Collected short fiction, p.329
Collected Short Fiction, page 329
Her geodynes—or, in the terms of the geodesy engineers, hyper-compensated electromagnetic geodesic deflectors—were of the new type designed by Max Eleroid. Far more powerful than the old, they were yet so delicately matched and balanced that the ship could be landed on a planet, or even worked into a berth, without the use of auxiliary rockets.
The Phantom Atom had compact accommodations for a crew of four. But only one man was aboard—now staring grimly at his own picture, fastened beside another on the metal bulkhead behind the tiny, vitrilith-windowed pilot bay.
ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND
DOLLARS REWARD!
That was the heading, in startling crimson letters, above the full-color picture. Beneath it was a block of smaller black type:
This sum will be paid by the legion of space, for aid and information leading to the capture or the death of Chan Derron, escaped convict, believed to be known also as the “Basilisk.”
Description: Stands six feet three.
Earth weight, two hundred ten. Hair, bronze. Complexion, deeply space-tanned. Eyes, gray. Slight scars on face, neck, and back, such as due to violent interrogation.
This man is physically powerful, intelligent, and desperate. A former captain in the legion, he was convicted of murder and treason. Two years ago he escaped from the legion prison on Ebron. He is believed to possess a small but powerful spaceship. Clues of him have been found on several planets.
Officers of all planets are warned that Derron is a dangerous man. He was trained in the legion academy. He is believed to be armed with a mysterious and deadly instrumentality. It is advised that he be disabled before he is accosted.
JAY KALAM
Commander of the legion of space
Four years had made a difference between the picture and the man. The picture, taken after his arrest, looked bleak and grim enough. But Chan Derron, in those four bitter years, had grown harder and leaner and stronger. Some frank, boyish simplicity was gone from his dark-tanned face, and in its place was something—savage.
HE TURNED from the picture, to the one beside his own. His great brown hand saluted it. And a brief, sardonic grin crossed his square-jawed face.
“Comrades, eh, Luroa?” he muttered. “Together against the legion!”
He had taken the other picture from the same legion bulletin board, in old, mud-walled Ekarhenium, on Mars, where he had found his own. The two notices were side by side, at the top of the board—offering the two highest rewards. And he had been dazzled by the sheer, startling beauty of the face on the other.
A woman’s face, wondrous with something beyond perfection. Beneath the dark, red-gleaming hair, her features were regular and white—and something shone from them. Her eyes were a clear green, wide apart, with the slightest hint of a slant. Full-lipped and red, her long mouth smiled with a hidden mockery.
A woman’s face—but she was no woman.
For the text beneath her picture ran:
Rewards totaling two hundred and fifty thousand dollars will be paid by the legion of space, the Green Hall Council, and various planetary governments, for the being named Luroa, pictured above, living or dead.
She is not a human being, but a female android.
The history of the android traffic is perhaps not generally known. But for many years, at his laboratory hidden on a planetoid beyond the normal limits of the System—a gifted criminal biologist—Eldo Arrynu engaged in the manufacture of these illegal synthetic beings. He headed a ring of criminals that made a vast income through, smuggling these beautiful, but dangerous beings to wealthy purchasers throughout the System.
Stephen Orco, the male android whose deadly cunning and soulless hate came near destroying the System during the war with the cometeers, is typical of these creations. Perfect of body, brilliant of brain, inherently criminal, Stephen Orco caused the destruction of his maker by the cometeers.
The entity Luroa was the last creation of Eldo Arrynu, and she is believed to be the last android in existence. The scientist refused to sell her. He kept her with him until the attack of the cometeers. She escaped, however, when all others on the planetoid were killed. Since, she has been the gifted and ruthless leader of the remnants of the interplanetary gang.
Beyond the single picture above, discovered in the records on the planetoid, no description of the android Luroa is available. Nothing is known of her surviving associates.
Officers are warned that this sinister being possesses a mind of phenomenal keenness, that she is pitilessly free of all human scruples, and that her alluring beauty is her most deadly weapon. She is fully trained in many lines of science, physically more powerful and far quicker than most men, and skilled in the use of weapons.
Officers are advised to destroy this being upon identification.
JAY KALAM
Commander of the legion of space
A quarter of a million, darling!” Chan Derron whispered. “And I think you’re worth it—on looks alone!” The hard grin seamed his dark face again. “For your own sake, I hope they haven’t got you overestimated as much as they have me.”
HE BLEW the smiling picture an ironic kiss, from his big brown hand, and then bent again to the hooded view plate of the chart cabinet. Miles of micrograined film within the instrument, intricate reels and cams and gears, ingenious prisms and lenses, could give a true stereoscopic picture of the System as it would appear from any point in its stellar vicinity—at any desired telescopic power, at any time within a thousand years. The anal-integrators could quickly calculate the speediest, safest, or most economical route from any one point to any other.
The big man found the light fleck that was Oberon, outermost satellite of cloudy-green Uranus. His great hands deftly moved the dials to bring it into coincidence with the tricrossed hairs in the view plate. He read the destination from the indicators—set it up on the keys. And then, while the humming mechanism was analyzing and reintegrating the many harmonic factors involved in moving the Phantom Atom across a billion miles of space to a safe landing on that cold and lonely moon, his bronze-glinting eyes went back to the smiling picture on the bulkhead.
“Well, Luroa,” he said slowly, “I guess it’s going to be good-by.” He waved a grave farewell to her white and mocking loveliness. “You know, we could have made quite a team, you and I—if I had just been what the legion takes me for!”
His bronze head shook.
“But, my lady, I’m not: I’m no reckless pirate of the spaceways—unless by dire necessity. I’m just a plain soldier of the legion, in incredibly and peculiarly bad luck. I haven’t got any ‘mysterious and deadly instrumentality.’ ”
His head lifted a little. His eyes lighted. His voice softened, confidentially.
“But I’ve got a secret, Luroa!” Smiling again, almost wistfully, he pointed at a series of figures on the log tape beside the hooded glass.
“No secret weapon,” he whispered. “And nothing like the secret of your life, Luroa. But it’s enough to mean new hope, to me.” His great head lifted, with a fierce little gesture of pride. “It means one more chance.”
A moment he looked silently at the smiling picture. And the green-eyed loveliness of Luroa looked back, he thought, with a mocking comprehension. “It was like this, my lady,” he said.
“The last time Hal Samdu chased me, I got a hundred million miles ahead of his fleet, running out north. I got far beyond visual range. Or beyond the normal range of the mass-detectors. I was splicing up a new hookup, to find if old Hal was still on the trail, when I found—something else.”
He shook his finger at her.
“Don’t ask me what it is, Luroa. It’s too far off, with whatever albido it has, to show even a point in the System’s best telescope. But the mass is of the order of ten million tons, and the distance approximately ten billion miles, estimated by triangulation.
“Doesn’t matter, what it is. A chunk of rock, or a projectile from Andromeda. I’m going out there. Just one more landing first, at some outstation, to get food and cathode plates. And then I’m off. I’ll find out what it is. And do a bit of research I have in mind. And wait.”
Chan Derron’s air of lightness was growing very thin. A hoarse little break came in his voice.
“Wait,” he whispered. “With the ato-synthesis plant, for air and food staples, I can wait a lifetime—or what’s left of mine—if I must.
“Wait—and listen. Beyond the ultrawave, of course, and out of all the beams—but the visi-wave should pick up something. Enough so I’ll know if Chan Derron can ever come back.”
He tried to grin, again, and waved his hand at the picture of Luroa.
“Till then, my darling,” his voice came huskily, “I guess it’s good-by. To you. And the legion. And the System. To every man and woman I ever knew. To every street I ever walked. To every bird and every tree. To every living being I ever saw.
“Good-by—”
Chan Derron gulped suddenly. He turned quickly away from the two pictures on the bulkhead, and looked out into the depthless dark of space. His eyes blinked, once or twice. And his great tanned hands stiffened like iron on the vernier wheel of the Phantom Atom.
THE GEODYNES made a soft musical humming. There was a slow, muffled clicking from the gyrotomic pilot. Chan Derron peered northward, into the star-shot dark. There—somewhere in Draco—lay that unknown object, his only possible haven.
It would be like this, always, he thought. Silence, and darkness. He would hear the small sounds of machines, and his own voice, and nothing else. He would talk too much to himself. He would look across the cold dark, at the bright points of other worlds. And wonder—
Tchlink!
It was a soft little sound. But Chan Derron stiffened as if it had been the crash of a meteor’s impact. He spun, and his hand flashed for the barytron blaster hanging in its holster on the bulkhead. Then he saw the thing that had made the sound, lying on the view plate of the star-chart cabinet.
The breath went out of him. His hand dropped from the weapon, helplessly. His great shoulders sagged a little. For a long time he stood staring at it, with all the strength and hope running out of him, like blood from a wound.
“Even here!” His bronze head shook wearily. “Even out here.”
Slowly, at last, he picked up the sheet of heavy red paper, that had been pinned beneath the crude little serpent of black-burned clay. He read the neat, black script:
MY DEAR CAPTAIN DERRON:
Congratulations on the brilliance and the daring of your last escape. Samdu has long since turned back, to try to guard the New Moon—from me! For the moment you are safe. But I must give you two points of warning.
You will find alarm and danger waiting for you on the moons of Uranus. For the legion base there has been tipped off that you are on your way.
And you will be held responsible, captain, I fear, for the things that are going to happen in the New Moon—whether you are there or a billion miles away.
Your faithful shadow.
THE BASILISK
Stark dread had driven its stunning needle into Chan Derron’s spine. He stood dazed, motionless. The mockery of that message swam and blurred upon the red page. And a slow, deadly cold crept into his paralyzed body.
It was more than frightening to know that his every act was followed by a sinister and unescapable power. Frightful to know that the incredible arm of the Basilisk could reach him, even here. Omniscience! Omnipotence! The powers, almost, of a god in the hands of—the Basilisk!
Almost, he could feel that fearful presence with him. He peered about the tiny pilot bay. It was dimly lit with the shaded instrument lights, the faint starlight that struck through the ports. He snapped on a brighter light. He wanted to search the ship. But, of course, that was no use. There couldn’t be a man within a hundred million miles. The mass-detectors, with his new hookup, would have given automatic warning of the approach of the mass of a man’s body, within a million miles.
HE CAUGHT his breath, trying to shake off that shuddery chill, and began to talk.
“Give me a chance, won’t you?” he begged of the empty air. “I don’t know who you are, Basilisk. Or where. But I’ve got a feeling you can hear me—a terrible feeling. Just listen to me. And give me a chance.”
His great fists clenched, and came up against his breast.
“Look what you’ve already done to me! Isn’t that enough? Four years ago I was a captain in the legion, with the promise of an honorable career. Commander Kalam chose me to guard Dr. Eleroid—that proved he trusted me.
“It was you, Basilisk, who killed Dr. Eleroid!” Against the silence of the ship, the muffled musical hum of the geodynes, the subdued clicking of the robot navigator, his challenging voice rang a little wild. “You did it—with my bayonet!
“It was you who sent me to prison. Two years, Basilisk, on the place they call the Devil’s Rock. With the guards making it a hell for me, trying to make me tell what I did with Dr. Eleroid’s invention—the invention that you took, Basilisk!
“And you’ve hounded me since I escaped in the guard cruiser I rebuilt into the Phantom Atom.” A hoarse little quiver was in his voice. “I’ve been trying to find another identity and another life. I didn’t want to fight the legion—or you, Basilisk. But you’ve made me!”
He tried to swallow a pleading sob.
“Look at all the things you’ve done. Look at the time I landed at that plantation on Ceres to get supplies—I was going to pay for them, honestly, with my mother’s rings. But I found the planter and his wife murdered—you did that, Basilisk! And a cruiser of the legion was about to arrive—you called it! And, after I had got away, I found the loot—the plate and jewels from the plundered house—aboard the Phantom Atom. You put it there, Basilisk!”
His bronze-gray eyes blinked.
“Or the time in Ekarhenium, on Mars, when I had just found an honest job in a laboratory, under another name. And my new employer was stabbed at his desk. And a bag of his money and papers—with blood on it—was flung into my room.
“Or that time I left the Phantom Atom hidden in the desert on Mercury, and stowed away on a freighter for Venus. The very hour I got aground in New Chicago, I saw my face on the news screens, with offers of reward. For the Terrestrial Bank had been looted on the night before, and the film in the camera of a murdered guard showed my face.”
His voice broke again.
“And that’s not half! Haven’t you done enough, Basilisk? Haven’t you tortured me long enough? Won’t you let me go? I only want to leave the System, now. You can’t deny me even—exile!”
He choked, and stared around the pilot bay again. The geodynes, aft, hummed softly on. The gyrotomic pilot clicked gently, now and then, as it set the little ship back upon her course toward Uranus.
“Will you let me go?” gasped Chan Derron. “Tell me, Basilisk! Give me a sign.”
Silence jerred at him.
He stared at the B-shaped serpent of clay and the heavy red sheet lying on the chart cabinet. And his breath caught. They were his answer—answer enough. This thing called the Basilisk had no humanity—no more than the android Luroa, whose dazzling, enigmatic smile mocked him from the wall.
No appeal would serve—none save a force as ruthless as its own.
He snatched the serpent, suddenly, and hurled it to shatter into black fragments on the floor. A savage anger took his breath, and roared in his ears, and shook him. He gasped. And suddenly his voice came back to him, low, and cold, and harsh.
“All right, Basilisk,” he said. “I’m going to quit trying to run away. It may seem pretty foolish, for one man to try to buck you, and the legion, too. But I’m going to, Basilisk. I’m going to get you—or die fighting. Still I may be your pawn—you must have meant for me to turn back, when you delivered that note. But watch me!”
He stopped the song of the geodynes, and then turned grimly to the star-chart cabinet. The view plate presently showed him the silver atom, spinning about the green sphere of the Earth, that represented the New Moon. He read its position, and his fingers moved swiftly to set up a new destination on the calculator.
V.
THE MIGHTY Inflexible slipped gently into a berth against one of the six vast tubular arms of the New Moon’s structure. Massive keys locked her trim hundred thousand tons of fighting strength into position. Her valves opened to communicate with the artificial satellite.
Three men in mufti were sitting at a table in a long, richly simple chamber hidden aft the chart room of the flagship. The slender man had chosen conservatively dark, exquisitely tailored civilian garb. The white-haired, ruggedfaced giant had attired himself in lustrous silks that reflected every bright hue of the New Moon’s mirrors; he had left behind his tinkling sheaf of medals only after argument. The careless gray cloak of the third fell loose of his short but massive figure; a heavy cane was gripped in his pudgy yellow hand.
“For life’s sake, Jay, what’s the mortal haste?” The round, blue-nosed face of Giles Habibula looked imploringly at the dark-clad commander. “Here we’ve just sat down to get our precious breath, after a frightful dash across the void of space. We’ve had but a whiff of your blessed viands, Jay. And now you say that we must go!”
Great Hal Samdu looked at him grimly.
“The dashing could have harmed you little, Giles,” he rumbled, “when you were fast in a drunken sleep. And if you’ve had but a whiff of Jay’s good food—then a mere taste would founder a Venusian gorox!”
Jay Kalam nodded gravely.
“We’re at the New Moon, Giles. Gaspar Hannas is waiting for us, at the valve. And we’ve a job to do.”
Giles Habibula shook the wrinkled yellow sphere of his head, and turned fishy pleading eyes to the commander of the legion.
“I can’t stand it, Jay,” he whimpered. “It’s a mortal turn I can’t endure.” He pointed a trembling yellow thumb at his protruding middle. “Look at Giles Habibula. He’s an old, old man, Giles is. He must ration his wine. He must have a cane to aid his limping steps. He’ll be dead soon, Giles will.”
