“Will there be food?” Porthos asked. “And drink?” asked Aramis.
“We will be there,” Athos said. “I am still confused but I want to understand and do right.”
“Good,” Nelson said. He gave Phillip a card with an address on it. “Will you see that they are there before eight?”
“With pleasure,” said Phillip.
THEY left Phillip’s room at seven, and because of the importance of the evening, Phillip felt justified in taking a cab. They arrived at the union hall with time to spare.
The space in front of the hall was crowded and the driver had to let them out almost a block from the entrance. The neighborhood was not of the best and the street was dark.
The Musketeers were in a jubilant mood. They were clean shaven, well pressed, and all their debonair dash had returned. The prospects of food and drink and the realization that they were now on the right side had cheered immensely.
“I will speak to them,” Porthos said. “I will bring tears to their eyes as I tell them of our sad betrayal.”
Aramis made an unpleasant sound with pursed lips.
“You were always a posturing fool,” he said caustically. “You will do best to remain silent while Athos speaks.”
Porthos was rumbling an indignant reply which was interrupted when a small man hurrying along in the opposite direction collided with him.
“Beg your pardon,” he said. “Didn’t see you coming. Can I borrow a match from any of you gentlemen?”
The Musketeers and Phillip had been walking abreast on the sidewalk and they all stopped.
“I have a match,” Phillip said. He took a folder of matches from his pocket and handed them to the man.
The man took the matches but made no effort to light one.
“Going to the union meeting?” he asked.
“Yes,” Porthos said. “I am going to talk to them. I am going to tell them—”
“Shut up,” Aramis said disgustedly. “He is not interested in what you are going to do.”
The little man chuckled. “Oh, but I am,” he said.
Phillip felt a sudden warning of danger.
“Let’s be getting along,” he said.
“Yes, it’s about time,” the little man said. He tore a match from the packet and struck it deliberately.
Later Phillip realized it must have been a signal.
For as the tiny flame spurted into the blackness a figure materialized behind Porthos, an arm raised, descended viciously, and Phillip heard a thudding smack, and then Porthos pitched forward, groaning.
Athos wheeled and leaped back as a sudden rush of figures closed in on them.
Phillip never struck a blow, and he didn’t see the man who struck him. He was hit from behind, a hard, paralyzing blow that set off a pin-wheeling display of pyrotechnics in his skull. He remembered falling, trying to strike out at the blackness that was sweeping him. And that was all . . .
PAIN that stabbed the base of his skull drove away the blackness. He opened his eyes slowly. For an instant they wouldn’t focus. Then he discovered that he was half-sitting, half-lying in a soft chair, and that his arms were bound to his sides. Twisting his head to one side he saw that Athos, Porthos and Aramis were similarly secured.
Athos was shaking his head groggily from side to side, but the other two were still unconscious.
“Where are we?” Phillip asked stupidly.
Athos screwed his eyes tight, then opened them with an effort.
“I was going to ask you the same thing,” he muttered.
Phillip glanced around the room, saw that it was large, luxuriously furnished, with huge windows across one entire wall, probably the street side.
The furniture was done in tan, the carpet was the color of an expensive camel’s hair coat and there was a small bar, a baby grand piano, and a combination record-player and radio that looked big enough to live in. The whole set-up looked like money. Big money.
While he was trying to force his aching head to think, a door opened quietly and several men drifted into the room. They were quiet, nondescript types in gray suits. They wore their hats, and their right hands, Phillip noticed, stayed close to their coat pockets.
Following them, grinning expansively, was Mr. Soleri, as beautifully dressed as ever, his black hair pomaded tight against his skull.
“Nice to see you all again,” he said. He glanced at Porthos’ and Aramis’ unconscious figures and pursed his lips sympathetically. “Too bad your friends haven’t come around yet.”
“You will regret what you have done,” Athos said evenly. “That you may consider a promise.”
“I don’t think so,” Mr. Soleri said, as if the matter didn’t interest him one way or the other.
“What is the idea of all this?” Phillip asked.
“It’s really quite simple,” Soleri said. He took an expensive cigar from his coat pocket and lit it carefully. “Your interference made all the strong-arm tactics inevitable. I hired your friends because they seemed stupid enough to believe anything I told them. My ambitions weren’t high. I simply wanted to create a little disturbance, get a little publicity, that’s all. Things were working beautifully until you came along this morning and talked them out of going to work. That wasn’t so bad but when I learned they were going to have a hearts and flowers reunion at the rally tonight I simply had to prevent it. That would have undone a lot of the good work. So that’s why you’re here.
The blow caught Soleri on the forehead. The sword fell from his fingers. He staggered forward pressing his hands to his face, knees buckling.
His henchmen made swift moves for their pockets but D’Artagnan had swung the gun to cover them. And the reckless smile was gone from his face, leaving it cold and hard.
“I wouldn’t,” he said.
They didn’t. Hands inches from guns, they froze.
There was a sudden battering on the front door.
D’Artagnan backed to the door, opened it and stepped aside. Several policemen, two or three plain-clothes men and Nelson charged into the room.
“It is all over,” D’Artagnan said.
One of the plain-clothes men glared at him. “You were supposed to wait for us to come in the front way before you started anything.”
D’Artagnan hung his head guiltily.
“I’m afraid I let my excitement carry me away,” he said.
Nelson untied Phillip while the policemen were releasing the Musketeers. “We traced you back to your room and met this young friend of yours. He wanted to come along. We suspected Soleri might have been the one who kidnaped you, so we made a bee-line for here. He didn’t get rid of the evidence fast enough.”
“He was trying to,” Phillip said.
“I’ve called the FBI,” Nelson said. “They’ll crack Soleri wide open and find out who’s behind him. And I want to put you and your friends to work.
I’ll give you the details later. Just in brief I want you to go on a speaking tour, telling just what happened yesterday and today. It might wake some people up to the fact that while the war is over there’s still work ahead.”
“Sounds fine,” Phillip said.
* * *
A week later Phillip and the Musketeers were sitting in quiet luxury in what had formerly been Soleri’s apartment, sipping cognac.
“So you see,” Porthos was saying, “you were wrong. We have this lovely apartment, beautiful food and drink and we are even working. What is difficult about America? It is wonderful, it is magnificent! It has no difficulties at all.”
At that moment the doorbell rang. Athos opened the door and a uniformed messenger handed him four bulky forms.
“Mr. Nelson sent these over,” he said.
Athos looked at them with a frown. Then he shrugged and tossed them on a table. “Nothing to worry about,” he said.
“What was it?” Phillip asked.
Athos shrugged. “I don’t know. But it cannot be bad. Everything here is good.” He picked up the f
orms again and read aloud, “Income Tax Return—” He tossed them back on the table. “There’s a lot more writing but it isn’t important.”
“Of course not,” Porthos said. He lifted his glass and then glanced sharply at Phillip.
“What are you laughing about?”
THE DEATH OF ASTEROID 13[*]
First published in the July 1948 issue of Amazing Stories.
Out in space the day of destiny came for a lonely asteroid—and came too for the men who fought for her!
THE VISI-SCREEN of the Olympiad cast back a reflection of the void its tapering nose pierced. Ahead shone Mars in sullen crimson; the green glow of Venus was high above a milky train of meteors that arched like a rainbow against the fathomless dark of the void.
Deflexsive rays surrounded the Olympiad, forming a shield against the star fragments that ranged through space in uncharted orbits. They loomed dead ahead as pin points of light that changed to awesome size as they rushed the speeding Olympiad; approaching they filled the visi-screen and then their craters and pits were visible like scars. When they moved into the Olympiad’s deflexive belts they veered suddenly and their hurtling passage could be heard through the duraluminum hull of the sleek space craft.
Corneal stood on the captain’s bridge watching the panorama of space unfold and there was, a soft smile at the corner of his mouth. Too rugged to be considered handsome, too tall and large to be considered graceful, he appeared as a man stripped of essentials, but made for a job and strangely out of place when not doing that job.
He was the captain of the Olympiad, a man of strength and silence; of sworn dedication to the service of Earth. There was nothing in his life but duty. He placed it first and last among his values. It was the start of him and the end of him; his motivation, his drive, his reason for being.
Now he pushed jet black hair from his forehead and there was an impatient twitch at the corner of his mouth. The smile was gone.
Snapping the audioswitch at his panel he raised the navigator.
“Check your course,” he ordered. His voice was flat, impersonal.
“Yes, sir.”
The answer came in a moment. “We’re a point off, Captain. I’ll have it corrected.”
“Have the Helmsman on duty report to me after his trick.”
He snapped the connection. There was no tolerance for error in his mind, whether it be his own or another. He drove himself unsparingly and his men respected him; but he was not a man they could like. Other space captains had nicknames and antedotes had grown about their exploits.
Tales that were told with grim affection after long watches. Of Corneal there was nothing. He was known as a fabulous navigator; and in the days of Space raiding and void warfare he had struck fear into the very souls of those he pursued, of those who broke the laws of Earth. His single jet crimson ship had been known and feared from the wastes of Jupiter to the rings of Saturn.
But stories were not told of Corneal. There was no affectionate halo of glory set on his name. He was a living machine; had he been more human he would have been a living legend.
The door at his back opened! Alan Nelson, his second in command, saluted, came to his side. They stood for a moment in silence watching the visi-screen.
They had been away from their base nine weeks now; and Nelson was growing restless. He was young, only twenty-two, a blond, smiling Lieutenant, happier in the bars of Earth than voyaging in the void. His chief complaint was loneliness. He could not associate with the men; and there was an iron barrier in front of his captain which he could not penetrate.
The silence grew and he knew that he must break it or leave.
“We’re right on course,” he said. “I checked it myself.”
“When?” Corneal asked the question without expression?
“Why just a few moments ago, sir.”
“Two minutes ago we were two points off, Lieutenant.”
Nelson wished he had kept his mouth shut. “I’ll see about it, sir,” he said, nervously.
“It’s been taken care of.”
Nelson let out his breath slowly and watched his captain’s iron-hard profile discreetly. There was no give to the man, no break at all in his rigid control and self-sufficiency.
TRYING to change the subject Nelson said: “Do you think we’ll be out much longer.” Almost as the words left his mouth he knew he had made a mistake. Corneal looked at him with cold gray eyes and Nelson felt himself shaking.
“I mean, sir,” he said, “it’s none of my business, of course, but I was wondering.”
“You are not required to speculate upon or discuss the orders of the Council,” Corneal said in a hard voice.
“I know, sir.”
“Very well. Go below and attend to your work.”
“Yes, sir.” Nelson faded away quickly.
Corneal stood alone on the bridge. The incident was out of his consciousness now; but it would remain filed away in a pigeon hole of his mind until he died. This sorting process was automatic with him, as inevitable as his breathing. Should Nelson’s name come up for advancement in twenty years Corneal would remember him as a youth with unseeming curiosity.
He himself was without curiosity. His orders became a blueprint for his existence, his chart and guide. There was emotion in him, but it was an inverted thing, directed against the enemies of earth, not as people but as they represented symbols of lawlessness.
For another half hour he watched the progress of his ships through the shifting void; then he went below for his dinner. His orderly waited until he heard his footsteps on the companionway, then hurried to bring in the dishes of food.
Corneal ate alone in full uniform. This was a ritual of his, a pattern he had made and kept. He discouraged intimacy as some men will discourage a bore or a fool. His desk and charts were against one wall; his bunk against the other. The long table was between them facing the one ornament in the room, a picture of Corneal’s father, vice-fleet Commander Corneal, a man with wintry eyes and tight arrogant features. From his father Corneal had taken a pattern of life. And in his thirty years he had never regretted his choice.
Corneal was sipping the one glass of rare Martian port he permitted himself when there was a knock at the door. He said, “Come in!” immediately. His mind was ticking automatically. His orders were that he was not to be disturbed at dinner. Therefore the cause of this interruption must be important.
Nelson opened the door in response to his command. He saluted and put a coded message on the table before Corneal. He looked pale and Corneal knew he was terrified at having interrupted his captain.
“The message was marked with three stars,” Nelson said, standing at attention. “I thought the captain would wish to see it immediately.”
“You were right.”
Three stars was top priority from the Earth council to its fleet units. He made an automatic note of the fact that Nelson had wisely ignored his orders and brought the message to him immediately. This, too, he filed away. From such tiny fragments he built a picture of a man.
Nelson shifted from one foot to the other.
“Could this be a change of orders, sir?” he asked eagerly.
CORNEAL glared at him and Nelson once again cursed himself for a fool. He would rather have bitten off his tongue than said that particular thing; but it had seemed to slip out. He waited trembling and sick, for the outburst.
But Corneal had a hard sort of wisdom. He knew that Nelson was castigating himself now as he could never hope to; and he also felt kindly disposed toward him for having the initiative to bring him the message during his dinner hour.
And so he said: “We will have to wait until its decoded. I will let you know if there are any changes of plan.” He said this last dryly and Nelson flushed.
“Yes, sir,” he said. “With the captain’s permission, I’ll go below.”
“Very well.”
Nelson hurried out breathlessly wondering as he would wonder to his dying day why
the lightning had not struck.
Corneal waited until the door had closed, then went to his desk and placed the coded message in the machine that broke the code with electric impulses.
He watched without any particular curiosity as the message was decoded and finally stood complete on the tape. It read:
“Craft of Heliax class in area of Martian astrocloud. Suspected as pirate ship known as the Vortex. Commanded by the Falcon. Contact and engage!”
For once Corneal felt a twinge of personal emotion. The Falcon was a Mars. He was a phantom, an elusive freebooter whose black ship was seen often in the cloudy understrata of wisp who had shown his crimson jets to the fastest and shrewdest of Earth’s Captains. Corneal hated him with something close to fury. The Falcon’s flaunting of law, his deliberate mocking of the standards of Earth were violently opposed to Corneal’s nature.
Now he snapped on his audiophone and gave orders to his navigators.
“Change course immediately. Hold three points off present course for ninety seconds. Then hold direct for Mars.”
“Yes, sir!” the navigator snapped, and Corneal knew from the enthusiasm of his tone that Nelson had spread the news that a change of orders might be incipient. He made a note of that automatically; but he could understand the navigator’s excitement. While Corneal did not concern himself with politics it was common knowledge that the relations between Mars and Earth had strained to the snapping point. There had been no trouble yet, but the Council had ordered its fleets into the void ostensibly for maneuvers; but everyone knew that the ships were the first line of defense in case of trouble, a ring of speeding steel that girdled the softly glowing planet of Earth.
Collected Fiction (1940-1963) Page 243
