Vol Vi Part 20 (2/2)

Dimly he knew that the color-storm was working on him; sensed danger when a great drowsiness stole over him; but he fought it off, his brain beating out hundreds of times more: ”Iapetus, Iapetus--I have a ranch there--Iapetus, Iapetus....”

Then came excruciating pain!

An electric shock suddenly speared him. His nerves seemed to curl up, and for a second his mind was thoroughly disorganized before it again took up the drone about Iapetus. Recovery ... dullness ... a kind of peace--and again the shock leaped through him. It was followed by a question from afar off: ”Where is Eliot Leithgow?”

Somehow the question meant a great deal and should not be answered....

Again the stab of agony. Again the voice: ”Where is Eliot Leithgow?”

Again the shock, and again the voice. Alternating, over and over. He could brace himself against the shock, but the voice could in no way be avoided. It was everywhere about him, over, around, under him; he began to see it. Desperately he forced his brain on the path it must not leave. He had forgotten years ago why, but knew there must be some good reason.

”Iapetus, Iapetus--I have a ranch there--Iapetus, Iapetus--Where is Eliot Leithgow?--Iapetus, Iapetus--I have a ranch there--Where is Eliot Leithgow--I have a ranch there--a ranch there--Iapetus, a ranch--Where is Eliot Leithgow?--Where is Eliot Leithgow?--Where is Eliot Leithgow?” ...

After two hours and ten minutes the Hawk crumpled.

He was quite delirious at the time. The combined effect of the pain, the physical and nervous exhaustion of the shocks and light, the endlessly repeated question, his own close concentration on his Iapetus ranch--these were too much for any human body to stand against. He lost his grip on his mind, lost the fine control that had never been lost before, the control about which he was so vain. And the lump of flesh that was Hawk Ca.r.s.e gave the information that was tearing wildly at its prison.

A stammering voice came from the heart of the color-sphere: ”Port o' p.o.r.no, Satellite III--Port o' p.o.r.no, Satellite III--Port o' p.o.r.no Sat----”

Dr. Ku Sui interrupted him; leaned forward.

”The house is number----?”

”574--574--574----”.

”Ah!” breathed the Eurasian. ”Port o' p.o.r.no! So near!”

Ku Sui returned the switch and pressed one of the b.u.t.tons. The pool of colors faded; the laboratory returned to comparative dimness. The machine in its center seemed but a great web of wire.

Slumped in the seat within it was a slender figure, his flaxen head bowed over on his chest, his eyes closed, and sweat still trickling down his unconscious brow.

And lying on the floor was another unconscious figure.

Friday had fainted.

CHAPTER VI.

Port o' p.o.r.no The pirate port of p.o.r.no is of course dead now, replaced by the clean lawfulness of Port Midway, but a hundred years ago, in the days before the patrol-s.h.i.+ps came, she roared her bawdy song through the farthest reaches of the solar system. For crack merchant s.h.i.+ps and dingy s.p.a.ce trading tramps alike, she was haven; drink and drugs, women and diversions unspeakable lured to her s.p.a.ce ports the cream and sc.u.m, adventures and riffraff of half a dozen worlds. Sailors and pirates paid off at her and stayed as long as their wages lasted in the Street of the Sailors; not a few remained permanently, their bodies flung to the beasts of the savage jungle that rimmed the port. There only the cunning and strong could live. Ray-guns were the surest law. Modern scientific progress stood side by side with murderous lawlessness as old as man himself.

The h.e.l.l town had grown with the strides of a giant, rising rapidly from a muddy street of tio shacks to a small cosmetropolis. She was essentially a place of contrasts. Two of the big Earth companies had modern s.p.a.ce-s.h.i.+p hangars there, well-lighted, well-equipped, but under their very noses was a festering welter of dark, rutted byways extending all the way to the comparative orderliness of the short, narrow Street of the Merchants, itself flanked by the drunken bedlam of the Street of the Sailors. It can be understood why these men who flew, who needed a whole solar system for elbow room, disdained setting to order the measly few acres of dirt they stopped at, but it is a mystery why, when used to living through vast leagues of s.p.a.ce, they endured such narrow streets and cluttered houses. Probably, tired from their long cramped cruises, impatient for their fling, they just didn't care a whoop.

The whole jumble that was this famous s.p.a.ce port rested in the heart of Satellite III's primeval jungle.

Tall electric-wired fences girdled Port o' p.o.r.no to keep the jungle back. It was equivalent to a death sentence to pa.s.s unarmed outside them; the monstrous shapes that lived and fought in the jungle's swampy gloom saw to that. Hideous nightmare shapes they were, some reptilian and comparable only to the giants that roamed Earth in her prehistoric ages. Eating, fighting, breeding in the humid gloominess of the vegetation shrouded swamps, their bellows and roars sometimes at night thundered right through p.o.r.no, a reminder of Nature yet untamed. Occasionally, in the berserk ecstasy of the mating season, they hurled their house-high bodies at the guarding fences; and then there was panic in the town, and many lives ripped out before a barrage of rays drove the monsters back.

They were not the only inhabitants native to Satellite III. Deep underground, seldom seen by men, lived a race of man-mole creatures, half human in intelligence, blind from their unlit habitat, but larger than a man and stronger; fiercer, too, when cornered. Their numbers no one knew, but their bored tunnels, it had been found, const.i.tuted a lower layer of life over the whole satellite.

Probably more vicious than these native ”Three's” of p.o.r.no were the visiting bipeds, man himself, who thronged the kantrans--which may be defined as dives for the purveying of all entertainments. In them were a score of snares for the buccaneer with money in his pocket and dope in his blood. The open doors on the Street of the Sailors were all loud-speakers of drunken oaths and laughter, pierced now and then by a scream or cry as someone in the sweating press of bodies inside knew rage or fear.

One interplanetarily notorious kantran made a feature of swinging its attractions aloft in gilded cages, where all of them, young and old, pale and painted, giant and dwarf, ogled the arrested pa.s.sers-by and invited sampling of their wares.

Of all kinds and conditions of men were these pa.s.sers-by. Earthling sailors, white, negro, Chinese and Eurasian, most of them in the drab blue of s.p.a.ce-s.h.i.+p crews, but each with a ray-gun strapped to his waist; short, thin-faced Venusians, s.h.i.+fty-eyed, cunning, with the planet's universal weapon, the skewer-blade, sheathed at their sides; tall, sweaty Martians, powerful brutes, wearing the air-rarifying mask that was necessary for them in Satellite III's Earthlike atmosphere. Business men and sight-seers, except the most bold, were apt to stay in their houses after their first visit to the Street of the Sailors. Each face on the street or in the kantrans that lined it bore the mark of drink, or the contemptuous, insolent expression bred by p.o.r.no's favorite drug, isuan.

Around p.o.r.no was the constant threat of savage life; below it were half-human savagery and mystery; above, in the very shadow of their mighty engines of s.p.a.ce, were the most vicious animals of all--degraded men.

This was the Port o' p.o.r.no of a hundred years ago.

This was the Port o' p.o.r.no where Master Scientist Eliot Leithgow for very good reasons had told Hawk Ca.r.s.e he would meet him. 574. The house of his friend.

Night descended suddenly on the outlaw s.p.a.ce-port that day the elderly exile waited in vain for his comrade in arms Hawk Ca.r.s.e to show up.

There were six hours when the blasting heat received by Satellite III from near-lying Jupiter would be gone, and in its place a warm, cloying tropical darkness, heavy with the odors of town and exotic products and the damp, lush vegetation of the impinging jungle. The night would be given over to carousing; for these six hours the Street of the Sailors came to life. It was a time to keep strictly in hiding.

In the middle of that night, when the pleasures of p.o.r.no were in full stride, there emerged suddenly, from one of the dark, crooked byways that angled off the Street of the Sailors, a squad of five men whose disciplined pace and regular formation were in marked contrast to the confusion around them. They were slant-eyed men, with smooth saffron faces, and strongly built, and they were armed, each one, with both a ray-gun and a two-foot black, pointed tube. But it was not their numbers, formation or weapons that caused the carousing crowd to fall silent and hastily get out of their path. It was, rather, the insignia embroidered on the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of the gray smocks they wore. The insignia represented an asteroid in a circle of the ten planets, and the Street of Sailors knew that sign and dreaded it.

The squad pressed along rapidly. A still-comely woman, new to p.o.r.no, plucked smirking at the leader's sleeve; but his pace did not slacken, and she fell back, puzzled and afraid because of her feeling of something lifeless, dumb, machinelike in the man. Ahead, an isuan-maddened Earthling fell foul of a Venusian; a circle cleared in the mob, a ray-gun spat and missed, and the Venusian closed, the gleam of a skewer-blade playing around him. This was combat; this was interesting; but none of the squad's five men gave the fight a glance, or even turned his head when, as they pa.s.sed, the butchered Earthling coughed out his life.

So they pa.s.sed, and soon they were gone down another black-throated byway.

They padded noiselessly along in the darkness to turn again presently, pausing finally before a low, steel-walled house, typical of the strongholds of prudent merchants of the port. No lights were visible within it; all seemed asleep.

Silence filled the narrow street, and unrelieved darkness. Occasionally a desultory breeze brought sounds of a burst of revelry from the Street of the Sailors; once the ports of an outbound s.p.a.ce-s.h.i.+p flashed overhead for an instant. But there was mainly silence and darkness, and in it the five men, parleying close together in toneless whispers.

After a little they separated. On cat's feet four of them stole around the sides of the house. The fifth, drawing the black, pointed tube from his slash, crept up to the front entrance-port and held the tip to it. Blue light sparkled fantastically, revealing his impa.s.sive face, outlining his crouching body. Then, quite suddenly, the port appeared to melt inward, and he disappeared into the blackness of the interior.

Presently there came a stir of movement, a whisper, a rustle from inside. A challenge, shouts volleying forth, a scream, another, and the peculiar rattling sound that comes from a dying man's throat. Then again silence.

Five shadows melted from the front entrance-port. They were carrying something black and still and heavy between them.

The errand was done....

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