by Don Wilcox
Gret forgot about his homesickness. Here was a challenge to him to be useful. To these little people with their intricate and complicated patterns of life, a favor from him might make all the difference.
“If I can only find Mox-O-Mox, the rascal, I will force him to return home and face the Mogo law.”
This declaration of intentions left the three earth people silent and bewildered, no doubt wondering whether Mogo justice could possibly reach out this far through space.
“Do you wish to take your box of food and supplies along?” Paul asked.
“It may be left for the friendly wing-men to feed upon.”
“They’ll have food for many years to come,” said Paul. “If you leave on this errand, Gret, will you be returning to us?”
“For you and Katherine I would like to return. However, as the Mogo saying goes, ‘there are always new landings.’ ”
The younger man with the girl now spoke up to voice a purpose of his own.
“We may see you in Mercury soon, Gret-O-Gret. As soon as they get through questioning Paul at Banrab, I have a hunch my flivver will streak out to see what the score is with this fellow, Mox.”
“Do you say they are to question Paul at Banrab?” Gret asked.
“It’s on the docket,” said George.
“They’ve got to convince themselves that Paul didn’t start all this mischief himself.”
Gret took time to absorb this pertinent detail. Then he said confidently. “We shall all meet again soon,” and went on to his space boat alone.
The Banrab camp, meanwhile, had turned into a three-way argument. As soon as George landed, he and Anna and Paul Keller met Mr. Waterfield. The jamboree had become too much for the billionaire and he had walked out for a breath of something more refreshing than hot air.
“The captain wants to start right back to Venus for another load,” Waterfield explained. “But Judge Lagnese declares we should agree on some rules first. After all, the Venus settlers will be panicky and they may pour back here by the thousands if we let them. The ruined earth will look safer to them than Venus after what has happened on Mercury.”
Waterfield went on to say that he thought the judge and the captain could work out their differences if it wasn’t for Garritt Glasgow.
“That little bird-faced dictator is throwing monkey-wrenches in everyone else’s machinery, and he’s grabbing more power for himself every minute. He has some phobia about capturing and trying Paul Keller.”
“I am Paul Keller,” Paul said. “Tell him I’ve already been captured.”
Waterfield took the news with equanimity, as if he had guessed Keller’s identity already. “The Venus Express was about to start out after you. When I walked out, Glasgow was putting the pressure on the captain.”
“How soon can I have my trial?” Paul asked.
Mr. Waterfield regarded him in the light of his curious question. George was convinced that the explorer was sincere.
“I’m sorry this trial has to happen,” Waterfield said. “I know how highly you were regarded when you left on your expedition. It seems cruel of us to question your motives. But there are certain pertinent facts that have thrown you in a very bad light.”
Paul Keller nodded. “I want to hear about those facts.”
They walked up the path toward the cliff road. Mr. Waterfield hinted that there might be a slight delay in the trial. When Paul probed for the reason, Waterfield came back to Garritt Glasgow.
“That’s another reason he was putting the pressure on the captain to lend him the Venus Express. He has learned that some wingmen he dispatched from Venus have thus far failed to put an end to the giant. He insists that the giant should be killed before your trial begins.”
“Why?” Paul asked.
“There’s just the possibility that the jury might feel freer to use its own judgment if they aren’t thinking that a Mogo monster might walk in on them while they’re deliberating.”
George watched Paul Keller take all of this with no tell-tale expression to reveal his emotions. If he is innocent, George thought, he must be seething with quiet rage.
The entrance of the main cave had been taken over by the self-appointed councilors. George and Anna wondered whether they, as members of the original governing committee, would have a voice. Apparently not. It was all Glasgow and the judge and the captain could do to hear their own voices. Others in the circle had been reduced to the status of interested listeners. At the moment, Glasgow was beating his fists in the air, demanding that the captain lend him the Venus Express. One good atom bomb for the giant would turn the trick.
“Where are you going to get your atom bomb?” someone asked.
All such questions found the little bird-faced dynamo ready with some sort of answer. Poppendorf stood near him, his huge arms folded and his high shoulders and hard face looming as a threat to any and all who might think to disagree with his master.
“You did bring those boxes of munitions, didn’t you, Poppendorf?”
“Sure, they’re here. They’re being guarded, like you said.”
“Then there’s still time before dark. All I ask of you, captain, is that you—”
Glasgow’s jaw dropped. His nervous eyes went wide, then narrowed. He was looking at Paul Keller, who had just walked up unnoticed, in the company of George and Anna. Keller, tall, square shouldered, clear-eyed, the lines of his face deepened by tragedy.
To face the leader of the Mogo expedition again, in the presence of people who had come to believe that leader a deadly destroyer of planets, called for a sort of stage presence. Glasgow rose to the occasion. If he was shaking in his boots or feeling any pinch of conscience, he didn’t show it. He made a brisk gesture.
“This is Paul Keller, gentlemen. The man we’ve been waiting for. Porters, take him back in that corner of the cliff and tie him.”
“All in the day’s work, eh, Glasgow?” Paul said.
“You’ll have your chance to talk later, Keller,” the little man snapped.
The porters moved to obey. Paul Keller’s eyes searched the faces of the group, as if trying to read the verdict in advance of the trial. He made no move to resist as they led him away. Katherine was standing back in the shadows of the cave, and George thought that she communicated one of her faint, ironical smiles to him.
“I’d advise you not to try anything fancy,” Glasgow called after him, taunting. “The edge of the cliff isn’t too safe . . . Now, gentlemen, as I was saying—”
Judge Lagnese broke in. “Let’s get this trial over with. You’re holding up the whole program. We’re not doing things legally. We should elect officers and proceed to—”
“I’m ready to proceed with the trial as soon as we’ve executed the giant. You agreed, Judge, that the committee would stand back of that action. Now, captain,—the keys to your ship, if you—please!”
Glasgow gulped the last word. His eyes flashed skyward. In the northwest a massive cloud appeared. No, not a cloud. A Mogo space boat. Thirteen miles of space boat.
Everyone saw it. If any persons were sleeping in the caves, or eating, or fixing their living quarters, or assembling power plants, they all came out on the run a moment after the boat hove in sight. People didn’t shout and gasp and squeal like that unless there was something worth seeing.
Somehow the sight didn’t terrorize, at first, so much as it hypnotized. The unbelievable was before their eyes, a leviathan of space travel. It was moving slowly, carefully, into their valley.
“Gret-O-Gret—just as I thought,” Glasgow said, biting his lips bitterly. There was an ugly snarl in his voice. “He’s here to threaten us. Now—do you see what I mean?”
The whole population of Banrab saw and understood, for they were all out in full force, clustered and crowded on the narrow cliff road. With such a space ship to gaze at, no one could be expected to know how a certain tragic accident occurred.
No one could be expected to know just how it happened that Judge L
agnese fell over the edge of the cliff at this particular moment.
Everyone heard the judge cry out as he fell. The cry sounded unnatural because he had many feet to fall and he kept falling faster until he crushed against the rocks.
George and the others, who reached him first, would always remember that his face, still recognizable, was no longer fiery red, but a death mask of white. But there was rich red on his moustache and goatee.
CHAPTER XXIX
“It was deliberate murder,” Katherine Keller declared. “How could it be anything else?”
“Who would have done it?” Paul asked. “It couldn’t have been Glasgow. He was over at the other side of the crowd. Do you think one of the porters—”
“Of course. You should know that, Paul. They’re all hired thugs.”
“I had begun to suspect it,” Paul said.
“You’re so slow-witted no wonder they’ve tied you into knots. Well, what are we going to do now? Languish behind these bars until they get ready to try us?”
A small jail had been made of one of the alcoves of the main cave. There was room enough for the two Kellers to sit comfortably on the leather cushions that Mamma Mountain had brought them, though not room to stand. The air from the cool rocks was sweet smelling, Paul thought. He also took some pleasure in watching the traffic that passed on the other side of his bars.
The large cavern had been strung with lights, none too bright against the dark ceiling of rock. Energetic young pioneers had outdone themselves to sweep up the buckets of soil and dead leaves that had accumulated along the cavern floors.
The inner spaces had been divided into “apartments” marked off by chalk lines on the floor and sometimes walled with hanging sheets or curtains. At night the dull gray ghosts that Paul could see, looking as far as possible into the cavern, became brilliant sheets of white—the sharply defined walls of Garritt Glasgow’s sanctum. The little man’s shadow would show as a black silhouette, leaping about capriciously as he moved around in his room. Paul was fascinated by the caricatures which his bird-like face formed.
“They had no right to lock you up in here, Katherine,” Paul said. “They’re not going to bring any charge against you.”
“I asked to be locked up,” Katherine said.
“Why?”
“I wanted to talk with you, for one thing. Then, you know—I’m more comfortable here. Otherwise, those porters would be watching me like a hawk for fear I’d pull some trick to help you escape.”
Paul shook his head. He was determined on that point. Nothing could make him walk out on this deal, he believed. He was here. He intended to stay here and clear up his record. Let them hold a trial as soon as possible.
“I’d have everything to lose by trying to escape. It would be just the evidence Glasgow would want.”
“He’s already using Gret-O-Gret against you.”
“No! How!”
“He’s saying that Gret came to intimidate the jurors, and that he’ll start blowing up things, Mogo fashion, if they declare you guilty.”
Paul wondered. Just what would Gret do under such conditions? Paul tried to look out the door of the cave. Two uniformed porters stood, dark shadows against the starry blue sky. The porters had become guards, for all practical purposes, serving in shifts at the cavern entrance. Paul had observed that they kept Glasgow informed on all comings and goings that might have any significance.
Mama Mountain came to the bars with some steaming coffee and a plate of sandwiches, Papa at her heels. He had come along to make fun of her, he said. He wanted to see her put the plate of sandwiches through the bars without spilling anything. As it turned out the laugh was on Papa. The bars ran horizontally instead of vertically.
“Where Papa went to school the bars ran up and down,” said Mamma with a sly wink at Paul.
“Until that day when Mamma came along and leaned against them,” said Papa.
“That was how I graduated.”
Mamma Mountain cast an eye about to be sure she wasn’t being observed. Then she spoke seriously.
“Mr. Keller, I know you’re in a heap of trouble, and I want to tell you I’m sorry.”
“Thank you, Mamma Mountain.”
“You’re a lucky man, to have a wife that sticks by you, whether you’re guilty or innocent.”
“He’s entirely innocent, Mamma,” Katherine said. “You would be surprised if you knew what dastardly crimes someone in this cave has gotten away with. I won’t tell you because you might not believe me. But this whole rotten deal is a trick cooked up by someone who saw his chance to murder his way to power.”
Mamma Mountain’s eyes were large with sympathy. She was bewildered by the bigness of things she didn’t understand.
“I guess I better not start asking questions,” she said. “First thing you know, they’d have me back of the bars—and then, who’d bring you coffee?”
“I’d do it, Mamma,” said Papa Mouse brightly. “I could always climb through the bars.”
Mamma spoke guardedly again. “Everybody wonders who they’ll get to be judge for your trial, now that Judge Lagnese is gone. That was an awful sorry thing to happen, Mr. Keller. Judge Lagnese was a fine man. I just don’t see how a man as active and alert as he was could have stepped off that cliff accidentally. Do you know what think, Mr. Keller?”
“I can guess.”
“M-m-m. Yessir, that’s what I think. And a lot of other folks think the same thing. . . But I didn’t say it, did I?”
“You’d better run along,” Katherine suggested, “before you do get into trouble.”
“Right away. Only—ah—is Big Boy Hurley one of your friends?”
“Why do you ask?” said Paul.
“If he is, you’d better warn him to watch the cliff. He could be next, you know. Maybe you didn’t see how his hand slipped the other day and he gave Glasgow a popper on the cheek.”
They talked a moment about George and Anna and their mysterious association with Glasgow.
When Mamma Mountain and Papa Mouse had gone, Paul continued to ponder over George Hurley. His relationship to Glasgow had troubled Paul from the start, chiefly because he liked George’s looks and hated to see him tied up with bad company. But beyond that, there had been a puzzling something. George and Anna had both revealed, here and there, bits of inside knowledge. As if they had been inside Gret-O-Gret’s space boat. As if they knew something of its shelves and charts. As if they had been so thoroughly imbued with Glasgow’s version of the Mogo tragedy from the start that they couldn’t eradicate it from their minds.
Gradually, however, the two young folks had turned their ears to Paul’s own version, and their suspicions had cooled, and they had become somewhat friendly.
Officially, George Hurley had fulfilled his assignment, belatedly, for Garritt Glasgow. He had brought back the man he had been ordered to get. He had succeeded, of course, because Paul had come willingly. Nevertheless, there was a chance that this success would restore George to the good graces of the wiry little dictator.
Or would that slap prevent a reconciliation? There must have been something deep back of that.
“It happened on impulse,” Katherine said. “Anyone could see that he was terribly embarrassed because he couldn’t explain it. And strangely, Glasgow passed over it.”
“Then it may have been forgotten . . .”
“I heard one sharp reference to it,” Katherine said. “Someone mentioned that if a man could slap Glasgow without meaning to, he could also push Judge Lagnese off the cliff without meaning to.”
“Oh-oh. We’ll hear more of that. S-s-sh. Someone’s coming up the path.” Poppendorf was the first to appear as a black, high-shouldered shadow beyond the entrance. Glasgow’s voice could be heard. Anna and George and the two porters were also in the party. Glasgow was doing most of the talking. He was still angry at the captain of the Venus Express, though the ship was now thousands of miles away. Glasgow’s remarks were little more than childish
grumblings because the captain had not yielded to some of his whims. But the captain had been staunch in his conviction that there would be many more people waiting at the Venus capital to escape to the earth at first opportunity. In fact, he envisaged a panic unlike anything the planet had ever seen.
Sticking by his guns, the captain had rounded up his crew and taken off. He had no passengers other than a corpse. A brief service had been held for Judge Lagnese, and the body had then been placed aboard the Venus Express to be taken back for burial.
At the cavern entrance the party stopped while Glasgow checked a few matters with his guards.
“As long as that giant is parked outside our doorway, we don’t have no trouble making people take orders,” one of the guards reported. “Frankly, boss, we’re scared out of our pants. Frankly, boss—I mean, Mr. Glasgow—”
“That’s better. Mind your manners.”
“Yes, Mr. Glasgow. Did the Venus Express get off all right?”
Paul listened with extreme distaste. Glasgow was building up his personal power with every contact. He might have been a prince or a king condescending to associate with the common people. However, he was obviously uneasy about Gret-O-Gret. He was sounding out his guards as to their own state of nerves, sifting for the best answers to their questions before he came on into the cave. There would be plenty of questions for him when he got to the big open chamber that was to serve as an assembly room. The whole new group of Americans from Venus who had arrived not many hours before, so full of noise and enthusiasm, had been frightened into near paralysis.
Did the giant know there was a camp of people here at Banrab? Yes, Glasgow had already admitted this to them. The big ship hadn’t come here by accident. Either it had followed George Hurley’s coppery flivver or it had come by directions which Paul Keller had furnished. Come what might, the giant had settled down on their doorstep, so to speak, and was probably having his night’s sleep somewhere within his thirteen mile ship, waiting for morning. No one had seen him leave the ship, though this meant little, since the curve of the valley obscured half of it from view. Neither had anyone seen any lights.