by E. C. Tubb
“Kenton is insane, of course. Not insane as is generally understood by the term, but unbalanced by frustration and inward conflict. He doesn’t want to be here. He wants to go home but, as Controller, he can’t just leave without being liable for heavy penalties. So he had to think of some way in which he could get off Lubridgida.” Thorpe sighed. “His plan was brilliant and it almost worked. First he destroyed the seeds and then the actual crop. He knew that he wouldn’t be suspected and, more important, he had a good reason to ask Ransom to give him authority to leave his post. But space travel is erratic, he couldn’t just catch a ship home, he had to planet-hop on stray traders and company vessels, hopping nearer and nearer to Earth until he could make the final jump.”
“What about the Denebians?” That was Jelkson, his hated features twisted like those of a monkey as his clockwork brain gnawed at the logic of the problem. Kenton smoked and stared and listened still without real interest, but with the appearance of attention. He was more interested in something else.
“Luck,” said Thorpe. “Ransom told me about that when I went into town. Sheer luck, but Kenton’s plan would have worked without Blake’s strike. Ransom is naturally suspicious of anything not human, given the hint and he would automatically think of the Denebians as being behind the sabotage. Planting the bomb in Perchon’s room was insurance against discovery. Kenton didn’t care what happened to Perchon just so long as he could get off-planet.” Thorpe sighed.
“Peculiar, isn’t it? All Kenton wanted to do was to get home. But to do that he needed money for passage, an official authorisation so that he could obtain food while on his travels, and a good reason for deserting his post. Once off-planet he would have been safe. He would have been ahead of the couriers and we could never have warned the planets against him.”
Too slow! Kenton hid his face behind a veil of smoke. Had he been too slow? One more day and he would have succeeded. One single day!
The fools were still talking about his great failure, mouthing nonsense about Ransom and first degree execution, of trials and punishment. He dug the fingers of his left hand into his palm, feeling the pain from the red patch of the radiation sore, the sore caused by the hot shell of the bomb when he had scooped it up while pretending to examine the plants. Only a sore, but it was enough to convict him beyond doubt. He had known of the danger and accepted it because there was nothing else he could have done.
Just as now there was nothing else he could do but....
Muscles exploded into action as he surged from his chair. Faces peered at him as he lunged forward, not towards them, but towards the clean, wide expanse of the windows. He jumped as he neared them, hurling himself forward with all his strength and glass shattered in a thousand crystalline shards as he dived through.
The moonlight was in his eyes as he fell.
KALGAN THE GOLDEN
From the spaceport the Street of Starmen ran a twisted mile to the great plaza of Ghort. A strange mile this, where the old met the new and the muted drone of a thousand tongues blended with the throb of starships as they settled down on their wings of flame. Small booths jostled the glittering mobiles of the Star Traders, taverns and houses of delight with samples of their wares suspended in gilded cages as they simpered at the men below. Sloe-eyed maidens from the torrid worlds of Phenris and ice-eyed women from the bleak planets of Eddoria. Black hair and blonde, green hair and orange, red hair and mottled blue, caressing smooth shoulders and revealing delectable limbs.
They matched the men thronging the street, the tall, cold-eyed men of space and the furtive pedlars of unnamed delights. Their calls mingled with the drone from the taverns and the shrill, complaining whine of the beggars as they held out their claw-like hands and showed their oozing radiation scars. From the shops came the persuasive tones of black-haired, swarthy-skinned traders, offering the sleek beauty of a proton blaster of the chill perfection of a finely-hammered blade.
In the taverns dull-eyed men sipped at their goblets filled with drink as black as night and as bitter as lost ambition, scowling at the roars of mirth from those who gulped the ruby wine of Keldoris or the poisonous green brews of Calgai. Heat there was, and dust, and the murmur of winged and crawling things. The sounds of shuffling feet, and the steely click of sword scabbard against blaster butt, the jingle of spurs from the desert tribes and the thin, wailing song of the slavers. All shifting and eddying along the Street of Starmen beneath the blazing, blue-white inferno of the sun that was Deneb.
This was Ghort at auction time.
A man strode down the street from the spaceport. A tall man, slender as a tempered blade and with a litheness of motion that betrayed hidden strength. All of bronze he was, from the soles of his polished knee-boots to the crown of the helmet hugging his bleak, deeply tanned features. A short cloak swirled from his shoulders, half hiding the skeel blade at his left hip and the blaster at his right. Straight he walked, his eyes never flickering, and he walked as though he walked alone.
A beggar saw him, a stooped and ravaged old man, his face scarred with the blue sears of radiation blasts and his scalp a raw egg. Ragged he was, grimed with dirt no water could remove, and his voice shrilled with the beggars’ whine.
“Charity, my lords. Charity to an old man. Bread for my lips and medicine for my wounds. Charity!”
The tall figure strode onwards, like a thing of metal, a thing of stone and, seeing him, the beggar thrust forward the bowl in his hand.
“Charity, my lord! Of your generosity, remember me.”
“Remember you?” The man halted, his eyes as cold and hard as ice and iron as he stared at the wreck of what had once been a man.
“Aye. For are you not he whom men call the Golden One? Kalgan the Golden?”
“That is my name.”
“Then truly the Gods have blessed me this day. For are you not he who walks the worlds and ages not while other men grow old and die?” The beggar reached out his claw-hand and gripped the edge of the swirling cloak. “Remember me, my lord. Once when I was young I served you well, aye I bear the scars to this day. On Fethal it was, a raid, a grim time of blasting guns and flashing blades. There was a woman....”
“Hold!” Kalgan twisted, and the old man’s hand fell from his cloak. “Enough.” He dipped into his pouch, and coins rattled into the wooden bowl. “Take this and remind me no more of the past, old man. Of what use are dead dreams?”
“To an old man dreams are all that are left.” The beggar licked his lips as he stared at the slender youth of the man before him. “I would not take your gold, Kalgan. There is a greater gift you can give to one who has reached the end of his days. You know well of what I speak.”
“Do I?”
“Aye. For are you not Kalgan the Golden?”
“So men have called me.”
“And called you well.” The beggar licked his lips again, oblivious to the crowds thrusting past. “For you have that which all men desire, and that thing is not the gold you own. I would give you a new name.” His voice dropped to a low whisper. “I would call you—Kalgan the Deathless!”
“You talk foolish words, old man.”
“Nay.” Abruptly the old man fell to his knees and grovelled in the dust before the tall figure. “Give me your secret, Kalgan. Give me life! Give me a little longer to suck the air and to taste the wine, to caress the flesh and to feel the gold. Let me be young again, for a year, a month, a day. Give me life, Kalgan. Of your charity, give me life!”
“Life?” Kalgan stared down at the beggar, and now his cold eyes had softened into something like pity. “You know not what you ask. Here.” Again light twinkled from the stream of gold he poured into the wooden bowl. “Drink of the black liquor of Ghort and forget your longings in delectable dreams.”
“But....” Bitterly the beggar stared after the tall figure of the golden man, then cringed, his thin hands clutching at his gold as he stared at the man who had gripped him by the arm.
A thick-set man this, wi
th a flaming mop of hair and broad features spotted with the scars of gamma leakage. A barrel for a chest and trees for legs, two great hands and fingers which looked as if they could tear steel. He stared down at the cringing beggar and jerked his head towards a golden fleck amongst the crowd.
“I heard you talk, beggar,” he snapped, and grey eyes stared into bloodshot ones of muddy brown as he hauled the man to his feet. “You know him?”
“Kalgan?” The beggar nodded. “The Golden One? Aye, I know him well.”
“You called him something else.” Tharg released the thin arm of the cringing figure and rested his hand easily on the hilt of the skeel blade he wore at his side. “My ears are sharp, old man, and you breathed a word. Was there sense in what you said?”
“Aye.” The wooden bowl moved suggestively towards the thick chest of the red-haired man. Tharg grunted and poured a handful of silver into the bowl.
“Speak.”
“For silver?” The beggar shrugged. “Kalgan gave me gold—and the secret is golden.”
“Silver—or steel?” The big man’s hand moved a little, and sunlight splintered from the razor edge of the skeel blade as it left its scabbard. “Trifle not with me, beggar. Speak.”
“I did but jest,” gasped the old man, and swallowed with relief as the big man thrust back the blade. “Kalgan is known wherever there are worlds which can bear the foot of men. Kalgan the Golden they call him, from Eddoria to Phenris, from Calgai to Necpothre, wherever the starships land and men talk in taverns, he is known. And yet I think that I know a little more than most.”
“Yes?”
“I knew him when young, when as a lad I killed my owner and went to space. They were lusty days those, with steel and gold, women and wine, and the thrill of bright deeds. Kalgan ran a starship, a slender hull loaded with guns, and like a ravening flame he struck at the Freebooters on the Independent worlds. I saw him again, it must have been a generation later, and again after twenty years. Now I have seen him a fourth time—and he has not altered.”
“His ways you mean?”
“I mean that he has not altered. He has aged not, bears no scars, walks as he always did, tall and proud, spurning the dust and lesser men.” The beggar blinked pus-filled eyes at the big man. “Can a man live forever?”
“No.”
“For eighty years have I known Kalgan, and he has not aged. Neither has he been scarred, though always in the thick, and he looks now as he did when I first saw him as a boy.” He grinned, baring the rotting snags of teeth that filled his scabrous mouth. “Read me that riddle, man of fire, and when you learn the answer, teach it to me.”
He was gone then, wriggling into the crowd, heading for one of the tiny booths that sold the night-black wine of forgetfulness. Tharg felt him go, but cared not, standing, eyes thoughtful, as he followed a tiny fleck of gold as it strode through the crowd filling the street of Starmen.
Finally he sighed and headed towards the great plaza.
* * * *
A strange man this Tharg. A man of searing ambition and frustrated hopes. A man who would sit with a bottle for company, drinking, drinking, his eyes twin clouds of heavy thought, his body coiled with tension as a spring, his mind wandering in the cold wastes between the stars. Mostly he was left alone at such times, left to his drinking and his thoughts, but sometimes he was not left so; sometimes burly starmen fresh from space would try to bait him and ridicule his aloofness. Such men died quickly.
Now, as he thrust his way through the crowd, his grey eyes held that same mist of thought, and jostled men turned to curse him, stared, and moved silently away.
So he came at last to the great plaza of Ghort.
A great place this, floored with stone and surrounded by the ranked pens that held the human cattle. A block raised itself at one end, and guards, armed and watchful, paced the edges of the cleared area before it. An auctioneer stood at the block, an old man dressed all in white, and around him his assistants awaited his terse commands. The rest of the area was filled with a motley collection of starmen, traders, nomads, wealthy profligates, hard-faced harridans, veiled men of the cloud-worlds and near-naked men of the strange planets circling a double sun.
Kalgan stood to one side, his cloak about his shoulders, his features blank as he watched the wares offered for sale.
“A prime beauty this, my masters,” droned the auctioneer. “The daughter of a king, a maiden, taken with much blood from the private starship of Kuss.” He pointed to where a veiled figure stood at his side. “A prize fit for the seraglio of a king. What am I bid?”
“Two hundred stellars,” called a raddled harridan, then scowled as a haughty nomad doubled her price.
“Five hundred,” called a small, sweating man, his tunic heavy with the Sunburst insignias of Kuss. The auctioneer smiled as he saw him, knowing that the man was an agent with orders to buy the girl back at all costs, and smiled still more as voices rang from the crowd pushing the price up to five thousand stellars.
“Sold to the agent from Kuss,” rapped the auctioneer. “Take her, my master, and beware least she again be captured.” He pushed the woman towards the small, sweating man. “The Gods grant that you have a good journey,” he droned. “Ghort is the richer for your company.”
A ripple of laughter ran throughout the crowd, and men, sworn enemies at any other time, grinned and relaxed under the accepted truce of the ten days of auction. Tharg ignored the mirth. He had come neither to buy slaves nor sell prisoners, to reclaim a relative or to purchase the freedom of a friend. He had come from curiosity, arriving in a starship loaded with the captured prisoners from a half-year of raiding, brought to be sold at the twice-yearly open auction of Ghort.
A batch of young men were next offered for sale, shrewd-eyed men bidding for their services, the batch being knocked down to a swarthy farmer from Theople. The harridan purchased a score of simpering women, too simple to feel anything other than excitement at their new life, and hurried them away to her private guards and the blank walls of the pleasure houses that were to be their homes.
A scarred gunner was next, then an engineer, both fetching high prices from narrow-faced Freebooters, who bought them to service their starships. A dancing girl from Ycathca fetched the same price as a cargo of wines, and a telepath cost three times as much as a bundle of drugs.
Slowly the day dragged on, the old auctioneer being relieved by another, and the searing heat of the swollen sun beat down on bare heads and helmeted, slaves and captors, warriors and traders, alike.
Tharg shifted impatiently, his grey eyes still on the silent golden shape of Kalgan, then looked up as a stir rippled through the crowd.
A thing was dragged to the auction block.
Man-like it was, with a horny crest on its head and writhing tentacles coiling from its lower jaw. Splayed feet supported a huge body and spatulate fingers hooked from fur-covered arms.
“A mutation from legendary Earth,” called the auctioneer. “A rare specimen and one worth much gold to you entertainers and collectors of alien life. It can be tamed with a radio-lash and will eat anything. It has the strength of ten and is impervious to radiation. Who wants a pile tender? An exhibit for a zoo? A slave that will make you the envy of all?” He stared around the silent crowd. “You there, Helman. Think of the combats you could stage in your arena with such a gladiator. What am I bid?”
“Ten stellars,” growled a man. “It will do as meat for my throags.”
“Twenty, it will do to scare my seraglio.”
“Fifty, I can use it as a watchdog.”
The auctioneer flushed a little at the ridiculously low bids, feeling that they reflected both on him and on the honour of Ghort. Impatiently he whispered to the attendant holding the creature, and the thing screamed as the radio-lash seared its nervous system with white-hot fire.
“Now,” said the old man. “What....”
He turned as chains snapped. He paled as the monstrous creature sprang away from its
bonds. One great hand slapped at the attendant and brain spurted from a splintered skull. A second swipe and the control of the radio-lash lay in crumpled ruin. Slowly the nightmare shape moved towards the crowd.
Men yelled as they fought their way backwards, and the thrumming whine of blaster bolts sliced the air with their incandescent fury. The thing grunted at the impact of the energy, its strange metabolism absorbing the bolts, and guards screamed hoarse warning as men fluffed into smoking ash beneath the wildly-aimed shots.
For a moment there was panic as men fought to get away from the shambling thing, and abruptly Tharg found himself in the front of the crowd, alone but for the slender golden shape of Kalgan.
The beast hesitated, its sunken eyes glaring from one man to the other, and guards sweated as they struggled to align the slender barrel of a Nione projector. Before they could bring the weapon to bear, the mutated horror moved, tentacles writhing and spatulate fingers clawing as it launched itself forward in a shambling run. Directly towards the slender man in bronze.
He didn’t move. That to Tharg, when afterwards he thought about it, was the strangest thing of all. Kalgan just stood, arms folded, making no move towards his weapons, staring at the distorted monstrosity bearing down at him. For a moment, Tharg stared at the strange tableau, stunned by the Golden One’s immobility, then, instinctively, he swung into action.
Light splintered from the skeel blade as it whined from its scabbard at his side. Splintered too from the razor-edged steel as it arced through the air, driven with all the force of mighty muscles, whining from the speed of its passing. So fast did the sword travel that it was as if a thin ribbon of light stretched from the big man’s hand to the back of the lunging creature, and the sound as the steel sheared home to the hilt in the shaggy back echoed over the breathless watchers.
The beast stumbled, fell, rolled as a gush of blood spouted from its mouth, paralysed and helpless from the cold steel severing its spine. Tharg strode over to it, turned it with a thrust of his foot, and tugged at the imbedded blade. Wiping it on the thick fur, he slammed it back into its scabbard and stared curiously at the calm face of Kalgan.
