Collected Short Fiction, page 485
They came to Freedonia, twelve hours later. McGee brought the Good-by Jane down through the warning beacons and the drift and the field of unseen mines, to a safe landing on that bleak black cube of airless iron.
The Drakes came aboard again. Still they were tired, red-stubbled men, but now they were giants again, mighty with the strength of spatial conquest. Old Jim Drake crushed the Earthman’s hand, rumbling softly:
“Glad to take you in the firm, captain.” The bronze-hair A younger giant, however, still seemed a little look Ann, with her gray eyes shining, took him aside to the end of the narrow wardroom and whispered something. He came back to Anders, grinning and awkward and likable.
“Congratulations, captain,” he said. “Sorry if I didn’t seem quite friendly. But I thought—” With a flush on his space-burned face, he turned incoherent. “Well, I mean—”
“You thought I wanted Karen?” His face turned redder, and Anders grinned. “And maybe once I did, ’cause your redhead’s pretty wonderful, Drake. But Ann’s the one for—”
His gray eyes looked at the tall girl in blue. “Used to think we were opposites.” His voice sank low again. “But that was just ’cause we happened to be fighting for opposing sides. Now, since we’ve settled that, seems we’re pretty much alike.”
“Then we want you, Anders.”
And Rick Drake gave him a bronzed, mighty hand.
Little McGee towed his skittishly elusive peegee disk back into the narrow wardroom, and displayed it floating above the table. The two giants tested its bobbing repulsion, with great eager hands. Tears wet the blue hollow eyes of old Jim Drake.
“Permanent negative paragravity!” His low rusty voice was choked with glad emotion. “That’s the solution I’ve been hunting, for forty years. Now we can build the bedplates, to fill those empty pits. Now we can finish the seetee shop.”
His powerful space-burned hands were trembling, testing the magic of the untouchable disk.
“Looks as if the firm of Drake, McGee & Drake is going to prosper, now,” Anders said. “ ’Cause we’ve got more to give mankind than Interplanet ever did. Now the spatial engineers can really conquer space.”
He grinned at the tanned bright face of the tall lovely girl beside him.
“I’m mighty lucky, to b’long to the firm.” The grin faded, and he took her hand, and his low whisper turned very serious. “Darn lucky, darlin’ !”
Then he heard a cough, and the loud voice of Rick Drake:
“—just one danger, that I can see. Captain Anders and our mines finished Franz von Falkenberg. But it’s possible he had already made a photophone call to Mars, giving the position of the Invaders’ power plant.”
Rob McGee took the short pipe out of his mouth.
“I took care of that,” he told them calmly. “You see, although that machine had been badly neglected for the last hundred thousand years or so they used it, I found the repulsion drive still in working order—”
“Eh!” Anders caught a startled breath, then slowly nodded. “Never thought of that, but s’pose it could be. Frictionless bearings don’t wear out. Seetee fuel doesn’t deteriorate. But what did you do?”
McGee drew deliberately on his pipe.
“The last three days we were there,” he said, “I had the drive field on, to push the machine into a different orbit. Now it won’t come back to the meteor belt. No danger the Martians will find it, even if they look. The men of our generation won’t see it again.”
His mild squinted eyes looked gravely at. the tall straight Earthman, and the breathless girl, and the two gaunt red-stubbled giants still bent in fascination over the untouchable disk.
“Not unless I tell them where to look,” McGee added gently. “And I don’t think I will.”
Anders stared at the stubby little spaceman, in the ill-fitting green space coat. McGee looked shabby and ugly and utterly insignificant. For a moment it seemed utterly impossible that he should be the sole trustee of that lost planet’s unguessed legacy.
But he had been the finder of it, Anders remembered. His singular gift had vanquished the haunting death that made it a trap for men, and conquered its untold secrets. Now, seeing the calm on his space-beaten face, serene as his native stars, Anders felt that he was worthy of that tremendous trust.
“B’lieve you’re right, Cap’n McGee,” the Earthman said soberly. “That bedplate, and the seetee machines we can build on it, ought to be enough for our generation. ’Cause I don’t think we need too much, that b’longed to the Invaders. Unlike things react. Dunno what their culture would do to ours.”
Ann held his hand, her brown fingers tense. “I’m awfully glad, Cap’n Rob,” she whispered to McGee. “Glad that machine is gone. Maybe you understand it, but nobody else ever can.” Her golden-tanned shoulder shivered, under the blue silk. “Maybe you think I’m silly, but I always felt the thing was haunted, with the ghosts of the Invaders. I’m glad to know they’re gone.”
McGee turned calmly away, filling his pipe again. He joined the two gaunt red-bearded spatial engineers, still absorbed in the miracle of the untouchable disk, that would support the contraterrene machines of tomorrow.
For Paul Anders and Ann O’Banion had forgotten him. They had even forgotten the thin tall ghosts, that they had both imagined on those narrow winding contraterrene footways, where men could never tread.
THE END.
Conscience, Ltd.
William Platt was a very upright man—so upright he had committed three acts which doomed him. And his punishment was the impossible task of correcting the results of his acts—
Nobody saw Murray Staples come into the crowded district courtroom. A trim, worried man in gray, he walked under the unseeing eyes of Sheriff Dixon, and glanced at the wall clock above Judge Prendick’s head. With a puzzled expression, he hurried on down the aisle, through the breathless hush of a tense legal battle. He set his heavy brief case on the end of the long table cluttered with the papers of the prosecution, and frowned again at the clock.
Nobody noticed him. He caught the elbow of District Attorney William Platt, who was just rising to address the court. But Platt shook him off, with a little shuddery gesture, and turned to sum up his case for the jury. Hurriedly, with thin nervous fingers, Staples opened the bulging brief case. He fumbled for a thin gray card, and read again:
OFFICE MEMO
TO: Murray Staples, Deputy Advocate
SUBJECT: Call for William Platt
PLACE: District courtroom, Clifton
TIME: Expires November 14, 5:19 p.m.
The clock above Judge Prendick’s habitual sleepy snarl already said five twenty. But Staples looked at the accurate watch on his wrist, and found that the courtroom clock was three minutes fast. Still unnoticed, although he was drumming nervously on the edge of the table, he waited impatiently.
District Attorney Platt was a tall, gaunt man, lean as a bloodhound. Inflexible justice flashed a glacial blue in his deep-set eyes. His thin-lipped mouth was stem with rigid self-restraint, his iron jaw square with rectitude. The pallor of an exhausted but triumphant crusader was gray on his hawk-nosed face.
This had been a trying day. Honoria had called him early, to keep an appointment with Dr, Venwick. Platt protested that he had no time to be ill. But Honoria was always right—that was why she had become the second Mrs. Platt. He went to see the doctor.
When the examination was done, Dr. Venwick laid his stethoscope aside, and fussed needlessly with the sac and tubes of the blood-pressure manometer. Something gave Platt a chill of icy alarm. There was a sudden hush, so that he could hear the loud, uneven beat of his own hurrying pulse; and the stabbing glitter of cold white light on bright steel instruments became acutely painful. At last the doctor turned.
“We had better face the facts. Bill.” He put on a careful professional frown, over his best poker face. “We’ve got a heart condition, here. Not too serious, yet. But we’d better ease the strain. I’d suggest you take a long vacation.”
Dr. Venwick’s best poker face wasn’t very good. Platt’s ability to read it had earned him several fifty-dollar pots—before he married Honoria and joined the church and quit playing stud in the locker room at the Clifton Country Club. He knew what the doctor was thinking.
“You can’t give me a death sentence, doc.” His fine voice was brittle with urgency. “I haven’t got time to let go. The Pickens case goes to the jury today. It’s in the bag—and it’s the best break I’ve ever had. The city papers are covering it. It will give me a chance to accomplish some of the things I was elected to do.”
Controlled again, his voice dropped confidentially.
“Listen, doc. Keep this quiet, but the grand jury is going to give me an indictment against Tanner. He has had the city hall in his vest pocket long enough. I’ve been working on the case for months, and I’ve got the evidence to turn him out. Can’t you fix me up, doc. so I can go on?”
“Not much that I can do.” Venwick said gravely. “I’m afraid you’ll have to slow up, Bill—or pay the penalty.”
“Then I’ll pay it, if I must.” Platt’s gray hawk face was stern with righteous determination. “But I’m going to hang that gun moll, first, and put Tanner and his grafting gang where they belong.”
Dr. Venwick’s warning was the first jolt, and Stella administered the second. On his way to the courtroom, Platt found her waiting in his office. Stella had been the first Mrs. Platt. But it was six years since he had seen her, now, and at first he scarcely knew her.
Stella was the only daughter of his former law partner, old Murray Staples. She had been only a slim, dark-haired girl, when they were married. They didn’t get on. She was extravagant and irresponsible, from the very first, and she soon took up with a fast crowd. Finally he discovered that she had made a week-end trip to Kansas City with Arthur Tanner, when she was supposed to be visiting her invalid aunt. Tanner was already an enemy of Platt’s, and this transgression was beyond forgiveness. He divorced her. and he hadn’t seen her since. Now she was waiting in a chair by his desk; a blond, hard-enameled. artificial stranger. Her eyebrows were penciled sharply, her lashes dark with mascara, her lips a hard perfect bow. She lazily crushed a red-stained cigarette, and gave him a cold languid hand.
“Why, Bill dear, you look almost ill.” Her suave husky voice was as artificial as the color of her hair. “Aren’t you glad to see your little darling Stellabel?”
Platt winced from the deliberate mockery of that old pet name, and frowned at the reek of gin on her breath. He closed his mind against the aching memories the name recalled. It was impossible to believe he had ever called this cold stranger by such a name.
“I’m already late for court, Stella.” He remained standing. “If you want to see me, you’ll have to come back later.”
Her throaty voice turned hard.
“Better give me a few minutes, Bill.”
“What do you want?”
She inhaled deliberately through another long cigarette.
“You’re sitting pretty, Billy,” she drawled through blue smoke. “I read all about you in the paper. You’re going to hang Ysobel Pickens, and then you’re going after my old pal Tanner.” Platt winced again, from her hard-mouthed smile. “I want you to cut me into your little game, Willie—for a thousand dollars.”
Platt blinked from the smoke in his eyes, and uttered an outraged gasp.
“So you’ve sunk to blackmail?” Just anger rang in his voice. “I might have given you something, Stella, for charity’s sake, if you had explained your need. But I won’t shake down. I’ve got a clean record, and you know it.”
“Cool off, Billy.” With calm insolence, she crossed mesh-stockinged legs. “I don’t give a damn about your record. But I know all about the Claypool bonds. I can tell the newspapers a story that will upset your pretty little playhouse.”
Platt sat down heavily, his face turning dark.
“You wouldn’t dare,” he protested hotly. “It was your own father who embezzled the Claypool bonds. I didn’t find out till after I was in the partnership. Then I helped him pay back the money and hush the thing up. My conscience is clear.”
“Damn your conscience and your record,” she drawled. “I was your wife and the old man’s daughter. I can tell a story that plenty of dumb but honest voters will believe.”
Platt’s gray face turned hard.
“Go ahead,” he said harshly. “If you want to smear your own father’s name, for spite. But you won’t get one penny out of me. You’ll find out that honest men don’t pay blackmail.” Something throbbed painfully in his temple. “You’re playing with fire, Stella. You ought to know that I’ve made a career out of smashing evil.” He stalked to open the door.
She put down the cigarette and slowly rose. Something had melted a little of her artificial hardness. Her crimson lip trembled. He saw the glint of a tear under her lashes.
“I guess you’ve done a pretty good job of smashing me already.” Holding the door, Platt felt a momentary twinge of pity. But her drawling, insolent voice turned hard again. “Better think it over, Willie. You’ve got a lot to lose.”
Platt shut the door and tried to quiet his fluttering pulse. Dr. Venwick had warned him not to get upset. Now his anger had turned him cold and ill. But he was in the right. He had settled generously with Stella, before he put her out of his life. Surely she wouldn’t dare try anything. If she did, he grimly assured himself, she would go to prison.
Yet conscience nagged at him, faintly. Once he had loved slim, dark-eyed, little Stella Staples—though it was hard to see anything of her left in this cold, brittle, made-in-Hollywood product. He wondered just why she needed a thousand dollars. He felt a momentary impulse to call her back and try to talk things over in a more friendly way.
But he was already almost late for court.
The case was sensational. The stuffy, overheated courtroom was packed to the walls when Platt arrived, with spectators who had crowded in to see Ysobel Pickens on trial for her life. Most of of them, he knew, expected him to get the death sentence he was fighting for.
Yet, many a citizen of Clifton felt a kind of pride in Ysobel Pickens, because her audacious exploits had put the little city on the map. The tellers in the Clifton National still proudly pointed out the bullet marks she had made when tipped-off officers trapped her gang there. Her last shot killed a deputy, and she was on trial for murder.
Her attorney was Arthur Tanner, Platt’s old enemy. That was one cause of his determination to win a dramatic victory—it would make a good background for the coming indictment of Tanner himself.
Tanner was a big man, and still handsome in his rugged way, in spite of a paunch and thinning hair. Red from good living, his wide face was furrowed into a perpetual jolly smile, to which his shrewdly squinted eyes gave a cold contradiction. He was an affable speaker and a clever lawyer. Platt had had a long experience with his unscrupulous methods, and he had been a little worried by Tanner’s seeming laxness in the defense of this case. He was still uneasily watchful for some unprincipled trick.
Late that afternoon, however, when Tanner rested for the defense, he had failed to score an important point. Platt was sure his case was won. This was a high point of his career, and he wanted to make the most of it. He was pleasantly aware of the big-city reporters at the tables arranged for them opposite the jury box, and he had got used to smiling into blinding flash guns.
It was five twenty when Platt rose to make his triumphant summation for the jury. His gray face was flushed with victory—yet something made him shiver as he addressed the court. The breathless tension of the moment made him cold and ill. The painful throb was back in his temple, his hands and feet felt clammy, and he wished he had a dose of bicarbonate. For a moment he stood dazed and voiceless.
“Gentlemen of the jury—” His voice came back. It was a mellifluous instrument, trained to carry sweet persuasion or tears of regret or gentle admonition or a storm of righteous wrath. “Gentlemen—look at this woman.”
Ysobel Pickens, on Tanner’s shrewd advice, was clothed in modest and becoming black. But her long fingernails were still defiantly red; and perhaps out of sheer panic she had used so much lipstick that her sullen, pouting lips were a scarlet wound in her terror-whitened face.
As she cringed beneath the jury’s staring eyes, Platt had a vague disturbed sense that he had known her somewhere before. Conscience whispered uneasily. He wished for a moment that he had made a sympathetic effort to understand how she had become what she was. Suddenly he wondered if she had really earned the penalty of death.
Her dark, hollow eyes flashed him a look of trapped and helpless hate. But Tanner, beside her, appeared alarmingly unconcerned. Platt felt the stir of excitement that swept through the crowded room, and that doubtful whisper was forgotten. Once more he was the crusader, and Tanner was the champion of all wickedness.
“Look at her.” His pliant voice held a practiced scorn. “Look through the rags and tatters of her soiled beauty, and you will see the ugly stain of evil on her sordid soul.”
That touched the opening note he wanted. It woke the weather-beaten farmers and pink-scrubbed mechanics and oily-haired merchants in the jury box, and touched their complacent faces with just the right mixture of lust and disgust. His voice turned piously moderate again.
“Gentlemen, I would not be harsh or vengeful, and I know that you would not. But I believe in a Creator, gentlemen, as you do. I believe in Heaven, for good must be rewarded and the soul can never die. And I am old-fashioned enough to believe in Hell, for evil must be punished.”
He saw the fat little smiles of self-righteous agreement. Ysobel Pickens dropped her head and started to whimper. But Tanner whispered some word of encouragement—Platt wondered uneasily what it might be—and she blew her nose and sat up straight and painted her lips defiantly. Platt waited a moment, to let the jurors see, and he noted their stiff disapproval.
