The Frank Belknap Long Science Fiction Novel

by Frank Belknap Long

  It was impossible, but true. There was nothing threatening in the way the words were uttered, just calm acceptance, just the matter-of-fact indifference of a man who has a duty to perform and doesn’t care what happens afterwards.

  But it would have perhaps been better if Corriston had not moved so quickly forward, for almost instantly the second guard barred his passage and laid a firm hand on his arm.

  “Hold on. Just a minute,” the tall guard said. “You’re Peter Stone, aren’t you?”

  With a quick pretense of anger Corriston jerked his arm free and looked the guard up and down. “Naturally I’m Stone. Who in hell did you think I was.”

  “Sorry,” the guard said, shrugging. “Don’t take it out on me. I just had to be sure.”

  “Well, you’re sure now. I guess you know why I’m here.”

  The guard nodded. “Ramsey just phoned down about you. Your friend is with him now. See that big gray building, the one on the left with the shuttered windows? There’s a guard stationed at the door, but he won’t stop you. He has his orders. Climb two flights of stairs and go down the long corridor on the third floor. Ramsey and your friend are in the last room on the left.”

  Corriston drew a deep breath, wondering if the guard had noticed the tightening of his facial muscles. He turned away from the gate slowly, staring out over the interior of the fortress, letting his emotions of the moment take complete possession of him.

  He had entered as if by magic a world apart, a small, shutin world of massive magnificence, of undreamed of material power and wealth. There were five buildings within the encircling wall of the fortress, each monumental in architectural sweep. Each was a citadel alone and apart, monuments to man’s creative genius erected by one man with a determination to make himself unique.

  It was a folly almost beyond belief, a terrifying distortion of human creativeness that could lead only to ultimate disaster and defeat.

  But greedy and cruel and ruthless as Ramsey undoubtedly was, there still burned in him a little of the spark that had created Athens in white marble. Had it not been so, he could not have even commissioned men of creative genius to transport to Mars the materials for such a project and have taken pleasure in its completion.

  “Your friend got here two hours ago,” the tall guard said. “They’ve been talking ever since. He came down to the gate once and said we should let you in, you and another man. Saddler, I think his name was. I see he’s not with you.”

  “No, Saddler is not with me,” Corriston said.

  “What happened to him?”

  “The big gray building with the shuttered windows, you said. If the guard tries to stop me, what do I say.”

  “I told you he had his orders.”

  Corriston looked up at the massive gate swinging shut behind him. For good or ill, he was completely trapped, completely at the mercy of the armed guards inside the citadel.

  They hadn’t taken his gun away from him, but, nevertheless, he was trapped. What chance would one armed man have against seventy-five or a hundred guards? They were keeping out of sight, all but the two at the gate. But at any moment they could converge upon him and shoot him down. They could choose their own moment, precisely as a research medical man could choose his own moment to experiment upon a laboratory animal, knowing that the creature was safe in its cage and couldn’t possibly get away.

  Corriston’s lips tightened and from a shadowed corner of his mind came a determination to brush all that aside, to ignore it completely. The guards at the gate might very well be telling the truth. It stood to reason that Ramsey would have remained secretive about his daughter. Kidnappers do not like to have their ransom demands discussed too openly. If Ramsey had been a complete fool he would have gone down to the gate and taken the guards completely into his confidence, but Corriston could not believe that Ramsey was that much of a fool.

  In all probability Henley had threatened Ramsey and provoked him almost beyond endurance. There had arisen the questions of how the ransom was to be paid, the girl set free.

  Damn it, Corriston thought, the thing for me to do now is to go straight toward that building and straight up the stairs to the third floor and straight down the corridor until I’m confronting Ramsey face to face. I’m Peter Stone. I’m one of the two men who helped Henley kidnap the girl and I’ve come to help Henley convince Ramsey. I’ve come to help him really put the screws on Ramsey. I can improvise from that point on.

  He moved away from the guards without looking back. Within the citadel there was silence, stillness, the five massive buildings cutting a rampart of pure, fragile design across the sky. There was a strange kind of perfection about the interior of the citadel. It was akin, somehow, to the perfection of solitude and even the sky seemed hushed, expectant, remote from reality, as if awaiting the unfolding of some impossible event, some terrifying drama of violence and retribution that could take place nowhere else.

  But Corriston’s reason told him that to believe any such thing would have been the height of folly. The sky inside the citadel was just as real, just as cloud-flecked and palely blue as the sky outside, and the notion that architecture or scenery of any kind could influence events was absolute nonsense. Things would happen exactly as he willed them to happen, provided nothing stood in the way of immediate drastic action and the kind of luck which had saved him at the gate continued to smile upon him.

  The big gray building with the shuttered windows continued to occupy most of his attention, and he walked very resolutely toward it, his eyes on the glimmer of pale light which marked its wide doorway. He was still fifty feet away when he saw the guard, standing very quietly just inside the door with his hand on his gun holster.

  Corriston’s lips tightened, but he did not moderate his stride. He had a reply ready if the guard challenged him. He preferred to believe that he would not be challenged, but he had no intention of taking anything for granted.

  He continued on until he reached the doorway and then he stopped abruptly. He waited for the guard to say something, but the man did not speak at all. He simply stared quietly at Corriston for an instant, and then stepped quickly back into the shadows. Corriston went on past him, and advanced along the wide corridor that stretched before him.

  The wide central staircase that circled up did not seem appropriate to a building that was not a residence and Corriston found himself wondering if Ramsey had turned the other four buildings into similarly unusual expressions of his own strong-willed orientation to reality.

  The buildings had undoubtedly been designed as administrative units of an industrial empire—a beginning empire in a new world. An empire predatory, avaricious, merciless. Yet Ramsey had seemingly allowed his desire for a home to gain dominance here, had allowed the emotions common to all men to influence his taste in interior architecture in at least one of the buildings.

  Chalk up that much to Ramsey’s credit. In that respect at least, he was superior to Henley. In that respect at least a man of good will could take sides, all apart from the personal issues involved. Henley was a predatory vulture on all counts, his talons constantly spread, constantly crimson-tipped. Ramsey was a vulture too, but in the depths of his mind he knew it. Part of the agony was shared by him, and in one desperate, despairing part of his personality he had tried to be creative.

  Corriston ascended the staircase swiftly, casting one brief glance at some murals and then ignoring them. The second floor landing stretched away into shadows, bisected by a wide corridor dimly lighted by overhead lamps. The second floor had an administrative building aspect and so did the third floor, which seemed in all respects its exact duplicate.

  Corriston’s excitement grew as he mounted the stairway. He felt like a man poised on the brink of a precipice with no assurance that he would not be hurled to his death; a man aware that tragedy would not strike him like a thunderbolt at any moment; and yet also like a man wh
o thought and felt differently from the trapped and the desperately despairing.

  He felt very confident, very sure of himself, and it seemed to him that there was no danger that he could not surmount, and deep within him there was something that exulted in the thought and kept him moving steadily upward.

  The third floor was like the second, its long central corridor dwindling away into shadows. Down it he moved cautiously, remembering what the guard at the gate had said. The third floor, the last door on your left.

  Ramsey was in conference. But it wasn’t a conference of industrial associates planning a division of spoils. Ramsey was talking to a killer under duress.

  Corriston was half way down the corridor when he heard the shot. It rang out in the stillness with a terrible clarity, sending echoes reverberating throughout the building, stopping Corriston in his tracks.

  For an instant the silence remained absolute, as if the shot had somehow silenced all life within the building. Even Corriston’s breathing was affected by it, so that for an instant he remained like a man horror-blasted into immobility, frozen, a statue with waxen features and widely dilated eyes.

  Then, abruptly, he ceased to be a statue. He broke into a run, heading for the door from which the shot had come.

  He came to the door and saw that it did not slide open on a panel. It was massive, with a knob jutting out from it, and when he grasped the knob it swung inward instantly and soundlessly and he found himself in a large, blank-walled room brightly illumed by three circular overhead lamps.

  Ramsey was sitting stiff and straight before a desk that was cluttered with reference files, manuscripts in folders, pens, pencils and other writing materials. His face was drained of all color, and his eyes were wide and staring. He was looking directly at Corriston, and yet he did not seem to see Corriston.

  He did not appear to be staring at anything in particular, that small, shrunken, unimpressive-looking little man with graying temples and a look of blank incomprehension in his eyes that chilled Corriston to the core of his being.

  Shaking, wishing that the eyes would close or brighten with relief, or do anything but remain so stonily indifferent, Corriston moved closer to the desk.

  He saw at once that Ramsey was close to death. He had been shot in the chest. There was a dull red stain on his chest, and even as Corriston stared it widened, a butterfly pattern of red, like a Rorschach seen through the eyes of a homicidally inclined psychotic.

  Suddenly Ramsey moved. He caught hold of the desk edge, and swayed a little, but his eyes remained filmed, blankly staring.

  Corriston was bending above him when a familiar voice said: “He’s done for. Nothing you can do for him. We had an argument and he lost his head. He just couldn’t see it my way. So I made a mistake and shot him. It was a mistake, all right. I lost my head. Now I’ve got nothing to lose by killing you.”

  Corriston raised his eyes slowly. He had one chance in a hundred perhaps. He knew it; he sensed it. Henley had somehow managed to stay out of sight for an instant. The room was very large. There were shadows in it, and Henley had apparently flattened himself against the wall behind the desk, in deep shadow.

  But now he was standing very straight and still behind the desk, ignoring the shuddering form of the man he had shot, little dark deathheads dancing in his eyes.

  Henley’s nearness did not bother Corriston. Death at ten feet could be no more final than death at a hundred yards.

  Only one thing bothered him. Events could move fast when you were close to a killer.

  He didn’t intend to let them move fast. Not for him, at any rate. He let his eyes rest for an instant on the gun in Henley’s hand, his thoughts racing. He knew that he’d be as good as dead if he made a single concession.

  Don’t let him know that the gun worries you. Pretend that the odds are even, even though he’s got the drop on you.

  Corriston said: “How do you know he’s fatally wounded? The wound’s three inches below his heart. You’re taking a hell of a lot for granted. You just said you made a mistake in shooting him. If he’s rushed to a hospital that mistake may not be your last. You’ll have a chance to go to work on him again.”

  Henley shook his head, his lips tightening. “Don’t be a fool. He’ll be dead in five minutes.”

  “I’m not being a fool,” Corriston said. “What will you stand to gain by shooting me and letting him die? You’ve got his daughter, but a dead man won’t be able to ransom her.”

  For a moment, nothing happened. Henley had made no attempt to draw his gun, and he did not draw it now. He stood very quietly staring at Corriston, breathing heavily, a strange, withdrawn look in his eyes.

  Perhaps he was thinking over what Corriston had said. Corriston wondered about that for an instant, and then dismissed it from his mind. You did not take anything for granted when you were standing that close to a killer.

  It was probably too late to save Ramsey. But for the first time he was standing very near to Henley with a weapon beneath his hand. If he drew his gun instantly and shot Henley through the heart Ramsey might have a chance. Otherwise.…

  Somehow he couldn’t do it; not without giving the other some slight warning, not without whipping his hand to his gun with a vigor that was clear and unmistakable. In matters of crime a fair man is at a disadvantage. He can only deal with a murderer in one way.

  He drew a split second ahead of Henley. He shot Henley three times, the gun blazing in his hands, and it did not seem important to him that Henley had also drawn his gun. A tight knot reached into his stomach as Henley’s gun blazed, but he kept right on firing.

  Henley died missing him, not scoring at all. That was the incredible thing. Henley, an expert shot, a genius at massacre, had missed him clearly with five shots and now he was down on the floor, clutching at his stomach, dragging himself along, while beneath his fingers a dull red stain grew.

  His eyes turned glassy suddenly. He tried twice to raise himself but he fell back each time. He did not speak at all. Blood from his punctured lungs flooded up into his mouth, and with a terrible, convulsive trembling of his entire body he rolled over on his side and lay still.

  Corriston’s hands began to sweat beneath the hard, cold gun. He wanted to drop the weapon, to hurl it from him, but he couldn’t somehow. He had killed Saddler in immediate self-defense. This had been a little different—a new experience, a frightening experience and he had been forced to grit his teeth even in firing, and now that it was all over he was tormented inwardly in a way that left him badly shaken.

  Henley was gone now. Dead and still and forever removed from a world he had contaminated. Henley had been warped and twisted largely by circumstances outside himself; nevertheless a deadly reptile has to be crushed when it is about to strike.

  Corriston looked up from the limp form sprawled out on the floor, and for a moment the tight lines of his face relaxed a little. Henley was no longer a menace; the breath of life that had sustained him had expired so completely that he had become now a kind of hollow mockery of something monstrous and distorted that could never harm anyone again.

  It was Ramsey who had to be considered now, Ramsey who was in peril.

  The light in the room seemed somehow a little dimmer than it had been. He turned slowly back to Ramsey, and for a moment could not quite believe what he saw.

  Ramsey’s face was changing. The hollows beneath his cheekbones were deeper than they had been, and his mouth had gone completely slack, and his eyes were uprolled in a quite ghastly way, so that only the whites showed.

  Slowly as Corriston stared Ramsey’s features began to come apart. The familiar, hideous pattern began to repeat itself on Ramsey’s blanched features. The mouth widened until it turned into a shapeless, colorless gash in a face that was hardly recognizable. The nose widened and spread out, the chin receded, and the cheeks became a flattened expanse of wrinkled flesh t
hat stubbornly refused to stop spreading.

  Ramsey’s face became a pumpkin face, with slits for eyes and a hideous caricature of a mouth that seemed almost to pout as it expanded.

  Suddenly Ramsey was no longer sitting upright before the desk. His body swayed and began to slump, tilting at first only a little sideways and then sliding completely from the chair to the floor.

  Ramsey did not descend to the floor with violence. It was a slow, barely perceptible gliding motion of his entire body that carried him from an upright position to a prone one in less than thirty seconds. His body seemed to collapse inward upon itself, as if he had suddenly become too skeleton-thin for his clothes, as if so much vitality had been drained from him by the shot which had put an end to his life that he had given up all hope of maintaining his dignity in death.

  But perhaps the man on the floor had no dignity to maintain. He wasn’t Ramsey. He was a hired substitute, an impostor, and quite obviously no man would undertake to play such a role without calculating all of the risks in advance. Perhaps he expected to die without dignity. Perhaps that was one of the risks which went with the bargain—the assumption that Ramsey might very well be killed in a violent fashion, and that anyone who stepped into Ramsey’s shoes and masqueraded as Ramsey might expect a similar fate.

  Corriston felt a nerve begin to twitch violently in his cheek. Why had Ramsey kept Henley occupied in so strange a manner, talking to a nonentity, a stand-in, a double who could never bargain and come to terms unless Ramsey ordered him to do so? Had Ramsey been incapable of dealing with Henley directly, and had taken this means of complying with the ransom demands?

  It seemed incredible on the face of it. Ramsey was quite obviously the kind of man who could live through any kind of private hell if he had to.

  He’d have stood up to Henley no matter how great his inner torment. He’d have met the ransom demands or rejected them—and it was almost inconceivable that he would have rejected them—without for an instant losing his outward composure. And even inwardly he would have kept a tight rein on his emotions. He was not the kind of man who would hire someone else to protect him from anything that vitally concerned him, even with the masks so conveniently at hand.