Collected Short Fiction, page 331
“Keep yer optics hot,” advised a little mechanic beside him. “Any big man you see tonight might be good for Hannas’ quarter of a million. You don’t know who—”
“You don’t know who,” Chan agreed.
A little door let them out upon the vast, noisy open space beneath the docks, thronged with incoming passengers from the space liners above. Chan turned away from his companions, and sighed with relief. Beyond the fleet, and the New Moon’s walls, and the alert inspectors scrutinizing every man that came down the gangplanks above, he was safe! Safe—
“Your reservation check, sir?”
It was an attentive, dark-skinned Martian porter. The grimy paper sticking from the pocket of his yellow uniform, Chan saw, was another copy of that notice of reward. With a worried frown, Chan patted his borrowed pockets.
“Ob, I remember!” He squinted and blinked. “Left it in my baggage. Can you get me a duplicate?”
Were the dark eyes studying his scar? He eased the crippled foot.
“Yes, sir. A temporary check. Your name, sir?”
“Dr. Charles Derrel. Marine biologist. From Venus, en route to Earth. Two days here.” He squinted again. “Can you get me some dark glasses? Not used to the light. The clouds on Venus, you know!”
The check, evidently a necessary passport to the New Moon’s wonders, was presently procured. Chan dispatched the porter to look for nonexistent baggage, and hurried on alone. The transit bands—a series of gliding belts, whose moving coffee tables and bars were crowded with bright-clad vacationists—carried him through endless enormous halls, past glittering shops and the famed shimmering beauty of the “gravity fountain” and the tall black portals of the Hall of Euthanasia. But Chan had eyes for none of this fabulous splendor, until he saw the Casino—for it was there that he might meet the Basilisk, at midnight.
TRANSPARENT and illuminated from within, the pillars at the entrance looked like columns hewn from living gems. Ruby and emerald, they. were covered with a delicate layer of gold. Tiny beneath their barbaric splendor, Chan saw a woman standing, waiting. He swung off the belt.
The girl was tall, with a proud grace of poise that he had rarely seen. The wealth of her hair was platinum-white; her fine skin was white; she wore a fortune in white Callistonian furs. And her eyes, he saw, were a rare true violet. He hurried on, to pass her.
She was utterly beautiful. Her loveliness set a painful throb to going in his throat. He could not help a twinge of bitterness, at thought of the double barrier between them—her obvious wealth and reserve, and his own more-than-desperate situation. If he had been some idle billionaire, he was thinking bleakly, perhaps returning from his colonial mines and plantations, she might have been waiting for him—
His heart came up in his mouth.
For the girl was coming swiftly toward him, across the vast, gold-veined emerald that floored the entrance. The white perfection of her face lit with a welcoming smile. Her eyes were warm with recognition. In a joyous voice—but one too low for any other to hear—she greeted him by name:
“Why, Chan! You’re Chan Derron!” Rooted with wonder, Chan shuddered to those syllables that made his body worth a quarter of a million dollars, living or dead. The smile of admiration congealed on his face. Moving with the weightless life of a flame, the girl came up to him and eagerly seized his nerveless hand in hers.
VII.
THE SALONS of chance occupied a series of six immense halls radiating from the private office of Gaspar Hannas, which was situated at the very center of the New Moon’s metal star. The walls of the office were transparent from within, and Hannas, from the huge swivel chair within his ring-shaped desk, could look at will down any one of the halls.
They were huge and glittering rooms. The walls bore expensive statues, expensive murals, golden statues set in niches. And the polished floors were covered with thousands of tables of chance.
Beneath each hall ran an armored tunnel, unsuspected by most of the players above, where their losses were swiftly examined for counterfeit, counted, tabulated, and dispatched to the impregnably armored treasure vault beneath the office of Gaspar Hannas.” A continuous tape, fed through a slot in the circular desk, revealed minute by minute the New Moon’s gains and losses. The losses were all printed in red, but there was very seldom any red in the totals.
“The laws of probability,” Gaspar Hannas always insisted, smiling his fixed and mindless smile, “are all I need. Every game is fair.”
And cynics, it had been suspected, were apt to find their doubt very unexpectedly terminated in the Hall of Euthanasia.
The six halls, this night, were more than commonly crowded. For the whisper of the Basilisk had run over all the New Moon, and a great many thrill seekers, in their gayest silks and jewels, had turned out to see what would happen at midnight. The play,. however, as recorded on the endless tape, was very slow—too many had heard that it was the highest winner whom the Basilisk had promised to rob and kill.
But Gaspar Hannas, tonight, was not watching the tape. He was walking with the three legionnaires in mufti, through the Diamond Room, where no limit was placed upon the stakes. Hal Samdu, in his great gnarled hand, carried a tattered notice of reward.
“This convict, Derron,” he insisted. “He’s your Basilisk.”
And he refreshed his memory, from time to time, with a look at the bronzehaired, space-tanned likeness of Chan Derron.
“Yonder!” Jay Kalam paused abruptly. “Derron was a big man. There’s one as big.”
They followed his grave dark eyes.
“Ah, so!” Giles Habibula was puffing mightily, from keeping pace with Hal Samdu’s impatient stride. “A majestic figure of manhood. And ’tis a mortal lovely lass at his side!”
The man stood like a tower above all the restless, bright-clad players. His hair was dark, dark glasses shaded his eyes, and his skin had a singular pallor. A long scar marred his face.
The blond girl beside him was equally striking. With a queen’s proud grace, she wore a lustrous cloak of priceless white fur. A queer white star-shaped jewel—it looked, Jay Kalam thought, like a hugely magnified snow crystal—hung at her throat.
“Six feet three!” Hal Samdu caught a gasping breath, and the poster trembled in his mighty hand. “He can’t hide that—and the paleness and the dark hair and the glasses could be disguise!” He beckoned to one of the legionnaires in plain clothes, trailing unobtrusively behind. “We’ll arrest him, and soon find out.”
Jay Kalam’s head shook sharply.
“Shadow him,” he whispered. “But if he is Derron—and the Basilisk—we must see more of his methods. Meantime—”
HE breathed something to Giles Habibula.
“In life’s name, Jay!” The small fishy eyes of the old man rolled at him, startled. “Don’t ask me that! Don’t command a poor old soldier to give up his very blessed life!”
“Remember, Giles.” Hal Samdu caught his shoulder. “It’s for the safety of the System—for Aladoree.”
Giles Habibula winced and heaved himself away.
“Don’t mangle me, Hal!” he gasped. “For life’s blessed sake! Of course I’ll do what Jay desires. Aye, for Aladoree!” He turned ponderously to the white giant in black. “Ah, Mr. Hannas,” he wheezed, “now I must have your order for a thousand blue chips.”
“A thousand! A million dollars’ worth?” The idiot’s smile stiffened upon the face of Gaspar Hannas, and he looked protestingly at Jay Kalam. “Commander, this is blackmail!”
“No blacker,” whispered Giles Habibula, “than the bloody career of Pedro the Shark!”
“I’ll give it to you!”
Clutching the order, Giles Habibula waddled toward the table. A smart jab with his cane, in the ribs of a purple-clad woman as corpulent as himself, made him a place beside the green-cloaked giant and the girl in white. He presented the order to the startled croupier.
“A thousand blue chips, croupier, or a hundred of your mortal diamond ones!”
He turned to the pale tall stranger. “Begging your pardon, sir,” he wheezed. “But my poor old hands scatter the chips, they tremble so. And your blessed touch, I observe, brings luck to the lovely lass beside you. Would you kindly place my bets, sir?”
“If you like.” The big man relaxed. “How much are you playing?”
Giles Habibula gestured at the stacks of his chips.
“The million,” he said. “On thirty-nine.”
Even here in the Diamond Room, such a play made a stir. Spectators crowded up to watch the wheel. With his small eyes half closed, Giles Habibula watched the croupier flick the ball into its polished track, and then lift his hand dramatically over the wheel.
“Eh!” he muttered. “Not when old Giles plays!”
He turned to the man and the girl.
“Thank you, sir!” he puffed. “And now we await the turn of luck—or skill!” His leaden eyes lit with admiration of the girl’s proud grace. “A lovely thing!” he wheezed. “As lovely as you are, my dear—that blue tapestry from Titan!”
His cane pointed suddenly across the table, held with an odd sure steadiness in his pudgy yellow hands, so that its polished green head was precisely opposite the upflung hand of the croupier, across the wheel.
The croupier gulped and turned white. His hand dropped, dramatically, as he followed the racing ball.
“Ah, and the golden nymph!” The cane fell, precisely as the hand pointed to a Statue in its niche. And the quick eyes of Giles Habibula came back to the girl in white. “Dancing as you must dance, my dear!”
The croupier stood trembling. His pale face ran sudden little rivulets of sweat. And the clicking ball fell at last into the slot. Blank, distended, stricken, the eyes of the croupier came up to the seamed yellow face of Giles Habibula.
“You are the winner, sir,” he croaked. “At forty to one!”
“Precisely,” agreed Giles Habibula. “And none of your mortal chips or scrip—I’ll take my forty blessed millions in good new Green Hall certificates.”
The trembling fingers of the croupier tapped the keys before him, and presently a thick packet of currency popped up out of the magnetic tube. While hushed spectators stared, he counted out forty crisp million-dollar bills.
Trembling suddenly as violently as the other man, Giles Habibula snatched up the forty stiff new certificates. He swung hastily, and his fat arm struck the pale man in green, and the bills all scattered out of his hand.
“My life!” he sobbed. “My forty millions! For Earth’s sweet sake, help a poor old man to save his miserable mite!”
After the first awed moment, there was an excited scramble after the bills. Giles Habibula, stooping and snatching, fell against the tall man. The stranger thrust a sheaf of money into his hands, and helped him back to his feet.
“Ah, thank you, sir!” Small eyes glittering, he was avidly seizing and counting the returned bills. “Thank you. Thank you mortal generously madam!” He heaved a vast sigh of relief. “Ah, ’tis all here! Thank you!”
HE WADDLED triumphantly back to where his three companions were ostensibly watching another table. Ignoring the peculiarly pale and sick-looking smile on the face of Gaspar Hannas, he dropped something into Jay Kalam’s palm.
“Ah, Jay,” he panted, “it cost me mortal peril—aye, and the last desperate exertion of my failing genius—but here are your suspect’s keys and his reservation check.”
“Mortal peril?” echoed Gaspar Hannas, faintly. “It cost me forty million dollars!”
The commander studied the little oblong of yellow card.
“Charles Derrel,” he muttered. “Marine biologist, from Venus.” His dark eyes narrowed. “It’s just a temporary check—‘original mislaid.’ And the name—Charles Darrel and Chan Derron!”
Hal Samdu’s great fists clenched.
“Aye, Jay!” he whispered. “Shall we arrest him now?”
“Not yet,” said the commander, “Wait for me here.”
He walked quickly to the table, and touched the tall man’s arm. The stranger turned very quickly to meet him. And the sharp-checked jerk of his arm told the commander that some weapon hung ready beneath the green cloak.
“These were dropped when the money was being picked tip, just now.” Jay Kalam allowed a glimpse of the keys and the yellow card. “If you can identify the check—”
The stranger stared through his dark glasses, speechless. But the girl stepped forward. Her gracious white arm slipped through the stranger’s. And she gave Jay Kalam a face that took his breath.
“Of course he can.” Rich as a singer’s, her voice was quick and positive. “Or I can identify him. Sir, this is Dr. Charles Derrel. Recently from Venus. My fiancé.”
“Thank you.” With a sudden intense effort of memory, Jay Kalam studied the girl. “Who, if I may ask, are you?”
The proud, impersonal violet eyes met his.
“Vanya Eloyan.” She spoke as if she were saying, “I am the empress of the System.”
“From Thule.”
The commander bowed, and dropped the card and the ring of keys into the stranger’s powerful hand. The girl smiled dazzling thanks, and then took her companion’s arm and turned him back to the table.
RUBBING thoughtfully at his lean dark chin, Jay Kalam found his own companions at another table, where the wheel paid one hundred to one. Giles Habibula, his moonface intent, was pointing with his cane, across the spinning wheel, toward the stupendous magnificence of a mural depicting the old Moon’s cataclysmic doom.
The croupier behind the table, with a desperate illness in his eyes, was staring slack-jawed at Gaspar Hannas. His hand moved, in a convulsive gesture, to mop his brow. And the old man’s cane moved swiftly also, pointing.
“And there,” he wheezed, “stands the blessed figure of Aladoree!”
“Restrain yourself, Habibula,” rasped Gaspar Hannas. “Or you’ll destroy the New Moon as surely as she did the old! For honor’s sake—”
The number fell.
The croupier’s mouth opened in a strangled moan. He gulped, and made a helpless little shrug at Gaspar Hannas.
“You are the winner, sir,” at last his voice came squeakily. “Twenty million, at one hundred to one. You have won two billion dollars!” He tapped uncertainly at his keys. “We’ll have it for you in a moment, from the vaults.” The great white hand of Gaspar Hannas caught the old man’s cloak.
“Habibula,” he croaked huskily, “have you no mercy? In honor’s name—” The fishy eyes of Giles Habibula blinked reprovingly.
“Ah, me! But that’s a mortal strange word to hear from you, Gaspar Hannas! Blessed little honor has been found, in anything your foul hands have touched, in the forty years that I have known you.” He turned back to the table. “I want my two blessed billions!”
In hundred-million-dollar Green Hall certificates—the first his blinking eyes had ever seen—his winnings were pushed toward him. With that amazing quick dexterity that his fat hands sometimes displayed, he shuffled through them to check the count.
“Pedro,” he wheezed sadly, “you shouldn’t begrudge me this—not when all your New Moon’s splendor is built upon the cornerstone of my poor old brain. For I find you still using the same simple devices I invented for the tables of the Blue Unicorn!”
He patted his crackling pocket, contentedly.
“ ’Twould serve you right, Hannas—aye, mortal justly—if I played all the night. Ah, so! Even if I broke your New Moon, and made you beg for the black chip of admission to your own Euthanasia Clinic!
“But I won’t do that, Hannas.” He swung heavily on his cane. “Because I’m more honest than you ever were, Pedro—aye, there’s a blessed limit to my stealing. Ah, so, one more play is all I want. Just one billion dollars, Hannas, at a hundred to one.”
Gaspar Hannas staggered, and his white jaw slackened.
“Habibula!” he husked. “In the name of Ethyra Coran—”
“Don’t utter her name!” cried Giles Habibula. “And I’ll play two billion—just for that!”
But Jay Kalam touched his arm.
“Better keep close beside us, Giles,” his whisper warned. “Move slowly, so that the plain-clothes men can gather in around you. And keep an eye on Dr. Derrel—for you’ve got just twenty minutes, now.”
“I?” Giles Habibula blinked at him. “You make me feel like a mortal convict, waiting for the ray!” He touched his pocket again, with a sidewise look at Gaspar Hannas. “I know he’d slit my poor old throat in an instant, Jay. But surely, with so many of you here, he wouldn’t dare. For Pedro was ever a white-livered coward at the core.”
“I was speaking, Giles,” Jay Kalam told him gravely, “of your danger at midnight, when the Basilisk has threatened to strike.
“The B-B-B-Basilisk?” Giles Habibula stuttered through ashen, quivering lips. “Aye, the mortal Basilisk! You told me he had threatened to abduct and murder some luckless p-p-p-player. But why should he pick on m-m-m-me?” Gaspar Hannas caught his breath, and his white baby grin seemed for an instant genuinely mirthful.
“Didn’t we tell you, Giles?” asked Jay Kalam’s grave, astonished voice. “Didn’t we tell you that the Basilisk has promised to come at midnight—in eighteen minutes, now—to rob and murder the highest winner?”
“And your two billions, Habibula, are the richest winnings in the New Moon’s history.” The great voice of Gaspar Hannas had a ring of savage glee. “You are picked to be the victim!”
TO BE CONTINUED.
One Against the Legion
Giles Habibula neatly picks himself as the Basilisk’s victim!
Synopsis of Part I.
“Unusual. Important. Indubitably dangerous.”
Such, Jay Kalam, commander of the legion of space, warned big, bronzed, young Captain Chan Derron, was the duty before him. That duty was to guard the great geodesic engineer, Dr. Mas Eleroid, during the test of a new and mysterious instrument.
