Collected short fiction, p.332
Collected Short Fiction, page 332
The experiment was performed on a lonely islet, in a locked and hidden underground chamber. Chan Derron stood watch, outside. Dr. Eleroid and his assistant failed to emerge. When the feet came, the door was found surprisingly unlocked. The two men were dead inside—apparently killed by Chans own missing barytron blaster.
Convicted of the double murder, Chan was sentenced for life to the prison rock of Ebron, and tortured because he could not reveal a thing he did not know—the whereabouts of the unaccountably missing invention.
After two years of hell, Chan Derron escaped. His efforts to find safely, however—first within the system and then on a new astronomical object he discovered, ten billion miles northward—were mocked by the Basilisk, a supercriminal who displays an uncanny mastery of space.
False clues planted by the Basilisk convince the legion that Chan is the criminal. When the Basilisk boasts that his next crime will take place on the New Moon, that great interplanetary resort is guarded with Hal Samdu’s fleet, and a reward is offered for Chan Derron.
Mockingly warned by the Basilisk that he will be blamed for the outrage in the New Moon, Chan Derron braves the fleet and the guards to enter it, desperately seeking to trap the Basilisk. Entering the Casino in disguise, he meets a lovely girl, unknown to him, who recognizes him—and knows that his life is worth of a quarter million dollars.
As midnight approaches, the three veteran legionnaires, Jay Kalam and Hal Samdu and Giles Habibula, wait in the Casino’s famous Diamond Room, with Gaspar Hannas, owner of the New Moon. They recognize Chan Derron, at a table beside the girl, but delay his arrest.
Giles Habibula, meantime—who knew Gaspar Hannas at the notorious Blue Unicorn, on Venus, forty years before—plays at the no-limit tables. He wins two billion dollars. And then Jay Kalam tells him, at eighteen minutes to twelve, that it is the highest winner whom the Basilisk has promised to rob and murder at midnight.
VIII.
GILES HABIBULA began to tremble. His blunging middle quivered like a bag of jelly. Drops of sweat stood out on his furrowed yellow face, and ran swiftly together. His small eyes seemed to glaze.
His teeth chattered violently; and then, being false, in his distress they fell out on the floor.
“Ahuh!” he gasped. “Yuh . . . whuh—”
He began tearing furiously to get his winnings out of his pocket. Jay Kalam retrieved the teeth. Giles took them clattering into the cavern of his mouth, and cried piteously:
“Jay! Ah, Jay, why didn’t you tell me? A poor, blind old man, tottering on, the mortal brink of life, a creeping, famished wretch with no teeth of his own to chew his miserable crust—Jay, would you let old Giles thrust his neck into the very noose of death?”
“You’ve Hal’s fleet to guard you,” the commander sought to reassure him, “and ten thousand of the New Moon’s police. We’ll protect you, Giles.”
“Aye!” An eager fighting glint lit the blue eyes of Hal Samdu. “We’ve set a trap for this Basilisk—and now you’ve baited it well, Giles, with your two billion dollars!”
“Ah, no!” sobbed Giles Habibula. “Old Giles will bait no traps—not with his poor old flesh!” He was staggering back to the table he had just quitted so triumphantly. “How long did you say, Jay?” he gasped. “Just fifteen blessed minutes—to lose two billion and twenty million mortal dollars!”
The croupier went white again, to see him returning,-and clutched for support at the edge of the table.
“Hasten, man!” the shrill voice of Giles Habibula urged him. “Call for the bets and spin your ball! In life’s mortal name, is this place a hall of chance—or the black Euthanasia Clinic?”
The croupier gulped and whispered hoarsely:
“Place your bets, gentlemen! Bets on the table!”
The leaden eyes of Giles Habibula were peering along the row of players.
“Some mortal fool has got to win,” he croaked. His glance fell upon a little gray man, opposite. A thin, dried wisp of a man. His pale, anxious eyes, through heavy-lensed glasses, were peering at endless rows of notations in a small black book. His thin, nervous fingers were tapping at the keys of a compact, noiseless computing machine. But three blue chips remained before him on the board. Giles Habibula called to him: “Brother, do you want to win?”
The little man blinked at him in near-sighed bewilderment.
“Sir,” came a shrill, piping voice, “I do! More than anything else in the world. I have been laboring twenty years—I have made fifty million calculations—endeavoring to perfect my system of play. I . . . I have three chips left.”
“Forget your mortal system,” wheezed Giles Habibula. “And play your three chips on one hundred and one.”
The little man scratched his gray head uncertainly, and peered back at his little book and his calculating machine.
“But my system, sir, based on the permutations of numbers and the gravitational influence of the planets, my system—”
“Fool!” hissed a mousetrap-faced female beside him. “Play! Old blubber-guts has got something! He just cleaned up a couple of billions.”
She set a-stack of her own chips on one hundred and one.
Giles blinked, and the croupier spun his ball.
THE LITTLE gray man looked at his machine, and put one chip on forty-nine. The fat yellow hands of Giles Habibula, handling the green certificates as if they had been incandescent metal, laid the stack of his winnings on the double zero.
“Two billion and twenty million,” he told the chalk-faced croupier. And his voice dropped to a rasp of deadly menace. “And don’t you move till that bail stops. Don’t take a mortal breath! I’ll handle the capacity.”
He looked back at the little gray man.
“On second thought, brother,” he wheezed, “your forty-nine will win. Due to gravitational influences!” He thrust the green handle of his cane abruptly into the croupier’s pasty face. “You stand still!”
The cane lifted, with a slow, deliberate sweep, and the ball clicked into the slot.
“Forty-nine is the winner!” With a sobbing cry of relief, the croupier snatched up the sheaf of bills from zero-zero. With a trembling wand, he raked in the other bets. He pushed a stack of a hundred chips to the little gray man.
The bleak-faced woman made some sound, very much under her breath, and abruptly departed.
“My system!” piped the frail little man, excitedly. “At last—after twenty years—it wins!”
His thin fingers recorded the play in his little black book. They tapped the silent keys of his machine. He peered at the dial, and then pushed the half stack of his chips back upon the number forty-nine.
The colorless eyes of Giles Habibula glittered at the croupier.
“Forty-nine,” he predicted, “will win again.”
The croupier licked his dry lips. His glazing eyes shot a despairing glance at Gaspar Hannas. He hoarsely called for bets, and spun the ball, and watched its clicking circle with a kind of white horror on his face.
And forty-nine won!
“My system!” The small gray man peered at the racks of chips pushed toward him. “For twenty years,” he shrilled, “Dr. Abel Davian has been thought a visionary fool. And now—” His heavy lenses stared about the hushed, wondering table. “Now, sirs, I must be acknowledged a mathematical genius!”
And he began recording the play, in a frantic haste.
“Caution, brother,” Giles Habibula wheezed at him. “This is a time for a mortal bit of moderation. Remember the B—”
“Hush, Habibula!”
The great white hand of Gaspar Hannas spun him around, ungently.
“Don’t speak of the Basilisk! You’ll ruin me, yet!”
Jay Kalam studied his chronometer again.
“Eleven minutes,” he said. “We had better be looking for him—and keeping an eye on our Dr. Derrel!”
THEY MOVED away across the vast floor, Hal Samdu stalking impatiently ahead. Laboring and puffing, Giles Habibula fell behind. Sweat broke out again on his yellow face.
“In life’s name!” he sobbed. “Jay, Hal, can’t you wait for poor old Giles? Would you leave him alone—with the mortal Basilisk at his heels? Can’t you feel the tensity of doom in the very air, aye, and see the stark print of fear on every mortal face?”
Jay Kalam had paused, and the old man snatched at his arm.
“Come, Jay!” he gasped. “For life’s sake, let’s make ready for the moment. Let’s stand against the wall, Jay, and gather all our men about us, with blasters ready—”
“Shut up, Giles!” rapped Hal Samdu. “There’s no danger, but to the winner. None, I think, if we surround this Dr. Derrel—”
“My mortal life!”
It was an apprehensive croak from Giles Habibula. Trembling, his arm was pointing at a table where the play had stopped. A tall man dressed in white was setting upon it some bulky object wrapped in brown canvas.
Giles Habibula stared anxiously, as he uncovered it. A square black box was revealed, with polished brass rods projecting from the sides and the top of it. A little instrument board was wired to the box, and a set of phones that the man slipped on his head.
“Who is he?” Giles Habibula had caught the arm of Hannas. “In life’s blessed name, what is that machine?” His thin voice quavered. “I don’t like the look of such mortal strange machines—ah, no, not when we’re dealing with such an unknown monster as the Basilisk!”
“That’s only John Comaine,” said the great voice of Gaspar Hannas. “We’ll speak to him.”
He led them to the man whose brains had conceived the New Moon. Comaine, in his white laboratory jacket, looked robust and athletic. His stiff blond hair stood on end. He had a square, stern mask of a face, with slightly protruding, emotionless blue eyes. He nodded to Gaspar Hannas, a stiff and uncordial greeting.
“Comaine,” said Hannas, “this is Commander Kalam and his aids; they have come to hunt the Basilisk.”
The glassy, bulging eyes looked at them briefly, coldly.
“Gentlemen,” his voice was dry, metallic, inflectionless, “I am attacking the problem in my own way. I built the New Moon. I am going to defend it.”
Giles Habibula was gaping at the black box.
“Ah, so, Dr. Comaine. And what is that?”
“The operations of the Basilisk,” Comaine said briefly, “display the use of an unfamiliar scientific instrumentality. The first step, obviously, is to detect and analyze the forces used.”
And he turned abruptly back to his instrument panel.
“Ah, so,” wheezed Giles Habibula. “You are mortal right. And that is that!”
And they went on among the tables, watchfully scanning the thousands of players. An increasing tension charged the air. Play had almost stopped. A nervous hush was spreading, broken now and then by a voice too loud, by a laugh that jangled with unadmitted fear. Many who had come to watch the work of the Basilisk seemed to regret their early courage, and there was a steady little trickle of silent men and women toward the doors.
ABRUPTLY Giles Habibula stopped again.
“I know that man!” he puffed. “Aye, forty years ago, at the Blue Unicorn! He is Amo Brelekko!”
“Naturally you know him,” rasped the great voice of Gaspar Hannas, “since you and he and I were three of a kind, in those old days.”
“Ah, what’s that?” Giles Habibula inflated himself, indignantly. “In life’s name, Hannas, I’ll not have you say three of a kind!” His fat lips made a sharp, startling sound, as if he had spat. “Neither you nor Amo the Eel ever did a mortal thing, but Giles could do it quicker and smoother and more silently, with precious less danger from the law!”
His leaden eyes went back to the tall man strolling toward them. Amo Brelekko was gaunt to the point of emaciation. His huge head was completely bald. Bushy black brows shaded his deep-set, brilliant dark eyes. A long hatchet nose accented the knifelike sharpness of his face. He now wore brilliant purple lounging pajamas, and a flaming yellow robe. A great diamond pinned his tunic, and the lean yellow claws of his fingers were glittering with rings.
“Amo the Eel!” whispered Giles Habibula. “You wouldn’t know that forty mortal years had gone. He looks just the same. He had the swiftest hands I ever know—r-aye, besides my precious own!”
His pale eyes blinked shrewdly at the New Moon’s master.
“What is he doing here, Hannas?
You couldn’t let him play. He knows your mortal tricks as well as I do.”
The white giant in black smiled his silly smile.
“Brelekko has been here since the New Moon was built,” said Caspar Hannas. “I offered him ten thousand dollars a day to play for the house. He refused. He said that he would prefer to take his money from the other side of the table.
“And he does. But he is more moderate than you were, Habibula. He limits his winnings scrupulously to ten thousand dollars a day. I don’t regret his presence. He is a valuable advertisement for the New Moon.”
“The Eel was but a youth when I knew him,” said Giles Habibula. “But he showed a precious promise, in the quickness of his hands.”
“Brelekko is a gifted man,” agreed Gaspar Hannas. “He is a skilled amateur magician—sometimes he gives a special performance for our guests. His brain is as clever as his hands. He invented the game of hyper-chess, and none can beat him at it.”
“I never tried,” muttered Giles Habibula.
“His suite is equipped as an astrophysical laboratory,” Hannas went on, “with an observatory dome outside, on the New Moon’s hull. By avocation he is a brilliant physicist, by vocation the greatest gambler in the system—”
The leaden eye of Giles Habibula had begun to glitter.
“Except,” Gaspar Hannas added very hastily, “of course, yourself.”
His great white hand beckoned, and Amo Brelekko came to meet them. When his dark eyes found the waddling old man in gray, however, he stopped abruptly. Gems glittered in a sudden arc, as his lean hand flashed toward his armpit.
But the thick cane of Giles Habibula was first. It snapped up level with the gaunt body of Amo Brelekko, and his yellow hand tensed on the head.
“Still, Brelekko!” His thin voice rang cold with menace. “Or I’ll burn you in two.” As the jeweled hand dropped, his voice softened. “Mortal me, Brelekko,” he wheezed, “after forty years, can’t we forget?”
“I’ll never forget, Habibula.” The speech of Brelekko was a voiceless husking. “Not in forty centuries!”
“Then you had best restrain yourself, Amo,” advised Giles Habibula, grimly. “At least until midnight has passed.” The fleshless, cadaverous face of the gambler made an unpleasant grimace.
“So you are here to hunt the Basilisk, Habibula?” his rasping whisper asked. “There is an ancient Terrestrial proverb, ‘Set a thief to catch a thief.’ ” His laugh was also queerly muted, a kind of chuckling hiss. “But I think even that will fail. For the Basilisk is a better thief than you ever were, Habibula.” Giles Habibula caught a choking breath, and the cane lifted swiftly. But Amo Brelekko, with a mocking little gesture of his thin jeweled hand, had turned toward a distant table, where there was a little stir of sudden excitement.
“We’ll soon know,” he whispered. “For yonder is the winner, I believe—the man in danger. And midnight is almost at hand.”
LIKE A YELLOW skeleton stalking, he hurried toward the table. The three legionnaires and Gaspar Hannas hastened after him. The most of the players, when they came to the table, had drawn a few paces back—out of apprehensive respect, it seemed, for the ominous promise of the Basilisk—so that only a few were left about the table, at the center of a hushed, whispering ring of spectators.
Most of those few yet at the table were the plain-clothes men of the legion. But the big pale man who. gave the name of Charles Derrel had pushed through to join them, with the tall blond beauty at his side. Amo Brelekko was standing beside the croupier, peering through a monocle at the wheel. The engineer in white, John Comaine, had moved his mysterious equipment to the end of the table; the phones were on his head, and he was fussing with the instrument panel.
The only actual player at the table—and, obviously, the focus of all the expectant strain that filled that hushed, watching circle—was the little gray man, Abel Davian.
His stacks of chips were taller, now. And he was quivering with elation. His heavy spectacles were awry, and his shrunken skin, beneath the garish atomic lights, was bright with sweat. His tunic was torn open at the throat. Feverishly he noted the last play in his little black book, and tapped at his silent calculator. His thin, trembling hand pushed out another bet.
Giles Habibula had stopped, panting apprehensively, in the circle of tense onlookers. But his three companions pushed forward to the table, and the little man peered up at them. His nearsighted eyes blinked in recognition.
“My mathematical theories are fully vindicated, gentlemen,” he piped. “My system has won twenty million dollars—a million for every year of my toil!” He paused to draw in the chips pushed toward him. “That is all I wanted. I’m going to quit.”
He asked the croupier for an empty moneybag. His trembling hands began stuffing it with his winnings. Blue chips, and the glittering diamond ones worth ten times as much. The gold-colored New Moon scrip. And crisp certificates of the Green Hall.
Jay Kalam snatched a glance at his chronometer, and made an imperative gesture to the alert legionnaires about him.
“Five seconds!” he whispered. “Guard this man.”
Little Abel Davian picked up the bag of his winnings, and his calculator, and his little black book, and shuffled wearily away from the table. Passing the tall stranger, he paused to mop his perspiring face. His head jerked against the handkerchief, oddly. He made a stiff little gesture of farewell.
“Good-by,” he shrilled. “For I’m going to leave the New Moon—”
Jaya Kalam stiffened where he stood, and caught his breath.
His ears heard a most peculiar noise. It was a deep purring hum. It was like the pur of a monstrous jungle cat, the thought flashed to him, in its suggestion of ominous and ruthless power. The even rhythm of it was mechanical. And it had an uncanny penetration—it throbbed through all his body, made his bones tingle, set a queer dull ache in his head, set his teeth to chattering.
