Out of their mountain hideout came the
terrified band of The Renegade. Through
the valleys of Venus they swept, seeking
a greed-maddened slaver who planned an
experiment so cruel and barbaric it would
destroy the very foundation of mankind.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Spring 1946.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The hooded figure of a man detached itself from the shadows beside the
door, paused, listening. Nothing stirred. The huge sprawling plantation
house was silent and yet alive with the feel of sleepers.
Then from below stairs, he heard a door slam. The tinkle of laughter
ascended to his ears. He crouched. His hand slipped inside his coat,
fondled the slug gun nestling in its shoulder holster. The voices
drifted out of hearing. Uneasy silence settled back over the plantation
house.
The hooded man let his breath escape between his teeth. He slid back
the door, passed inside like a shadow, shut the door behind him.
The room which he'd entered was lit by the intense, green radiations
from the Venusian vegetation. The cold phosphorescent light streamed
through the open windows, glinted from a glassite desk, soft flexoglas
lounging chairs and sofa. It was the typical office from which the
plantation owners directed the affairs of their feudal estates.
As silent as a night hawk, the hooded man drifted to the wall, ran his
fingertips over the wood paneling. There was a faint click. The panel
slid back revealing a wall safe.
A needle ray of light streamed suddenly from the hooded man's hand,
splashed off a paper which he'd drawn from his pocket. He checked the
string of figures printed there, returned the paper to his pocket. He
worked swiftly, surely. Then with a sigh of satisfaction he swung back
the heavy door.
There was a faint thump in the corridor outside the office that broke
the silence.
The hooded man snapped erect, the compressed air slug gun in his hand.
He was sharply conscious of the hum of Venusian night life outside the
windows. The room felt sticky, close. His hand was damp with sweat
about the pommel of the slug gun.
He waited five minutes, ten minutes without moving, but the noise was
not repeated.
He drew a breath, set to examining the papers in the safe by the aid of
the midget flash. Most of them he put back carefully, just as they'd
been, but two packets he stuffed into an inside coat pocket. He closed
the door, spun the dial. He heard a sharp click behind him, leaped
around.
At the same instant, the room was flooded with bright white light.
"Please don't!" said a girl's voice.
The hooded man arrested his hand halfway to his shoulder holster.
A startlingly beautiful girl, he saw, was standing in the doorway to
the corridor covering him with a wicked dart gun. She was a tall girl
with the yellowest hair he'd ever seen. She wore a spun glass negligee
and her skin was blue. It was the pastel blue of a Terran dawn flushed
with rose.
She came all the way inside, slid shut the door.
"Who are you? What do you want?"
"Why don't you turn in the alarm?" said the hooded man dryly. The
poisoned needle gun was sending goose flesh quivering up his spine. A
scratch would be fatal. His jaw tightened beneath the hood. His eyes
were hard green discs, the dangerous eyes of a hunted man.
"Oh no." The blue girl's voice was low. "I wouldn't do that. I'd never
be able to get the safe open by myself."
"What?"
"I want you to open the safe for me."
* * * * *
The hooded man didn't reply for a moment. At length, he asked: "What
then?"
The girl giggled. "I take what I want, and you take what you want," she
explained naively. "See. And you'll be blamed for taking it all. Only
you're going to be disappointed!"
"Disappointed? How?" He took a step toward her.
"Bemmelman never keeps his money on the plantation. It's all at
Venusport. There aren't fifty monad in the safe."
"Maybe I'm not after money." He took a second step, his green eyes
opaque.
She looked at him intently, made a thin gasping noise. "You're the
Renegade!" The dart gun trembled in her small blue fist. "Oh my God! I
didn't guess. You're the Renegade!"
Without affirming or denying the statement, he asked, "What do you want
from the safe?" and took a third step.
"Don't come any closer! I'm a very good shot. See!"
The little gun went spat. The hooded man heard the dart whisper past
his ear, thunk into the paneling behind him. His stomach felt suddenly
hollow.
"My dear girl," he said dryly; "if you do that again, I won't be able
to open a book, let alone that safe. I'm a mass of jelly now."
"Then you will open it for me?"
"What is it you want?"
"Evidence!" Impulsively she took a step toward him, allowed the
dart gun to waver out of line. "Evidence to send Bemmelman to the
disintegration chamber!"
The hooded man felt appalled at the sheer animal hate in her violet
eyes. Her skin was too light for her to be a full blooded Jovian
primitive. She must be a cross. He mentally snapped his fingers. That
was it, of course. The Blue Venus! The slave for whom Hal Bemmelman was
asking five thousand monad on the Venusian Slave Mart. He said:
"You aren't overly fond of Bemmelman?"
"I loathe him!" With a savage jerk, she yanked her white negligee down
from her left shoulder. "See that?"
He saw a scar on the pale-blue skin above her breast. It was the shape
of a fern leaf and he could have covered it with his thumb.
"Branded!" she spat. "My father was a Jovian Dawn Man--an animal! But
my mother was an Earth woman. Hal Bemmelman kidnapped her!"
The hooded man regarded her pityingly. She was only a kid, he realized.
He said:
"You can't get Bemmelman like that. He runs the government at
Venusport. He'd never come to trial." He stopped, realizing that she
wasn't listening.
Nostrils flaring, head erect, the girl was looking through him blankly.
A glimmer of fright flitted across her mobile features. Then she raised
the dart gun, pointed it full at his chest.
"Put your hands on top of your head, please!"
His green eyes contracted angrily. He didn't move.
"I mean it! Put your hands on top of your head, please."
With a shrug, he obeyed. He saw the door to the corridor slide back. A
heavy red-faced man in his late forties and a wrinkled snuff brown suit
stared in at them. The red-faced man's sparse sandy hair was plastered
to his skull, and he had little mobile brown eyes like a pig.
"Is that you, Hal?" The blue girl didn't turn around, didn't take her
eyes off the hooded man. "I've caught the Renegade!"
The red-faced man's jaw dropped. "Yes sir," he said. "Yes sir, it's me,
Sofi." A shrewd gleam flickered in his pig-like eyes.
"I caught him trying to open the safe."
"So I see! So I see!" Bemmelman rubbed his hands together, came into
the room. He pulled a dart gun from the belly band of his trousers and
leveled it at the Renegade. "Stand aside, Sofi."
The hooded man felt his stomach turn slowly upside down. He considered
hurling himself behind the glassite desk, snatching out his slug gun.