The Bluff of the Hawk Part 2

"Eliot, you've got to go to some place of safety until this is all over. You too, Eclipse, to take care of him. Let me see.... There's Cairnes, and Wilson.... Wilson's the one. He should be at his ranch now. You remember it: Ban Wilson's ranch, on the Great Briney Lake?

Right. Both of you will go there and wait. I'll meet you there when I'm finished. And at that time I'll either have the papers or know that Ku Sui has found the laboratory."

Again on his feet, the old Master Scientist regarded anxiously this slender, coldly calculating man who was his closest friend. He was afraid. "Ca.r.s.e," he said, "you're going back alone into probable danger. The papers--the laboratory--they're important--but not so important as your life."

There was visible now in the Hawk's face that hard, unflinching will-to-do that had made him the spectacular adventurer that he was.

"Did you ever know me to run from danger?" he asked softly. "Did you ever know me to run from Ku Sui?..." And Eliot Leithgow knew that the course was set, no matter what it might hold.

Ca.r.s.e again glanced at Jupiter, hanging ma.s.sive in the blue overhead.

"About three hours of daylight left," he observed. "Now, close face-plates. We must go up--far up--to get our bearings."

Alt.i.tude swept back the horizon as they arrowed up through the warm, glowing air. From far in the heavens, perhaps twenty miles, Ca.r.s.e saw what he looked for--a bright gleam of silver in the monochrome of the terrain, where Jupiter's light struck on the smooth metal hides of a group of s.p.a.ce-ships resting in the satellite's lone port, p.o.r.no.

Eighty, a hundred miles away--some such distance. Into the helmet's tiny microphone he said:

"That's p.o.r.no, over to the 'north,' and there to one side is the Great Briney. It's not far: you won't have to hurry, Eliot. Head straight for the lake and follow the near sh.o.r.eline toward p.o.r.no, and you'll come to Ban Wilson's ranch. Now we part."

The three clinging, giant forms separated. The direction-rods for horizontal movement were out-hinged. A last touch of mitten-gloves on the bloated suits fabric; a nod and a smile through the face-plates; and a few parting words:

"Good luck, old comrade!"--in Leithgow's soft voice; and the Negro's deep, emphatic ba.s.s: "Don't know how far these little sets work, suh, but if you need me, call. I'll keep listenin'!"

And then white man and black were speeding away in the ruddy flood of Jupiter-light, and Hawk Ca.r.s.e faced the danger trail alone, as was his wont.

Caution rather than speed had to mark his journey, Ca.r.s.e knew. Several ranches lay scattered in the jungle smother between him and the port--stations where the weed isuan was collected and refined into the deadly finished product. They were worked for the most part by Venusians allied with Ku Sui: the Eurasian practically controlled the drug trade; and therefore, if any alarm had been broadcast, many men would already be on the lookout for him.

So the Hawk dropped low, and chose a course through the screening walls of the jungle. It did not take him long to attain full mastery of the suit's controls, and soon he was gliding cleanly through the hollows created by the mammoth outthrusting treetops in a course crazy and twisted, but one which kept him pointing always towards p.o.r.no.

Presently he found an easier highway and a faster--a sluggish, dirty yellow stream, quite broad, which ended, he was sure, in a swamp within a mile of his destination.

Flanked by the jungle growth which sprouted thickly from each bank, a gray, ghostly shape in the shadows lying over the water, he sped through the dying afternoon. He kept at least ten feet above the surface, well out of reach of such water beasts as from time to time reared up through the placid surface to scan him. Once a huge gantor, gulping a drink from the bank, snorted and went trumpeting away at the grotesque sight of him--flying without wings!--and once too, on rising cautiously above the treetops to reconnoiter, Ca.r.s.e saw life far more perilous to him: a small party of men, stooping over a swamp-brink and plucking the ripe isuan weed. At this he dived steeply and fled on; and he knew he had gone un.o.bserved, for there came no outcry of discovery from behind.

Jupiter lowered its murky disk as the miles streamed past, breeding a legion of shadows welcome to the fabric-clad monster skimming through them and to the creatures who blinked and stirred as night approached.

The stream broadened into shallow pockets; patches of swamp appeared and absorbed the stream; and Ca.r.s.e knew he was close to his destination.

He cut his speed and glanced around. Ahead, the dark spire of a giant sakari tree climbed into the gloom. It would be a good place. The man rose slowly; like a wraith on the wind he lifted into its top-most branches; and there, in the broad, cuplike leaves, he warily ensconced himself. For man-sounds came into his opened helmet, and through a fringe of leaves, across a mile of tumbled swamp and marsh, he could see the guarding fences of the cosmetropolis of p.o.r.no.

A last slice of blotched, flaming red, the rim of setting Jupiter, still silhouetted p.o.r.no, sprawled inside its high, electric-wired fences, and the flood of fading light brushed the town with beauty.

The rows of tin shacks which housed its dives, the cl.u.s.tered, nondescript hovels, the merchants' grim strongholds of steel--all merged into a glowing mirage, a scene far alien to the brooding swamp and savage jungle in whose breast it lay. Here and there several s.p.a.ce-ships reared their sunset-gilded flanks, glittering high-lights in the final glorious burst of Jupiter-light....

The planet's rim vanished abruptly, and p.o.r.no returned to true character.

For a moment it appeared what it was: a blotched, disordered huddle, ugly, raw, fit companion of the swamp and jungle. Then beads of light appeared, some still, some winking, one crooked line of flaring illumination marking the Street of the Sailors, along which the notorious kantrans flourished, now ready for their nightly brood of men who sought forgetfulness in revelry. Soon, Ca.r.s.e knew, the faint man-noises he heard would grow into a broad fabric of sound, st.i.tched across by shrieks and roars as the isuan and alkite flowed free. And all around the lone watcher in the sakari tree the night-monsters were crawling out in jungle and swamp on the dark routine of their lives as, in the town, two-legged creatures even lower in their degradation went abroad after the dope and liquor which gave them their vicious recreation.

The night flowed thicker around him.

From somewhere behind, the Hawk heard a suck of half-fluid mud as a giant body stretched in its sleeping place. A tree close to his suddenly fluttered with the unseen life it harbored. A hungry gantor raised its long deep bellow to the night, and another answered, and another.

It grew pitch black. Only a sprinkling of pin-points of light marked p.o.r.no to the eye. The sky beyond the town matched the sky to the rear.

Jupiter's light now had fled the higher air levels. The time had come.

Cautiously Ca.r.s.e brushed the branches aside, rose upright and pressed the mitten switch over to repulsion. In instant response his giant's bulk lifted lightly. He sped upward, straight and fast; and at two thousand feet, still untouched by the sinking planet's rays, he brought himself to an approximate halt and peered below.

Port o' p.o.r.no lay spread out beneath, one thin line of light-p.r.i.c.ks off which angled fainter lines, extending only a short distance and then dying widely off. There were perhaps two thousand men in the town--men from all the countries of the three planets inhabited by creatures that could be called human--and of these at least three quarters knew Hawk Ca.r.s.e as an enemy, because of his intolerance for their dope-trade. His approach to the house Number 574 had to be swift, direct, unseen, unheard.

He was able to make it so. Pointing the direction rod, he winged forward until directly above an estimated spot, then dropped a thousand feet. A pause while he searched; another drop. He knew Kurgo's house well, but the scene was confusing from above, and the street the house was on was always dark at night.

He made it out at last. The squat two-storied structure, similar to other merchants' strongholds, seemed unlit and unwatched. Ca.r.s.e swung back the hinged mittens of the suit and slid his hands out ready for action. In his left he took his ray-gun; then, pressing the mitten-switch, he dropped straight, silent, swift, like the Hawk he now truly was.

A single window-port, high up, broke the smooth rear of Kurgo's house.

It faced a silent alleyway. The steel shutters were closed, but a pull swung them noiselessly outward. For a brief moment Ca.r.s.e's bulging giant's figure of metal and fabric hung black against the shadowed window-port. The room he peered into was solid black. He heard no sound. Clumsily he thrust out and stepped in.

Silence. Inky nothingness--but the air was weighted with many things, and among them one which brought the short hairs on the Hawk's neck p.r.i.c.kling erect. A smell! It was not to be mistaken--a faint, but rank and fetid and altogether identifying smell--the body-smell of a Venusian!

For a moment Hawk Ca.r.s.e's breathing stopped. Metal clanked on metal for an instant as he moved from the window-port and became one with the darkness inside; then silence again, as his eyes trained into the vault and his hand held ready on the ray-gun. He waited.

Was it a trap? He had seen no guards watching the house; had sensed it deserted. But the steep shutters, unlocked, readily permitting entrance--and the smell! Even if not still there, a Venusian had been in the room, and a Venusian of Port o' p.o.r.no was an enemy. A Venusian.... There were only some sixty on the whole satellite, and, of these, fifty were the men of Lar Tantril. Lar Tantril, powerful henchman of Dr. Ku Sui, director of the Eurasian's drug trade on Satellite III. But that line of thought had to wait.

"I see you!" he whispered suddenly and sharply. "My gun's on you. Come forward!"

No answer; not the slightest sign or stir in the darkness. He breathed again.

Ca.r.s.e knew the arrangement of Kurgo's house. He was in his second-story sleeping-room. There was a door in the wall ahead, leading into the room Leithgow was accustomed to use on his visits, and there the papers should be. But first he would have to have light.

His ears pitched for any betraying sound, Ca.r.s.e moved heavily to his left until a wall arrested him. He felt along it, located the desk he sought for and scoured through it. His fingers found the flash he knew was there.

The darkness then was slit by a hard straight line of white. It shot over the room picking out overturned chairs, a bowl that had toppled to the floor, scattering its contents of ripe akalot fruit, a sleeping couch, its sheets and pillows awry, and--something human.

A half-clothed body lay sprawled beside the couch, its hands thrust clutching forward and its unseeing eyes still staring at the door whence had come the shots that had burnt out the left side of its chest. Dead. Three days dead. The murdered master of the house, Kurgo, lying where Ku Sui's robot-coolies had shot him down.

The Venusian-smell swept more strongly into his nostrils as the adventurer opened the door into Leithgow's room. No Venusian had ever been in those rooms _before_ the abduction.

Ca.r.s.e's light danced over the room's confusion: a laboratory table overturned; apparatus spilled; several chains flung around, one splintered: mute signs of the struggle Eliot Leithgow had offered his kidnappers.

In a corner stood a metal chest. In the bottom drawer was the all-significant answer. Hawk Ca.r.s.e crossed the room and slid it open.

The papers were gone!

Methodically Ca.r.s.e hunted through every drawer and corner of the room, but he found no trace of them. Every article that would be of value to an ordinary thief was left; the one thing important to Dr. Ku Sui, the sheaf of papers, was missing.

The presence of the Venusian body-smell started an important train of thought in the Hawk's mind. It signified that the papers had been taken by henchmen of Ku Sui, which in turn signified that Ku Sui had survived the crashing of the dome and was alive and again aggressively dangerous. But was the Eurasian already on Satellite III? Was he already in personal possession of the papers?--perhaps conducting a search for Leithgow's laboratory?