The Affair of the Brains Part 5

Tall electric-wired fences girdled Port o' p.o.r.no to keep the jungle back. It was equivalent to a death sentence to pa.s.s unarmed outside them; the monstrous shapes that lived and fought in the jungle's swampy gloom saw to that. Hideous nightmare shapes they were, some reptilian and comparable only to the giants that roamed Earth in her prehistoric ages. Eating, fighting, breeding in the humid gloominess of the vegetation shrouded swamps, their bellows and roars sometimes at night thundered right through p.o.r.no, a reminder of Nature yet untamed.

Occasionally, in the berserk ecstasy of the mating season, they hurled their house-high bodies at the guarding fences; and then there was panic in the town, and many lives ripped out before a barrage of rays drove the monsters back.

They were not the only inhabitants native to Satellite III. Deep underground, seldom seen by men, lived a race of man-mole creatures, half human in intelligence, blind from their unlit habitat, but larger than a man and stronger; fiercer, too, when cornered. Their numbers no one knew, but their bored tunnels, it had been found, const.i.tuted a lower layer of life over the whole satellite.

Probably more vicious than these native "Three's" of p.o.r.no were the visiting bipeds, man himself, who thronged the _kantrans_--which may be defined as dives for the purveying of all entertainments. In them were a score of snares for the buccaneer with money in his pocket and dope in his blood. The open doors on the Street of the Sailors were all loud-speakers of drunken oaths and laughter, pierced now and then by a scream or cry as someone in the sweating press of bodies inside knew rage or fear.

One interplanetarily notorious kantran made a feature of swinging its attractions aloft in gilded cages, where all of them, young and old, pale and painted, giant and dwarf, ogled the arrested pa.s.sers-by and invited sampling of their wares.

Of all kinds and conditions of men were these pa.s.sers-by. Earthling sailors, white, negro, Chinese and Eurasian, most of them in the drab blue of s.p.a.ce-ship crews, but each with a ray-gun strapped to his waist; short, thin-faced Venusians, shifty-eyed, cunning, with the planet's universal weapon, the skewer-blade, sheathed at their sides; tall, sweaty Martians, powerful brutes, wearing the air-rarifying mask that was necessary for them in Satellite III's Earthlike atmosphere. Business men and sight-seers, except the most bold, were apt to stay in their houses after their first visit to the Street of the Sailors. Each face on the street or in the kantrans that lined it bore the mark of drink, or the contemptuous, insolent expression bred by p.o.r.no's favorite drug, isuan.

Around p.o.r.no was the constant threat of savage life; below it were half-human savagery and mystery; above, in the very shadow of their mighty engines of s.p.a.ce, were the most vicious animals of all--degraded men.

This was the Port o' p.o.r.no of a hundred years ago.

This was the Port o' p.o.r.no where Master Scientist Eliot Leithgow for very good reasons had told Hawk Ca.r.s.e he would meet him. 574. The house of his friend.

Night descended suddenly on the outlaw s.p.a.ce-port that day the elderly exile waited in vain for his comrade in arms Hawk Ca.r.s.e to show up.

There were six hours when the blasting heat received by Satellite III from near-lying Jupiter would be gone, and in its place a warm, cloying tropical darkness, heavy with the odors of town and exotic products and the damp, lush vegetation of the impinging jungle. The night would be given over to carousing; for these six hours the Street of the Sailors came to life. It was a time to keep strictly in hiding.

In the middle of that night, when the pleasures of p.o.r.no were in full stride, there emerged suddenly, from one of the dark, crooked byways that angled off the Street of the Sailors, a squad of five men whose disciplined pace and regular formation were in marked contrast to the confusion around them. They were slant-eyed men, with smooth saffron faces, and strongly built, and they were armed, each one, with both a ray-gun and a two-foot black, pointed tube. But it was not their numbers, formation or weapons that caused the carousing crowd to fall silent and hastily get out of their path. It was, rather, the insignia embroidered on the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of the gray smocks they wore. The insignia represented an asteroid in a circle of the ten planets, and the Street of Sailors knew that sign and dreaded it.

The squad pressed along rapidly. A still-comely woman, new to p.o.r.no, plucked smirking at the leader's sleeve; but his pace did not slacken, and she fell back, puzzled and afraid because of her feeling of something lifeless, dumb, machinelike in the man. Ahead, an isuan-maddened Earthling fell foul of a Venusian; a circle cleared in the mob, a ray-gun spat and missed, and the Venusian closed, the gleam of a skewer-blade playing around him. This was combat; this was interesting; but none of the squad's five men gave the fight a glance, or even turned his head when, as they pa.s.sed, the butchered Earthling coughed out his life.

So they pa.s.sed, and soon they were gone down another black-throated byway.

They padded noiselessly along in the darkness to turn again presently, pausing finally before a low, steel-walled house, typical of the strongholds of prudent merchants of the port. No lights were visible within it; all seemed asleep.

Silence filled the narrow street, and unrelieved darkness. Occasionally a desultory breeze brought sounds of a burst of revelry from the Street of the Sailors; once the ports of an outbound s.p.a.ce-ship flashed overhead for an instant. But there was mainly silence and darkness, and in it the five men, parleying close together in toneless whispers.

After a little they separated. On cat's feet four of them stole around the sides of the house. The fifth, drawing the black, pointed tube from his slash, crept up to the front entrance-port and held the tip to it.

Blue light sparkled fantastically, revealing his impa.s.sive face, outlining his crouching body. Then, quite suddenly, the port appeared to melt inward, and he disappeared into the blackness of the interior.

Presently there came a stir of movement, a whisper, a rustle from inside. A challenge, shouts volleying forth, a scream, another, and the peculiar rattling sound that comes from a dying man's throat. Then again silence.

Five shadows melted from the front entrance-port. They were carrying something black and still and heavy between them.

The errand was done....

CHAPTER VII

_The Coming of Leithgow_

Hawk Ca.r.s.e awoke to the touch of a hand on his brow. He came very slowly to full consciousness. His pain was great.

His whole body was sore: every joint, every muscle in it ached; his brain was feverish, pumping turmoil. When he at length opened his eyes he found Friday's face bent close down, tender anxiety written large over it.

"You all right, suh? How do you feel now?"

A harsh sound came from the Hawk's throat. He pressed a hand to his throbbing temple and tried to collect his senses. Sitting up helped; he glanced around. They were back in the same cell, and they were alone.

Then, shortly, he asked:

"Did I tell him?"

"About Mr. M. S., suh?"

"Of course, I can't quite remember--a bit blurred----"

"I guess you did, suh," Friday answered mournfully. "I didn't hear you, but Ku Sui said you told him where Master Leithgow is. But dog-gone--you couldn't help it!"

Ca.r.s.e forgot his pain as his brain straightened these words out into their overwhelming consequence, and something of its old familiar mold, hard and graven, emotionless, came back to his face. His eyes were bleak as he murmured:

"I couldn't help it--no. I really don't think it was possible. But I could have refused to get into the machine. I thought I could resist it.

I took that risk, and failed." He stopped short. His body twitched with uncontrolled emotion, and in decency the negro turned his back on his master's anguish. A broken whisper reached him: "I have betrayed Leithgow."

For a short while neither man moved, or made any sound. Friday was a little afraid; he guessed what must be going on in Ca.r.s.e's mind, and had no idea what to expect. But the Hawk's next move was quite disciplined; he was himself again.

He got up and stretched his body, to limber its muscles. "How long have we been here?" he asked.

"Don't know suh; I was unconscious when they brought me here myself. But I guess not less'n six or eight hours."

"Unconscious?" asked the Hawk, surprised. "You fought, and they knocked you out?"

The big negro looked sheepish and scratched his woolly head.

"Well, no suh," he explained. "I was aimin' to b.u.t.t in some, but they wouldn't let me."

"Then how did you get unconscious?"

Friday fidgeted. He was acutely embarra.s.sed. "Don't know, suh, Dog-gone, I just can't figure it, unless I fainted."

"Oh." The Hawk smiled. "Fainted. Well so did I, I guess. I suppose," he went on seriously, "you couldn't tell whether the asteroid moved or not.

I mean toward Satellite III."