VIII
Alarm rocked the space port behind us. Great cruisers lifted ponderously from their cradles. And a thousand little gray patrol boats, fleet as our own tiny ship, rocketed into pursuit.
"We're lost!" I gasped.
And tall dark Jeron, standing gravely at the controls, shook his head.
"This time," he said heavily, "we won't get away. For already they are close upon us. Our rust-colored hull is easy to see. And they're already racing to get between us and the cosmic cloud—Kel can't pullthatagain!"
"Don't need to."
The Earthman still wore the grimed, gaudy togs of old Naralek. The brilliant patch of the sandbat was still plastered to his shoulder like some diamond-winged, colossal moth. But his lean body stood very straight, and his gray eyes flashed with a fighting glint.
The swarm of red stars—the flaring repulsors that drove our pursuers—grew and spread. A flight of them swept up beside us. Deadly blue needles began to probe for us. And Kel Aran turned gravely from the danger without, to the telescreen cabinet.
"—spies!" It was the boom of Gugon Kul. "Enemies of the Corporation and the Empire! They must be taken."
Something clicked.
"Hold on, Admiral!" The voice of Kel Aran had the cracked nasal twang of the old showman of space. "Remember what Setsi told you, in the booth?"
The reply was an incoherent bellow.
"I do, by the Emperor!" It became at last comprehensible. "And it proves that your circus is a ring of spies!"
"Perhaps," rapped Kel Aran. "But it proves that you are something worse. We know ten times more than Setsi told you. Do you remember the game on Ledros, when you played three ships of your command against a slave-girl, and lost them to Malgarth? Do you remember how you got the funds you paid for the five Moons of Haari? Do you remember—"
He was interrupted by a choking roar.
"If you don't like to be reminded, Admiral," the Earthman cut in again, "call off your ships. Otherwise, we'll tell all your fleet why the stores are rotten! And why the pay was cut!"
The sandbat fluttered on his shoulder, like a mist of diamond light.
"Oh, Admiral, beware!" caroled the silicon being. "Setsi'll tell! Oh, oh, Admiral, what a world Setsi'll tell. For Setsi knows! Setsi knows about the secret cabin in your ship, and those you imprison there, and the deadly drugixili!"
"Eh?" rapped Kel Aran, into the stark silence. "Shall we broadcast, Admiral?"
And the sandbat, clinging like a gem-sewn patch to his shoulder, made a mockingly melodious chuckle.
A long silence, while I could hear the Admiral's gasping breath.
"All right," said Kel Aran. And his fingers touched the controls of the screen.
"No, don't broadcast!" It was a hoarse, whispered gasp. "I'll call back the fleet. And we must make a rendezvous—for I will reward you."
"Very well," and Kel Aran grinned.
"You'll meet me?" gasped the Admiral. "Where? When?"
"On black Mystoon," rang the reckless voice of Kel Aran. "On the night that Malgarth dies!"
There was a pause, a dread in the voice that answered.
"Mystoon? But Mystoon is forbidden to all save the robots; its very location is unknown, even, to men. How can we meet there? And don't you know that Malgarth can never die?"
"I'll find a way," the Earthman promised him. "And I don't know."
Something clicked, and he turned lightly away from the screen. His lean face was bright with anticipation. Softly, he was humming the chorus of his song of Verel Erin, that ended, "—till I find her or I die."
"And now," he told us joyously, "we've found her!"
The red pursuing stars halted, indeed, and turned back, as Gugon Kul had promised. But Jeron, as he set our little ship on her new course toward the capital system of the Galactic Empire, shook a grave dark head.
"Malgarth will hear of this in time," he prophesied. "And he's quicker than our crafty Admiral. He'll be quick enough to see that this limping showman is the Falcon of Earth, still seeking the Stone—and he'll be quick enough to set a trap!"
Offer of a few drops of rum spurred the drowsy sandbat to recall a few more crumbs of knowledge gleaned from the Admiral's brain. Verel had been picked up near the old orbit of Earth, drifting in a self-propelled space-suit with the motor coils burned out. It was one of Gugon Kul's patrol boats that found her. Chancing to watch her trial, on the telescreen, the Emperor had been struck with her beauty. He had ordered her to be brought to Ledros. She was kept drugged. And she was to be destroyed, like any native of the condemned planet, when he tired of her.
"Drugged," whispered Kel Aran. His face was a gray taut mask. "At the mercy of Tedron Du!" His eyes lit with a frosty glitter. "We're going to Ledros, Barihorn. We're going to take Verel and the Stone. And we'll pay the Emperor, while we're there, for the crimes of twenty years."
Ledros, Jeron warned, was well garrisoned by the Galactic Guard. And the alarm would surely be out by the time we reached it. But Kel Aran would admit no delay or concession to peril. We climbed out, as the ship ran on, to repaint the hull with that invisible black. The papers of theChimerian Birdwere burned, most of the betraying paraphernalia of the circus dumped out into space. And we drove on toward the seat of the Galactic Empire.
Even with the incredible power of theBarihorn'sspace-contraction drive, it was a voyage of many days to Ledros. We studied the charts as we flew, and made a dozen futile plans.
"Ledros," Kel Aran told me, "is the greatest planetary system in the Galaxy. In various orbits, all billions of miles outward from its triple sun, are forty huge planets. Many are covered with the palaces, estates, treasuries, and administration buildings of the Emperor. But half, at least, are devoted to the bases and fortifications of the Galactic Guard. The private fleet of Tedron Du is three times that of our old friend the Admiral."
But we slipped past the long rows of sinister colossal hulks lying in the void. Veiled in the crimson repulsor-flare of a great freighter carrying food for the soldiers and the bureaucrats and courtezans of the Emperor, we came safely within the ring of fortified planets, and turned aside, at last, toward the pleasure-world of Tedron Du.
The three clustered suns, crimson, blue-white, and a pale eerie green, were now a splendid sight. The two score of giant planets, lit with the changing rays of the triple star, made a string of splendid gems against the night of space. The pleasure planet was itself a gorgeous jewel, covered with well-tended gardens of many-hued vegetation, and with the magnificent palaces, triumphal arches, and colossi erected by a thousand generations of universal rulers.
Approaching the night side of the massive planet, we cut off the power to glide undetected through another patrol of the Galactic Guard—while big Zerek Oom, mopping perspiration from his tattooed forehead, declared ominously:
"Nothing begun so deadly well but turned out very ill!"
Finally, however, taking the controls from the Saturnian, Kel Aran dropped us in a silent dive, checked it over a bright-lit palace, and settled into an adjoining garden. Very softly, theBarihornsank into the shadowed water of a silver-walled bathing pool.
Kel Aran was hardly looking the Falcon of Earth. His face was gray, taut, dewed with sweat. His lean hands trembled. His breath was quick, his voice a low hurried rasp. His whole being, I saw, was the battleground of a tremendous hope and a tremendous fear.
"In half an hour," he gasped, "we may have her—or we may know that she is dead."
To my relief, he chose me to go with him above. The ship's lock worked as well below water as in the vacuum of space. We entered it without space suits, since the air above was breathable, but each wearing two long-tubed disruptor guns. The water of the pool flooded in. I caught a great breath, dived out after the Earthman, swam upward.
Dripping, we clambered over the silver rim, and paused breathless beneath the dead-white foliage of an unfamiliar tree. Still there was no alarm—the silence began to seem tense, uncanny, as if some unseen menace crouched and held its breath!
The emerald sun had been last of the three to set, and an unearthly greenish twilight lingered in the sky. All the shrubs and trees, even the velvet lawns of that vast walled garden, were snowy white. Towers of yellow gold rose beyond, and great windows burned with a blood-red light, and a thin wail of melancholy music reached us.
I saw the sandbat clinging to Kel's shoulder. She fluttered her six glittering arms, to fling off a shower of tiny drops. And I heard her cooing voice:
"Now she's dancing, Kel. She's lovely before the Emperor. Her body is a wind-tossed foam of light. Lovely, Kel, so lovely! But her mind thinks nothing that I can tell. She feels nothing, Kel. Remembers nothing. Hopes nothing. She is a robot dancing, Kel, before the eyes of Tedron Du!"
The bright pancake of Setsi fluttered again; its million bright gleams shimmered with a blue of dread.
"The eyes of Tedron Du! Oh, what dreadful eyes! They are thirsty, Kel. They are hungry. They are eager. They are cruel! How beautifully she dances, Kel! How gracefully—even if her mind is dead! The Emperor holds his breath. His fingers coil beside him. He's thirsty, Kel. Ah, so fearfully thirsty for her blood!"
We had wrung the water from our garments, dried and tested our weapons. Kel Aran was tense and white, as he listened to Setsi's whirring. And a grim cold light burned up in his eyes.
"Wait here, Barihorn," came his strained low whisper. "Guard the ship and my retreat. I'm going after Verel."
I started to insist that I should go along. But one quick gesture silenced me. He strode away through the dead-white garden, toward the scarlet windows and the music. And I was left alone. The air was heavy with a scent like funeral lilies. And that breathless, crouching silence became more and more intolerably oppressive.
It was a long, long time that I waited. All the green dusk faded. The stars were strange and cold in the sky, and the great bright planets of Ledros made a vari-colored trail among them. And still that lurking silence leered.
I listened to the thin sounds in the distance, trying to read the progress and the fate of Kel Aran. The music had an orgiastic rhythm—a million years before, I should have called it "swing." Sometimes there was a peal of drunken laughter, and once I heard a woman scream.
But what of Kel Aran? Eternal minutes dragged away. The dead-white trees were ghostly shapes about the pool. And a dull glow of crimson touched the sky's dark rim, for the red sun would be the first to rise. And yet that silence thickened, clotted.
Then abrupt uproar! Shrieks and loud commands. The snarl of cathode guns, and the thin cold hiss of disruptors. The crash of a shattering explosion. And then I saw Kel Aran!
The crystal panes burst from a great window. For a moment I saw him standing in it alone, his lean crouching figure outlined against the red beyond. A disruptor stabbed its white blade from his hand. Then he leaned down, lifted a slim girl into his arms, and leapt out into the darkness.
Dark smoke poured out of the great window behind him. It was lit with flickerings of orange. And the tide of confusion swept upward. The roar of flames drowned shouts and screams. Great engines dropped out of the sky, and began deluging the flaming palace with great white streams.
I saw movement in the white foliage, and almost rushed to meet Kel Aran. But it was a Galactic Guard detachment, a score of men in red-and-yellow, running. I dropped beside the pool until they had passed.
"The Falcon!" The panting words came back to me. "Fired the palace! Out here—with the Emperor's dancer!"
The crimson dawn grew thicker. The smoke and flame gushed higher from the palace—it was a losing fight, against the conflagration. I crouched under the white leaves, waiting with a hand on my gun.
"Barihorn!"
Kel Aran had whispered my name, and I started as if a gun had cracked. He was standing behind me, at the brink of the pool. His arm was around a panting girl. Torn scraps of silken gauze clung to her slim white loveliness, and a deep splendor glowed at her waist.
"I found her," he whispered triumphantly. "And the Stone!"
He touched the great jewel at her waist—and I saw that indeed it had the shape of the diamond block, into which, as I slept, I had seen the eternal mind of Dondara Keradin transferred.
I stared at the trembling, gasping woman. She was beautiful, yes. But something was wrong. And it was not that she was drugged. Her eyes were alert, watchful. Something in them was cold, calculating, hostile.
"Verel!" Kel was whispering. "We'll make it—even though they got poor Setsi! And still I can't believe—Mine again, when I thought you must be dead!" He drew her white loveliness close. "Even the Stone!"
"Kel!" she sobbed in his arms. "My darling Kel!"
I heard a hoarse command, saw another squad of searchers break out of a white hedge toward the burning palace. Even as I touched the Earthman's shoulder, in warning, a booming challenge reached us:
"Halt, Falcon! Yield yourself—or die!"
Kel swung the girl toward the pool.
"Dive!" he whispered. "We must swim into the valve."
"Where?" Her cold eyes were staring at him, strangely.
"Hurry!" His pleading voice held a sudden agony of doubt. "The ship is in the pool."
She crouched abruptly. Her white lithe body, marked with red scratches from the flight, was tensely pantherlike. Her eyes had a malific greenish luster. Thin and high, her voice shrieked out:
"Here! Here's Kel Aran, the Falcon. Take him!"
She leapt catlike at the Earthman, sweeping him back from the silver brink. He struggled with her.
"Help me, Barihorn!" he gasped. "We must take her! Malgarth—She doesn't know herself."
Shouts had answered the girl. White warning rays hissed above us. I saw two more squads rushing down upon us, beside the first. I tried to help Kel Aran drag the girl into the pool. But her slim white arms had a maniac strength. She picked us both up, carried us back again from the silver rim.
"Strong!" Kel was gasping. "She's strong as a robot!" A choking sob of startled horror. "She is—"
Then I saw the appalling thing. Struggling to get his feet on the ground again, Kel had caught the red curls of her hair. And the hair had come off! Her head had come off—all the outside of it.
For all her white beauty had been a painted mask.
Still her red-scratched, naked body had all its loveliness. But the thing on its shoulders was the compact metal brain-case of a robot, its weird eye-lenses glittering with a cold and triumphant green.
Chilled with a startled horror, I struggled against those binding arms, so far stronger than any arms of flesh.
"I see it now!" came the despairing gasp of Kel Aran. "This was all a trap of Malgarth's. And the bait was not Verel, but her robot simulacrum!"
We were suddenly flung down upon the dead-white grass. Scores of men stood around us, in the light of the flaming palace, covering us with bright weapons. And the hideous robot-head, glittering eerily on the white-curved shoulders of Verel Erin, began to laugh like a machine gone mad.
"Look!" A new despair choked Kel Aran. "It was not even the Stone!"
He pointed back to the pool's white rim. I saw that the great jewel had fallen there, and shattered. The fragments had no fire. I knew that it had not been the Dondara Stone, but only a mockery of glass.
That appalling mechanical laughter rang louder in our ears, maddening.