TWO LIVES ARE GAMBLED
Staggering toward his desk, Keith Randolph Marshall began to jab at
buttons affixed on its top. When servants appeared, he began screaming
orders to pursue and apprehend the kidnapper.
Almost unable to breathe from sheer horror, he slumped at a window and
gazed into a courtyard below. The big man was springing lightly across
the lawn, and the puny wisp of the girl looked a light burden in his
massive arms. A last leap, and they went through the open port of the
moored space-flyer.
Spurts of flame came from smoky rear jets. A sound like thunder rolled
into being, shaking the house and rattling the windows. For an instant
the space-flyer was cushioned on a turmoil of flames. Jets beneath the
prow tilted the nose upward. Then it darted swiftly into the heavens.
People over the solar system called the grizzled old man a dictator
of the spacelanes, yet it would have been hard, even for a close
acquaintance, to recognize Keith Randolph Marshall in the broken
man who now stooped over the tele-panels, pleading for a wireless
connection with the Space Police Bureau.
His next connection went through to a Dr. Haliburton, in the Medical
Towers Building of San Francisco. Marshall was calmer now, but
controlled himself only with an effort.
The mirror cleared to reveal a tall man in a laboratory apron, bent
absorbedly over a retort. As the features turned to Marshall, a look of
surprise gleamed behind gold-rimmed glasses and he tugged at the point
of a distinguishing Van Dyke beard.
"What's wrong, Mr. Marshall?" he demanded. "Is Alyce ill--"
"Everything!" gasped Keith Randolph Marshall. "I'll explain later. Tell
me, do you know young Rufus Thallin?"
"Indeed I do," responded the scientist with a frown. "I've been in
private practise for several years since leaving the faculty of
California School of Technology. An excellent pupil. Aptness for
medicine. A future for him there, if he wants it....
"Since you speak of it," went on Dr. Haliburton curiously, "he was here
only yesterday to talk over old times."
Marshall was tense as spring steel now and trying hard to conceal his
extreme excitement.
"Then he's pretty good in a medical way?" he wanted to know savagely.
"Pretty good is no word for it!" exclaimed Dr. Haliburton. "Why, I saw
him do a plastic operation once that would have stumped an old hand at
surgery. It was on a Venus expedition of the faculty, and a man had
become drunk and staggered into a grove of leper-plants. The flesh was
peeling from both hands, and Rufus operated--with only a native dirk,
mind you! He grafted plastic protoplasm to the tendons and saved both
hands. An exceptionally fine bit of surgery...."
"Just what," demanded the dictator of spacelanes, "does he know about
the Venus plague?"
Dark eyes narrowed and sparkled through the transparent lenses.
"Blue virus!" he exclaimed. "He's very interested. We discussed it at
length, and also went over the records of your daughter's case. I gave
her six months to live, as you know, and he--"
"That damned devil!" snorted Marshall in uncontrolled rage. "He was
planning it all the time. Now he's kidnapped her and taken her to
space."
For a moment the physician was stunned. He went quietly to a cabinet
case and jerked open a drawer. His face above the beard became ashen.
"Her case records are gone," he said dazedly. "You must be right."
Incoherently, Marshall poured forth the story, and the savant listened
incredulously, tugging at his trim beard.
"If she dies," shouted Marshall, swinging his fist, "he'll pay for it
in the atomic blast chamber, with his life."
When the telecaster was silent, Dr. Haliburton stood for a long while,
merely staring.
"No other would have dared!" he whispered awedly. "And there is a
chance, a tiny chance. He risked his life on it. How I wish I had his
courage!"
* * * * *
Rufus Thallin was afraid neither of his pursuers nor of their bullets
as he fled from the Marshall manor. Not as long as the precious little
bundle in his arms held the dim spark that was heir to the Marshall
millions. Widely opened blue eyes were peering up at him, but not with
fear. Only with a strange wonder that bordered on mental stupor.
"Don't be frightened," said young Rufus as they lumbered into the port
aperture of the space-flyer. "I'm not going to hurt you."
He laid her on a pendant space cushion and she did not struggle.
"I'm not frightened," she said in a leaden tone. "All you could do
is kill me. And I am not afraid of death. Neither would you harm me
bodily, since I am no longer attractive as other girls are."
Hand on the controls, Rufus faltered, looking back at the tumbled maze
of glinty hair.
"Whoever told you that?" he demanded, feeling poignantly sorry for her
for the first time. Up until the present instant, he had considered
her impersonally, rather as a key or possible solution for his own
troubles. It made him aware of the tremendous risks he was taking with
her life. Yet it was too late to back out now.
Under his guidance, the space-flyer lurched up at the sky, hurled
itself through the thinning blue stratosphere and smoked a fast trail
for the outer depths of space.
Strange, or was it?--that up till now he had thought only of that final
memory of his gaunt death-beckoned father, of the promise he had made
looking into the stern exactness of fading eyes.
When young Rufus swore he would keep the Thallin Starways going, would
preserve that proud tradition that went back to former times when the
first gallant rocket-ships bellowed like fire-breathing monsters and
hurtled fearlessly into the void, he had meant every word of it.
His feelings changed. Again the girl was only a pawn. Everything else
had failed. He had seized upon her and the sickness that lay prey to
her body as a means toward an end. He felt that there was a good chance
of her being cured when exposed to the healing rays of the void. He was
gambling not only her life, but his own as well. For if he failed in
his mission the Space Police would hound him to an eventual ignoble end.
In the visor screens, earth was falling away swiftly. As he watched
a scattering of dots appeared, drifted slowly across the face of the
globe, into space. Police craft, of course.
The girl's pale face was watching and he knew that she also was aware
of the pursuit. To those who followed their space-ship could be but a
dwindling mote that floated out of place in the pattern of encircling
stars.
Yet they had him! He read that conviction deep in her listless eyes.
The jaws of a gigantic trap were closing down about him in space.
With the superior speed of the Marshall gravity-impelled speedsters,
overhauling was certain, and then it would be a mere matter of clamping
him in magnetic grapples and making up a forced boarding party in space
toggings.
He pushed the controls down, built the discharge blasts to their
limit, and mopped sweat from his brow.
"They'll catch you, won't they?" He was surprised at the limpid words.
Alyce was lying on the swinging spring-couch, watching him in a
detached lethargy.
"Good girl!" he exclaimed jubilantly. Her faint interest was evidence
that there was still sap left in her body. "No, I don't think they'll
catch us. Now, don't move around and exert yourself. Just remember that
I'm your doctor now, and a pretty good doctor at that."
Right now those radiant, penetrating rays might be going through the
hulls of the ship, passing through diseased cell tissue, rearranging
the cellular patterns. He was determined not to frighten her. Words
might soothe her. So he pointed to the dots in the rear vision screens,
which were becoming larger.
"They're getting closer! That's because they're using the gravity
repulsion system, and I'm still using rockets. The rockets are on full
blast. There are about ten police ships hot on my trail. If I depended
entirely on rocket blasts, I'd never get away from anti-gravity
chasers."
As he spoke he was engrossed in making changes on the oval mechanism
board.
"My new drive doesn't use an explosive blast," he explained. "The fuel
doesn't explode, but changes into primitive radiation! This radiation
shimmers away--at almost the speed of light. Due to its increased mass
with its enormous velocity, it will exert an enormous force in the
opposite direction."
An instrument on the board cackled, and he flipped a switch. A
telescreen began to lighten. Those pursuit spacers were dangerously
close now. Close enough to see uniformed men standing on their bridges,
peering through glassite. From the nearest cylindrical shape a long
tentacle was shot forth.
Magnetic grapple! It slithered past the front cowling of his space
flyer, looped out and whipcracked back. If it had fastened to the
outer berylumin hull, escape would have become impossible. Through
transparent ports on all sides he saw the bulky noses of the Space
Police ringing him in. Many eyes were watching him over the sights of
grapple rockets.
Big Rufus Thallin grinned, turned and waved goodbye through the nearest
port, then slammed a power throttle down.
"So long.... Howling Jupiter! What a jolt!"
Long trailers of flame vanished behind his jets. Now only a shimmering
column of radiant force appeared. Rufus was jerked back against the
seat. It was as though the space-flyer had just scooted into motion
from a standstill.
One startled glance told him that the girl had passed into a coma.
Jerking himself upright, he began to fight the throttle, which was
jammed to the last notch and held there by the motion of swift
acceleration.
In the nearest police craft a top-notch pilot was staring with popping
eyes as the fugitive craft leaped ahead.
"Great blazing Antares!" exploded the "ace" spaceman, following the
departing space-ship with his eyes. "Where'd he get that power? Lordy
me, what speed!"
"Feed the juice into this star wagon!" groaned a Space Police
commander, deeply chagrined. "He's got some new propelling force that
has everything beat."
"They're getting away," gritted the pilot bitterly. "They're getting
away, and we can't do a thing. All we can do is stand here and watch
while that crazy man escapes to space with the poor girl."
In the craft ahead, Rufus' body was pulling away from the throttle.
Blood was clogging up in his respiratory system. Though his breathing
was smothered he held on grimly. The throttle snapped and he catapulted
in a wild heap across the control room, smashing against a wall.
A sickening knowledge swept him. The lever had snapped at a
crystallized joint, and was of no use now. He dropped it and went
crawling across the floor on all fours.
Alarmed by the smoothness of the space-flyer's motion, he shot a
fearful glance up at the accelerometer, to find the needle floating at
zero. The power-thrust of radiant force had ceased as quickly as it had
come into being.
It took little effort to get to his feet now. The police craft had kept
on his trail and were gaining again. Automatically he reached out and
snapped the rocket blasters into action to steady his space-ship. With
the new propulsor disabled, he could only coast along with his newly
gained momentum. The police ships were getting big again on the visor
screens.