by Gardner Fox
Alton Raymond only snorted. “I have half a dozen, below levels. Take your pick. I’ll have a robot escort you to my gun room. Select whatever guns you want.” He came across the room, rested a hand on Carrick’s shoulder. “I want you to enjoy yourself this next week—partner.”
The fat man laughed, triumphantly.
Carrick wasted little time.
Within the hour he and Mai were at the controls of a sleek starship fitted with hypergear drive and all the comforts that engineering genius could cram inside a saucer hull, rising off-planet. A few minutes later, when he hit the overdrive studs, Dyarnal was a tiny ball in dark space aft.
Purple splashed behind him and then the greyness of warp-space closed in around the hull. Acrux was a dozen light years distant; maybe two, three days by way of this misted universe through which he and Mai Valoris were plunging so swiftly.
He leaned back in the contour chair, stretching. It had gone better than he had expected, back in Skytowers. Alton Raymond needed him. Desperately. So desperately that he was willing to make Kael Carrick a fellow billionaire.
“I can’t believe it,” he said aloud to Mai.
She was feeding punched tapes into the tiny computer that was the warp-brain of the hyperdrive unit. She turned and looked back over her shoulder at him. “Believe what?”
“That Alton Raymond will give me all that money. I’m sure he’ll do just what I expect him to do. After I kill Ylth’yl, hell alert the authorities where to find me and send them to arrest me.”
Her elfin eyes glinted under long yellow lashes. “Knowing that, you’re still going to Acrux?”
“No, I—”
“Carrick!”
It was a whisper in the air filled with hate and triumph.
“Carrick, do you hear me? No need to answer. I know you do. And I know also that you recognize my voice. Than Lear, broken out of Dakkan planet—come hunting you!”
The voice died out. Carrick crouched frozen in his chair, staring all around him. “How? How can he talk with us?”
Mai whimpered, “Where is he?”
“Listen, Carrick. And you too, Mai. I’m going to blast you both. Oh, I won’t kill you. You’re too valuable to me, both of you—Carrick for what you have to do, Mai because she’s my way of making you do it.”
The voice went on talking, a purring whisper that spoke of a hidden space radio in the thieves’ kitchen by which Than Lear had contacted his smuggler friends, who had sent another starship to the prison planet. It took little ingenuity to figure where Carrick had gone, once off Dakkan planet.
“You wanted to clear your name, Carrick. It was that simple.”
“But out here in hyperspace?” Carrick breathed. “How could you find me here and—talk to me this way? It’s impossible!”
They could hear his laughter, thick and booming all around them in the air. “Ever hear of microwaves, Carrick? Or cyrogenic waves which are even shorter in length? This is a high-grade military secret, Carrick. Empire thinks it’s the only one who has hyper-vox, but it isn’t. Obviously, as you know, I have it. I, Than Lear…”
There was a silence. Then—
The room exploded into brilliance. Light blazed all around them with a searing fury that was a physical force on the skin. Carrick heard Mai gasp; he turned, staring with his hair standing on end.
She was white, glowing. Her flesh seemed opalescent as if a light were shining deep inside her, emitting its glow into the blazing brightness of the control room. She was frozen rigid in mid-movement. Her eyes were open, but they were blind. There was no life inside them.
Carrick rasped a curse.
The air said a single word. “Carrick!
“Are you able to talk? No, I must have been mistaken. The thalamatrode could not fail. It has never failed yet. No brain can resist it.”
“It failed this time,” Carrick said softly. His hands were moving swiftly, ripping punched tapes from the warp-computer. Gravity grippers could take over automatic controls by latching onto the graph-circuits and holding them with magnetic fields. Manual control was something else again. The gripper could not predict the movements a man might make as it could those of a machine, and was helpless to hold the adder circuits long enough to maintain control.
Carrick hit the firing studs. Below him the engines shifted smoothly as the air around him spoke again.
“Carrick! It is you, there. Not Mai, no! She is too normal for the thalamatrode to fail to hold her. But you! You’re different, Carrick. Not-man. Unhuman.”
“You foulness,” Carrick whispered.
The room laughed at him.
“The ‘trode has never failed to hold the crews of the starships I plunder. How else do you think I got away with my robberies? When the ‘trode hits them, every man, woman and child go into a state of brain shock. Alive, yes. Able to move, no. They stand and watch as my men take their cargoes. After a while the effect of the ‘trode wears off, but by that time, my men and I are far away.”
Than Lear was telling him this to gain time, Carrick thought. Time for what? To run alongside and board the starship? His body might not respond to a thalamatrode, but it would to strong hands and then to steel manacles.
He threw up the hypergear lever.
The grey mist was gone. He was in norm-space.
Few starships traveled in norm-space these days; only lumbering traders working the planets of a star system, where distance could be computed in statute miles, not light years. Than Lear was weaponed to hit a ship in hyperspace, not in norm-space. No space pirate in his right mind ever hijacked a ship between planets; system-space was too well patrolled by the Empire. In the vast reaches between stars, the odds were close to infinity to one that a raid would be detected.
The sleek little starship was fast, even in norm-space. Carrick moved the shift into full speed ahead and reset the astrodigits.
A thought nagged at the back of his mind. How had Than Lear known where to find him? Even assuming he might have guessed he would have gone to see Alton Raymond, he would have no way of knowing that Acrux was his destination—unless he had been told. The only one who could have told him was Alton Raymond.
Carrick scowled. If Than Lear and Alton Raymond were working hand in glove—ah, how many things this might explain! The fat man would have told Than Lear about the worlds of Slarrn, about his suspicions that Hannes Stryker had made Kael Carrick into something alien, inhuman.
Than Lear would know how important Kael Carrick was to anyone hoping to enter the worlds of Slarrn and make them his own. This was why he would not harm Kael Carrick; Than Lear had been promised a slice of Slarrn.
A silent partner to the fabulous Alton Raymond.
Carrick grinned coldly. It made sense.
And yet—
He had no proof. And there was no way to get that proof. Or—was there? Carrick sat hunched over, eyes reading the shifting stars on the astroscreen, picking out Mizar and Ta Tsun and beyond them, Agena. The Border worlds were clustered somewhere around Agena.
Than Lear will expect me to hit for Acrux, he thought. Losing me in hyperspace, he will shift over into norm-space and put out a probe. He will look for me along the route to Acrux.
The sensible thing to do was to avoid that hunting planet.
Carrick moved gears. Slowly the stars began to swing. Agena lifted into the center of the astro-screen. He would give himself a day, then go back into hyperspace. Than Lear would not expect him to be moving toward Agena and the Border worlds beyond; he felt reasonably confident he could lose him.
Six hours later, Mai Valoris sighed and shuddered. Carrick was at her side with a vial of vitoral, holding her neck with a hand, touching the rim of the vial to her lips. He made her sip slowly.
“I was cold,” she whimpered. “Cold, cold.”
Carrick lifted and carried her to a little cabin, putting her on the bunk, covering her with a therma-blanket. After a while she warmed and her cheeks grew flushed.
He told
her what had happened, about his suspicions of Alton Raymond and Than Lear. She considered that, golden hair spread out on the pillow.
“It may be as you say,” she said at last. “Than Lear has fantastic luck in hyperspace. Somebody must get him the flight charts of the trading ships to let him pick up so many during warp-flight. Alton Raymond could do that, easily enough.”
Carrick shook his head. “Alton Raymond and Than Lear. What a combination! And the fat man said he wasn’t interested in the profit angle of the Slarrn worlds, I thought he was a liar when he said that. A man who loves money once, loves it always, in any shape or form.”
“You’re only one man. Can you hope to beat them both?”
I am not a man, not really, he told himself. In one way, the pirate was right. I am alien. Inhuman. Something—different. Something built like an android, yet with a human brain—all that was left of the original Kael Carrick—manufactured to fight this thing called Ylth’yl.
“I can hope,” he said softly. “No more.”
They ate synthesized steak and canned greens over a metal table in a niche to one side of the control room. He told her he meant to vane down on the Border planets, to walk into the lawless outlaw towns of space, where the criminals and the degenerates sought escape from the Empire. The Border worlds were like the Mews of the inner planets, on a glorified scale. Red-line districts where anything went, where a man could hire himself any sort of pleasure or pain he wanted, if he had the price.
He could even hire a killer, a man like Felton Pratt.
“Who did the hiring? Than Lear? Or Alton Raymond?”
“Does it make a difference?”
“If Than Lear hired him, it’s pretty good proof that he and Alton Raymond are partners. Why else would someone like Than Lear hire a man to kill Hannes Stryker—unless he knew about the Slarrn worlds? The only way he could do that was through Alton Raymond, for only the fat man and Hannes Stryker knew about them.”
Mai nodded, frowned. “You aren’t positive Felton Pratt did the killing.”
“Reasonably so. I know I didn’t do it. Pratt testified he saw me with a blipper in my hand. He lied. To me—if not to a court of law—this is some sort of proof that he himself was involved.”
“Pratt could have been the lookout. Somebody else might have pressed the firing stud.”
“It isn’t likely. A professional assassin doesn’t take company along on a job. But even assuming Pratt was only a lookout, he was hired to do it. I want to know who hired him.”
He put his palms on the tabletop. “Time now to gear over into hyperspace. We’ve put enough distance between ourselves and Than Lear so that he won’t find us again.”
“You hope,” Mai muttered, shivering.
There were a dozen or more of the Border planets, little worlds swinging about star-suns in the remote reaches of the galaxy, too far away to be commercially profitable. They were livable. There was good air and sweet water on them, and their grassy stretches were green and lush. The sunlight from the double star Albireo or from Agena was strong and warming. They were earth-type planets where man felt right at home.
They had been discovered centuries before, during that first explosive rush of mankind into the stars, when explorers shot at compounded light-speeds in every direction outward from Earth. For a long time they remained empty, waiting for man to come to them. Man knew they were there, but man was not interested. There were planets just as good closer to Earth, found in clusters, some of them, made for easy colonization. The Border worlds were too far away to bother with.
As man grew wealthier with the prosperity of the star worlds, man began to prey upon himself. Killers, thieves, pirates, all found a quarry upon whom to batten. These desperate types needed a sanctuary, somewhere to which they could run and live between crimes.
The Border worlds did not care. Man was man.
These hardnose men built cities, sprawling places where they could drink and eat and make love to the women who came to the Border planets either with men or to find them. After a while, the Border worlds developed a civilization of their own. It was primitive, pagan, but it was exciting.
With the passing of time, even the criminals began to realize that there is no freedom without authority; otherwise, there is only chaos. So they passed laws of their own. They made it safe for visitors to vane down and look around, to enjoy the vice and illicit pleasures which were furnished them at a price, in perfect safety.
You bought a token from the Diktors and you wore it pinned to your clothes. With it you could go anywhere on the planet. You were forbidden as prey. Of course, if you took it off to mix in with the natives as some of them did, you forfeited its protection.
Even the toughest criminals respected the tokens. They had learned over the years that a man could die too horribly to make it worthwhile robbing from or killing a Tokener. There were too many other ways to kill and rob. Besides, the token-wearers brought hard cash to the Border worlds. They were too valuable to ill-treat.
“We’ll buy tokens,” Carrick said. Mai Valoris wondered if a token would save them from Than Lear.
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE BAZAARS of Uthoric were a crossroads between the stars.
As Mai Valoris and Kael Carrick walked the cobblestones of the centuries-old Square of Sellers, the desert wind from the west stirred their blouses, whipped sand across their boots, ruffled the heavy canvas tents before which the Yann nomads displayed their woolen stuffs. Hard by their striped booths were counters heavy with the golden cups and ewers hand-crafted by tentacled Afrids on Pollux-5, and beyond these, shallow trays heaped with great diamonds and massive emeralds mined by three-eyed Volarians.
These were the products of the civilized planets, brought here by pirate ships for sale to the highest bidder, goods that no fence could dispose of, back on the Empire worlds. A traveler to Uthoric, largest and most important of the Border planets, could buy a fortune in art forms and jewels, if he dared to risk an Empire investigation on his return home.
There was a stiff fine for buying Border.
Few men wanted any part of it. Only those collectors who hid away their purchases in strongboxes or in great vaults would take the chance. Sometimes a criminal, grown rich with successful robberies, might build a mansion on The Peak beyond the grass flats and fill it with treasures.
Mai would have lingered over a tray of rings but Carrick hurried her on. Agena was a red globe on the horizon and already the Uthorician night was closing, in, cold and clear, filled with dancing motes of snow that always vanished with the rising of the sun.
The taverns would be filling along the narrow alleys and streets that ran like a labyrinth outward from the bazaar. There would be roaring fires built in their stone hearths, chilled wine and steaming meat to fill the empty bellies, stirring music and pretty girls to dance away the hours. The Border worlds knew how to live.
Carrick and Mai Valoris had been a part of that life for three weeks. They had changed roles to that of rich man and his personal companion, rather than wife—only a madman brought his wife to the Border planets—and they wore the grey and green tokens made of coralistone and emerald that stamped them as travelers in good standing.
The lanterns above the Street of Far Stars knew the sound of their laughter, as did the cobbles of the Avenue of the Terran Kings. Tables in the Inn of the Red Tree had held their food and drink, benches in the Inn of the Thousand Gods supported them while they shouted encouragement to a Cetian girl who had come down the social ladder to the Border cities, to make her living with an unusual set of ventral muscles.
As they walked through the twisting streets, over the cobbles and the paving stones, the day grew swiftly into night. Lamps on iron hooks outside narrow wooden doors and oil torches thrust into brick cups, tossed their shadows back and forth on the walls of taverns and pleasure houses past which they moved. Uthoric was coming awake, now that Agena was sliding to the other side of the world. There was excitement in th
e air.
“Tonight, we learn about Felton Pratt,” Carrick said.
He turned to look down at Mai Valoris; he did not see a man who came from the recesses of a building archway and as suddenly drew back into its shadows. The man had a trimmed red beard tracing the outline of his jaw, and was big and heavyset in black wool shirt and twill clingpants. There was a blip-gun bolstered at his hip on a broad leather belt set with brass studs. A diamond gleamed in a tooth as he grinned widely.
When Carrick was a score of steps beyond the arch, the redbearded man began to follow him. He walked swiftly, with a deceptive grace for a man of his bulk. As he walked his fingers fumbled for the button of a communicator. Through warp-space, the microelectronic signal would begin its steady beep.
A sign swung on rusting chains above a small square and was carved in the shape of a grinning idol. The Inn of the Thousand Gods was big, as Uthorician taverns went. It was three stories high and—some men said—dropped two levels below the surface of the street. You could have as much privacy or as much company as you were willing to pay for, at the Inn of the Thousand Gods.
Carrick touched the wooden door. It swung open and a gust of hot air steamy with spilled wines and cooking foods come out to brush across them. There was something to be said for this sort of living, he told himself as his hand on her back brought Mai into the tavern before him. Food odors were always synthesized in the Empire cities. Here they were the way they had always been, before man had gone out into the stars. Carrick supposed it was the animal in him that took enjoyment from them, by means of a racial memory larded over by centuries of civilization and which perhaps could never be wholly eradicated.
The man called Noor Kama was tall and lean. He slipped between the tables at sight of the man and woman standing in the carved oak doorway of his inn, bowing slightly and smiling. Noor Kama was a rich man. He owned the Inn of the Thousand Gods as his father and his father’s father had owned it before him. Gossip said his great-grandfather had won it in a poker game that had lasted two weeks.