SQUEEZE PLAY
Prenzz was very dead.
That was self-evident, without examination. No stench such as permeated
this room ever could have come from living tissue.
The odor grew worse by the moment. While Ross stared, his face a mask
of numb, horrified disbelief, the corpse took on a strangely oozy
look. Inside its clothes, the body began to lose its contours. Flesh
sloughed from one cheek, then the other, as if putrefaction were
somehow here motivated to race to destroy the evidence of crime.
Shuddering, Ross flicked his light off, stumbled back to the door, and
retched. He was still shaking his head as if to clear his nostrils of
the cramped room's stench as he plunged into the shadows of the nearest
alley.
For a moment, there, he paused and stood frowning. Then, narrow-eyed,
he fumbled through his tunic's pocket and came out with a now-familiar
note-sheet ... unfolded it ... stared down at the name and address it
bore: _Veta Hall, 417D Esrach Unit_.
Folding the note-sheet again, Ross strode on through the alley to the
next street, climbed into the first vacant transor, and punched the
Esrach Unit button on the selector panel.
The transor surged forward, gears whining as it picked up speed. Three
minutes and a bewildering series of turns later, it ground to a halt
once more, automatic door already lifting.
Ross got out. But instead of going on into the unit, he left-faced,
walked briskly down the street to the first corner, turned right, and
so continued until, after another right turn, he stood directly behind
the Esrach building.
In front, the structure had made some show of keeping up appearances,
for all its obvious age and deterioration. The entrance was neat if not
new, and imitation veldrene drapes and occasional lengths of doloid
stripping had been added to put a bold front to drabness.
Back here, in the rear, all such was recognized as sham. Thick grime
and even streaks of rust took the place of decoration. Litter cluttered
the base-line, and the nearest door sagged half-open on its hinges.
Inside, old odors of grease and filth added to the air of decay.
There was a stairway of sorts beside an ancient fire-tube. Climbing to
the fourth level, Ross moved silently down the dank central corridor.
Veta Hall's number, 417D, was located close to the middle of the first
wing. Instead of a tab-lock, the door had a primitive chain affair,
anchored on the inside.
Getting out his writer, Ross maneuvered for a moment. The chain
clinked, then fell away.
Easing the door open the rest of the way, Ross stepped inside.
Small noises drifted from a room beyond the one in which he stood.
Crossing to it, he reached for the doorknob.
Before he could touch it, the door whipped open. Veta crossed the
threshold, her eyes not even focussing on him.
Ross caught her wrists as she looked up. When she started to cry out,
he twisted sharply, so that the sound died on an indrawn breath.
Now she stared at him, face pain-strained. "Thigpen, what's the
matter--?" It was the faintest of whispers.
"Nothing. Nothing but a corpse, that's all." Ross said it through
clenched teeth. "Not that you'd know anything about that, would you,
Veta?--About a man they called Zoltan Prenzz, the man I told you I was
going to see on Japetus first chance I got--"
He broke off; twisted the girl's wrists again.
It brought her forward on tiptoe, tiny anguished sounds bubbling in her
throat.
Ross' face stayed a cold, relentless mask. He said tightly, "It's my
own fault, Veta. All mine, for trusting you even a little--you, working
for Pike Mawson, and with a brother on starak. Only now you're going
to make it up by telling me the things I need to know. And this time
there'll be no holding out or stalling."
"Please, Thigpen...." The effort of speaking brought a small cluster
of saliva bubbles to one corner of Veta's mouth. "I don't know what
you're talking about. There must be some mistake--"
"Your mistake," Ross corrected harshly. He backed Veta into the room
from which she'd come. "We'll have some answers now: who killed Zoltan
Prenzz?"
"I don't know!"
"Who'd you tell about him?"
"I didn't--"
"Who, I said! Mawson? Your brother?"
"Thigpen, I didn't tell anyone! I couldn't! You only mentioned the man
once. I didn't even remember his name till just now, when you reminded
me."
"We'll try it again, then--"
A knock sounded on the outer door.
Veta opened her mouth to scream.
* * * * *
Like lightning, Ross hammered a blow to her jaw, then caught her limp
body before she could spill to the floor.
The knock sounded again. A man's voice called, "All right, you, in
there! Open up."
Ross' eyes fanned the room, then fixed on the old-fashioned fire-tube
hatch set into the wall in one corner. Dragging Veta across to it
bodily, he wrenched it open, stuffed her in, and let her drop, then
hastily followed suit himself as the voice in the hall rose even more
belligerently.
The tube discharged them into a narrow, litter-choked court between the
building's wings. Veta slung over his shoulder like a sack of meal,
Ross ducked into the nearest entryway.
The niche sheltered the doors to two apartments. The sound of a man and
woman arguing violently pulsed from one; from the other, silence.
Now a shout rose on one of the building's upper levels: a man's angry
bellow, echoing and reechoing as it bounced back and forth across the
narrow court. Veta moaned and moved her head groggily.
A trickle of sweat rilled from Ross' hairline. Stepping close to the
door of the silent apartment, he tried the knob.
The door was locked.
Overhead, another shout. Then, from the court's ground level, a harsh
rattle of answer.
Ross stepped back fast, eyes distending. Lifting a foot, he smashed a
battering-ram kick at the door's lock.
The door burst open. Dodging past it as it swung back, Ross heeled it
shut behind him. He was breathing hard, and another rill of sweat had
joined the first.
Prowling through the empty apartment now, Veta still slung limp over
his shoulder, Ross jerked back storage area sealers until, after
half-a-dozen tries, he came upon and dragged out a heavy, shapeless
space-sack of the type used by cruiser crewmen.
Another moan from Veta. She shifted, clutching at Ross' tunic.
Unceremoniously, he dumped her on a bed, then returned to the
space-sack. Spreading its mouth wide, he lifted the girl's legs and set
her feet down inside the bag.
Veta's eyes flicked open, panic-shadowed. "What are you doing?"
"Getting you ready for a little trip." He heaved her up from the bed
and lowered her into the sack, pulling the heavy synthetic casing up to
cover her. "If you know what's good for you, you'll keep quiet."
He pulled the sealer-tab shut as he spoke, disregarding her sudden
frantic flurry of movement. Then, turning, he stepped back to the
storage shelves, selected and donned one of several spaceman's leave
caps, swung the bag to his shoulder, and boldly strode out of the
apartment and the court to the nearest transor-rank.
The trip across the city was uneventful. Hardly a hint of movement
showed through the stiffness of the space-sack's heavy casing.
Ross left the transor two streets from his own quarters, walking the
rest of the way through two linked alleys. He was half-panting by the
time he reached the entrance; and his fingers shook as he shoved the
card into the tab-lock.
Then, at last, he stepped into the dim, silent living room and dumped
the space-sack to the floor. Tossing the leave cap into a corner, he
swabbed the sweat from his forehead, shoved shut the door and bolted
it, and slid a lamp-switch to the first notch.
The room brightened.
A voice came through the silence also: "You frightened me, Thigpen. I
was beginning to be afraid you weren't coming."
A woman's voice, low and husky and seductive.
Ross spun round, eyes distending.
Astrell reclined on the divan across the room in studied grace. The
soft light smoothed her features so that when her lips curved in a slow
smile she might have been younger by twenty years.
"Didn't you expect me, Thigpen?" she murmured. "I told you I'd come,
you know."
Ross shrugged, not speaking. His face now had taken on a wooden look.
Picking up the space-sack, he carried it to the bedroom, closing the
door after him as he returned.
Still smiling, Astrell patted the seat beside her with a somewhat pudgy
hand. "Come sit down, Thigpen."
Ross met her gaze coldly. "I don't think that's necessary, Astrell."
"Oh, but it is!" The woman rose from the couch as she spoke, and came
to him. "It's not just the catalyst, my dear. I want to get to know you
better."
"Do you?"
"Of course I do!" Astrell traced fluttery designs on the front of Ross'
tunic with a long-nailed forefinger. Close up, her knuckles showed deep
wrinkles. The skin along the backs of her hands was creping, too, and
the flesh along her throat, beneath her eyes, and at the corners of her
mouth was sagging visibly.
But still she preened, and fluffed her halo of determinedly auburn
hair, and threw Ross the coy, flirtatious, low-lashed glances of a
woman two decades younger. "You know, darling, you'll be glad, too."
"Oh?" Ross stood unbending. "Just what is it I'll be glad of?"
"Why, that you helped me, of course." Astrell laughed, just a bit too
shrilly. "It's not as if I were asking you to give it to me, you know.
I'm more than willing to pay for it, and I've the money, too--more
money than you can even dream of, all my savings from those years when
no one from here to the Belt even thought of giving a social affair top
rating, if Astrell didn't attend."
* * * * *
The woman seemed to grow taller as she spoke. Head high, she moved
to and fro with slow, graceful steps--a queen in bearing, however
caricatured, living for the moment in her dreams of glory-radiant days
gone by.
Then, once more, she paused close to Ross. "Besides, my dear, once I've
the catalyst, I'll be young again--and very, very grateful to you." An
insinuating laugh. "Darling, have you any idea how delightful it can be
to hold the gratitude of a girl whose talents were such that she was
able to marry the seven richest men in all the outer planets, one after
the other?"
Again, the woman reached out a pudgy hand to caress Ross. His teeth
clicked together, as if with a sudden involuntary shiver. Catching the
hand in his own, not too gently, he pushed it away.
"There's something you need to understand, Astrell," he said in a
tight, controlled voice. "I can't think of anything I'd rather do than
milk you of all that money you've piled up. But I haven't got the
catalyst, or the formula either. So you're wasting your time, mooning
around me."
"Don't worry, Thigpen. I understand." Astrell gave vent to a
knowing, conspiratorial giggle. "You've got to be careful. Killing
Tornelescu--that was dangerous; you can't afford to admit it, even to
me. The same way with the catalyst: you've no intention of confessing
you've so much as heard of it. But if a case of it were to turn up in
my rooms, somehow, and a money-case were to vanish--"
Ross said, "Get out."
"'Get out'--?" The woman's head jerked back. She searched his eyes for
a long, unsteady moment.
Then a pallor came to her withered cheeks, for all their show of
artificial color. Her breathing speeded. "Thigpen, you mean it! The
catalyst--you're not going to sell it to me--"
And then, in a rush, face thrust close: "Don't say it, Thigpen! Don't
say it if you want to live! I can give you beauty. I can give you
money. But if you won't take them, then I'll get the catalyst without
you! They'll find you in an alley with your throat cut, Thigpen--the
same way you left Tornelescu! And Thigpen--you'll call it a favor when
they finish you, because first they'll make you tell the secret--"
The woman's voice rose higher with every sentence, till she was
half-screaming. Her face contorted into a wrinkled mask of hate. Her
back bent, too, and her body seemed to pull together, till when she
shook her fist at Ross she was hag, incarnate; the embodiment of every
creaking crone.
"Out!" Ross clipped. "Out!" Grimly, he pressed her back towards the
door.
For an instant it seemed she was going to resist, force him to back his
commands with violence. Then, abruptly, she whirled and without another
word fled the apartment.
Gustily, Ross let out pent-up breath and, pivoting, turned once more to
the other room.
But now, on the threshold, he stopped short. For where the space-sack
had lain brief minutes before, now there was only crumpled bedding.
Momentarily, Ross stood as if paralyzed. Then, with a curse, he sprang
forward--flinging aside furniture; clawing open the storage areas.
No Veta.
Ross whirled to the barred window.
The bars weren't there any more.
Stiff-faced, stumbling, Ross sank down onto the bed.
Only then, seemingly out of nowhere, Cheng spoke to him: Cheng, the
smuggler; Cheng, the slaver; Cheng, the black-browed, scar-faced killer
from the Belt:
"All right, Thigpen. Listen to me. This is the way we're going to play,
and I don't mean to tell you more than once."
Ross came up from his seat as if on springs. Wildly, he looked this way
and that.
To no avail. There was no sign of anyone in either room.
"Get this, now, Thigpen. Get it the first time."
Slowly, Ross turned, searching.
The thing lay on a table close at hand--one of those silvery spheres
known as memory balls, a tiny, self-contained speaker unit only
slightly larger than a marble yet still capable of repeating once any
brief statement made in its immediate vicinity.
Cheng's voice again: "A man runs a woman into his place in a
space-sack, he likes her some, Thigpen. That's the way I see it."
Ross dug his nails into the table.
"Call her a hostage if you want to, Thigpen. Because she don't come
back till I get the formula for that life catalyst stuff you took off
old Tornelescu."
Ross' eyes seemed to draw deeper into his skull, his head to sink
farther down between his shoulders.
"Of course, if you're the kind of chitza don't give a filan how long it
takes the wench to die, that won't mean nothing to you."
Ross stood as if carved in granite.
"Maybe you _do_ like her, though." Cheng chuckled maliciously. "Well,
then, that makes it simple: you just hang around awhile at a place they
call Naraki's. It's down in the old port quarter." A fragmentary pause.
"You got that, Thigpen? You just stick at Naraki's kabat-dive till
somebody comes and gets you.
"Otherwise--no more Veta Hall!"
The memory ball clicked off.