Heywood, Gion's jackal, moped sullenly about the rocks of the jagged
little asteroid, scowling through his vitrine helmet at the tiny figure
moving slowly along the crater floor near the distant bones of the
wrecked _Plutonian_. The intolerable glare of the naked sun, hidden
by the rock's toothed horizon, yet thrust flaming whorls of gold and
scarlet above the mountains to hideously outline the ragged ribs of the
vessel he had diverted from its course to its death on this uncharted
worldlet.
A scowl he kept hidden from his companion darkened his handsome, waxen
face, and for the hundredth time he muttered imprecations upon his
ill-fortune in the moment of triumph. He had not counted on the girl.
Allen Heywood depended on nothing save himself, for which his master
Gion valued him more highly than any other tool and trusted him not at
all. Surreptitiously relaying to the Marward the coordinates of the
space-ship on which he had slipped as passenger, Heywood had coldly
blown out the stern-tubes with a delayed-action bomb and sent the big
ship crashing into the selected uncharted asteroid, thinking nothing of
the fifty lives that flared out in the exploding wreckage. More careful
of his own, he had simply stepped out an emergency lock in a space-suit
a moment before the ship struck, allowing himself to slowly drift with
his own momentum and the asteroid's faint gravitational pull. He had
landed a mile from the ship perhaps an hour after it crashed, only to
find himself confronted by another suited figure, the woman Francinet.
Shaken by the encounter, he realized she had no suspicion of the part
he had played, or that the crash had been less than accidental. She
had herself been saved by the merest freak, having been clad in a
space-suit for a photograph-minded acquaintance. When the ship split,
she had been shot upward through a rent in the hull, drifting slowly
down as had he. They were hopelessly marooned.
The ship was ruined, if not completely destroyed. Heywood pushed aside
the horrible steel-hard blobs of red which had been human beings with
no apparent qualms, nor troubled himself that it had been he who had
slain them all as surely as with gun or knife. With the bows crushed
shapeless by the headlong smash into the asteroid and the stem blown
wide by its own thermoblast bombs, nothing was left them but a length
or two of warped and twisted main cabin hardly capable of retaining the
Earth atmosphere still flowing through the tiny purifier engines he had
seen to preserving. Cleaning out the unrecognizable dead, he rigged up
a rough shelter for them. They had occupied it by now for over a week.
He kicked again at a rock, watching it spiral slowly up and over a
crevasse in slow-motion. The jewels were still intact, hidden in
the ship's safe. He had not risked her discovering him tampering
with either, nor the safer course of destroying her as he had her
companions. There was no assurance that another ship than Gion's
rescuing craft might not discover them first.
That Gion would send a ship for him he believed with implicit faith,
tempered by the knowledge that it would be the loot and not the thief
that the powerful Marward coveted. He had no illusions concerning Gion,
and so had survived. Thus, as he glanced skyward to see a tiny star
moving perceptibly across the blazing night of interspatial glory,
Allen Heywood flattened himself behind a huge rock quite as promptly as
from the devil himself.
A blaster slid into his hand. The green eyes were intent.
The little ship was coming down.
* * * * *
The long blue glare paled across the unwinking stars and a red column
of fire poured viciously from Kurland's ship, whitening to a rigid
arc lancing into the broken rocks below. Eyes intent, the outlaw bent
forward over his keys, searching the ragged terrain as he braked his
easy dive. Then his firm lips thinned, cruelly hard in the thick beard
masking his copper face. The broken ribs of the lost space-ship thrust
up against the sun, half-hidden in the shadows of a stoney ledge.
Kurland shut off his drive, thrusting in breakers and snapping down his
forward beams. The eight-man ship he had made known and feared through
all the distant Jovian system drifted easily through the empty sky,
feeling its way on walking tractor beams. The star-shine glinted on the
black lines and heavy armament, hesitating to further lighten the dark
menace of the craft.
A green beam lanced into a nearby crag, splitting it from top to
bottom, and toppling it in soundless ruin across the crater floor.
Nothing stirred about the silent wreck.
Lightly the ship touched the crater floor, rocking gently on its beams.
A broad figure in black swung down and moved swiftly across the rock
toward the broken hulk of the _Plutonian_. Heywood softly drifted into
the shadows, floating easily from hollow to hollow, following.
Kurland stood silent, looking up at the gigantic ruin, majestic even in
its awful desolation, and the look upon his face was not good to see.
There were no deeper hells than those for wreckers, no fate too grim
for one who callously snapped the bright, thin thread of life reaching
out from Earth to all the Solar planets and their hundred circling
satellites. The Marward of Jupiter would buy an empire with this
tangled pile of riven steel. He should find the bargain dear.
There was no need to seek airlocks in the _Plutonian's_ side. Three
were visible, ripped and gaping, and there were a score of torn holes
twenty feet and more in width broken through the shell where the vessel
had plowed her way into the rocks. Clothes instruments, furniture,
books, and a hundred intimate possessions lay crumpled to view in the
gutted cabins or scattered wide across the shining plain. For a moment
Kurland looked at a headless doll, then moved forward, his face a
deadly mask.
Swiftly he climbed, mounting the broken stone and twisted metal that
led him to a greater gash leading into an inner saloon. He forced his
way through the debris, then straightened, looking about him curiously.
Furniture and drapes lay crushed, torn, heaped against the broken
forward bulkheads, but nowhere could he see the dead who must have
died here by the tens and by the score. There was no blood upon the
walls, for blood exposed to the instant void of interstellar space
crystallized in the very bodies of the injured, but in the debris at
the foot of the muralled bulkhead many tiny marbles of dreadful scarlet
rolled and tinkled silently as he searched.
He moved forward, passing through the shattered bulkheads where open
swinging doors gave acute evidence of the unexpectedness of the
catastrophe which had overwhelmed the ship. Ruin and destruction were
everywhere, but nowhere a trace of the bodies he knew had exploded into
scarlet dust as the biting death of space lanced its deadly vacuum into
the rending vessel. There could be only one answer, and it brought his
gun into his hand as he moved warily through the corridors.
His search ended in the open, metal-sprayed bowl which had been the
forward pilot cabin, for here, piled hideously in red tangles, the
rigid blots whose life-blood had rolled beneath his feet in bright
pellets as he walked lay sprawled in horrible disfigurement. There were
no longer anything at all. Simply _color_, encompassed in torn and
broken clothing.
Whiter than the fleshless bone displayed before him, Kurland thrust
to the swinging door, welding it shut in one impulsive burst of his
blaster. No man should see what lay beyond. Shaking with a terrible
anger, Kurland strode furiously back the broken ship, gun in hand, and
flung his curses on ahead. He opened nothing, but shot doors and panels
from their hinges as he advanced, eyes glaring for the faintest sign of
movement. Only the man who had planned and executed this horror could
have survived it.
* * * * *
Midway in his stride the outlaw halted, gun lifted. The pilot light
over the central chambers glowed softly. There was atmosphere within.
Kurland snarled, closed his gloved hand on the twisted lever. He jerked
and the battered door swung open, revealing a rough airlock improvised
from the usual intercommunicating chamber. He darted in, snapping the
door behind him. Air sighed into the chamber as he drew another rude
lever down from the box nailed to the bulkhead.
Removing his vitrine helmet, Kurland holstered his gun and thrust open
the inner lock. The air was clean and fresh, Earth-crisp. The room
was battered, but not structurally damaged, and the furnishings were
neatly in place. There were signs that other chambers had been looted
to furnish this one, and Kurland smiled mirthlessly. He silently moved
across the thick blue rug.
The room beyond was a sleeping cabin, with male attire in the slotted
racks. The stamp of occupancy lay everywhere in the worn, neat articles
stamped with a golden H. The other room of the suite had been fitted
with heat tubes for warmth and cooking, and were piled high with
salvaged foodstuffs.
Continuing, Kurland found a broken passage beyond this kitchen, leading
deeper into the shop's waist, but cut off from the first suite by
locked doors. The outlaw grinned wickedly and, reversing the charge
silently burned the doors from their slides. There was no sound, no
vibration as he laid them against the wall. Gion had not hunted him for
nothing.
The room beyond was deep in rugs, the panelled walls well-hung with
costly paintings. A recorder was singing beyond a brocaded drape, and
Kurland could hear footsteps moving lightly across the padded floor.
With one swift bound he was across the anteroom, ripping the drapery
from its flimsy hangings, and stood upon the threshold of the inner
room, a black, terrible figure looming in the warped doorway like the
angel of Death. His voice rang softly through the sudden frozen silence
as he faced the survivor.
"My apologies. I underestimated Gion."
Irene Francinet, whirling in anger at an intrusion she attributed
to the hitherto circumspect Heywood, froze at the sight confronting
her, a huge black-bearded stranger with the bronze face of a Japanese
devil-mask. The gloved hands were gargoyle claws, hovering over the
blasters slung at the intruder's steel-black hips, the blazing eyes
lances piercing her to the heart. This was ... Death.
She had been preparing for a sun-bath under a lamp built into the wall
over the bed. The hand clutching her garments across her breast sank
for a moment, evoking a mirthless grin from the giant that froze her
already icy blood.
"You needn't trouble," he said, his voice so low she barely heard him.
"It won't work."
She drew herself up, dark head high, and tried to still the tremor of
her knees. There was good blood in Irene Francinet, and long years of
iron discipline.
"You are intruding," she said, and her voice was steadier than she
hoped. "Who are you? Where is your ship?"
His courtesy was insulting as he bowed, his eyes never leaving hers.
"Your pardon. I am Eldon Kurland, late of North Jupiter. _You_ need no
name."
"I am Irene Francinet, Recorder, of Earth." Her voice was angry,
uneven. "I do not understand you."
"Let it suffice that I understand you," he replied, his tone acid with
ruthless disdain. He moved slowly forward, his eyes chill diamonds
under the softly glowing atomics, and slowly she retreated, no longer
able to conceal her fear. His hands never left the black handles of his
guns.
"I knew the Marward's arm is long," he went on, grimly. "None better
than I. I had not thought it long enough to drag the proud name of
Recorder in this bloody mud."
She halted, stamping her foot on the rug. "What is this talk? Marward
of where? Why do you fling him in my face like ... like refuse?" Bright
color stained her pale cheeks, and he eyed her curiously.
"You do that well enough, Francinet." He surveyed her from head to
toe, savoring the midnight hair, the eyes flaming bluely into his, the
straight nose and the strong red mouth. "Disclaim Gion of Jupiter if
you will. He's no friend of mine. But save your anger for better men.
I've seen your work."
Her face was blank, and he answered her brutally.
"I stand within it. It stinks in the sun. I walked in blood to fling
it in your face, you treacherous snake! I'll see the color of Gion's,
yes, and yours, before either of you hears the last of this!" he blazed
in a sudden whirl of recurring anger. "You'll play at words with me!
You know this ship's cargo! You sent Gion her position even as you blew
her tubes and sent her crashing here with all her helpless people." He
flung a hand back at the door by which he had entered. "Walk out there,
Recorder, and feel their blood roll beneath your feet! You who are so
free with other's lives to win the treacherous praise Gion lulls you
fools asleep with while he robs and slays!"
"What are you saying?" she whispered, lips stiff in her blanched face.
"You think _I_ wrecked the _Plutonian_? You think I killed those
people?"
"You live," was his brutal rejoinder.
"But why? _Why?_" she wailed, abandoning her firm dignity as he loomed
over her, black with anger. "Why should I do so horrible a thing? What
reason could I have?"
"My reason," he snarled. "Because you must, as I came here because I
must. I to save my comrades from the noose, you for Gion's gold. Well,
you've earned it, and triply over, woman. Where are the jewels?"
"I have no jewels," she faltered, her hand indicating her few personal
belongings salvaged from the wreckage of her cabin. He brushed them
aside, turned a jeering grin on her.
"You haven't opened the safe, then? By Throaze, but Gion knows his
tools! Where is it?"
* * * * *
She stared at him. "Back there. In the purser's office, I suppose." Her
voice was frankly trembling. "I haven't touched it."
"Clever. I might not have been the first." He jerked his head aft.
"Ahead of me. March."
"I'm not ... dressed."
He tossed her a blanket. "Use that. Show me that safe, _Recorder_." Her
proud title, in his bitter lips, was an epithet, and she bristled. But
she obeyed.
She moved into the dimly lit corridor beyond her little suite, feeling
her way along the warped and battered passage. They had not attempted
to utilize this part of the vessel, although it lay within their
atmospheric seals, and she had rough going. Kurland moved close behind
her, hand on his gun, but she made no move to oppose him. Her one hope
of safety lay in acceding to this madman's demands, trusting to her
erstwhile companion, Heywood. He must be somewhere about. And Kurland
did not seem to know of his existence.
The office was a broken shambles, records and papers heaped against the
forward bulkhead. The massive safes had been torn bodily from the wall
and lay upended in the litter. Kurland strode swiftly to the smallest,
motioning her to immobility with his gun. Supplied with Gion by the
proper combinations, he spun the six dials expertly and the three doors
fell open. He took out a small leaden box, then four more.
Prismatic fire blazed roof-high as he flung back the cover of one,
jetting iridescently from a tumbled mass of primitive goldwork
encrusted with the unbelievable gems of Orion. He lifted a heavy golden
torque, studded with blazing gouts of crimson flame and slung on an
inch-thick rope of giant Venusian pearls worth each the lives of twenty
men. A yellow diamond Chalcidite rolled across the scarred steel of the
open door and came to rest, winking like an evil eye in the dim light
sifting down the corridor behind Kurland.
His voice was soft, terrible in its hatred as he looked at her, blanket
clutched frozen across her bosom. His eyes blazed as balefully as the
huge jewel winking before him.
"Will you lie now, Recorder? These are the Jewels of Orion!"
She did not answer, less for the contemptuous accusation in his voice
than the more dreadful thought her trained mind thrust at her as
insistently. If the _Plutonian_ had been sabotaged and wrecked for
such world-loot, as his sure knowledge, his very presence indicated,
then his first assumption must inevitably be true. The survivor he
considered her must indeed be the hellish wrecker. And she was not the
only survivor.
Her eyes were enormous. A mound of living fire grew upon the dusty
steel as he piled up the blazing rings and brooches of the long-dead
Orion kings. He tossed down a circlet of hammered gold, wreathed for
the brows of some ancient queen, and the thirty pendant gems tinkled
musically in the silence. Each could have bought the souls of an army,
round, glinting stars of purest emerald green deep-sunk with tiny suns
of icy diamond lustre. Kurland paused in his magical task, looking
across at her.
"Are they worth the blood we walked upon to reach them, Recorder?" he
asked, quietly.
"I ... I didn't know," she faltered, meeting his gaze with growing
firmness.
"Men have died before over these bright toys," he shrugged, opening
another box and pouring it in a blazing cascade over the first heap of
white fire. "Men will die again. And among them, Gion."
"The Marward of Jupiter?" she whispered. "He knows? He sent you here,
knowing this?"
"Your message reached him. The Marward is swift to serve his servants.
Particularly those ... bearing gifts."
"You betray yourself," she flashed, pointing at the gems. "Gion is
evil, but would he trust any messenger with _those_?"
Kurland looked quietly at her. "The Marward holds me in tighter bonds
than you think, Recorder. If I fail him, five of my friends hang.
Skyhigh."
She looked searchingly at him. "Who are you? You rate your friends very
high, Black-beard."
* * * * *
Kurland smiled, a hard grin with no mirth in it. "I am Eldon Kurland,
as I told you. Outlaw. Gion made. Were you a true Recorder, you should
know of me, and know I hold my men dearer than this trumpery glass from
beyond the Milky Way." His gloved hand struck the gems contemptuously,
tossing jewels to right and left upon the papered flooring. She
followed their meteoric flight, then glanced up in astonishment as
Kurland swayed, knees buckling, and sank with a clash of heavy armor
to sprawl across the fortune he had struck aside. Behind him a bright,
feral countenance smiled wolfishly and the slight figure which had
slipped silently into the room from the passage straightened up
triumphantly, gun in hand. Allen Heywood smiled upon her benignly.
[Illustration: _The outlaw stiffened, then his knees buckled._]