by Don Wilcox
“We’ve been watching your approach for several minutes. You’ll pardon us if we haven’t brought a brass band out to meet you.”
“Brother, you’ve got everything else here. But we don’t want a band, and we don’t care to step on the toes of any queen who claims this as her planet. We’d just like to pick up one small piece of merchandise.”
“You’ll pick up nothing.”
Bob met that one with all the impetuous pent-up feelings of an agent who, up to this moment, had been a dismal failure. “We’ll take what’s ours, no more, no less. Don’t try to throw any stumbling blocks in our path. We’ve got a weapon in that ship that can blow this little planet of yours right across the sky.”
The man with the bad arm was smiling a twisted smile that spoke evil and defiance and murder. “Brother!”
Just that, nothing more. There was something in the way he said it that drilled at Bob’s curiosity. They stared at each other. The legless man, hand after hand, had moved closer, and now he spoke the single word, “Brother!”
The man with the bent back looked pained and said nothing.
“Your manner of addressing us is prophetic,” Bad-Arm said. “Within the hour you may be our brother. We are subjects of Her Majesty, and we find it quite convenient to do exactly what she commands. Something tells me she can use you, too. If so, we shall be glad to treat you as a young brother deserves to be treated.”
“So you’re slaves!” Bob said. “Servants is the polite term, brother!”
The man with the painfully folded back now stepped closer and spoke in a slow, uneasy manner. “The queen gave us orders.”
“Right.” Bad-Arm assumed his best air of authority. “I almost forgot, Brother. You and your party are invited to be the guests of the queen. Please come at once with us.”
“We didn’t come here to make a social call.” Bob intended to stand his ground. “This piece of merchandise—”
“If you’re here on a shopping tour, you may do your talking with the queen.”
“And if we don’t?”
“We have some interesting weapons, too.” Bad Arm made a swinging gesture with his good right arm.
Gunfire blazed from somewhere around the planet’s curve. A piece of wreckage bounced out into the whirl of things, and another blast of gunfire struck it squarely. It shattered and went flying off in fragments. Momentum carried the pieces out and on, and Bob doubted whether they would ever find their way back to this part of the sky. It wasn’t a pleasant prospect, when applied to a ship, a box of currency, or a person.
“We don’t like to waste ammunition,” Bad-Arm said. “You and your party will find the queen very congenial company.”
Bob relayed the edict to those in the Yellow Jacket. Orders were for Steeple to remain. As to the others, he had no commands. He could only repeat what had been told him, and point out that the gunfire was the queen’s own punctuation mark to her invitation.
“We’ll not have you going in alone,” Randy replied.
A few minutes later, Randy, Kay and Clip emerged from the air locks. Bob made the ship fast, and the four of them followed the afflicted trio of slaves into a passsageway that led into a lighted room.
It was a well-appointed spaceliner interior. Whether it was a complete ship, buried within the Floating Island’s heap, or only the passenger accommodations of a crippled ship, made no particular difference for its present function. It was the palace of a queen who lived here, safely hidden within the interior of the little “planet” which she had chosen to rule.
Bob had counted ten slaves by the time he and his party were seated in the parlor-like surroundings. Soft lights added luster to the rich red rugs and the red and blue-upholstered furniture.
The slaves, like the first three Bob had encountered, were faultlessly polite and obedient. All were unfortunate physical specimens, each with his own affliction or deformity. Each too, Bob thought, possessed a strangely sinister quality, so that every polite remark, invitation, or act of courtesy carried its own overtone of threat. The queen must have trained them well.
The slaves came to attention when chimes tinkled from one of the entrances. The queen entered.
The flash and glitter of diamonds was what Bob saw first. Queenly in stature and bearing, the tall, regal woman walked in. She seated herself in front of the party, allowing herself the luxury of gazing a moment at each one before speaking. The coldness of her eyes was more than a bluff, Bob thought. She could undoubtedly kill a man without ever blinking.
She placed a finger to her cheek. She wore a ruby-studded ornament at her throat and a ruby-studded tiarra in her beautifully waved black hair. The lines of her face were severe. She was handsome, forcefully handsome, with a hard look of authority that had doubtless been exercised upon her slaves every hour since her kingdom had begun.
Her costume consisted of a minimum of fabric; it was all ornament, exposing the ivory whiteness of her slender, shapely body. A circling of pearls accentuated the graceful curves of her breasts.
“Are there only four of you?” A faint mockery touched her lips, as if she already knew there were more.
“Five,” said Bob. “We left one in the ship.”
“Your most expendable member, I trust.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“If I should be displeased,” the queen said, “at an instant’s notice I might decide to blow up your two-bit skyboat. It would be a pity to execute a handsome young guy without seeing him first.”
“It would be a damn shame to execute our pilot, even if he isn’t young and handsome.”
“You’ve very obligingly answered the question that was in my mind.”
“Say, what is this, a gangster hideout?”
“Watch your speech, my fine friend. You happen to be in the presence of royalty.”
Royalty! Her speech sounded to Bob like the mongrel tongue of a gangster’s moll trying to pass in high society. Her arrogant manner was so insulting it was all he could do to hold his temper. Kay and Randy were sitting back as stiff as boards, leaving it to him to try to outguess this she-devil who called herself a queen. And Clip had edged off toward the nearest exit, had stopped there when confronted by a shabby-looking slave, and was now apparently looking for some way to escape to the outside.
Bob said, “What kind of kingdom is this? Do you made a habit of shooting first and declaring war afterward? What reason could you have for threatening to blow up our space ship?”
“You have made a grave error in coming here,” the queen said, rising. “You have approached my planet like a boatload of thieves. You at once began to plunder.”
“See here, we’re cruising through the open sky, and we’re conducting ourselves according to our sky rights.”
“You have no sky rights here,” she said, meeting his eye in a way that sent fighting chills through him. “This is my planet. Everything on it is my property. Your first obligation when you arrive at a new planet is to report to the government of that planet. My men practically had to drag you in by force to pay your respects to me and my government.”
“Did you expect us to know you were here? There weren’t any signs.”
“I expected you to inquire.”
“All right, we’re here,” Bob said savagely. “What do you want?”
“You should have bowed when I entered the room.”
“Now wait a minute. Where I come from—”
“I know exactly where you come from. I know who you are and why you came.”
Bob took a moment to absorb the shock of that statement. Did she know, or was she bluffing? He gave one quick glance around the wide room, hoping against hope that he might catch sight of the coveted box. No such luck.
“All right,” he said angrily, rising and returning the challenge of her glare. “Play your cards, Queen. Spill it. If you know why we came, tell us. Why?”
“You were sent here by Earth governments to see whether it’s true that I’ve set up my own kingdom here
in space, and you’re going to demand that I get out or be reported. There!” Bob’s jaw dropped, his eyes widened, and suddenly he lost his grip on his dignity and let out a raucous laugh. “Haw-haw-haw! Queenie, you’re a card! Your imagination has been working overtime. You’re so far off the trail you must be in the wrong solar system.”
Kay nudged him, and he cut his laughter short. The queen’s face had lighted up with a pinkness that had turned red too then fairly purple. She gave an unintelligible shout of fury, and six slaves moved in and took their places at her side. They were fingering the pistols that hung in their purple sashes, and for an instant Bob thought that he was going to become a part of a mass execution.
With quick recovery of her lost poise, the bejeweled lady said in tones of icy dignity, “Please excuse me for a moment. When I return I shall have a plan for you.”
She turned and marched toward the exit, escorted by two slaves. Four slaves stood immobile, watching Bob and the others. Then, at the faint sound of chimes, they retired to their doors to stand guard.
Kay whispered, “Did you notice her left arm?”
“It was in bandages,” Randy whispered. “It was only half an arm. There’s been some kind of violence here.”
“We’d better break out of this in a hurry,” Bob said. “With or without that box, we’d better be moving.”
“It would be a shame not to get it when we know it’s here,” Kay said. “I’ve half a scheme in the back of my head . . . A woman’s wits can sometimes outsmart another woman, you know.”
“Did you see how she looked at me?” Randy asked.
“How?”
“Sort of—well, not meaning to be egotistical, but I thought she showed a gleam of—well, something, I can’t say just what.”
“I never knew you to be caught for words before,” Kay said. “Do you have any notion that you could talk to her and get a reasonable deal out of her?”
“That’s what I was wondering.” Randy rose and began to pace. “Bob, do I have your permission to go and talk with her personally? Entirely at my own risk, you understand.”
Bob found his lips too tight with anger to answer readily. He was marching back and forth across the red rug, feeling like a caged animal.
“Keep your guns ready,” he whispered. “We may have to fulfill her prediction after all. Where’s Clip?”
“He skipped out when she called the guards up. He must be on the outside.” Kay took Bob’s hand. “Bob, dear—”
“We’ll try not to let anything happen. You mean too much to me,” Bob said quietly. “Take it easy.”
“If I could get back to the ship—”
“You and Randy should both go back, right away. Randy—where did he go?”
In the privacy of her council room, Dezeeta permitted herself the queenly luxury of exploding with rage in the presence of her dwarfed little prime minister, Mogarr.
“Take it easy,” Mogarr soothed in his low, heavy voice. “Tell me what you’re talking about. Maybe I can help you.”
“Why do you think they’re here? Why?”
“My, my, Her Majesty is in a fury! You’re really burned up!”
“Don’t say ‘burned’ to me.”
“Sorry.”
“I’ve made a damned miserable mistake. I thought—oh, never mind what I thought.”
The little squirrel-like prime minister crawled up from the arm of the chair onto the back, where he had a better chance to look her in the eye. “I know what you thought. You thought it was government agents again. You’re destroying yourself with that worry, Dezeeta. I’ve told you before.”
“Oh, shut up!”
“Here you have everything your own way, all the wealth in the skies, and comfort and heat, air and food—every luxury that broken-down space liners can offer—and still you go on worrying for fear your game’s up. Everything in the world to make you happy—”
“Not quite.”
“And every time a ship approaches you—”
“Don’t taunt me. I’m human like everyone else.”
“Careful. Queens don’t usually admit—”
“Shut up!”
“If you have such a fear of every passing space ship, why don’t you apply the one tried and true method? Why bring them in for a regal show? Why not simply open fire at first opportunity and let the slaves pick up the pieces?”
“You know why,” she said coldly. The dwarfed little Mogarr nodded solemnly and crawled down from the back of the chair and folded up in it like a cat. He put his fingers over his eyes. He spoke in a tone of injury.
“Oh, yes, you’ve promised yourself the luxury of a man. A new man.
“A man—not half a man.”
“A man—a real man—to make love to you. Unfortunately, I’m no longer a novelty to you. I’m the brain that makes you a queen, you don’t mind my being that. But when it comes to sharing your favors—”
“Don’t start that, Mogarr. We’ve no time to dig up our petty troubles.”
“All right. Shall I give the order to fire at their ship?”
“Not just yet. Have you seen the two men?”
“Dimly, through the curtain. Does either of them look interesting to you?”
“Both of them.”
“Ho-ho! Lady luck has smiled double all at once. Well, which one will it be, or have you decided, to make kings out of both of them with a stroke of your personal magic?”
Dezeeta studied him for a moment. If she could conveniently get rid of the rest of the party . . . But that would doubtless offend both men, so that neither would behave to best advantage. An appearance of an accident to the others would be preferable.
“If it’s that hard to decide,” said her counsellor, “entice them both and let them fight it out.”
“Mogarr, you do still come up with a streak of brilliance now and then. That is exactly what I’ll do. If I knew what they were here for . . .”
“The one had begun searching for a box of merchandise when our blundering slaves made haste to usher them into your presence. By the way, what was that last box they brought in? It had an important look—seals and such.”
“It was weightless.”
“Everything’s weightless. Here, let’s take a look.” Mogarr drew the box out of the heap at the corner of the room. Then he looked up to see a stranger standing in the doorway, watching him. “Well!”
“I hope you don’t think I was spying,” the tall young man said hastily. “I was about to knock—”
Dezeeta rose and walked over toward the door, staring at him dubiously at first; then as he smiled she decided to welcome him. She turned to see that Mogarr was thrusting the new box through what had once been the airlocks of this one-time space liner. The tunnel beyond that exit was concealed by the well-packed heaps of wreckage and refuse. He locked the airlocks and pocketed the key. From the outer surfaces of the planet the box would never be reached. Not unless one went to the trouble of tearing the planet apart to find the tunnels.
She returned her attention to the mild-mannered, smiling young man.
“My name is Randy Chalmers. If I’m not intruding—”
“Your friend didn’t bother to make introductions,” Dezeeta said. “But I assumed that you and the girl are husband and wife. Or is she—?”
“She’s my sister.”
“You needn’t lie to me. I can see you want to make a good impression on the queen. Well, don’t begin by lying. Sit down and tell me why you came in here.”
Randy remained standing. “It happens she’s my sister. I’m not used to being thought a liar. What reason would I have to—”
Dezeeta reached to catch his hand, and he yielded uncertainly.
“The reason is obvious. You’ve suddenly been privileged to meet someone who has turned your head. You needn’t be ashamed of falling in love with me, Randy. I could see it in your eyes when we first met.” Dezeeta motioned to the dwarf at the other side of the room. “Mogarr, you may go.”
“Go,” Dezeeta said to Mogarr, and he obeyed.
“Wait,” Randy objected. “He has the key—”
“Any key he has couldn’t be of the slightest interest to us, dear,” Dezeeta said, drawing the young man over to the sofa.
Randy’s suave manner had quickly worn out. She saw a hard defiance come into his soft features. He refused to sit down on the sofa. He refused the drink she offered. He drew his hand away from hers roughly and talked not as one should talk to a queen. He treated her as he might treat a drunken bum who blocks the way or asks for a handout.
“Let’s get a few things straight, madam,” he said hoarsely. “I didn’t come in here to make love to you.”
“You might give yourself a chance. You’re afraid of yourself in my presence, I can see that. You’re afraid of your own strength. Let yourself, relax, sweetheart. You’re in the arms of the queen; you’re all right; nothing can happen to you—”
“I was trying to tell you about that box. It’s ours. It contains—”
“Will you forget it, Randy darling? Have you ever in your life had an opportunity like this—to give your love to a queen?”
“Queen be damned,” Randy snarled. “That box, I tell you it contains two billion dollars, and you’ve got it. I saw it. I know where you put it. And if you don’t fork it over—”
“Two billion dollars, did you say?”
“We represent the insurance company. We’ve got to recover it, and if you don’t release it—”
“Mogarr!” Dezeeta stepped to the wall and touched a signal button. In a moment Mogarr walked in. Back of him came six purple-sashed slaves. One of them carried a long canvas sack. Another came toward Randy with a hypodermic needle.
“What are you going to do?” Randy asked.
“I’ve discovered that I despise you,” Dezeeta said. “I’m going to give you your freedom. It will only take a minute.”
The needle went into his arm and he began to sag almost immediately. They tied him up in the sack so that he was only a bundle of canvas. They took him outside. One of the slaves hurled him out into space, and when he had floated out about a hundred feet they turned guns on him and blasted him to bits. The dust of what had been Randy Chalmers went out on its endless journey into space.
