"From the first weak call for help. I reached there about as soon as
the Patrol ships and ordered the whole story on ice."
"You can prove to her it _was_ Lucas?"
"Easily. They were there three or more days, loafing on solid ground,
letting themselves go on the poor devils of the little colony. When
the Patrol came in answer to a stolen radio signal, they had time only
to fight and run, leaving everything. Two of his trusted lieutenants,
known men, Revere and Pahboard, were found dead after the long-range
firing when we seized the domes. We can pin it on him with a deadly
certainty, Bannerman. We'll tar him with the blackest truth the System
has ever seen. Sir Galahad will ride for a little time, perhaps, but
he'll ride the calculating fiend we've known him and not the gallant
adventurer these cheap telecasts make him out to be. And we'll fling
the certain truth in Iris Chanler's painted face to do it!"
Bannerman was gravely sober. "Have you considered the consequences,
sir? The girl has been carefully reared. She's wealthy, spoiled, but
only a girl. In her revulsion from the ghastly sight you plan to thrust
on her, might she not turn on us in reaction? Fling the blame on us for
letting him commit the horrors she couldn't deny?"
General Wheelwright lifted an admiring forefinger. "Now that's the way
I like to hear my officers talk, Bannerman. Consider all the angles,
all the consequences. Follow no set plan blindly." He nodded in stern
commendation. "Knowing the woman, I anticipated your thought. The
Patrol will not lead her blindly by the hand into Banya Tor, Bannerman.
She will be steered there purely by chance, by a man not known to be
of our force. A man above suspicion, above reproach, perhaps I might
say above the law itself. Thorne."
He grinned wolfishly. "Call him in, Bannerman. You know his private
line."
Bannerman shook his head. "With your permission, sir, I'd rather not.
Even those men out there know him only as the richest man alive. That
is his value."
Wheelwright was not impressed. "You know best, then I know him as a
sot who stumbled on a Vadirrian cache and came out of the desert with
more wealth than any man from here to the outer rings. The whole System
knows him as no more, but for us it is sufficient that he secretly is
a captain in the Patrol and ready to do our bidding. The Chanler woman
and a party of her chattering friends are not an hour behind me on the
incoming Martian liner for Vulhan City. Take me to Thorne and we shall
spread our nets for the magpie if we have to use half his new-found
wealth to do it!"
* * * * *
"My first assignment!" snorted in Geoffrey Thorne as he stood watching
the dancers twirling about the huge white ballroom in the Government
House. "Escorting some snaggletoothed bandylegs to a desolate little
asteroid just to quease her fat little stomach. It's enough to turn my
own."
"Patience, Thorne," smiled Bannerman, leaning quietly against a pillar
at his side. "She's not bandy-legged."
Thorne stared, then laughed abruptly. "I needn't take your word on
that, Bannerman. The General comes."
General Wheelwright, forging through the eddying swarm of dancers,
glittered with gold and braid, but it was not at the great man Thorne
was staring with such evident approval. At the officer's side stepped
a tall, beautifully shaped woman in clinging Ionian spider-weave, her
skin glowing brilliantly in the intricate patterns of the skin-tight
gown. Her ebon hair, shoulder-length, bore a single brilliant jewel at
the ear, but it was her eyes which held Thorne.
Grey-blue as a summer storm, they scanned him as she walked forward, a
faint smile parting her lips at his open admiration. It was an approval
he made no effort to conceal, for Jeff Thorne, International, honored
no convention against his will, nor had he need. His vast wealth
enfolded him like a mantle, and few men on Earth or Mars or any other
planet took pleasure in measuring wits or steel with him. Slowly he
moved forward to meet the General, the dancers parting unobtrusively
before him.
Many eyes followed him, a tall, commanding figure in the heavily
brocaded white silk tunic, the broad golden stripe of the International
still upon the shimmering black of his close-fitting trousers. Gold
sparkled on chest and shoulders and jewels in the hilt of the short,
heavy sword slung at his left hip in ceremonial homage to the first
Martian colonists. In honor of these, too, was the crisp white turban
about the gold-shot scarlet fez, symbolizing the blood they shed and
the purity of the ideals for which so many of them had died. The five
moonstones of the order of Larcanston glowed sullenly red on his broad
chest.
"I hoped you'd be here, Thorne," the General greeted him, as heartily
as though he had not made grimly certain the young man would attend.
"May I present Miss Iris Chanler, Senator to the Council. Miss Chanler,
Captain Thorne." There was a chill disapproval in the General's
starched tones.
As they bowed and swept away in the ensuing dance, he joined Bannerman
stiffly and stood watching the gay throng with an expression as dour as
he could muster.
* * * * *
Thorne and the girl swung lightly in spiraling circles, fingers
interlaced, in the intricate, graceful steps of the latest Venusian
Glide Roll, the dancers melting about them in light-hearted disregard
of all official dignity.
"A handsome couple, sir," nodded Bannerman.
"Handsome enough," agreed Wheelwright, clasping his hands behind him
and following the two with brooding, stormy eyes. "Thorne seems to know
his business."
He was promptly about it. As the girl melted into his arms, following
his every lead with exquisite grace, he grinned down at her upturned,
challenging face.
"I almost stayed away," he admitted.
"Because of me?"
"Had you seen the picture of you I conjured up," he sighed, and she
laughed.
"And mine of you," she added. "I thought of you as a wrinkled old
desert rat, hearing of your fortune."
"We wrinkle easily here on Mars," he smiled. "You'll not stay long
enough to know." And his eyes, sweeping her lace-sheathed body, assured
her she need not fear wrinkles at the moment.
She smiled. "We sail for Triton on my yacht tomorrow. There's just time
for a visit to the Battan caves before I must return to N'Yott for the
opening of the fall sessions."
"Those are dangerous parts," he warned. "Your party is very small."
"We have good men," she laughed, eyeing him curiously. "You know that
area?"
"If I say I do, will you construe my answer aright?" was his cool
rejoinder.