One Against the Legion Read online

  They sprawled together in space. The technician, after his first surprise, displayed a wiry strength. He groped for his atomic torch, that would have cut Chan’s armor like paper.

  “I’ve got a blaster.” Vibration of metal in furious contact carried Chan’s words. “But I don’t want your life—only your number and your keys.”

  “Derron!” The man’s face went white within his helmet. “The convict—we were warned.” Chan grabbed for the torch. But the fight had gone out of the other. Limp with terror, he was gasping: “For God’s sake, Derron, don’t kill me. I’ll do anything you want!”

  His name, it seemed to Chan, had grown stronger than his body! And more dangerous than any enemy. Swiftly, he took the prisoner’s tools, his work-sheet, his keys, and the number-plate—a black-stencilled yellow crescent—from his helmet. With the man’s own torch, he welded the shoulder-piece of his armor to the motor-house.

  “In three hours,” Chan promised, “I’ll be back, and let you go.”

  He grasped a sliding ring on the pilot wire, and the geopeller sent him plunging down five hundred miles to the New Moon’s heart. The wire brought him to a great platform, on one of the vast tubular arms of the central star. He dropped amid half a score of other men, all with kits of tools, and hastened with them into a great air-valve.

  His own face looked at him, from the wall of the valve.

  $250,000 REWARD! shrieked crimson letters.

  LOOK! This man may be beside you—NOW!

  At a wicket, as he filed with the others out of the valve, he turned in his captured work-sheet.

  “Inspect and repair Mirror 17-B-285” was the order at its head. He scrawled at the bottom of it, Defective switch located and repaired .

  How long would he have, he wondered, before some other repairman, sent out to do a better job, would find the first welded to the motor-house beside the Phantom Atom ?

  But if he had won just three hours—In the locker rooms, where the men were squirming out of their metal, hastening under the showers, gratefully donning their clothing, he saw that ominous poster again. And all the talk he heard was of Chan Derron and the Basilisk, and whether the two could be the same, and whether the promised robbery and murder would be carried out at midnight.

  Chan Derron found the locker to which his borrowed number corresponded. He hung up his suit, hastily donned the somewhat-too-small lounging pajamas and loose cloak that he discovered there, and thrust himself into a group of tired men bound for home and supper.

  “Keep yer optics hot,” advised a little mechanic beside him. “Any big man you see tonight might be good for that quarter million. You don’t know who—”

  “You don’t know who,” Chan agreed.

  He left the workmen, and a little door let him out upon the vast, noisy open space beneath the docks, thronged with incoming passengers from the space liners above.

  He closed the door, and sighed with relief. For he had passed the fleet, and the New Moon’s walls, and the alert inspectors scrutinizing every man that came down the gangplanks above. He was safe—“Your reservation check, sir?”

  It was an attentive, dark-skinned Martian porter. The grimy paper sticking from the pocket of his yellow uniform, Chan saw, was another copy of that notice of reward.

  With a worried frown, Chan patted his borrowed pockets.

  “Oh, I remember!” He squinted and blinked. “Left it hi my baggage. Can you get me a duplicate?”

  Were the dark eyes studying his scar? He eased the crippled foot.

  “Yes, sir. A temporary check. Your name, sir?”

  “Dr. Charles Derrel. Marine biologist. From Venus, en route to Earth. Two days here.” He squinted again. “Can you get me some dark glasses? Not used to the light.

  The clouds on Venus, you know—”

  The check, evidently a necessary passport to the New Moon’s wonders, was presently procured.

  Chan dispatched the porter to look for non-existent baggage, and hurried on alone. The transit bands—a series of gliding belts whose moving coffee-tables and bars were crowded with bright-clad vacationists—carried him through endless enormous halls, past glittering shops and the tall black portals of the Hall of Euthanasia. But Chan had eyes for nothing until he saw the Casino—for it was there that he might hope to meet the Basilisk at midnight.

  Transparent and illuminated from within, the pillars at the entrance looked like columns hewn from living gems. Ruby and emerald, they were covered with a delicate rime of gold.

  Tiny beneath their unbelievable glitter, a woman stood waiting.

  He swung off the belt.

  The girl was tall, with a proud grace of poise that he had rarely seen. The wealth of her hair was platinum white; her fine skin was white; she wore a fortune hi white Callistonian furs. And her eyes, he saw, were a rare true violet.

  He hurried on, to pass her.

  She was utterly beautiful. Her loveliness set a painful throb to going in his throat. He could not help a twinge of bitterness at thought of the double barrier between them—her obvious wealth and reserve, and his own more than desperate situation. If he had been some idle billionaire, he was thinking bleakly, perhaps returning from his colonial mines and plantations, she might have been waiting for him—His heart came up in his mouth.

  For the girl was coming swiftly toward him, across the vast gold-veined emerald that floored the entrance. The white perfection of her face lit with a welcoming smile. Her eyes were warm with recognition. In a joyous voice—but one too low for any other to hear—she greeted him by name: “Why, Chan! You’re Chan Derron!”

  Rooted with wonder, Chan shuddered to those syllables that made his body worth a quarter of a million dollars, living or dead. The smile of admiration congealed on his face. Moving with the weightless rife of a flame, the girl came up to him, and eagerly seized his nerveless hand hi hers.

  7

  The Luck of Giles Habibula

  The salons of chance occupied a series of six immense halls radiating from the private office of Gaspar Hannas, which was situated at the very hub of the New Moon’s wheel. The walls of the office were transparent from within, and Hannas, from the huge swivel chair within his ring-shaped desk, could look at will down any one of the halls.

  They were huge and costly rooms. The walls bore expensive statues, expensive murals, golden statues set in niches. And their polished floors were covered with thousands of tables of chance.

  Beneath each hall ran an armored tunnel, unsuspected by most of the players above, where their losses were swiftly examined for counterfeit, counted, tabulated, and dispatched to the impregnably armored treasure vault beneath the office of Gaspar Hannas. A continuous tape, fed through a slot in the circular desk, revealed minute by minute the New Moon’s gains and losses. The losses all appeared in red but that color was rarely seen.

  “The laws of probability,” Gaspar Hannas always insisted, smiling his fixed and mindless smile, “are all I need. Every game is fair.”

  And cynics, it had been suspected, were apt to find their doubts very unexpectedly terminated in the Hall of Euthanasia.

  The six halls, tonight, were more than commonly crowded. For the whisper of the Basilisk had run over all the New Moon, and a great many thrill-seekers in their gayest silks and jewels had turned out to see what would happen at midnight. The play, however, as recorded on the endless tape, was somewhat slow—too many had heard that the highest winner was unlikely to keep his winnings.

  Gaspar Hannas, for once, was not watching the tape. He was walking with the three Legionnaires through the Diamond Room, where no limit was placed upon the stakes.

  Hal Samdu, in his great gnarled hand, carried a tattered notice of reward.

  “This convict, Derron,” he insisted. “He’s your Basilisk.”

  And he refreshed his memory, from time to time, with another look at the bronze-haired, space-tanned likeness of Chan Derron.

  “Yonder!” Jay Kalam paused abruptly. “Derron w
as a big man. There’s one as big.”

  They followed his grave dark eyes.

  “Ah, so!” Giles Habibula was puffing mightily, from keeping pace with Hal Samdu’s impatient stride. “A majestic figure of manhood. And a lovely lass at his side!”

  The man stood like a tower above all the restless, bright-clad players. His hair was dark, dark glasses shaded his eyes, and his skin had a singular pallor. A long scar marred his face.

  The blond girl beside him was equally striking. With a queen’s proud grace, she wore a lustrous cloak of priceless white Callistonian fur. A queer white star-shaped jewel—it looked, Jay Kalam thought, like a hugely magnified snow-crystal—hung at her throat.

  “Six-feet-three!” Hal Samdu caught a gasping breath, and the poster trembled hi his mighty hand. “He can’t hide that—and the paleness and the dark hair and the glasses could be disguise!”

  He beckoned to one of the soldiers hi plain clothes, trailing unobtrusively behind. “We’ll arrest him, and soon find out.”

  Jay Kalam’s head shook sharply.

  “Shadow him,” he whispered. “But if he is Derron—and the Basilisk—we must see more of his methods. Meantime—”

  He breathed something to Giles Habibula.

  “In life’s name, Jay!” The small fishy eyes of the old man rolled at him, startled.

  “Don’t ask me that! Don’t command a poor old soldier to throw away his life!”

  “Remember, Giles.” Hal Samdu caught his shoulder. “It’s for the keeper of the peace.”

  Giles Habibula winced, and heaved himself away.

  “Don’t mangle me, Hal!” he gasped. “For life’s blessed sake! Of course I’ll do what Jay desires. Aye, for the keeper—” He turned ponderously to the white giant hi black.

  “Ah, Mr. Hannas,” he wheezed, “now I must have your order for a thousand blue chips.”

  “A thousand! A million dollars worth?” The idiot’s smile stiffened upon the face of Caspar Hannas, and he looked protestingly at Jay Kalam. “Commander, this is blackmail!”

  “No blacker,” whispered Giles Habibula, “than the bloody career of Pedro the Shark!”

  “I’ll give it to you!”

  Clutching the order, Giles Habibula waddled toward the table. A smart jab with his cane, in the ribs of a purple-clad woman as corpulent as himself, made him a place beside the green-cloaked giant and the girl in white. He presented the order to the startled croupier.

  “A thousand blue chips, mister—or make it a hundred of your mortal diamond ones.”

  He turned to the pale tall stranger.

  “Begging your pardon, sir,” he wheezed. “But my poor old hands scatter the chips, they tremble so. And your lucky touch, I see, has won a fortune for the lovely lass beside you. Would you kindly place my bets, sir?”

  “If you like.” The big man relaxed. “How much are you playing?”

  Giles Habibula gestured at the stacks of his chips.

  “The million,” he said. “On thirty-nine.”

  Even here in the Diamond Room, such a play made a stir. Spectators crowded up to watch the wheel. With his small eyes half closed, Giles Habibula watched the croupier flick the ball into its polished track, and then lift his hand dramatically over the wheel.

  “Eh!” he muttered. “Not when old Giles plays!”

  He turned to the man and the girl.

  “Thank you, sir!” he puffed. “And now we await the turn of luck —or skill!” His leaden eyes lit with a sudden admiration of the girl’s proud grace. “A lovely thing!”

  he wheezed. “As lovely as you are, my dear—that blue tapestry from Titan!”

  His cane pointed suddenly across the table, held with an odd sure steadiness hi his pudgy yellow hands, so that its polished green head was precisely opposite the still uplifted hand of the croupier, across the wheel.

  The croupier gulped and whitened. His hand dropped, dramatically, as he followed the racing ball.

  “Ah, and that golden nymph!” The cane fell, precisely as the hand, pointing to a statue in its niche. And the quick eyes of Giles Habibula came back to the girl in white. “Dancing as you might dance, my dear!”

  The croupier stood trembling. His pale face ran sudden little rivulets of sweat. And the clicking ball fell at last into the slot. Blank, distended, stricken, the eyes of the croupier came up to the seamed yellow face of Giles Habibula.

  “You are the winner, sir,” he croaked. “At forty to one!”

  “Precisely,” agreed Giles Habibula. “And none of your chips or scrip—give me forty millions in good new Green Hall certificates.”

  The quivering fingers of the croupier tapped the keys before him, and presently a thick packet of currency popped up out of the magnetic tube. While hushed spectators stared, he counted out forty crisp million-dollar bills.

  Trembling suddenly as violently as the other man, Giles Habibula snatched up the forty stiff new certificates. He swung hastily, and his fat arm struck the pale man in green, scattering the bills out of his hand.

  “My life!” he sobbed. “My forty millions! For Earth’s sweet sake, help a poor old man to save his miserable mite!”

  After the first awed moment, there was an excited scramble after the bills. Giles Habibula, stooping and snatching, fell against the tall man. The stranger caught him and helped him back to his feet.

  “Ah, thank you, sir!” Small eyes glittering, he was avidly seizing and counting the returned money. “Thank you. Thank you generously, madam!” He heaved a vast sigh of relief. “Ah, it’s all here! Thank you!”

  He waddled triumphantly back to where his three companions were ostensibly watching another table. Ignoring the peculiarly pale and sick-looking smile on the face of Gaspar Hannas, he dropped something into Jay Kalam’s palm.

  “Ah, Jay,” he panted, “it cost me mortal peril—aye, and the last desperate exertion of my failing genius—but here are your suspect’s keys, and his reservation check.”

  “Mortal peril?” echoed Gaspar Hannas, faintly. “It cost me forty million dollars!”

  The Commander studied the oblong yellow card.

  “Charles Derrel,” he muttered. “Marine biologist, from Venus.” His dark eyes narrowed. “It’s just a temporary check—‘original mislaid.’ And the initials—Charles Derrel and Chan Derron!”

  Hal Samdu’s great fists clenched.

  “Aye, Jay!” he whispered. “Shall we arrest him now?”

  “Not yet,” said the Commander. “Wait for me here.”

  He walked quickly to the table, and touched the tall man’s arm. The stranger turned very quickly to meet him. And the quickly checked movement of his arm told the Commander that some weapon hung ready beneath the green cloak.

  “These were dropped when the money was being picked up, just now.” Jay Kalam allowed a glimpse of the keys and the yellow card. “If you can identify the check—”

  The stranger stared through his dark glasses, speechless. But the girl stepped forward.

  Her gracious white arm slipped through the stranger’s and she gave Jay Kalam a smile that took his breath.

  “Of course he can.” Rich as a singer’s, her voice was quick and positive. “Or I can identify him.

  Sir, this is Dr. Charles Derrel. Recently from Venus. My fiance.”

  “Thank you.” With a sudden intense effort of memory, Jay Kalam studied the girl.

  “Who, may I ask, are you?”

  The proud, impersonal violet eyes met his.

  “Vanya Eloyan.” She spoke as if she were saying I am a princess. “From Thule.”

  The Commander bowed, and dropped the card and the ring of keys into the stranger’s powerful hand. The girl smiled dazzling thanks, and then took her companion’s arm and turned him back to the table.

  Rubbing thoughtfully at his lean, dark chin, Jay Kalam found his own companions at another table, where the wheel paid one hundred to one. Giles Habibula, his moon-face intent, was pointing with his cane, across the spin
ning wheel, toward the stupendous magnificence of a mural depicting the old Moon’s end.

  The croupier behind the table, with a desperate illness in his eyes, was staring slack-jawed at Caspar Hannas. His hand moved, in a convulsive gesture, to mop his brow.

  And the old man’s cane moved swiftly also, pointing.

  “And there,” he wheezed, “stands the lovely likeness of Aladoree!”

  “Restrain yourself, Habibula,” rasped Caspar Hannas. “Or you’ll destroy the New Moon as surely as she did the old! For honor’s sake—”

  The number fell. The croupier’s mouth opened in a strangled moan. He gulped, and made a helpless little shrug at Caspar Hannas.

  “You are the winner, sir,” at last his voice came squeakily. “Twenty million played, at one hundred to one. You have won two billion dollars.” He tapped uncertainly at his keys. “We’ll have it for you in a moment, from the vaults.”

  The great white hand of Caspar Hannas caught the old man’s cloak.

  “Habibula,” he croaked huskily, “have you no mercy? In honor’s name—”

  The fishy eyes of Giles Habibula blinked reprovingly.

  “Ah, me! But that’s a strange word to hear from you, Caspar Hannas! Precious little honor has been found hi anything your foul hands have touched, in the forty years that I have known you.” He turned back to the table. “I want my two billion.”

  In hundred-million-dollar Green Hall certificates, the first his blinking eyes had ever seen, his winnings were pushed toward him. With that amazing quick dexterity that his fat hands sometimes displayed, he shuffled through them to check the count.

  “Pedro,” he wheezed sadly, “you shouldn’t begrudge me this—not when all your New Moon’s splendor is built upon the cornerstone of my poor old brain. For I find you still using the same simple devices I invented for the tables of the Blue Unicorn!”