Kenneth Bulmer - No Man's World

“Fat lot of honor I’ve left now,” Caradine said sourly.

“Oh, I don’t know.” Allura smiled at him. “I’d say you’d done a good job of retaining your manly virtue intact.”

“If only—” Caradine burst out. “If only Shanstar and Ahansic and all the others could get together! Then, we’d be able to talk sense to Horakah.”

“That’ll be the day,” grunted Koanga, rising from his chair. “Now find Rawson and his woman before the police do.”

Rawson and Sharon found Caradine walking about in front of the garages. He had an idea they’d come that way. He kept it brief. Yes, he’d go along with their plans. They parted and the smile of triumph on the pair from Ahansic was so alike as to make Caradine begin to wonder.

Harriet Lafonde smiled too, as she looked up with the greeting lighting her face. She rose gracefully from the chair under the wide-spreading trees with the curiously flat pale-green leaves. The chair moved back silendy on the stone patio flags.

“Well, Mr. Carter. So you have come to collect your visa.”

He smiled unaffectedly at her. No doubt about it; she was charming. Her perfectly styled gray hair caught a vagrant beam of green-tinted sunshine and for a moment gleamed with a pure golden light. A trick, an optical illusion, but it transformed her into an exciting woman ten years younger.

“If it is still available. You know that I was for a time suspected of murder?”

“Yes, I know. So tiresome. But mistakes made by other departments do not affect me yet, I trust. As far as my travel department is involved, Mr. Carter, your visa is here, ready for you.” She held out her hand.

The plastic-covered case was warm from her grasp, warm from the warmth of the blood running in her veins. Caradine took it, feeling that warmth. He smiled.

“Thank you… Harriet.” He swallowed. “I’ll probably be leaving tomorrow. May I… that is, would you care to do me the honor of dining with me tonight?”

She tilted back her head and looked at him through long eyelashes. Then she laughed, a mellow golden gong-note amid the tinkling sounds of falling water and bird song and insect hum. Her eyes were a soul-drowning gray.

“I would be delighted, John.”

Emotionless robots handled the luggage with superhuman skill and expertise. Handbags, grips, suitcases, duffelbags, packing cases, crates, shining alloy cylinders—all were smoothly operated by the robotic team of loaders. The starship stood straddle-finned on the pad, the early sun sending a gleam to strike and bounce in reflected glory from her needle nose. The passengers rode upwards smoothly in elevators that dropped them off at the decks specified on their tickets.

Men and women from Ragnar and the good ol’ PLW were last to leave the elevator, entering the ship through the first-class airlocks immediately in rear of the command sections.

Because this was a ship belonging to Horakah, nationals of that stellar grouping also traveled first-class.

Dave Caradine entered the starship through a narrow port situated just where the fins sprang from the hull.

He went straight to his cabin, a two-berth place with cramped accommodation for the week’s run. Earth week, that was. Five days, Horakah standard. Have to remember that. Especially since that night of rain when Koanga had told hmi that he knew Shanstar was not the planet of his birth.

To hell with that now. And don’t—particularly don’t— worry about the silvery alloy crate that had made planetfall on Gamma-Horakah containing samples of Shanstar wares and was leaving that planet with a man and woman of Ahansic cocooned snugly within its innocent metal shell. He wondered how they’d stand out the journey. They were provisioned, had a good air supply, sanitary arrangements—a sort of miniature spaceship in which to ride within the larger compass of the starship.

They’d done it all in that hectic week since he had agreed and that last night when he’d spent an evening and night with Harriet Lafonde such as he had imagined denied to him forever.

She was no dignified, old and majestic lady. No, sir! Not when the Pomcrush had a sweetener added, and the lights had shone in her eyes and her gray hair had been rearranged to reveal the genuine golden strands hidden beneath. She’d said, laughing, that the gray camouflage made her feel more up to the job of travel official for an entire planet.

And, for the third particular thing in the thoughts thronging his brain, when she’d discarded that demurely severe green dress and sallied forth in a silver sheath that revealed maturity that both Sharon and Allura would not come by until they had experienced a great deal more of the galaxy.

Yes. A great girl Harriet Lafonde.

A pity that her planetary grouping and his might very soon he at war.

Of course, a girl could spray her hair any color she wished for a night’s enjoyment, and foundation garments could turn a plug-ugly marine sergeant into a TV starlet at the tightening of a magneclamp. But Harriet had used those tricks to age and mature herself instead of the other way around. The girl with whom he’d lived it up along the great white way around the entertainment belt of Gamma had been the real Harriet. That, in due time, he’d found out. It had been real nice.

Yes, quite a girl.

The warning signal sounded and the starship was cleared of visitors. Caradine stepped out of his cabin and found his way to the observation lounge where he ordered a Pomcrush. Around him his fellow passengers for the journey, drifting into this automatic central point on the time of departure, were talking and laughing, all in subdued voices, waiting for the moment when the starship would lift jets and hoist for interstellar space. The robot bartender sounded brash, dispensing drinks, smokes and sedative pills.

The faintest of thrillings through the ship’s fabric coincided with the last warning. Four minutes later the ship leaped from Camma-Horakah and was outward bound.

Well, that was it. There was no going back now.

The sight of the planet, just before they made transition and went into interstellar drive, affected Caradine oddly.

If some of the people surrounding him had their way, their machinations came to fruition, then the next time he saw that planet might be its last—when it was disintegrating in a sleeting storm of ruptured atoms. He shuddered at the thought. Planetary destruction, although nowadays merely a part of the appurtenances of war, was still a horrible concept, no matter how it was rationalized out. It existed. That alone was enough to account for deviations from the norm, like those fantastically dressed kid gangs back there.

Tommy Gorse. Well, he wasn’t sorry he’d knocked him down. But he felt pity for the stupid kid for getting mixed up in an affair that had resulted in his murder. They’d caught the murderer all right. Caradine had realized, then, the depths of ambition and deviltry in Rawson.

On the TV the murderer, walking bowed to his trial, had only once lifted his face to the maliciously watching cameras.

A whimsical face, with a dark, secretive look and a strongly cleft chin…

Rawson had used his instrument and obtained what he wanted. The instrument, once used, could be tossed aside.

Well, Caradine had had to discard unwanted tools in the past. He thanked God that he’d never stooped to letting them hang or burn or be brain-probed on a charge that really should have been laid at his door. He finished his drink and went to his cabin.

His two-berth cabin had been allotted him as a matter of routine and he had considered himself fortunate that he had no roommate. He opened the door—robots were a luxury these low-down quarters did not extend to—and a hearty voice said: