The Complete Saga of Don Hargreaves

by Festus Pragnell

  And the problem that was worrying us now was no slouch of a problem. We wanted the formula for a certain powder. Only one man, so far as we knew, knew the formula. And he was hiding. Might be anywhere in Mars. Emperor Usulor had already got his police looking for him, but—

  “I wonder what the Chief of Police has found out,” said Wimp suddenly, beginning to fiddle with the teleview.

  “The latest report,” I said.

  “Keep it.” Wimp believed in the personal touch.

  In the teleview screen the Chief looked up and saw us.

  “What progress?” Wimp asked at once.

  “In what matter, Your Highness?”

  “Prince Grumbold.”

  THE Chief tapped his forehead and tried to put on a “Spider-in-his-web” look, like a man who is watching the moves of hundreds of dangerous criminals all at the same time.

  “Grumbold, Grumbold, Grumbold . . . Oh yes! I remember. Dangerous international conspirator. The latest report from the Secret Service about him—”

  “Don’t trouble,” snaps Wimp. “I’ll speak to the Secret Service myself.”

  The Chief of Police only had time to get ready to look surprised before his face vanished from the screen.

  “And what a Secret Service,” Wimp muttered. “Three attempts to assassinate me and three kidnappings in a couple of years!”

  My wife certainly has had a lively time lately. But I don’t think it’s quite fair of her to blame her dad’s service chiefs. Wimp herself is not always as careful as she should be. And on a planet as full of dangerous criminals as Mars is it is not very difficult for the Heiress to the Throne to find trouble. She behaves like an overgrown schoolgirl. That’s my opinion. No staid reliable Princess about her. Always snake-hunting, grotto-exploring, or up to some still sillier game.

  And when they had dusted her down and pulled the splinters out of her she didn’t seem any the worse for wear.

  Anyway, it wasn’t long before she had the frontispiece of the Secret Service Chief on the teleview screen. He was a man with a lean face and a long hooked nose that made him seem to be looking round a corner at you. And he had such a cunning look in his eyes that he would have made Sherlock Holmes seem like a schoolboy.

  “Aha!” he said, tapping his nose, “there is a considerable traffic in chemicals and machine parts to the port of Novwollo in Kuspilad!”

  “What are you talking about?” gasped Wimp.

  It was said of Weil Hektorum, greatest detective of Mars, that no matter what happened he never looked surprised. It was not true. Hektorum looked surprised then. He seemed unable to believe that anybody, no matter how stupid, could fail to understand his remark.

  “Can I be mistaken?” he muttered. “Don’t you want to trace Prince Grumbold and his bogus Professor?”

  “Why, certainly, I do. We do. All of us do. But how in Mars did you know—”

  “Really, Princess,” said Hektorum, with a pained sigh, “you do not give me credit for the most ordinary common-sense. Bruny Hudells was recently called to your suite. What would you, Prince Don and Vans Holors be discussing with him? The prospects for the coming zekolo races, perhaps. But would you ring up the Chief of the Secret Service about that? No. There is only one explanation. You want to know how the search for the white powder is going on. That means you want to find Prince Grumbold. That means you are interested to know of our latest clue. Or, at least, I thought you would be.”

  “But what had your item of shipping news—”

  “Really!” Hektorum sighed again. “You are looking for a scientist who uses many strange processes. Obviously he needs supplies of chemicals and machine parts!”

  “Say no more,” said Wimp. “Don, Bruny, Vans! We are going to Novwollo to find Grumbold.”

  “Give me a minute or two,” said Hektorum, “and I will join you.”

  HE TOOK a box out of a drawer. It had a cable which he plugged into his power supply. It also had a rubber pad which he moved slowly over his face.

  As I watched, the face was changing shape. The bridge of the nose sank and the nose broadened. Lean cheeks became fat ones. Eyebrows wandered upwards.

  Then other machines made a sallow complexion look fresh, and turned the black hair green. Green hair on Mars, while uncommon, is not remarkable, but usually goes with poor intelligence. Hektorum now looked like a well-fed but half-witted farmer.

  “Ah!” he said. “It be a nuisance, but now I shall have to go to Kuspilad to arrange about that mortgage!”

  “How did you do it?” I asked.

  “Portable plastic surgery outfit,” he explained. “Very useful in my profession. Causes nerve, skin and muscle cells to dry up and shrink, or to absorb moisture and swell, according to the way one turns the handle. Works by deep-heating infra-red rays. It has one drawback. After several days the face begins to return to its natural state. The other rays, which change the chemical composition of the pigments in skin and hair, are too well known in Mars for me to need to explain them. The effects of them, too, wears off in time. But aren’t we wasting time?”

  CHAPTER III

  The Chase

  WEIL HEKTORUM was at the Princess’s suite in a few minutes. He made Wimp dress in men’s clothes and us three in women’s clothes. The plastic surgery outfit made some changes in our appearance, although I had some doubt as to whether it was much use trying to disguise the enormous Hudells. Though, I must say, Hektorum did not make such a bad job of it, considering.

  His next move seemed to me to spoil it all. He televised the airport and booked reservations in an air-liner for Princess Wimpolo, Vans Holors and me for a journey to Novwollo in the country of Kuspilad.

  “Why go under our own names?” I asked.

  “We don’t,” he said.

  “Your schemes are too deep for me,” I said. “The news that the royal party will be on the liner will be everywhere in an hour.”

  “Just a normal precaution,” he said. “Only our luggage will be on the liner. At the last moment we teleview the Captain telling him to start without us. Will you kindly come with me?”

  We slipped out of a back entrance of the palace to a small secret airport. Hektorum’s badge got us a quick passage. Then he showed us the queer-looking secret aircraft we were to travel in.

  It was as round as an egg, transparent, had a helicopter propeller on top and a small propeller in front, with three landing wheels on telescopic props. Queerest-looking thing I ever saw.

  A trusted operative of Martian International Investigators, which was the official name of Usulor’s Secret Service, put the message through to the air-liner. The great liner rose in the air out of a big crowd that had gathered to show their loyalty by waving flags and cheering and to whisper “Isn’t she getting fat!” Always well-nourished, Wimp was now nearly eleven hundredweight.

  The big liner really didn’t go awfully fast. There were too many twisty caverns to go through. What we lost on the straight stretches we made up on the bends. So that we kept it pretty well in sight most of the time.

  IT WAS an ordinary, dull journey for most of the time. I thought Hektorum was being a bit too artful. I could not see the point of all this trickiness. It annoyed me because Wimp had to travel most of the time sitting on the lap of Vans Holors. You see, Bruny Hudells took up most of the room in that flying egg. I’d trust Vans with my life. All the same, there are some Martian customs that I don’t really like. Married women sitting in other men’s laps is one of them. They saw no harm in it.

  So, I was not sorry when we began to get near to the country of Kuspilad. There were some narrow, twisty caverns here. The traffic lights, set in the rocks over our heads, were at “Stop!” The great liner idled, waiting.

  Some blunder here, I thought. The royal party should have had right of way. “Aha!” exclaimed Hektorum. “I thought Grumbold would show up!”

  What alarmed him I couldn’t see, until I noticed a lot of black specks darting out of the rocks at the waiting airli
ner. Through the telescope, I saw that they were pterodactyls. Prince Grumbold had a lot of those prehistoric leathery-winged creatures that were extinct on Earth millions of years ago, and that he trained to do all sorts of dirty work for him.

  “Don!” said Vans, “There’s a fight going on there!”

  “But for once, Holors,” said Hektorum, firmly, “it is a fight that you will take no part in.”

  I saw the face of Vans twist in pain. In front of his eyes a fight was happening. And he was not in it. It hurt.

  “I should have been on that liner,” he growled.

  “Me too,” said Hudells.

  The officials of the air-liner were putting up a good show, seeing what few arms they had and what numbers were against them. Pteros, paralyzed in the air by deathrays, nose dived, men on their backs falling off. But at last the gallant crew was wiped out. No more deathrays stabbed out. Pteros perched on the drifting liner, their riders getting off. The liner turned and went off another way, pteros all around.

  “Grumbold thinks you and Don are in the passenger cabins on that liner,” Hektorum explained. “Now all we have to do is to follow, and we shall be led to Grumbold’s hide-out.”

  A subtle lad, that Martian detective. I’ll say that for him. If I had been managing that affair I would have been in Grumbold’s clutches by then. No use saying I wouldn’t.

  So, Wimp still on the huge lap of Vans Holors, and me on the lap of Wimp, we trailed the stolen liner.

  THIS time it was not so easy. When we followed the liner before we had known exactly which way it was going. This time we did not. We did not dare let it out of our sight.

  It led us into a wild, lonely cavern. But in the center of the cavern we saw what made our hearts jump. It was a great fat-bellied space ship.

  “I must admit I was not prepared for this,” Hektorum admitted, losing that “Don’t you think I’m clever?” air of his.

  We saw the passengers all marched out and looked over. Being so far away, we could not tell whether the conspirators noticed that their birds were not in the net. But soon all went into the space-ship, and the ship itself blasted off.

  “Ah!” groaned the detective, “I’m beaten. Weil Hektorum outwitted. After this I’ll keep bees! My secret air-egg cannot fly in space.”

  “Beaten?” snapped Wimp. “Nonsense! Get to the nearest observer post. Get the space-ship trailed!”

  “Ah yes!” exclaimed Hektorum, brightening up. “There is a chance after all.”

  So, we dived for the nearest observer post. Hektorum flashed his badge. He demanded control of the telescopes.

  The telescopes of the observers were on the nearly airless surface of Mars, worked by remote control, and relayed their pictures to the astronomers in the interior of Mars by television. By its flaring rocket-jets the escaping spacecraft was soon picked out. Astronomers began figuring with elaborate formulae and slide-rules quite beyond my understanding.

  “By its course and the acceleration used,” said one at last, “I would say the vessel was heading for Phobos.”

  “I have reached the same conclusion,” nodded another.

  “Quite right,” agreed a third. “Indubitably correct,” assented the fourth, putting the lid on it.

  Phobos! One of the two moons of Mars. Bodies so small that it is only out of politeness to the planet that they are called moons at all.

  “I must go to Phobos,” said Weil Hektorum.

  “You mean, we all go,” said Wimp.

  “My dear Princess,” began Weil, “it is dangerous. I cannot permit.”

  “You cannot permit!” barked Wimp, taking him by the shoulders and beginning to shake. The foolish girl saw an adventure offering and, well, I’ve told you about her little ways before.

  To sum up, a very worried detective was persuaded to take the four of us with him. Otherwise Wimp would have shaken him until his teeth fell out. And the poor fellow could do nothing to defend himself against the Princess Royal of Mars. Neither could the secretly grinning astronomers.

  SO, WE roared out of Mars in the Ace of Spades ship. Told you about that ship, didn’t I? Captured from the Venusian Pirate, Belangor the Butcher, it was the shape and color of the Ace of Spades. The shape brought the center of gravity well to the rear, making the ship easy to control. Ordinary, cigar-shaped ships are liable to turn somersaults when the rockets start. And, being dull black in color, the ship was practically invisible in the background of space, especially with the white spots painted all over her to look like stars. In the hands of Belangor the Butcher, this sinister vessel had often crept upon the rich space-liners of Venus, rocket-jets shut off, silent and as good as invisible, till the moment came to strike, to leave a stripped shell full of corpses and to vanish once more. I am proud of the fact that Vans and I helped to rob this terror of some of his powers, even if Belangor and his men got away and have still not been rounded up by the Space Patrol of the Elastic Men of Venus.

  Now, we used the useful ship with her space-camouflage for our own ends.

  Weil Hektorum dashed about, making arrangements for the take-off. I tried to help, but all I got was, “Leave it to me! I can manage!” Conceited fool, I thought.

  Hektorum was looking worried when he stopped running around checking stores and fuel. Wondering what he was going to say to old Usulor when he got back, I suppose. Because the Emperor of Mars is an excitable man, and when Wimp gets into danger somebody usually gets into trouble.

  I do wish Wimp would be more careful.

  CHAPTER IV

  On the Wrong Foot

  ANYWAY, I got the ship into space, Vans pulling any levers that were too big for me.

  “Clear of Mars,” I reported. “Give me a course.”

  “Say that again,” said Hektorum, frowning.

  “Give me a course. Where are we heading? What way do we go?”

  “Go? Why to Phobos, of course.” I could hardly believe my ears.

  “Look here, clever boy,” I said. “See all that black stuff out there? Black as the darkest Martian cavern? Well, that’s space. And all those colored spots in it are stars. Apart from one or two that are planets. That big blue thing is the sun. And that untidy lump of rock is Mars.”

  “Thanks for the astronomy lesson,” said Hektorum, suavely. “Never my strongest subject.”

  “I’ll say it wasn’t,” I agreed, bitterly. “Can you tell me which of those countless bodies is the tiny world of Phobos? Remember that it shines only by reflected light, so that it may be full, halffull or showing the merest crescent. Also, it may be in the shadow of Mars, or eclipsed. Or it may be behind Mars, or Occulted. Or it may be in that part of the sky that we can’t look at because of the dazzling light of the sun. And it moves so fast that you must never take your eyes off it. If you do you won’t pick it up again.”

  Hektorum had a look.

  “The situation presents unanticipated difficulties,” he mumbled.

  “Any space-traveler would have anticipated them,” I snapped. “Have you no astronomical charts?”

  “What are they?”

  I groaned.

  “But, Don,” said Wimp. “There must be charts on the ship. Belangor must have had them.”

  “All removed by your father’s police,” I answered. “To help the Venusian Space Police find Belangor.”

  The pirate and some of his crew, you remember, got away in lifeboats when their ship was captured.

  “Some may be left. We’ll look.” But none was left. A long, anxious search found nothing.

  “Now what’s to do?” we asked each other.

  “Radio, back for directions,” I said. “That’s all we can do.”

  “And let Grumbold pick up the message and know we are on his trail! Never!”

  “Then what can we do?”

  “Give me a telescope,” boomed Hektorum. “I’ll search for Phobos. May be a crescent or a half circle, you say.” We all began to search. Suddenly Hektorum exclaimed, “I’ve got it! A distinct
crescent.”

  I looked.

  “Unfortunately it happens to be one of Jupiter’s moons and bigger than Mars itself.”

  So we looked some more.

  Vans called me at last.

  “What is this? Gibbous shape and going fast.”

  It was. It streaked across the sky so fast that it had to be both small and nearby.

  “Hold it, if you can,” I said. “I’ll plot a course.”

  IT HAD to be quick work, but I got our ship closer to that satellite, until we could see the glass bubbles on its surface ages ago by Martian engineers. Because the satellites of Mars, are, of course, far too small to hold air without help.

  Then the rocket-tubes began to fail. “Hektorum!” I said, severely, “You’ve put the wrong fuel on this ship.”

  Hektorum looked. The gauges told their own tale. Sooting-up!

  “A slight miscalculation,” he admitted. “I thought all rocket ships used the same fuel.”

  I am afraid I snorted rather rudely, “You should have let me fuel her.” Thanks to the extremely light gravity of the Martian moons and the wonderful easy steering ways of that Ace of Spades ship I landed the ship without personal injury to anybody, although I did not do the ship much good. It might have been very nasty. Fancy being headed outwards, away from the Solar System, with practically no usable fuel! A space nightmare. Best not to think about it.

  “All the same, mishaps apart,” said Hektorum, “at least I have brought you to the hide-out of Grumbold. Perhaps I am not a good astronomer, nor as good a spaceman as our wizard Prince from Earth,” he bowed to me, “but at least the detective part of the job has been successful. Let us put on space-suits and explore.”

  He was clever at putting the best face on things, that detective.

  But he was on the wrong foot still. “When we’ve made a space-suit big enough for Hudells and one small enough for Don. That’ll take several days, unless there are more stores on this vessel than I can find,” Wimp said.

  “Are you sure we’ve reached the hideout of Grumbold?” I asked. “This particular moon happens to be Deimos, not Phobos.”