat back, an amused smile on his cold face, and contemplated the possibilities.
***
Hendrin reached the end of the long corridor and folded Dorvis Graal’s pass in his pocket. He would probably need it to get out again.
He turned to the girl. “Pull the cloak tight around you, lass. I don’t want Darrien to see your nakedness until the proper moment. And try to brighten up and look more desirable.”
“Why should I?” she sniffled. “Why should I care what I look like?”
Patiently the Mercurian said, “Because if Darrien doesn’t buy you I have to give you to that Venusian out there. And, believe me, you’ll be a lot better off with Darrien than in the arms of that foul-smelling tailed one out there. So cheer up; it’s the lesser of the two evils.” He closed the cloak around her and together they advanced toward Darrien’s throne room.
A stony-faced Martian guard stood outside the throne room. “What want you with Darrien?”
“I bring him a girl.” Hendrin pointed to Elissa, then showed the guard Dorvis Graal’s pass. “The Viceroy himself sent me to Darrien.”
“You can pass, then,” grunted the Martian. He opened the door and Hendrin stepped in.
It was a scene of utter magnificence. The vast room was lined from wall to wall with a fantastically costly yangskin rug, except in the very center, where a depression had been scooped out and a small pool created. In the pool two nude earthgirls swam, writhing sinuously for Darrien’s delight.
Darrien. Hendrin’s eyes slowly turned toward the throne at the side of the vast room. It was a bright platinum pedestal upon which Darrien and his mistress sat. Hendrin studied them while waiting to be noticed.
So that’s Darrien—or his double. The galaxy’s most brilliant and most evil man sat tensely on his throne, beady eyes darting here and there, radiating an unmistakably malevolent intelligence. Darrien was a small, shrunken man, his face a complex network of wrinkles and valleys. Darrien or his double, Hendrin reminded himself again. The possibility was slim that Darrien himself was here; more likely he was elsewhere in the palace, operating the dummy on the throne by a remote-control device he himself had conceived.
And at Darrien’s side, the lovely Meryola, Darrien’s mistress. She was clad in filmy vizosheen that revealed more than it hid, and the Mercurian was startled at the beauty revealed. It was known that Meryola’s beauty was enhanced by drugs from Darrien’s secret laboratories, but even so she was ravishing in her own right.
Hendrin had to admire Darrien. After the destruction of Venusia five years ago, a lesser man might have drifted into despair—but not Darrien. Goaded by the fierce rage and desire for vengeance that burnt within him, he had simply moved on to Mars and established here a kingdom twice as magnificent as that the Earthmen had destroyed on Venus.
He was talking now to a pair of bushy-tailed Venusians who stood before the throne. Lieutenants, obviously, receiving some sort of instructions. Hendrin made a mental note to find out who they were later.
Finally Darrien was through. The tyrant looked up and fixed Hendrin in his piercing gaze.
“Who are you, Mercurian, and what do you want here?”
Darrien’s voice was astonishingly deep and forceful for a man so puny in body. For a moment Hendrin was shaken by the man’s commanding tones.
Then he said, “I be Hendrin, sire, of your majesty’s legions. I bring with me a girl whom perhaps—”
“I might purchase,” snapped Darrien. “That fool Dorvis Graal! He knows well that I can’t be troubled with such petty things.”
“Begging your pardon, sir,” Hendrin said with glib humility, “but the Viceroy said that this girl was of such surpassing beauty that he couldn’t set a proper price himself, and sent me to you with her.”
Hendrin noticed an interesting series of reactions taking place on the face of the tyrant’s mistress. Meryola had been staring curiously at the girl, who stood slumped beneath the shapeless cloak. As Hendrin spoke, Meryola seemed to stiffen as if fearing a rival; her breasts, half-visible through her gauzy garment, rose and fell faster, and her eyes flashed. Hendrin smiled inwardly. There were possibilities here.
Darrien was frowning, bringing even more wrinkles to his face. Finally he said, “Well, then, let’s see this paragon of yours. Unveil her—but if she is not all you say, both of you shall die, and Dorvis Graal in the bargain!”
Hendrin approached the girl. “Three lives depend on your beauty, now—including your own.”
“Why should I want to live?” she murmured.
Hendrin ignored it and ripped away the cloak. Elissa stood before Darrien totally nude. To his relief Hendrin saw the girl was cooperating; she stood tall and proud, her breasts outthrust, her pale body quivering as if with desire. Darrien stared at her for a long moment. Meryola, by his side, seemed ready to explode.
At length Darrien said, “You may live. She is a lovely creature. Cover her again, so all eyes may not see her.”
Hendrin obediently tossed the cloak over her shoulders and bowed to Darrien.
“Name your price.”
“Two hundred credas—and a captaincy in your forces.”
He held his breath. Darrien turned to Elissa.
“How old are you, girl?”
“Nineteen.”
“Has this Mercurian laid lustful hands on you?”
“I’ve never been with any man, sire,” the girl said, blushing.
“Umm.” To Hendrin Darrien said, “The captaincy is yours, and five hundred credas. Come, girl; let me show you where your quarters will be.”
***
Darrien rose from the throne, and Hendrin was surprised to see the man was a dwarf, no more than four feet high. He strode rapidly down the pedestal to Elissa’s side. She was more than a foot taller than he.
He led her away. Hendrin, his head bowed, glanced up slowly and saw Meryola fuming on the throne. Now was the time to act, he thought. Now.
“Your Highness!” he whispered.
She looked down at him. “I should have you flayed,” she said harshly. “Do you know what you’ve done?”
“I fear I’ve brought your Highness a rival,” Hendrin said. “For this I beg your pardon; I had no way of knowing Darrien sought concubines for himself. And I sorely needed the money.”
“Enough,” Meryola said. Her face was black with anger, but still radiant. “Out of my sight, and let me deal with the problem you’ve brought me.”
“A moment, milady. May I speak?”
“Speak,” she said impatiently.
He stared at her smouldering gray-flecked eyes. “Milady, I wish to undo the damage I’ve caused you this day.”
“How could you do that?”
Hendrin thought quickly. “If you’ll go to my lord Darrien and occupy his attention for the next hour, I’ll slip within and find the girl. You need only sign an order testifying that she’s a traitor to Darrien, and I’ll convey her to the dungeons—where she’ll die before Darrien knows she’s missing.”
Meryola glanced at him curiously. “You’re a strange one, Hendrin the Mercurian. First you bring this ravishing creature to Darrien—then, when his back is turned, you offer to remove her again. Odd loyalty, Mercurian!”
Hendrin saw that he had blundered. “I but meant, milady, that I had no idea my act would have such consequences. I want the chance to redeem mys
elf—for to bring a shadow between Darrien and Meryola would be to weaken all of our hopes.”
“Nicely spoken,” Meryola said, and Hendrin realized he had recovered control. He looked at her bluntly now, saw tiny crows’ feet beginning to show at the edges of her eyes. She was a lovely creature, but an aging one. He knew that she would be ultimately of great use to him.
“Very well,” she said. “I’ll endeavor to separate Darrien from his new plaything—and while I’m amusing our lord, get you inside and take the girl away. I’ll double his five hundred credas if he never sees her again.”
“I thank you,” Hendrin said. The Mercurian offered her his arm as she dismounted from the throne. He felt a current of anticipation tingling in him. He was on his way, now. Already he had won Darrien’s approval—and, if he could only manage to convey the girl to the dungeons without Darrien’s discovering who had done it, he would be in the favor of the tyrant’s mistress as well. It was a good combination.
Legend had it that only Meryola knew when Darrien himself sat on the throne and when a duplicate. He would need her help when the time comes.
Exultantly he thought: Oh, Krodrang, Krodrang, you sent the right man for this job!
Quietly he slipped from the throne room in search of Elissa, feeling very proud of himself.
***
The entrance to the tunnel was guarded by two Venusians and a fin-handed Plutonian. Lon Archman approached and said, “Is this the way to Darrien’s throne room?”
“It is. What would you want there?”
Archman flashed the Viceroy’s pass. “This is all the explanation you should need.”
They stepped aside and allowed him through. The corridor was long and winding and lit by the bright glow of levon-tubes. There was no sign of the Mercurian or the girl up ahead.
That was all right, Archman thought. He had no particular interest in them, so long as he were inside the Palace itself. And his ruse had worked, evidently; here he was, with a pass to the throne room.
Trotting, he rounded a bend in the corridor and halted suddenly. Three Martians blocked his way, forming a solid bar across the tunnel.
“Stay right there, Earthman.”
“I’ve got a pass from Dorvis Graal,” he snapped impatiently. “Let me go.” He smelled the foul musk of the Martians as they clustered around him.
“Hand over the pass,” ordered the foremost of the trio.
Suspiciously Archman gave him the slip. The Martian read it, nodded complacently, and ripped the pass into a dozen pieces, which he scattered in the air.
“Hey! You can’t do that! Dorvis Graal—”
“Dorvis Graal himself has just phoned me to revoke your pass,” the Martian informed him. “You’re to be held for questioning as a possible assassin.”
Grimly Archman saw what had happened. His 97.003% rating had fooled him into thinking he was some sort of superman. Naturally, the Viceroy had been suspicious of the strange-faced, over-eager Earthman with the wild story, and had ordered his pickup. Possibly the Mercurian and the girl were safely within, or else they had been picked up too. It didn’t make any difference. The wily Viceroy was cautiously taking no chances in the affair.
Almost instantly Archman’s zam-gun was in his hand, and a second later the Martian’s tusked face was a blossoming nightmare, features disappearing in a crackle of atomized dust. The man sagged to the floor. Archman turned to the other two, but they had moved already. A club descended on his arm with stunning force and the zam-gun dropped from his numbed fingers. He struck out with his fist, feeling a stiff jolt of pain run through him as he connected.
“Dorvis Graal said not to kill him,” said one of the Martians.
Archman whirled, trying to keep eyes on both of them at once, but it was impossible. As one rocked back from the force of the Earthman’s blow, the other drew near. Archman felt hot breath behind him, turned—
And a copperwood club cracked soundly against the side of his head. He fought desperately for consciousness, realizing too late that he had blundered terribly. Then the club hit him again and a searing tide of pain swept up around him, blotting out tunnel and Martians and everything.
***
Hendrin confronted the shivering Elissa. She stood before a mirror clad only in a single sheer garment Darrien had given her.
“Come with me,” he whispered. “Now, before Darrien comes back!”
“Where will you take me?”
“Away from here. I’ll hide you in the dungeons until it’s safe to get you out. Now that I’ve been paid, I don’t feel any need to give you to Darrien—and the tyrant’s mistress will pay me double to get you out.”
She smiled acidly. “I see. I suppose I’ll then be subject to your tender mercies again—until the next time you decide to sell me. Sorry, but I’m not going. I’ll take my chances here. Darrien probably takes good care of his women.”
“Meryola will kill you!”
“Possibly. But how long could I live with you outside? No, I’ll stay here, now that you’ve sold me.”
Hendrin cursed and pulled her to him. He hit her once, carefully, on the chin. She shuddered and went sprawling backward; he caught her—she was surprisingly light—and tossed her over his shoulder. Footsteps were audible at the door.
He glanced around, found a rear exit, and slipped through. A staircase beckoned. The Mercurian, bearing his unconscious burden, ran.
***
Through a dim haze of pain Lon Archman heard voices. Someone was saying, in a Martian’s guttural tones, “Put this one in a cell, will you?”
Another voice, with a Plutonian’s liquid accents, said, “Strange the dungeons should be so busy at this hour. But a few moments ago a Mercurian brought an Earthgirl here to be kept safe—a would-be assassin, I’m told.”
“As is this one. Here, lock him up. Dorvis Graal will be here to interrogate him later, and I suppose there’ll be the usual consequences.”
“That means two executions tomorrow,” said the Plutonian gleefully.
“Two?”
“Yes. The Lady Meryola sent me instructions just before you came that the Earthgirl is to die in the morning, without fail. Now the Earthman comes.” The jailer chuckled. “I think I’ll put ’em in the same cell. Let ’em enjoy their last night alive!”
Archman dizzily felt himself being thrown roughly into a cold room, heard a door clang shut behind him. He opened one eye painfully. Someone was sobbing elsewhere in the cell.
He looked. It was the Earthgirl, the one the Mercurian had been with. She lay in a crumpled, pathetic little heap in the far corner of the cell, sobbing. After a moment she looked up.
“It’s you—the Earthman!”
He nodded. “We’ve met before.”
A spasm of sobbing shook her.
“Ease up,” Archman said soothingly, despite the pain that flashed up and down his own battered body. “Stop crying!”
“Stop crying? Why? Why, when they’re going to kill us both tomorrow?”
END OF PART ONE
II
Synopsis of what has gone before:
LON ARCHMAN of Universal Intelligence has been sent to Mars on the difficult task of assassinating DARRIEN, the shrewd madman who threatens Earth. Darrien had established an empire on Venus, destroyed five years earlier by Earth spaceships—but Darrien had fled to Mars and built an empire of even greater strength. It is Archman’s job to find Darrien and kill him—a job complicated by the fact that Darrien is known to utilize several orthysynthetic duplicate robots indistinguishable from himself.
At the same time, HENDRIN, a blue Mercurian in the pay of Krodrang, Overlord of Mercury, has arrived on Mars for similar reasons: to kill Darrien and transfer his secret weapons to Mercury. When Archman first encounters the Mercurian, Hendrin is with a captive Earthgirl, ELISSA HALL, whom he has purchased from a pair of drunken Venusian soldiers. Hendrin means to sell the girl to Darrien and thus gain access to the palace. Archman decides to follow Hen
drin.
The Mercurian persuades DORVIS GRAAL, Darrien’s viceroy, to give him a pass to Darrien. Archman, using the device of accusing Hendrin of being an assassin, likewise gets past the Viceroy—but this time Dorvis Graal has doubts, and orders pickup of both Hendrin and Archman for questioning.
Archman is caught in the tunnel that leads to Darrien’s palace. Hendrin and Elissa get through and the Mercurian shows the girl to Darrien, who is immediately taken by her beauty and buys her.
However, MERYOLA, Darrien’s mistress, is jealous of the newcomer. She bribes Hendrin to spirit Elissa away from Darrien and hide her in the dungeons of the palace.
Archman and Elissa, who had met briefly before, now meet again—in the same cell. And all signs point to their executions the follow-ing morning.
In the darkness of the cell, Archman eyed the shadow-etched figure of the girl uneasily. He was twenty-three; he had spent six years in Universal Intelligence, including his training period. That made him capable of handling tusked Martians and finny Plutonians with ease, but a sobbing Earthgirl? There were no rules in the book for that.
Suddenly the girl sat up, and Archman saw her wipe her eyes. “Why am I crying?” she asked. “I should be happy. Tomorrow they’re going to kill me—and that’s the greatest favor I could wish for.”
“Don’t talk like that!”
“Why not? Ever since Darrien’s raiders grabbed me on Planetoid Eleven, I’ve just been bought and sold, over and over, bargained for, used as a pawn in one maneuver after another. Do you think I care if they kill me now?”
Archman was silent. Flickering rays of light from somewhere outside bobbed at random in the cell, illuminating the girl’s almost bare form from time to time. He wanted to talk gently to her, to take her in his arms, to comfort her—
But he couldn’t. He was a trained assassin, not a smooth-talking romancer. The words wouldn’t come, and he crouched back on his heels, feeling the throbbing pain from his beating and the even sharper pain of not being able to speak.
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