Distant Planet: SF Boxed Set (Illustrated Edition). Leigh Brackett

blue with no lashes. Campbell disliked him instantly.

      "I'm Tredrick," said the Earthman. His voice was thin, with a sound in it like someone walking on cold gravel. "Terran Overchief. Why do you wish to land, Mister Black?"

      "I bring a message from the Kraylen people of Venus. They need help."

      Tredrick's eyes became, if possible, thinner and more pale.

      "Help?"

      "Yes. Help." Campbell was struck by a sudden suspicion, something he caught flickering across Tredrick's granite features when he said "Kraylen." He went on, slowly, "The Coalition is moving in on them. I understand you people of Romany help in cases like that."

      There was a small, tight silence.

      "I'm sorry," said Tredrick. "There is nothing we can do."

      Campbell's dark face tightened. "Why not? You helped the Shenyat people on Ganymede and the Drylanders on Mars. That's what Romany is, isn't it—a refuge for people like that?"

      "As a latnik, there's a lot you don't know. At this time, we cannot help anyone. Sorry, Black. Please clear ship."

      The screen went dead. Campbell stared at it with sultry eyes. Sorry. The hell you're sorry. What gives here, anyway?

      He thrust out an angry hand to the transmitter. And then, quite suddenly, the Taxil was looking at him out of the screen.

      The hostile look was gone. Anger replaced it, but not anger at Campbell. The Taxil said, in a low, rapid voice:

      "You're not lying about coming from the Kraylens?"

      "No. No, I'm not lying." He opened his shirt to show the tattoo.

      "The dirty scut! Mister Black, clear ship, and then make contact with one of the outer hulks on the lowest tier. You'll find emergency hatchways in some of the pipes. Come inside, and wait."

      His dark eyes had a savage glitter. "There are some of us, Mister Black, who still consider Romany a refuge!"

      * * * * *

      Campbell cleared ship. His nerves were singing in little tight jerks. He'd stepped into something here. Something big and ugly. There had been a certain ring in the Taxil's voice.

      The thin, gravelly Mr. Tredrick had something on his mind, too. Something important, about Kraylens. Why Kraylens, of all the unimportant people on Venus?

      Trouble on Romany. Romany the gypsy world, the Solar System's stepchild. Strictly a family affair. What business did a Public Enemy with a low number and a high valuation have mixing into that?

      Then he thought of the drum beating in the indigo night, and an old man watching liha-trees stir in a slow, hot wind.

      Roy Campbell called himself a short, bitter name, and sighed, and reached lean brown hands for the controls. Presently, in the infra-field, he made out an ancient Krub freighter on the edge of the lowest level, connected to companion wrecks by sections of twelve-foot pipe. There was a hatch in one of the pipes, with a hand-wheel.

      The Fitts-Sothern glided with exquisite daintiness to the pipe, touched it gently, threw out her magnetic grapples and suction flanges, and hung there. The airlock exactly covered the hatchway.

      Campbell got up. He was sweating and as edgy as a tomcat on the prowl. With great care he buckled his heavy gun around his narrow hips. Then he went into the airlock.

      He checked grapples and flanges with inordinate thoroughness. The hatch-wheel jutted inside. He picked up a spanner and turned it, not touching the frigid metal.

      There was a crude barrel-lock beyond. Campbell ran his tongue once over dry lips, shrugged, and climbed in.

      He got through into a space that was black as the Coalsack. The air was thin and bitingly cold. Campbell shivered in his silk shirt. He laid his hand on his gun butt and took two cautious steps away from the bulge of the lock, wishing to hell he were some place else.

      Cold green light exploded out of nowhere behind him. He half turned, his gun blurring into his palm. But he had no chance to fire it.

      Something whipped down across the nerve-center in the side of his neck. His body simply faded out of existence. He fell on his face and lay there, struggling with all his might to move and achieving only a faint twitching of the muscles.

      He knew vaguely that someone rolled him over. He blinked up into the green light, and heard a man's deep, soft voice say from the darkness behind it:

      "What made you think you could get away with it?"

      Campbell tried three times before he could speak. "With what?"

      "Spying. Does Tredrick think we're children?"

      "I wouldn't know." It was easier to speak this time. His body was beginning to fade in again, like something on a television screen. He tried to close his hand. It didn't work very well, but it didn't matter. His gun was gone.

      Something moved across the light. A man's body, a huge, supple, muscular thing the color of dark bronze. It knelt with a terrible tigerish ease beside Campbell, the bosses on its leather kilt making a clinking noise. There was a jeweled gorget of reddish metal around the base of its throat. The stones had a wicked glitter.

      The deep, soft voice said, "Who are you?"

      Campbell tried to force the returning life faster through his body. The man's face was in shadow. Campbell looked up with sultry, furious eyes and achieved a definite motion toward getting up.

      The kneeling giant put out his right arm. The green light burned on it. Campbell's eyes followed it down toward his throat. His face became a harsh, irregular mask cut from dark wood.

      The arm was heavily, beautifully muscled. But where the hand should have been there was a leather harness and a hook of polished Martian bronze.

      * * * * *

      Campbell knew what had struck him. The thin, hard curve of that hook, more potent than the edge of any hand.

      The point pricked his throat, just over the pulse on the left side. The man said softly:

      "Lie still, little man, and answer."

      Campbell lay still. There was nothing else to do. He said, "I'm Thomas Black, if that helps. Who are you?"

      "What did Tredrick tell you to do?"

      "To get the hell out. What gives with you?" If that Taxil was spreading the word about him, he'd better hurry. Campbell decided to take a chance. The guy with the hook didn't seem to love Tredrick.

      "The black boy in the radio room told me to come aboard and wait. Seems he's sore at Tredrick, too. So am I. That makes us all pals, doesn't it?"

      "You lie, little man." The deep voice was quietly certain. "You were sent to spy. Answer!"

      The point of the hook put the exclamation point on that word. Campbell winced away. He wished the lug wouldn't call him "little man." He wouldn't remember ever having felt more hopelessly scared.

      He said, "Damn your eyes, I'm not lying. Check with the Taxil. He'll tell you."

      "And betray him to Tredrick? You're clumsy, little man."

      The hook bit deeper. Campbell's neck began to bleed. He felt all right again otherwise. He wondered whether he'd have a chance of kicking the man in the stomach before his throat was torn out. He tried to draw farther away, but the pipe wall wouldn't give.

      A woman's voice spoke then, quite suddenly, from beyond the green light. Campbell jumped. He hadn't even thought about anyone else being there. Now it was obvious that someone was holding the light.

      The voice said, "Wait, Marah. Zard is calling me now."

      It was a clear, low voice. It had music in it. Campbell would have loved it if it had croaked, but as it was it made his nerves prick with sheer ecstasy.