Collected Short Fiction, page 328
For months more at the permanent depot of the expedition on Triton, cold moon of Neptune, he had toiled in charge of the first preliminary analysis and classification of the results of the expedition—recording the hundreds of tremendous discoveries gleaned from those ancient worlds.
Then another, more urgent duty had called him back to Earth. A move was gaining support in the Green Hall to order the destruction of the departing comet with AKKA. But Jay Kalam, in return for the free co-operation of the liberated peoples of the comet with the research expedition, had promised to let them go in peace. Leaving young Robert Star in command of the half-secret, heavily fortified depot, he had come back to fight before the Green Hall for the safety of the comet.
Now at last the victory was won. The new cometeers were gone beyond the range of the greatest telescope—pledged never to return. And Jay Kalam was slow and heavy with fatigue. A few more reports—secret reports dealing with the weird, matter-annihilating weapon of the cometeers—and then he was going to John Star’s estate on Phobos, to rest.
“But, commander—” The distressed, insistent voice of the orderly hummed through the communicator. “Gaspar Hannas is owner of the New Moon. And he says this, is urgent—”
The commander’s lean face grew stern.
“I’ll talk to him when I get back from the Purple Hall,” he said. “We’re already sent Admiral General Samdu, with his ten cruisers, to help Hannas catch his thief.”
“But he has failed, sir,” protested the orderly. “An urgent message from Admiral General Samdu reports—”
“Samdu’s in command.” Jay Kalam’s voice was brittle with fatigue. “He doesn’t have to report.” He sighed, and pushed thin fingers through the forelock of white that he had brought back from the comet. “If their man is really Chan Derron,” he muttered, “they may fail again!”
SETTLING limply back in the chair behind the crowded desk, he let his tired eyes look out of the great west window. It was dusk. Above the five points of the dead volcanoes on the black horizon, against the fading greenish afterglow, the New Moon was rising.
Not the ancient satellite whose cragged face had looked down upon the Earth since life was born—that had been obliterated, a quarter-century ago, by the mysterious power of AKKA, when Aladoree Anthar turned her secret ancestral weapon upon the outpost that the dread invading Medusae had established there.
The New Moon was really new—a glittering creation of modern science and high finance, the proudest triumph of thirtieth-century engineering. The heart of it was a vast six-pointed star of welded metal, ten miles across, that held eight miles of expensive, air-conditioned space.
Far nearer its primary than the old, the new satellite had a period of only six hours. From the Earth, its motion appeared faster and more spectacular from its retrograde direction. It rose in the west, fled across the sky against the tide of the stars, plunged down where the old Moon had risen.
The New Moon was designed to be spectacular. A spinning web of steel wires, held rigid by centrifugal force, spread from it across a thousand miles of space. They supported an intricate system of pivoted mirrors of sodium foil and sliding color filters of cellulite. Reflected sunlight was utilized to illuminate the greatest advertising sign ever conceived.
The thin hand of the commander had reached wearily for the thick sheaf of green-tinted pages headed:
REPORTS OF THE COMETARY RESEARCH EXPEDITION, J. KALAM, DIRECTOR. REPORT CXLVIII.: PRELIMINARY ACCOUNT OF METHODS AND EQUIPMENT FOR THE REDUCTION OF MATTER TO AN IMPALPABLE NEUTRONIC DUST.
But the rising sign, as it had been designed to do, held his eyes.
A vast circle of scarlet stars came up into the purple-green of dusk. They spun giddily, came and went, changed suddenly to a lurid yellow. Then garish blue-and-orange letters flamed a legend: “Vacation! Take the New Moon Line to happiness!” The disk became a red-framed, animated picture of a slender girl in white tripping up the gangway into a silver liner of space. She turned, and the gay invitation of her smile faded into the burning words: “Whatever you seek, you will find it at the Planet of Paradise!”
“Even,” Jay Kalam remarked dryly to the sign, “the System’s foremost criminals.”
“Find health at our sanitariums!” flamed the writing in the sky. “Sport in our gravity-free games! Recreation in our clubs and theaters! Knowledge in our museums and observatories. Thrills and beauty—everywhere! Fortune, if you are lucky, in our gaming salons! Even oblivion, if you should desire it, at our Clinic of Euthanasia!”
“But, all the same,” Jay Kalam whispered to the sign, “I think I’ll still take the quiet peace of John Star’s Purple Hall—”
The commander stiffened, behind his desk.
For the great sign, where a green flaming hand had begun to write some new invitation, suddenly flickered. It went out. An instant of darkness. Then red, ragged, monstrous letters spelled, startlingly, his own name!
“KALAM!” Darkness again. Then the fiery scarlet symbols: “G-39!”
An explosion of red-and-white pyrotechnics wiped that out. A cold blue point grew into an immense blue star. And the star framed a girl in rainbow colors, dancing. She laughed, and a white arm beckoned.
But Jay Kalam was no longer watching the sign. For G-39 was his emergency call, to be used only in cases of grave necessity. A little chill of cold forewarning shook his hand, as he touched the communicator dial.
“All right, Lundo,” he told the orderly. “Get me Gaspar Hannas on the visi-wave!”
BUILDER and master of this gaudiest and most glittering of all resorts, Gaspar Hannas was a man who had come up out of a dubious obscurity. The rumors of his past—that he had been a space pirate, drug runner, android agent, crooked gambler, gang boss, and racketeer in general—were many and contradictory.
The first New Moon had been the battered hulk of an obsolescent space liner, towed into an orbit about the Earth, twenty years ago, and more. The charter, somehow issued to Gaspar Hannas in the confusion that had followed the war with the Medusae, gave it the status of a semi-independent planet. It offered a convenient refuge from the more stringent laws of Earth and the rest of the System. And Gaspar Hannas, with a growing wealth and a spreading secret influence, had defied outraged reformers. He had prospered exceedingly.
The wondrous artificial satellite, now open just a decade, had replaced a whole fleet of luxury liners that had circled just above the laws of Earth. The financial status of the New Moon Corporation was always a little clouded—Hannas had been called a financial octopus; but none doubted that the New Moon returned a profit tremendous enough to justify its tremendous cost, or doubted that Hannas, with his special police, ruled it like a dictator.
His enemies—and there was no lack of them—liked to call Gaspar Hannas a spider. And it was true enough that his sign in the sky was like a gaudy web. True that millions swarmed to it, to leave their wealth—or even, if they accepted the dead-black chip that the croupiers would give any player for the asking, their lives.
The man himself must now have been somewhat beyond sixty. But as he sat, gigantic and impassive, at the odd, round desk in his office, watching the flowing tape that recorded the winnings in all the halls, sipping the dark Martian beer that never intoxicated him, no onlooker could have guessed his age within a score of years—or guessed at anything that moved behind his face.
For the face of Gaspar Hannas, men said, had changed with his fortunes. His old face, they said, had reflected his real nature too well. It had showed the scars of too many battles. And it was printed, they whispered, on too many notices of reward.
The face of Gaspar Hannas, now, like the flesh of his great idle hands, was very white—but whiter still, if one looked closely at his vast smooth expanse, were the tiny scars the surgeons had left.
It was a face of peculiar blankness. The only expression that ever moved it was a slow and meaningless smile—a smile that made its white smoothness look like the face of a monstrously overgrown idiot child.
The eyes of the man, set far apart and deep in that white bald head, were sharp and midnight-black. Beyond that idiotic smile, they looked a little odd. But their dark, piercing fixity never revealed what was passing in the mind of Gaspar Hannas.
Such a face, men agreed, was singularly useful to a man in his trade.
THAT WAS the face that Jay Kalam waited to see, upon the shining oval plate of the visi-wave cabinet. (One of the System’s first useful developments from the conquered science of the comet, this instrument utilized the same instantaneous or achronic force fields that the lovely fugitive, Kay Nymidee, had used to reach Bob Star, on her escape from the comet.)
The plate flickered, and Jay Kalam saw the vast smooth features of the New Moon’s master. And even that senseless smile could not hide the apprehension that was devouring the vitals of Gaspar Hannas. For his whiteness had become a ghastly pallor, and he was breathless, and his whole gross body trembled.
“Commander . . . commander!” His great voice was dry and ragged-edged with fear. “You’ve got to help me!”
“What do you want, Hannas?” Jay Kalam asked flatly. “And why was your sign used to call me? You already have a legion fleet to guard your place.”
Still Gaspar Hannas smiled that silly baby-smile, but his blank forehead was beaded with fine drops of sweat.
“Admiral General Samdu gave the authority,” he gasped. “He agrees that the situation is urgent. He’s here with me now, commander.”
“Well,” Jay Kalam wearily inquired, “what’s the trouble?”
“It’s this man—this monster—who calls himself ‘the Basilisk’ !” The huge voice was hoarse and wild. “He’s ruining me, commander. Ruining the New Moon! Time knows where he will stop!”
“What has he done?”
“Last night he took another patron! The high winner at baccarat—Clovis Field—a planter from the asteroids. My police escorted him, with his winnings, to his yacht. They got him there, safe. But he was taken out of the sealed air lock, commander—with all his winnings!”
Jay Kalam brushed the white forelock back into his dark hair, impatiently.
“Just one more gambler robbed?” His tired eyes narrowed. “That has happened many a time on the New Moon, Hannas—when you didn’t think it necessary to call the legion!”
A queer tensity stiffened that white, foolish smile.
“Robbed—but that isn’t all, commander. Clovis Field is dead. His body has just been found in the precrematory vault at the Euthanasia Clinic. And his right hand is closed on one of those little black clay snakes that this Basilisk uses to sign his crimes!”
“What killed him?”
“Strangled!” boomed the great white man. “With a green silk scarf.” In his deep black eyes, behind that mindless mask, Jay Kalam saw the glitter of a terrible light. Accusing—or triumphant—he didn’t know which. “It is embroidered in gold, commander,” said the great voice of Hannas, “with the wings of the legion of space!”
Jay Kalam’s lean face tensed. “Robbery and murder,” he said. “But still I see no need to call upon me. What’s the matter with your own police? You have ten thousand of the toughest men in the System. Set them on your Basilisk!”
The deep black eyes almost—glazed. “You don’t understand, commander. It . . . it’s uncanny! The air lock was sealed—and stayed sealed. And the vault was locked. Nobody could have done the thing. Nobody but one of our own employees could have opened the vault. And—nobody could have entered the air valve!”
“I advise,” said Jay Kalam, “that you examine some of your own employees. “You say that Admiral General Samdu is with you? Please put him on.”
THE SMOOTH, white face was replaced by a scarred, rugged, ugly red one, equally gigantic. Beneath his snow-white hair, the features of Hal Samdu were stiff with an awed bewilderment.
The commander smiled a greeting. “Well, Hal, what is your emergency?” The battered red face twisted, and the blue eyes of Hal Samdu grew dark as if with pain.
“I don’t just know, Jay,” said his deep, worried voice. “There’s not much you can put a finger on.” His own big fingers were clenched into baffled fists. “But it is an emergency, Jay! I know it. I can feel it. The beginning of something—dreadful! It may turn out to be as bad as the Medusae—or the cometeers!”
Jay Kalam shook his tired dark hard.
“I don’t see anything, Hal—”
Hal Samdu leaned forward, and his great scarred impotent fist came up into the screen.
“Well, Jay,” he rumbled, “maybe you’ll listen to this!” His voice sank, with an unconscious caution. “I’ve been on the Derron case, you know, ever since we got back from the comet. Well, I haven’t caught him—there was never such a man! But I’ve got clues. And, well—”
His tone dropped lower still.
“Commander, I’ve got evidence enough that this Basilisk is Chan Derron!”
“Quite possible.” Jay Kalam nodded.
“There was no Basilisk until after Derron got out of prison,” argued Hal Samdu. “Soon after, there was. He began with small things. Experiments. He’s trying out his power—the invention he murdered Max Eleroid to get! Time knows how he hid the thing on that rock, when we combed every square inch—unless he could have used a geopeller!
“But he has it!” A secret, frightful power!”
The great hands twisted together, in a baffled agony.
“And he’s getting more confident with it. Bolder! Every job he tries is more daring. And time knows where he will stop!” The great rugged knob of his Adam’s apple jerked. “I tell you, Jay, the man who robbed and murdered Clovis Field can do anything—anything!”
Hal Samdu’s voice dropped again. It was cracked and shaken with alarm.
“I don’t like to speak of this, Jay, on the wave. But if this Basilisk—if Derron—can do what he did tonight, then she isn’t safe! Or—it!”
Jay Kalam stiffened. He could not fail to know what Hal Samdu meant by she and it—he and the giant, with fat old Giles Habibula, had been too long the guards of Aladoree Anthar and the priceless secret that she guarded: the mysterious weapon, designated by the symbol AKKA, whose very existence was the shield of mankind.
If they were in danger—
“All right, Hal,” he said. “I’ll come out to the New Moon—”
“And one thing more, Jay—” The rugged face was yet stiffly anxious. “Bring Giles Habibula!”
“But he’s on Phobos,” protested the commander, “with John Star and Aladoree. And Mars is a hundred degrees past opposition. It would take half a day to get him. And I don’t see—”
“Call John Star,” begged the big legionnaire, “and have him bring Giles to meet you. Drunk or sober! For we’ll need Giles, Jay, before this thing is done. He’s getting old and fat, I know. But he has a gift—a talent that we’ll need.”
“All right, Hal.” Jay Kalam nodded. “I’ll bring Giles Habibula.”
“Thank you, commander!” It was the great hoarse voice of Gaspar Hannas. Into the visi-wave plate, beside Hal Samdu’s unkempt white head, the smooth white face of Hannas crowded, smiling idiotically. “And—for Earth’s sake—hurry!”
JAY KALAM put through his call to Phobos by ultrawave—the faster visi-wave equipment, still experimental, not yet having been installed there. He ordered the Inflexible—powerful sister ship of the Invincible, which was destroyed by the cometeers—made ready to take off. He was on his feet, to leave the office, when he saw the little clay serpent.
It lay on the thick green sheaf of the report that he had been working over a few minutes before. And beneath it was a folded square of heavy, bright-red paper.
“Eh?” he muttered, uneasily. “How did that come here?”
He looked quickly around the room. The heavy door was still closed, the orderly sitting watchful and undisturbed beyond its vitrilith panel. The vitrilith windows were locked, the grates over the air ducts intact.
“It couldn’t—”
Certainly he had seen no movement, heard no step. The cometeers had known invisibility—came an alarming thought. But, no, even an invisible man must have opened a door or a window. He shook his head, baffled and aware of the cold prickling touch of a nameless dread, and picked up the serpent.
That was crude enough. A roughly molded little figurine, burned black. It lay in a double coil, head across the tail, so that it formed the letter B.
Where had it come from?
Thin, delicate hand trembling a little, he unfolded the heavy red sheet. The impression of a black serpent, at the top of it, formed another B. Beneath it, in a black script precise as engraving—the ink still damp enough to blot his fingers—was written:
MY DEAR KALAM:
Since you are going out to the New Moon, will you kindly take Gaspar Hannas a message from me? Will you tell him that nothing—not even the protection of the legion of space—will keep his most fortunate patron every day from the fate of Clovis Field?
THE BASILISK.
IV.
THE SOLAR System is curiously flat. The two dimensions of the ecliptic plane are relatively crowded with worlds and their satellites, with the cosmic debris of meteors, asteroids, and comets. But the third is empty.
Outbound interplanetary traffic, by a rule of the spaceways, arches a little to northward of the ecliptic plane; inbound, a little to the southward, to avoid the debris of the System and danger of head-on collision with another craft. Beyond these charted lanes, there is nothing.
A tiny ship, however, was now driving outward from the Sun, parallel to the ecliptic plane and two hundred million miles beyond the limits of the spacelanes. Its hull was covered with thin photoelectronic cells capable of being adjusted to absorb any desired fraction of the incident radiation—making the vessel, when they were in operation, virtually invisible in space.
Not thirty feet long, and weighing too few tons to have perceptible effect on the mass-detectors of a legion cruiser beyond ten million miles, the ship had power to race the fleetest of them.
