Whoever this man Andrias was, thought Duane, he was certainly a man of
importance on Callisto. As he had said, _he_ gave the orders.
The crew of the rocket made no objection when Andrias and his men took
Duane off without a word. Duane had thought the nurse, who seemed a
good enough sort, might have said something on his behalf. But she was
out of sight as they left. A curt sentence to a gray-clad official on
the blast field where the rocket lay, and the man nodded and hurried
off, to tell the rocket's captain that the ship was being refused
clearance indefinitely.
A long, powerful ground car slid up before them. Andrias got in front,
while the two uniformed men shoved Duane into the back of the car,
climbed in beside him. Andrias gave a curt order, and the car shot
forward.
The driver, sitting beside Andrias, leaned forward and readied a hand
under the dashboard. The high wail of a siren came instantly from the
car's roof, and what traffic was on the broad, straight highway into
which they had turned pulled aside to let them race through.
Ahead lay the tall spires of a city. Graceful, hundreds of feet high,
they seemed dreamlike yet somehow oddly familiar to Duane. Somewhere
he had seen them before. He dragged deep into his mind, plumbing the
cloudy, impenetrable haze that had settled on it, trying to bring forth
the memories that he should have had. Amnesia, they called it; complete
forgetting of the happenings of a lifetime. He'd heard of it--but never
dreamed it could happen to him!
_My name, it seems, is Peter Duane_, he thought. _And they tell me that
I killed a man!_
The thought was starkly incredible to him. A white-haired man, it had
been; someone named Stevens. He tried to remember.
Yes, there had been a white-haired man. And there had been an argument.
Something to do with money, with a shipment of goods that Stevens had
supplied to Duane. There has even been talk of killing....
But--murder! Duane looked at his hands helplessly.
Andrias, up ahead, was turning around. He looked sharply at Duane, for
a long second. An uncertainty clouded his eyes, and abruptly he looked
forward again without speaking.
"Who's this man Andrias?" Duane whispered to the nearest guard.
The man stared at him. "Governor Andrias," he said, "is the League's
deputy on Callisto. You know--the Earth-Mars League. They put Governor
Andrias here to--well, to govern for them."
"League?" Duane asked, wrinkling his brow. He had heard something about
a League once, yes. But it was all so nebulous....
The other guard stirred, leaned over. "Shut up," he said heavily.
"You'll have plenty of chance for talking later."
* * * * *
But the chance was a long time in coming. Duane found himself, an hour
later, still in the barred room into which he'd been thrust. The guards
had brought him there, at Andrias' order, and left him. That had been
all.
This was not a regular jail, Duane realized. It was more like a
palace, something out of Earth's Roman-empire days, all white stone
and frescoed walls. Duane wished for human companionship--particularly
that of the nurse. Of all the people he'd met since awakening in that
hospital bed, only she seemed warm and human. The others were--brutal,
deadly. It was too bad, Duane reflected, that he'd failed to remember
her. She'd seemed hurt, and she had certainly known him by first name.
But perhaps she would understand.
Duane sat down on a lumpy, sagging bed and buried his head in his
hands. Dim ghosts of memory were wandering in his mind. He tried to
conjure them into stronger relief, or to exorcise them entirely.
Somewhere, some time, a man had said to him, "_Andrias is secretly
arming the Callistan cutthroats for revolt against the League. He wants
personal power--he's prepared to pay any price for it. He needs guns,
Earth guns smuggled in through the League patrol. If he can wipe out
the League police garrison--those who are loyal to the League, still,
instead of to Andrias--he can sit back and laugh at any fleet Earth and
Mars can send. Rockets are clumsy in an atmosphere. They're helpless.
And if he can arm enough of Callisto's rabble, he can't be stopped.
That's why he'll pay for electron rifles with their weight in gold._"
Duane could remember the scene clearly. Could almost see the sharp,
aquiline face of the man who had spoken to him. But there memory
stopped.
A fugitive recollection raced through his mind. He halted it, dragged
it back, pinned it down....
They had stopped in Darkside, the spaceport on the side of Luna that
keeps perpetually averted from Earth, as if the moon knows shame and
wants to hide the rough and roaring dome city that nestles in one
of the great craters. Duane remembered sitting in a low-ceilinged,
smoke-heavy room, across the table from a tall man with white hair.
Stevens!
"_Four thousand electron rifles_," the man had said. "_Latest
government issue. Never mind how I got them; they're perfect. You know
my price. Take it or leave it. And it's payable the minute we touch
ground on Callisto._"
There had been a few minutes of haggling over terms, then a handshake
and a drink from a thin-necked flagon of pale-yellow liquid fire.
He and the white-haired man had gone out then, made their way by
unfrequented side streets to a great windowless building. Duane
remembered the white-hot stars overhead, shining piercingly through
the great transparent dome that kept the air in the sealed city of
Darkside, as they stood at the entrance of the warehouse and spoke in
low tones to the man who answered their summons.
Then, inside. And they were looking at a huge chamber full of stacked
fiber boxes--containing nothing but dehydrated dairy products and
mining tools, by the stencils they bore. Duane had turned to the
white-haired man with a puzzled question--and the man had laughed aloud.
He dragged one of the boxes down, ripped it open with the sharp point
of a handling hook. Short-barreled, flare-mouthed guns rolled out,
tumbling over the floor. Eight of them were in that one box, and
hundreds of boxes all about. Duane picked one up, broke it, peered into
the chamber where the tiny capsule of U-235 would explode with infinite
violence when the trigger was pulled, spraying radiant death three
thousand yards in the direction the gun was aimed....
And that memory ended.
Duane got up, stared at his haggard face in the cracked mirror over
the bed. "_They say I'm a killer_," he thought. "_Apparently I'm a
gun-runner as well. Good lord--what am I not?_"
His reflection--white, drawn face made all the more pallid by the red
hair that blazed over it--stared back at him. There was no answer
there. If only he could remember--
"All right, Duane." The deep voice of a guard came to him as the door
swung open. "Stop making eyes at yourself."
Duane looked around. The guard beckoned. "Governor Andrias wants to
speak to you--now. Let's not keep the governor waiting."
* * * * *
A long, narrow room, with a long carpet leading from the entrance up to
a great heavy desk--that was Andrias' office. Duane felt a click in his
memory as he entered. One of the ancient Earth dictators had employed
just such a psychological trick to overawe those who came to beg favors
of him. Muslini, or some such name.
The trick failed to work. Duane had other things on his mind; he walked
the thirty-foot length of the room, designed to imbue him with a sense
of his own unimportance, as steadily as he'd ever walked in the open
air of his home planet.
Whichever planet that was.
The guard had remained just inside the door, at attention. Andrias
waved him out.
"Here I am," said Duane. "What do you want?"
Andrias said, "I've had the ship inspected and what I want is on it.
That saves your life, for now. But the cargo is in your name. I could
take it by force, if I had to. I prefer not to." He picked up a paper,
handed it to Duane. "In spite of your behavior, you can keep alive.
You can even collect the money for the guns--Stevens' share as well
as your own. This is a release form, authorizing my men to take four
hundred and twenty cases of dehydrated foods and drilling supplies from
the hold of the _Cameroon_--the ship you came on. Sign it, and we'll
forget our argument. Only, sign it now and get it over with. I'm losing
patience, Duane."