Who was this sweet-voiced singer weaving a
spell of dreams and drugs that drove men mad
and threatened to smash the System? SBI
Captain Roal Hartford dared the death of the
Thousand Minds to learn her dreadful secret!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Summer 1947.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
That's what they called her, Alayna, Queen of the Silver Stars, and she
was singing when Roal Hartford stepped into the Starhouse.
The setting was the same--the swirling blue smoke from scores of zhema
cigarettes, the odor of stale alcohol and penetrating Valcoso. The
setting was the same as in a thousand other taverns hovering in the
backwash of man's advancing conquest of the planets. Only Alayna made
this Martian tavern any different from the rest.
The silence while she sang was tribute. The brawling and the laughter
and the loud curses stopped for no other tavern singer but Alayna.
As Roal Hartford stood motionless in the doorway, listening, he knew
why they called her the Queen of the Silver Stars. She was a queen to
these men. Those who listened were men who had no home, and she sang of
home to them. She sang of green fields and blue skies and of lovers and
of children. Her voice was so low and deep that it was like a husky sob
in her throat and they had to strain to hear.
Roal glanced at a table where bearded, drunken space miners listened to
the dream of which she sang. One of them with a livid burn scar across
his face turned away from his companions and ran a finger over his eye.
For an instant Roal himself was lost in that dream. He thought of far
Earth, which he had not seen for so long. The conquest of space seemed
suddenly futile. It was nothing but a vain waste of lives and energy
and brought no one happiness. Yet why should a man live except for
happiness? Someone like Alayna could be happiness for him, he thought.
The Queen of the Silver Stars could be happiness.
He dragged his mind abruptly out of the dream world of Alayna's song.
He was Captain Roal Hartford of the Solar Bureau of Investigation.
His world was the world of dope peddlers, thieves, and murderers that
infested the starways. He was a little cog in a great machine and he
knew that he had to keep going to keep the machine from breaking down.
It wouldn't do for him to wonder why the machine should be kept running
at all.
Alayna's song ended, but the silence hung on for an instant. Then
slowly the spacemen and gamblers turned back to one another, avoiding
each others' eyes until they were sure their own were dry.
* * * * *
Roal Hartford moved away from the doorway and picked his way among the
tables. He was not here in the guise of Captain Roal Hartford of the
SBI. His matted beard and space-worn garb was like that of the dozen
meteor miners scattered through the tavern room. Miners who kept going
day after day because of the yarns of occasional fabulous treasure
found floating on the spaceways. But no one of them had ever seen such
treasure--they had only heard of it, and kept going in the hopes of
some day making a strike that would in turn create new fables of vast
treasure.
Roal moved with the shambling gait of one worn and haggard by months
among the meteors. When he sat down at a table he rested his head on
his hands a moment until one of the shy little Martian girls came to
take his order.
The Martians were like withered flowers. The little creature beside
him must not be more than twenty of her planet's years, Roal thought,
but her skin was like old and dried leather. The bones could be seen
through the flesh almost. Only her eyes were bright and they peered at
Roal with a staring glance that gave him uneasiness. All the Martians
were that way. He thought it was as if he were a deadly enemy and they
looked at him as if they were sure of eventual victory over him.
He shrugged the thought away. In the hundred years of Terrestrial
association the Martians had not been guilty of a single overt act. At
first, of course, there had been conflict, but a century of peace stood
to assure continued amicable relations.
"Valcoso," Roal ordered.
Silently, the Martian moved away and Roal turned his eyes to the
surroundings in the room. While he had pretended to be resting he had
kept his glance on Alayna. It seemed incredible that after a year on
the starways he should suddenly find her like this. He had listened
to a thousand tales of spacemen who had sworn to having visited the
phantom tavern, Starhouse, of hearing the song of Alayna, who could
shake the stoutest of spacemen with the tenderness of her songs in that
husky, almost inaudible voice.
He had thought of a thousand things that she might be, but he had never
pictured her like this. He had even begun to doubt the reality of her
existence. Now he had found her he didn't know what he was going to do.
She was slender and sweet, and she could not possibly be the mistress
of death and insanity that was sweeping through the planets and
outposts. Surely she could not be the lure that enticed men into the
gripping tentacles of the drug, _harmeena_.
But every clue he had picked up bore a thread that linked with the
Queen of the Silver Stars. Miners with shattered minds had spoken in
their last hours of Alayna, and in their croaking voices had tried to
sing her songs before they died. Because of her they died with smiles
upon their lips.
But, because of her, many of them died.
The SBI had a hundred agents scattered in every part of the System. No
one took seriously the miners' and spacemen's yarns of a phantom tavern
where a golden-haired girl sang songs that lured them into a dream
world from which they could never return.
No one, that is, except Roal Hartford. He knew that somewhere in the
tales repeated by a thousand dying throats there must be a thread
of truth, regardless of how fantastic it might be. Somewhere there
must exist the phantom tavern, Starhouse, though one spaceman told of
visiting it in Heliopolis and another spoke of its existence in the
swamp city, Tarma, while still others swore that it was in Vegrath
across the planet from Heliopolis.
Roal had placed investigators at every point where Starhouse had been
reported, but nothing had ever come of it.
* * * * *
Nothing--until he had walked along the night streets of Heliopolis and
suddenly seen Starhouse there where it seemed to him that it had always
been.
And the moment that he had entered and heard the first note of Alayna's
song he knew he had found the Queen of the Silver Stars.
Her beauty must have been exquisite and flawless, once, Roal thought.
It was still the nearest thing to perfection that most men would ever
see. But there were traces of strained lines, and hollows where her
cheeks should have been more rounded. There was something, too, in her
eyes that Roal could not bring himself to look upon for long as she
suddenly caught his gaze and stared back at him.
He turned his eyes away. And, when he looked again, he swore. It seemed
he had looked away only for an instant, scarcely long enough for her to
have crossed to the nearest wall, yet she was gone. And the space miner
she had been talking to had also vanished.
Without appearing to be concerned, Roal glanced about, searching the
walls and side passages where she might have gone. From upstairs there
came sounds from the gambling rooms. Elsewhere in the building were
other rooms of doubtful uses. Passageways opened from the main tavern
room to these other chambers, and there was no telling which way Alayna
had gone.
Then abruptly she returned--alone. Roal saw her standing in a doorway
leading from a hall opposite him. And she was going to come to him.
The thought that he was at last to meet the mysterious Queen of the
Silver Stars filled Roal with mixed feelings. Her eyes were upon him,
speculating, weighing, he felt, his susceptibility to her charms that
would make him her next victim.
As she came slowly towards him the transparent folds of the garments
that thinly veiled her floated like a nimbus of light about her figure.
And the eyes of the men in the room were upon her. She sat down beside
Roal.
"You're a stranger here." Her low, husky voice made it a statement,
rather than a question.
"The dream of every spaceman is to visit Starhouse and hear Alayna,
Queen of the Silver Stars, at least once before he dies."
"You're far from dead, miner."
"My good fortune in coming here so soon."
"Starhouse is a place of rest and dreams for weary spacemen. They all
find their way here sooner or later."
"I have heard stories--from those who have found dreams here," Roal
said cautiously.
"Yes--you would share the dreams of Starhouse?" Alayna spoke with even
more caution. Roal felt her eyes trying to weigh and evaluate him in
terms of the worn, haggard spacemen who were the regular habitues of
Starhouse.
"I would like to know the dreams of Starhouse," said Roal.
"Come with me."
Heart beating more rapidly, Roal downed the last of the Valcoso and
rose to follow Alayna. He did not miss the throbbing pulse that beat
in the white column of her throat, nor did he miss the faint sweep of
revulsion that crossed her face for an instant as she rose and felt the
scores of eyes staring at her--through her filmy garments.
Seizing upon this faintly-revealed trait, Roal suddenly drew his heavy
cloak from his own shoulders and laid it upon her. Instinctively, she
grasped its protection and drew the collar tight about her throat.
Then, realizing her betrayal of her role, she hurled the cloak to the
floor and stamped upon it.
"Your insolence will find you trouble, miner!"
Silently, Roal reached down and picked up the cloak while guffaws
rained upon him from nearby tables. But he had seen enough--enough to
know that Alayna, Queen of the Silver Stars, was putting on an act that
was repulsive to her own instincts. Some compulsion was forcing her to
remain in the stinking, smoke-filled tavern, exposing her loveliness to
the lewd stares of starmen nightly.
She held her golden head high as Roal followed her past the tables into
one of the halls leading out of the tavern room, but as they passed out
of sight of the tables, her head inclined and her shoulders slumped
almost imperceptibly.
"Poor little Alayna--" Roal whispered.
She whirled on him, her azure eyes ablaze, but whatever hot words
trembled on her lips were not spoken. Nor did her hand that stretched
back come up to sting his cheek.
While her moment of rage persisted, Roal memorized every line of
tension in her lovely face. Beneath her beauty and the husky tenderness
of her voice, strong storms of conflicting motives surged with force
enough to tear her slim body.
But the moment passed and Alayna subdued the storm, not daring to
speak. She whirled her back upon Roal and continued to lead the way
down the hall.
The passage was dimly lit and thickly carpeted. The sounds of the
distant tavern room were deadened and only silence prevailed. Doors,
silent and closed, lined the hall. Roal wondered what lay behind them.
Abruptly, Alayna stopped and opened one and stood aside to allow Roal
to enter.
"The place of dreams, miner. Pleasant dream to you." From a cupboard
against one wall she took a bottle of wine and poured a glassful. Then
two glistening white spheres like pearls were taken from a drawer and
dropped into the wine. Instantly, a white smoke rose from the glass of
wine and began to fill the room.
Alayna stared at it for a moment, then broke. "Miner, quickly! Don't
inhale! Come with me, quickly." She was sobbing unrestrainedly now. She
flung open the door to plunge into the hall. But she didn't leave the
room.
* * * * *
In the doorway stood the biggest man that Roal thought he had ever
seen. Not fat--_big_.
His bare biceps revealed by a sleeveless blouse were like huge brown
logs. His great chest was like a slowly swelling drum of polished
leather. Alayna's golden head collided with it as she darted outward.
The man made no move nor uttered any word. He merely remained in the
doorway, arms akimbo. His hairless, polished skull was immobile as a
brown boulder. Only the pin-point lights of his eyes betrayed life and
fury.
Alayna gave a short gasp that ended in a sob of torment. Then she
ducked under one of those great arms and left the room. Only then did
the man move. He stepped backward and slammed the door before Roal's
astonished senses could lead him to make a motion.
He tried the door uselessly.
During all that long interval of Alayna's outburst he had held his
breath against the rising smoke from the wine glass. Now he plunged
down on the soft couch in the center of the room. Gladly, he noticed
that the artificial lights in the room were dimming. From his jacket he
extracted a brown capsule and broke it between his teeth, covering his
act so that anyone spying upon him might not detect the capsule. Then,
as his vision grew spotty from lack of oxygen, he allowed himself to
breathe cautiously.
The secret antidote against the effects of _harmeena_ had never been
tried before.
It had been prepared by chemists of the SBI from analysis of the bodies
of dead miners who were known to be addicts. Every agent of the SBI
carried the antidote. None had ever had the opportunity to try it
before. Roal prayed that it might work.
The lights had dimmed completely now. But the gas from the dissolving
pellets in the wine glass was filling the room with luminescence. Its
ghostly glow swirled and twisted like crazed demons and poured into
every corner and crevice of the room.
Upon this ghostly screen Roal knew that the wild dreams and fantastic
visions induced in his brain by the drug should be projected. He waited
in tense anxiety, hoping they would not come, hoping that the antidote
the SBI chemists had devised was correct.
The visions did not come. That screen of luminous gas remained blank.
But it spun and swirled about him as if it were a living thing and
realized the defeat he had administered to it.
It seemed to spin tentacles that leaped out and beat upon him, twisting
and dragging at him as if to beat down his last resistance. A wild
impulse to laugh back at the ghost demons possessed Roal. He almost
gave way to it.
Then sweat broke out upon his brow. Perhaps _this_ was evidence in
itself that the drug was prevailing against his senses in spite of the
antidote.
The ghost demons fighting against his senses were only phantoms of
unreality, but he had to fight back their reaching fingers. He closed
his eyes against them and told himself that they weren't there. But
they were. They took on form and shape and horrid faces. Laughter rang
in his ears until he couldn't stand the sound of it. He knew that he
had work to do. He must make an examination of the place, find escape
from this room somehow and search through the halls and rooms of
Starhouse to find out its forbidden mysteries.
He rose from the couch and all the silver demons in the room pounced
upon him, beating his skull with tenuous lashes. He made his way to
the cupboard despite their onslaught and took out one more of the
_harmeena_ spheres and dropped it into the secret pocket in the lining
of his jacket.
But more than this, he could not do. The devils beat him back to the
couch and pounded his head with psychotic hammers until his senses
slowly waned and died.