Methodically he ransacked the drawers of Andrias' desk. Papers, a
whole arsenal of hand guns, Callistan money by the bale, ominously
black-covered notebooks with cryptic figures littering their
pages--those were the contents. A coldly impersonal desk, without the
familiar trivia most men accumulate. There was nothing, certainly, that
would get him out of a building that so closely resembled a fortress.
He tumbled the things back into the drawers helter-skelter, turned
Andrias over and searched his pockets. More money--the man must have
had a fortune within reach at all times--and a few meaningless papers.
Duane took the release he had signed and tore it to shreds. But that
was only a gesture. When Andrias came to, unless Duane had managed to
get away and accomplish something, the mere lack of written permission
would not keep him from the rocket's lethal cargo!
When Andrias came to....
An idea bloomed in Duane's brain. He looked, then, at unconscious
Andrias--and the idea withered again.
He had thought of forcing Andrias himself to front for him, at gun's
point, in the conventional manner of escaping prisoners. But fist
fights, fiction to the contrary notwithstanding, leave marks on the men
who lose them. Andrias' throat was speckled with the livid marks of
Duane's fingers; Duane's head, butting Andrias in the face, had drawn a
thick stream of crimson from his nostrils, turned his sharp nose askew.
No guard of Andrias' would have been deceived for an instant, looking
at that face--even assuming that Andrias could have been forced to
cooperate by the threat of a gun. Which, considering the stake Andrias
had in this play, was doubtful....
He stood up and looked around. He had to act quickly. Already Andrias'
breath was audible; he saw the man grimace and an arm flopped
spasmodically on the floor. Consciousness was on its way back.
Duane touched the heat gun he'd thrust into his belt; drew it and held
it poised, while he sought to discover what was in his own mind. He'd
killed a man already, they said. Was he then a killer--could he shoot
Andrias now, in cold blood, with so much to gain and nothing to lose?
He stood there a moment. Then, abruptly, he reversed the weapon and
chopped it down on Andrias' skull.
There was a sharp grunt from the still unconscious man, but no other
sign. Only--the first tremors of movement that had shown on him halted,
and did not reappear.
"_No_," Duane thought. "_Whatever they say, I'm not a killer!_"
But still he had to get out. How?
Once more he stared around the room, catalogued its contents. The guard
would be getting impatient. Perhaps any minute he would tap the door,
first timorously, then with heavier strokes.
The guard! There was a way!
* * * * *
Duane eyed the length of the room. Thirty feet--it would take him a
couple of seconds to run it at full speed. Was that fast enough?
There was only one way to find out.
He walked around the desk to the bell cord. He took a deep breath,
tugged it savagely, and at once was in speedy motion, racing toward the
door, his footsteps muffled in the deep, springy carpet. Almost as he
reached it, he saw it begin to open. He quickly sidestepped and was out
of the guard's sight, behind the door, as the man looked in.
Quick suspicion flared in his eyes, then certainty as he saw Andrias
huddled on the floor. He opened his mouth to cry out--
But Duane's arm was around his throat, and he had no breath to spare.
Duane's foot lashed out and the door slammed shut; Duane's balled left
fist came up and connected with the guard's chin. Abruptly the man
slumped.
Duane took a deep breath and let the man drop to the floor. But he
paused only a second; now he had two unconscious men on his hands and
he dared let neither revive until he was prepared.
He grasped the guard's arm and dragged him roughly the length of the
room. He leaped on top of the desk, brutally scarring its gleaming top
with the hard spikes of his boots. His agile fingers unfastened the
long bell cord without causing it to ring and, bearing it, he dropped
again to the floor.
Tugging and straining, he got the limp form of Andrias into his own
chair, bound him with the bell cord, gagged him with the priceless
Venus-wool scarf Andrias wore knotted about his throat. He tested his
bindings with full strength, and smiled. Those would hold, let Andrias
struggle as he would.
The guard he stripped of clothing, bound and gagged with his own
belt and spaceman's kerchief. He dragged him around behind the desk,
thrust him under it out of sight. Andrias' chair he turned so that the
unconscious face was averted from the door. Should anyone look in,
then, the fact of Andrias' unconsciousness might not be noticed.
Then he took off his own clothes, quickly assumed the field-gray
uniform of the guard. It fit like the skin of a fruit. He felt himself
bulging out of it in a dozen places. The long cape the guard wore would
conceal that, perhaps. In any case, there was nothing better.
Trying to make his stride as martial as possible, he walked down the
long carpet to the door, opened it and stepped outside.
* * * * *
His luck couldn't hold out forever. It was next to miraculous that he
got as far as he did--out of the anteroom before Andrias' office, past
the two guards there, who eyed him absently but said nothing, down the
great entrance hall, straight out the front door.
Going through the city had been easier, of course. There were many men
in uniforms like his. Duane thought, then, that Andrias' power could
not have been too strong, even over the League police whom he nominally
commanded. The police could not all have been corrupt. There were too
many of them; had they been turncoats, aiding Andrias in his revolt
against the League, there would have been no need to smuggle rifles in
for an unruly mass of civilians.
Duane cursed the lack of foresight of the early Earth governments.
They'd made a prison planet of Callisto; had filled it with the worst
scum of Earth. Then, when the damage had been done--when Callisto had
become a pest-hole among the planets; its iniquities a stench that rose
to the stars--they had belatedly found that they had created a problem
worse than the one they'd tried to solve. One like a hydra-beast.
Criminality was not a thing of heredity. The children of the
transported convicts, most of them, were honest and wanted to be
respectable. And they could not be.
Earth's crime rate, too, had not been lowered materially by exiling its
gangsters and murderers to Callisto. When it was long past time, the
League had stepped in, and set a governor of its own over Callisto.
If the governor had been an honest man a satisfactory solution might
have been worked out. The first governor had been honest. Under him
great strides had been made. The bribe-proof, gun-handy League police
had stamped out the wide-open plague spots of the planet; public works
had been begun on a large scale. The beginnings of representative
government had been established.
But the first governor had died. And the second governor had
been--Andrias.
"_You can see the results!_" Duane thought grimly as he swung into the
airfield in his rented ground car. Foreboding was stamped on the faces
of half the Callistans he'd seen--and dark treachery on the others.
Some of those men had been among the actual exiled criminals--the last
convict ship had landed only a dozen years before. All of those whom
Andrias planned to arm were either of the original transportation-men,
or their weaker descendants.
What was holding Andrias back? Why the need for smuggling guns in?
The answer to that, Duane thought, was encouraging but not conclusive.
Clearly, then, Andrias did not have complete control over the League
police. But how much control he did have, what officers he had won over
to treachery, Duane could not begin to guess.
Duane slid the car into a parking slot, switched off the ignition and
left it. It was night, but the short Callistan dark period was nearly
over. A pearly glow at the horizon showed where the sun would come
bulging over in a few minutes; while at the opposite rim of the planet
he could still see the blood-red disc of mighty Jupiter lingering for
a moment, casting a crimson hue over the landscape, before it made the
final plunge. The field was not flood-lighted. Traffic was scarce on
Callisto.
Duane, almost invisible in the uncertain light, stepped boldly out
across the jet-blasted tarmac toward the huge bulk of the _Cameroon_,
the rocket transport which had brought him. Two other ships lay on the
same seared pavement, but they were smaller. They were fighting ships,
small, speedy ones, in Callisto for refueling before returning to the
League's ceaseless patrol of the System's starlanes.
Duane hesitated briefly, wondering whether he ought to go to one of
those ships and tell his story to its League commander. He decided
against it. There was too little certainty for him there; too much risk
that the commander, even, might be a tool of Andrias'.
Duane shook his head angrily. If only his memory were clear--if only he
could be sure what he was doing!
* * * * *
He reached the portal of the ship. A gray-clad League officer was there
standing guard, to prevent the ship taking off.
"Official business," Duane said curtly, and swept by the startled
man before he could object. He hurried along the corridor toward the
captain's office and control room. A purser he passed looked at him
curiously, and Duane averted his face. If the man recognized him there
might be questions.
For the thousandth time he cursed the gray cloud that overhung his
memory. He didn't know, even, who among the crew might know him and
spread the alarm.
Then he was at the door marked, _Crew only--do not enter!_ He tapped on
it, then grasped the knob and swung it open.
A squat, open-featured man in blue, the bronze eagles of the Mercantile
Service resting lightly on his powerful shoulders, looked at him.
Recognition flared in his eyes.
"Duane!" he whispered. "Peter Duane, what're you doing in the clothes
of Andrias' household guard?"
Duane felt the tenseness ebb out of his throat. Here was a friend.
"Captain," he said, "you seem to be a friend of mine. If you are--I
need you. You see, I've lost my memory."
"Lost your memory?" the captain echoed. "You mean that blow on your
head? The ship's surgeon said something ... yes, that was it. I hardly
believed him, though."
"But were we friends?"
"Why, yes, Peter."
"Then help me now," said Duane. "I have a cargo stowed in your hold,
Captain. Do you know what it is?"
"Why--yes. The rifles, you mean?"
Duane blinked. He nodded, then looked dizzily for a chair. The captain
was a friend of his, all right--a fellow gun-runner!
"Good God," he said aloud. "What a mess!"
"What's happened?" the captain asked. "I saw you in the corridor,
arguing with Stevens. You looked like trouble, and I should have
come up to you then. But the course was to be changed, and I had to
be there.... And the next I hear, Stevens is dead, and you've maybe
killed him. Then I heard you've lost your memory, and are in a jam with
Andrias."
He paused and speculation came into his eyes, almost hostility.
"Peter Duane," he said softly, "it strikes me that you may have lost
more than your memory. Which side are you on. What happened between
you and Andrias? Tell me now if you've changed sides on me, man. For
friendship's sake I won't be too hard on you. But there's too much at
stake here--"
"Oh, hell," said Peter, and the heat gun was suddenly in his hand,
leveled at the squat man in blue. "I wish you were on my side, but
there's no way I can tell. I can trust myself, I think--but that's all.
Put up your hands!"
And that was when his luck ran out.
"Peter--" the captain began.