by Gardner Fox
“My home is your home,” he said. “Your wishes are my wishes.” His eyes touched Mai Valoris and she shivered as she always did when Noor Kama looked at her. If it were not for the token you wear, those black eyes said to her, I would put you to work for me, golden woman. Invariably, after Noor Kama looked her way, Mai touched the token, to make sure it was still fastened to her grey wool blouse.
“The usual,” Carrick said.
They were escorted to a clean table and a girl came running to take their orders. From the drapes across the room, out into the cleared space between the tables, came the Cetian woman, petite and beautiful even though the lines on her face showed age. She was a graceful dancer and she knew the ages-old ritualistic steps of the Paean to Layamar.
Before she was done, Noor Kama was sitting beside Carrick. In an undertone, the lean man murmured, “You have told me you want to hire an assassin.”
“Not just any assassin. Felton Pratt.”
“Murder is an art, true, and—”
“—and that is why I want a top artist. Felton Pratt killed Hannes Stryker, a deed that has already made him famous. I want—”
Noor Kama interrupted. “Kael Carrick blipped Stryker. The stars know—”
“Oh, come. You and I realize Carrick had nothing to do with it, no matter what the law courts said. Felton Pratt did the job. And expertly, too. It’s why I want to hire him to do away with my business associate.”
Carrick took a sip of the red flarine. “I don’t want slipups. I don’t care who gets blamed for the deed—myself excluded, naturally. I just want it done—in such a way and at such a time that I will have an ironclad alibi.”
Noor Kama spread his hands. “Felton Pratt—I have been told—is dead. He was killed on Hilnoris some months ago.”
Carrick shrugged, with a look that indicated disbelief.
Noor Kama said casually, “To convince you I speak the truth, let me tell you that Felton Pratt was killed because he is the murderer of Hannes Stryker. Or at least, this what rumor says. He got too big for his clingpants and—had to be removed.”
“Blackmail,” Carrick said, and nodded.
The lean man pursed his lips. “It could be that, yes.”
“Oh, all right. If I can’t have Felton Pratt, I can’t.” Carrick sounded petulant, His eyes touched the Cetian woman whose veils lay about her bare feet on the floor. He pretended an interest in her danse du ventre that he did not feel. Beside him, Noor Kama shifted uneasily.
“There are other men available here on Uthoric. Men whose ability I will myself guarantee.”
“I’ll think about it,” Carrick said coolly.
He did not want an assassin; he did want information about Felton Pratt. The criminal underground which ran from the Border planets outward across the civilized worlds had learned the reason why Felton Pratt had been destroyed. Noor Kama, who acted as contact man for killers and robbers hired here on Uthoric for jobs on the commercial planets, knew why he had been blipped. Now Kael Carrick knew why, too. He felt the warm glow of satisfaction in his veins.
There was nothing to keep him on Uthoric. Tonight he would lift-off toward Leonidar, where Hannes Stryker had maintained his laboratories. But not yet. He did not want to arouse Noor Kama’s suspicions.
He applauded the Cetian woman and his gesturing hand brought her, smiling and swaying gracefully, to his table. Her wide violet eyes flickered toward Mai Valoris; Carrick was almost positive she shrugged.
When she was seated, gracefully folding her wrapper about her body, Carrick called the waiter. The Cetian woman ordered flarine and waited, hands clasped, pale forearms stretched out on the table. It amused Carrick to see the way in which she and Mai studied one another with sidewise glances. Not jealously. More as possible rivals or as competitors for his affections.
He said, “My companion and I are having a little party later in our hotel suite. We thought you might like to attend.” Beside him, Mai started and checked a glare in his direction. Recovering, she nodded and smiled faintly. The Cetian woman looked at her and then back at Carrick before she inclined her head.
“I shall be delighted,” she stated in her singsong voice. “Though my services come rather high. I dance and play upon many instruments and have other talents which you may enjoy. What time is the party?”
“An hour from now. This will give you a chance to freshen up and change your clothes. What is your fee?”
When the woman told him, Carrick counted out a number of gold credicoins. “Half now, half later in our suite. Is this satisfactory?”
“It is most generous,” she murmured.
Noor Kama was in the shadows of a doorway, looking their way. Carrick felt positive he had seen him push coins at the Cetian woman. He would be anxious to question her, to learn why Carrick had paid her for what. With a hand, he dismissed the dancer and watched her walk away.
In his ear, Mai hissed, “This is the first news I have had that you plan a party. If you—”
“Easy, easy. Use your wits. This gives us a chance to leave shortly. The woman will tell Noor Kama that we’re going to meet her in our suite. Instead, we’ll be at the spaceport lifting off-planet.”
“You’ve learned what you came to discover?”
He let his head bow forward.
A while longer Carrick waited, listening to a string quartet from the Yann islands. Then he rose and turned to Mai with a hand at her elbow, guiding her between the tables to the counter where his bill was waiting. He paid, jested a moment with the pretty cashier, then followed Mai Valoris out into the Uthorician night.
Overhead two moons went whirling past, revolving about one another. It was a splendid spectacle; they stood a moment in the light of the wall torches, admiring it. Carrick was also studying the length of narrow alleyway and the side door of the Inn of the Thousand Gods. No one came out of it. Perhaps Noor Kama believed the story the Cetian woman told him, perhaps not; Carrick decided to watch his back trail on the way to the spaceport, to make sure.
They started off at a fast pace, as if anxious to get to their hotel suite. Carrick walked with an arm about the girl, playing out their part of lovers dreaming of a rendezvous. Where the alleyway met the broad Boulevard of Betelgeuse, he bent to kiss her ear; his eyes swept the alley behind them.
A shadow moved sideways against the wall and Carrick felt his heartbeat increase its pace. Noor Kama had sent a man after him. If he continued on his way for another five minutes, by the time the spy could get back to Noor Kama and tell him Carrick was heading toward the spaceport, he and Mai would be safely inside Alton Raymond’s starship.
They walked on. From a sidestreet two men appeared, turning to follow after them. Up ahead two more men were leaning against a building wall, staring skyward at the twin moons which the people of Uthoric called The Dancers. Carrick felt his skin crawl. This was not the work of Noor Kama, of that he was positive.
Five men in the night, waiting for Kael Carrick and Mai Valoris. They smelled of inescapable trap. Ah, but—whose hand had set it?
“Show no surprise,” he muttered at Mai.
“What’s wrong?” she asked quickly.
“Trouble. Bad trouble, unless I misread the signs. Let me handle it. You do what I say—no less, no more.”
The three men behind them had joined forces. They came on abreast of one another, plugging the alleyway against retreat. The two men before them moved away from the building wall, directly into their path.
Carrick studied the upturned elfin face of Mai Valoris in the crimson torchlight. He felt a tenderness toward this golden woman staring up at him in despair at the fate which had brought them into danger. A kindred terror lay deep in himself, lest she be hurt. This is the way a man would feel, and he was glad Hannes Stryker had left him this ability to know love and fear because of a woman.
His hand went to her shoulder. He caressed her for a moment, then his fingers tightened and turned her. “Run,” he growled, and pushed her forward and to one side.
/>
In the same motion he was lifting off his feet, turning his body. He drove into the two men before him at knee height. His heavy body and massive muscles crunched across their legs as if he had been an iron bar.
He heard their gasps, their sudden curses.
As they went down he rolled away, only far enough to gather both feet under him. He launched himself forward. One of the men was rising to his feet. Carrick took him across his face with a big fist.
There was a sodden splat as nose cartilage flattened.
The man flew backward, out cold.
The second hoodlum was rushing Carrick and behind him the following three came at the run. None of them were reaching for a blipper, which was something for which to be thankful, at least. It was fists against fists and with the odds four to one in their favor, the men were strongly confident.
Carrick was wildly alive. However Hannes Stryker had fashioned his body, of silicon cells and radiation, at least he had given him the ability to fight. Adrenalin and glycerin pumped into his blood. His head remembered the ways and the means of fighting from his years with Space Patrol: his hand-crafted body let him use those tricks swiftly, surely, with a minimum of waste motion.
His hand caught a wrist. His body turned. His hip felt the weight of a man against him as he heaved. He was turning even as the man went flying upside down into a building wall, to hit hard and slide down headfirst onto the cobblestones. Unless his body was in better shape than Carrick thought, that fall might well have broken his neck.
Then he was in among the three men who had followed him. His fist stabbed. His leg hooked behind a knee. His palm pushed. One man went sideways under the impact of his knuckles. A second flailed the air as his hooking knee and pushing hand sent him reeling into his companion.
Carrick gave them no chance to recover.
His fists were on them even as they were moving backward. An uppercut. A right hook to the belly. A straight left to a jaw. They were backed into the brick wall and his fists held them there, crunching into bone and bruising flesh. Blood from smashed lips flecked his knuckles but he kept hitting, until the men began their slide, unconscious, to the cobblestones.
Carrick turned and ran.
He ran swiftly, easily. There was no tiredness in him. Could Hannes Stryker have solved the problem of fatigue in his muscles with some chemical by which the lactic acids and carbon dioxides of exhaustion were absorbed and destroyed? He felt tireless.
The spaceport loomed silvery in the twin moons. Low white buildings and the tall, slim Control Tower were oddly graceful. Gone were the dirts and grimes of daylight. It was a fairy setting on a world of devils.
The spaceships spread away into the distance like pebbles on a seashore. His own ship was vaned in section LH453. Carrick ran toward it. He overtook Mai Valoris in the shadow of a massive freighter and as they ran, told her what had happened.
“Whose men were they? Noor Kama’s?”
“I don’t think so. There was no reason for him to capture us, and capture us those men intended doing. Otherwise they’d have blipped us down.”
Mai shivered as she put her hands on the entry ladder and went up its metal rungs. Carrick came after her. In the open port he paused to throw his glance backward toward the town. There was no movement there.
He stepped in. The port slid closed behind him.
Uthoric fell away below, its twin moons almost hidden now by the curve of the horizon. Swiftly it receded to a small round ball; then Carrick touched the hyperspace controls and Uthoric was swallowed up in grey mists as the little starship hurtled into warp-space.
Mai set the vectors for Leonidar.
“Than Lear will know by now we haven’t been to Acrux,” she told him as she turned from the glistening metal counter. “He’ll guess where we’re going.”
“I know he will, as soon as he learns from his hoodlums that we got away. I’m hoping that he’s on his way to Uthoric—to supervise our imprisonment himself.”
“You think Than Lear hired those five men?”
“Would anybody else dare to move against the tokens?”
“Mmm, no. I suppose not.”
“Than Lear is coming to Uthoric. We go to Leonidar while he’s en route here. When he learns what’s happened tonight from his toughs, he’ll come after us. But we’ll be there ahead of him.”
“And what can we do on Leonidar that will protect us from him?”
“We go through the gateway—into Slarrn.”
The breath scratched in her throat as Mai Valoris gasped. She was sitting on the edge of the metal counter; she slid off it and stared at him, her hands moving through the air as if she did not know what to do with them.
“Slarrn? Oh, no!”
He squinted at her. “Where else will we be safe?”
“But Ylth’yl—”
“—won’t have any effect on you if you stay far enough away. Its thoughts aren’t geared to seize control of a human brain. Not yet, not while it’s in Slarrn. Hannes Stryker said so. It’s the reason why he was able to get away. And you heard Alton Raymond yourself. He escaped the same way. He felt Ylth’yl questing for him but it couldn’t grab him.”
Mai shivered. “Just the same, I’m scared.”
“I’ll protect you.” He came out of the contour seat and stood before her, putting his hands on her shoulders. Her elfin face was upturned to him, trusting, almost hopeful. Carrick realized that this girl had become very dear to him over the weeks he had known her.
He kissed her gently.
After a moment she pushed away, eyes wide and mischievous. “Well,” she said softly. “Well, well!”
He grinned down at her. Suddenly life had become sweet to Kael Carrick, for he knew now that his body was that of a human being, not of a robot or an android. His brain and his heart were his own. This body Hannes Stryker had given him was as good as or better than his old one. His arms drew the girl against him, hugging her.
“What brought all this on?” she murmured against his chest, enjoying the sensation of his muscular arms crushing her softness.
“You, of course. What else?”
Carrick felt like shouting with joy. He had a reason now for fighting Ylth’yl. No longer was he a mechanical thing Hannes Stryker had built to do battle for mankind. He was man himself, fitted out with undiscovered weapons by a dead genius—weapons with which to battle for the freedom of the stars so that he and other men like him might achieve their ultimate destiny.
CHAPTER NINE
CARRICK STEPPED out into the sunlight of Leonidar for the first time since his arrest close to a year ago. He stood a moment, breathing in the cool air, sensing the sunlight warm on his skin, relishing this return to the planet where he had been given back his manhood. A sound of leather on metal told him Mai was right behind him on the rung of the ship’s ladder.
They were alone on the laboratory tarmac. There was no other ship but Alton Raymond’s saucer to break the stretch of macadamite. Than Lear was still in space or on Uthoric; raging, probably, in a dozen different languages.
The Slarrn gateway was open to them.
They ran across macadamite to a side door. Over a year before, its lock had been fitted to open to two sets of fingerprints, his own and those of Hannes Stryker. Had they changed locks since the trial? His fingertips went into the slots. He waited, heart slamming.
Ah, now he could hear the hum of the tumblers blurring, sliding back. As they did so, a mechanism opened the door. The laboratory lay beneath them.
For fear that Than Lear might be lying in wait, Carrick went in first but the long room was empty. He and Mai were the only ones in the building. His hand touched her elbow, brought her with him across the tiled floor toward the distant blue stil door which hid that part of the laboratory where Hannes Stryker had always worked alone.
He wondered if he could open the blue door. He had never made the attempt; always Stryker had been the one to unlock it, open it and move into the sanctuary o
f his innermost rooms. If he could not make it yield—
There was no need to worry. Hannes Stryker had planned too well to ignore such a fundamental part of his plan. Having created a new Kael Carrick to fight Ylth’yl, he would hardly fail to give him passageway into the Slarrn worlds.
The blue door opened to his fingertips.
He saw the gateway first. It was made of grey subsidiundum and it occupied a section of the north wall. Just beyond it were the cement blocks of a building wall. There was no view into that other universe. Carrick felt a stab of disappointment before cold reason told him that the gateway must be activated before it would function.
A row of colored knobs glittered on a slab of grey metal. Carrick put his hands out, touched them almost caressingly. Here before me is a passageway into new worlds, untouched as yet by man. Human population, exploring through the stars, can find new planets ready for their grasp—if I can kill Ylth’yl! I and I alone may give man his ancient dream of paradise. His fingers tightened convulsively.
He threw down the knobs, remembering their function from what he had read in Stryker’s notebook; heard the levers click into place. The subsidiundum blocks began to glow.
Mai Valoris gasped behind him. She was staring into the gateway, eyes wide. Her hand lifted, pointing. Carrick came to stand beside her.
The grey stone blocks of the laboratory wall that had been visible in the gateway opened moments before could not be seen. Instead, a glistening curtain of titanic energies, shimmering like an aurora borealis, hid them behind its brilliance. Light points coruscated within that eerie drapery, sparkling with the power flooding the space between the blocks. It pulsed and quivered, seemed to tinkle distantly with faery music. He felt Mai shiver beside him and reached for her hand.
Slowly the energy curtain faded into transparent ripples like heat waves. As the light motes faded, they found themselves staring through the gateway, into—
Slarrn! The planet of Ylth’yl.
Into a paradise that was a hell.
A wide meadow lay between the grey blocks, stretching away toward a river and a line of trees bordering its banks. A blue sky in which a great sun hung like a mighty ball held half a dozen large white birds wheeling and dipping to the wind currents. Far to the west a puff of cloud was moving slowly. Closer to the gateway, a splash of blue flowers made curtsies where the breeze touched them. It seemed almost that they bowed in welcome.