by Don Wilcox
“Hello, Mr. Bracket,” the Ambassador greeted him in passing.
The young man returned a saccharin smile. “How do you do, Mr. Ambassador.”
Hefty saw that the Ambassador didn’t intend to stop and talk. The Fiddle brothers, one of the mechanics, and Thelma all turned as if expecting this to be an official visit. When the Ambassador merely greeted them and continued on his way, were they disappointed, Hefty wondered, or relieved?
Jake Fiddle, his eyes glinting mischievously, called out, “Say, Mr. Ambassador, didja ever git those three devilish wingmen that did the shooting?”
The Ambassador stopped and turned and Hefty followed him as he sauntered toward them.
“It is not easy to apprehend mischief makers when they have wings, Mr. Fiddle,” he said politely. “But I shall know their faces if I see them again. Would you?”
They looked at each other, each waiting for the other to reply. Thelma said, “My sister Selma says she would know them.”
“Good. How is she feeling, by the way?”
Hefty decided that the Ambassador was being as friendly as an important man could possibly be. But suspicious eyes were watching him counteracting his efforts to be congenial. Then he threw out a sharp challenge.
“We haven’t found the wingmen but we discovered their guns. American made pistols. A recent patent—”
Bull Fiddle broke in with, “You don’t say, Mr. Ambassador. Some of your folks must be in cahoots with em.”
“We keep a careful record of all the firearms in this colony. Have you checked your own supply?”
The Fiddle brothers looked at each other and Jake shrugged. No answer. The Ambassador’s nerves were tense, Hefty knew, as he studied one after another of them, turning at last to stare at Dick Bracket. Dick was still smiling.
“It will be necessary,” said the Ambassador coldly, “for me to send a squad of guards to check every item of your equipment against the captain’s inventory.”
Then the ambassador and Hefty resumed their walk. The chills were playing through Hefty’s spine. It was great stuff to be seen hobnobbing with the Ambassador, all right—or was it? Mentally he was doubling his fists, knowing that sooner or later he would pay for this moment with a few left hooks to someone’s jaw. The Ambassador was speaking to him again.
“You’ve known Stupe Smith a long time, haven’t you?”
“I been his sidekick for the last half dozen years.”
“You think a lot of him?”
“Greatest guy in the world.”
“What about Captain Meetz? Have he and Smith been friends long?”
Hefty shook his head. “They just got acquainted when we took off for Venus.”
After a little silence the conversation drifted in other directions and all the while Hefty did his best to keep pace with the long legged Ambassador. When they parted at the entrance of the hotel, the Ambassador offered his hand.
“Keep an ear to the ground, Mr. Winkle. I am going to trust you to bring me any important news you hear. You’ll do that, won’t you Mr. Winkle?”
The handshake was solid. “Just call me Hefty.”
CHAPTER XIV
So you tink you keep der ear to der ground?” said Gypsy Brown to Hefty that night as they sat at a card table in one corner of the lobby. “Ledt me tell you, dot’s exactly vot I been doing. Me, I got two ears to der ground, dot’s vy my head iss in such a pain.”
They had forgotten the card game before the first hands were dealt. Hefty simply had to talk with someone he could trust, and Gypsy Brown was the one who could understand.
“You know vot I tink?” she said, tapping him on the back of the hand, “I tink effryvun in der whole lot has come here mit a different idea. You take der doctor.”
“Jabetta? What about him?” Hefty said.
All der time he writes der notes. You vatch and see.”
“Every doctor writes notes, Gypsy. Prescriptions and records and things. They can’t carry it all in their heads.”
“You vatch and see,” Gypsy repeated, her chain earrings clinking as she nodded her head seriously. “You vatch and see . . . And den, dot Dick Bracket.”
“What about him?”
“He’s not no good.”
“How do you know?”
They looked around to be sure Dick wasn’t spying on them. He had a way of edging in on conversations unexpectedly. While they were discussing his arsenal experience, Velma joined them.
“The last time I saw Dick,” Velma said, “was about an hour ago. Just as I was leaving Selma’s room, he was coming from the captain’s door. He was carrying a shoe box, and just for a joke I ran up and said, ‘Let’s see your new shoes,’ and I lifted the lid and peeked before he stopped me. What do you suppose?”
“A pistol?” said Hefty.
“Shoes?” said Gypsy.
“You’re both wrong. Maps, or some kind of charts. I couldn’t tell, for sure.”
“He and der captain are thick like glue,” said Gypsy. “Vare you tink you’re goin, Hefty? Der game aindt efen begun.”
“No game tonight,” said Hefty, putting on his coat. “It’s high time for me to put the other ear to the ground.” He strode away abruptly, and Gypsy looked after him, saying, “Now vot iss biting him?”
In the deep shadows on the farther side of the Wellington spaceship one of the planes taxied to a stop and idled gently. Thelma was at the controls. She looked down into the darkness, trying to make out the forms of Dick Bracket and the Fiddle brothers. They were still carrying on their conference with the spaceport guards. She had just returned from a ten minute warm-up flight over the capital. The plane was loaded with provisions for establishing a camp. But as yet, Thelma believed, no flight had been authorized.
“If they think they’re going to trick me into an unauthorized flight, they’re mistaken,” she said to herself.
Jake Fiddle came into the plane, tense with excitement.
“All set for flight, Babe? We’re gonna pull a fast take-off in about a minute.”
“Are we?” Thelma said skeptically. “What’s the score?”
“They’re stalling us. The Ambassador has given them an order to look over our goods.”
“Well,” said Thelma. “Why not? Have we got anything to hide?”
“Dick Bracket thinks it’s none of their business. The captain has given him the green light, he says.”
Thelma frowned. She reached to switch off the motors, but Jake caught her hand.
“Now, Babe, just because you don’t like Dick Bracket, are you gonna be nasty? I’ll be goin’ with you on this jaunt—Bull and I. We’ll hit the Southeast Ocean beach by dawn, and unload our goods, and you and Dick can be back by early afternoon. . . How about it?”
“I’ll phone the Ambassador,” said Thelma, reaching for the radiotelephone. “If he tells me it’s okay—”
“Don’t be that way, Babe.” Jake caught her arm, tightened his grip on her hand and tried to draw her into an embrace.
The door swung open at that moment, and two uniformed guards entered the plane. Thelma turned to stare at them, and she was infuriated at their intrusion.
“What are you busting in here for? What business have you got—”
The guards tried to protest that orders were orders. This was their job. The Ambassador had given them papers—
Dick Bracket and Bull Fiddle followed them in and Dick flashed a pistol.
“Get out!” Dick snapped. “Get out quick. We’re taking off now and we don’t need any surplus baggage.”
The guards were taken by surprise. This smooth tongued boy had been trying to outtalk them for the past ten minutes, but he had been polite enough about it. Now they saw in his eyes the fanatical light of a man who would shoot first and ask questions afterward.
They moved toward the door. At first Thelma thought that they were going to knuckle down and take orders like a pair of slaves. But suddenly both of them whirled, reaching for their guns.
/> Thelma stifled a scream. It all happened in a split second. Two quick flashes. Dick’s automatic pistol was almost silent. Just—pnk-pnk!—and the two guards sagged and fell. One of them groaned, clutching at his belly. The other simply sank, and his elbow bumped the floor and his hand stuck up limply like a fan over his face.
“Let me out of here,” Thelma said under her breath. The Fiddle brothers were staring at the fallen guards, and Jake didn’t notice her as she brushed past him. But Dick Bracket blocked her path. His blazing black eyes reminded her of pictures of the devil. The devil in his youth; she thought, getting his first taste of violence. Or was this his first?
Without a word, with only a slight flourish of the pistol, he stopped her.
The Fiddle brothers began to grumble. This was no good. This would cook their goose. Dick would never get by with this kind of doings.
“We’re all in this,” Dick said coldly. “Drag them back in the aisle. Here, get some newspapers under them.”
The Fiddle brothers obeyed like a pair of trained seals.
“Now, Miss Stevens, back to the controls, if you please.”
Thelma was chilled to the fingertips. No use trying to defy this young desperado. He would commit murder at the drop of a hat. She backed away slowly, watching him.
“We won’t get away with this, Dick,” she said. The word we was her strategy. Her wits were whirling. “Dick, didn’t you know—” she pointed to the window.
“What are you talking about?”
“There’s someone out there. They saw you do it. They saw the whole thing. They couldn’t hear what we were saying. They’ll pin you for this—”
“Who was out there?”
“I couldn’t tell.” It was working, she thought. He was going to fall for it. “All I could see was a shadowy form. Look, Dick, you’d better do your stuff before he gets away.”
Dick’s sharp black eyes flashed toward the window. She talked fast now, and the Fiddle brothers were lapping it up. They had been too stunned to think.
“We can get by with this, Dick. We can dump these two guards on top of a mountain. The wingmen will get the blame. Everybody’s looking for wingmen attacks after what happened the other night. But we’ll get by—if you snag that witness before he gets away. Quick, pal—”
“All right, throw a light,” Dick said. “You, Jake—” The burly fellow moved to the door, making ready with a pistol. Thelma seated herself at the controls and began flashing the spotlight around. Dick, at her elbow, was disconcerted. Bull Fiddle had followed his brother out. If they were on their wits, this was their chance, Thelma thought. They would race off and report. They would save their hides on this deal. But Dick must have foreseen the danger of losing them.
“Keep the spotlight on them,” he said. “Back and forth from them . . . Now, sweep around that way. There’s where he’d be hiding—oh-oh—there he is!”
There someone was—an eavesdropper, lurking at the farther edge of a baggage cart. Thelma’s heart almost stopped. It had been farthest from her thoughts that there would be someone—
“Keep the light on him,” Dick ordered. “That’s good. They’re on him now. A little guy in a brown coat and no hat—why, it’s Hefty Winkle. Him. So. We’ll take care of him, all right.”
Thelma thought she would faint. There he was, little Hefty with his comical face. His eyes were batting against the spotlight. Those two big lugs had him, all right. He wasn’t putting up much of a scrap, and he didn’t look half as scared as Thelma thought he should look. Did he know were a couple of murdered guards aboard?
“All right, Hefty, you’re our prisoner,” Dick Bracket snapped. “Get aboard. We’re taking off on a secret mission, and we need your company. All set, Miss Stevens?”
“All set,” said Thelma weakly. The motors accelerated, the plane shot swiftly across the open field and took off into the night.
CHAPTER XV
Stupe looked up through the fog as he swam. It was hard to tell how high overhead the plane was flying. The roar of the motors was already diminishing, rolling away softly into the distance.
“This would be a fine morning for a crash,” he thought. There was no use for him to give way to the panic that wanted to grip him. For the present, there was only one thing for him to do. He must get back to land as quick as possible. He must ascend to a lookout point. Perhaps he could get a fire started. Then if the fog cleared, so that they could land, there was just a chance—
“Slim chance!” he muttered pessimistically, remembering that he had been hiking for the past two days. If he had only brought a little two-way radio!
If there was only some way of getting back, or signaling—
A thousand ifs flooded his mind. But one hope was paramount—that the plane would find a safe landing in spite of this fog.
These realities came upon him so swiftly that his previous fantasies were swept away. Had he actually seen a figure of a rider in the mists? Or had that object been no more than a phantom, a thing of his imagination?
He could see the trail of waves in the still waters for a little distance back of him, and as he drew the small raft around, he believed he was returning to the shore from which he had come.
The night’s flight from the spaceport across the narrow continent to the Southeast Ocean had been a difficult one. For Hefty Winkle, it was like the feeling he used to have just before he went into the ring with a prize fighter twice his size. Only worse. The tension had continued all night.
Dick Bracket had blundered. Everyone on board knew that. But he seemed to know what he was doing and he insisted that the captain’s authority was back of him.
“I want to talk with those Fiddle brothers in private,” he had said, soon after they had passed over the Venusian capital. However, during this private conference he had made it impossible for Hefty to talk with Thelma.
“If I could only radio back to the Ambassador before we get out of range,” Hefty had thought. “There will be the devil to pay trying to square things.” And to think the Ambassador had taken him into confidence!
The Fiddle brothers were coming to some decision, nodding their heads in agreement with Dick. Then Hefty overheard one of them say, “You’re sure that the captain planned it this way? Don’t we get contracts or somethin’?”
Dick drew some papers from his pocket. Jake and Bull studied them with blank expressions and handed them back.
“We’d better get rid of these corpses,” said Jake.
As they flew over the Divide, they unceremoniously pushed the bodies out the door. That was that. Hefty watched Dick as he wiped his hands on his handkerchief.
“I’ll have a few words with you and Miss Stevens,” Dick said.
During their conference, which lasted the rest of the night, Hefty did his best to gauge Thelma’s reactions. It wasn’t easy to figure out a girl like that. She and her sister had been born with poker faces, he decided.
At first Hefty had believed her to be in cahoots with Dick. That spotlight had been his own undoing. And yet her manner didn’t betray any respect for Dick Bracket’s plans.
“Here is the proposition,” Dick said. “You can take it or leave it. I’ll give it to you straight from the shoulder just as Captain Meetz told it to me.”
He unfolded a map of the continent. Hefty recognized the outline of the Southeast Ocean with the fingers of land extending into it and the profile of a man’s shoulder and head farther to the east. Unlike any map Hefty had seen before, this one was marked with products—minerals, forests, oil lands and other natural resources.
“The Wellington expedition has come,” Dick explained with an air of ownership, “to establish a chain of outposts. Within a few years this land will be the Wellington empire.”
Thelma spoke up rapidly. “What makes Wellington think he can get away with anything like that?”
“Wellington is willing to take a few risks.” The young desperado smiled suavely. “He has hand-picked his key men. We
don’t mind running a few risks.”
Hefty was looking dizzily through the map, through the fore of the plane, through the planet itself, as he tried to tie this explanation to the personality of Wellington. What about the entertainments for millionaires? What about the beautiful girl on the white horse?
“I don’t get it,” Hefty said. “Stupe has been sent here for the express purpose of finding the girl that Mr. Vest talked about—”
“Bunkum!”
“Huh?”
“Get wise, Sonny Boy. That talk was just a screen.” Dick gave Hefty a patronizing pat on the head. “There was no such thing as a beautiful girl riding through the sea!”
Hefty angered.
“But Stupe heard Mr. Vest say—”
“Yes, Vest evidently believed it. It was a convenience to Wellington that a nut like Vest happened along. Very convenient indeed.”
Hefty’s nerves were suddenly tight with ill-repressed fury. “But it can’t be just a gag. Wellington offered Stupe a cool million.”
Dick laughed lightly. “A provisional offer. If he finds the girl. But he won’t. I heard Wellington laughing about that afterward. ‘They call him Stupe Smith,’ Wellington told us. ‘Stupe for Stupendous. When he gets back from this little clambake it will be Stupe for Stupid.’ Now, Hefty,” Dick Bracket was smiling like a salesman who was about to sign up a stubborn customer, “when the Wellington empire is established there will be huge profits for those who get in on the ground floor. Would you like to see a copy of the agreement?”
Before Hefty could reply, Thelma said, “All right, all right, you and all your big shot friends are going to dish out a round of fortunes on a silver platter. Is that the idea?”
“If you see fit to cooperate in every detail,” said Dick, tossing his head back and narrowing his eyes at her.
“I never decide about matters like this without talking to my sisters,” said Thelma, “but I’ll admit it looks good. Why don’t you get smart and rope the Ambassador in on the same deal?”
Dick evaded this question. It was evident that the personal flare-up between him and Ambassador Jewell would not be easily forgotten.