Part 2

"Don't care ef I do," remarked Karns, and sat down in the seat indicated. "As I was saying, I thought I'd look in on this place, seeing as how I had to make the perihelion hop home. Have to git home to see my oldest grandchild married."

"Wouldn't be interested in a bit of cargo, would you?" asked the man. "Our own ship is overdue, and I have some freight for Venus."

"I'm allus interested in a bit of cargo," said Karns, "but this trip I can't stop by Venus--time's too short."

"Oh, well," said his host, indifferently, "it doesn't matter about that. I was thinking of shipping some boxes of claws and hides to our agent at Venusberg for sale there. We are a new company and have no outlets on Terra yet, unless you wanted to speculate on your own account and buy them outright."

"Speculation's my business," said Hank Karns, serene and bland. And added, with just a touch of foxiness, "_ef_ the buying price is right."

"Oh, we won't quarrel about that," laughed the man. "The hides are a by-product with us--this is a pharmaceutical outfit. We make a preparation from the hormones of these beasts. You can have the horns at almost any price."

They spent the better part of an hour in good natured haggling, the child-like old man raising first one trivial objection after another to win small advantages--chiefly in the matter of valuation of the various items of trade goods he had to offer. None of the lone traders ever dealt in cash. The _Swapper_ was most appropriately named.

At last they shook on the bargain--and a bargain it most obviously was from the trader's point of view. Mr. Raoul Dement, or so the company man styled himself, presented the visiting captain two flasks of the violet liquor after the old custom of the trade.

"Nice stuff," observed Hank Karns, licking his lip. "The best I ever."

"There's twelve cases of it in the warehouse," said Dement, with a wink. "Now, if you were the smuggling sort, there would be a nice profit for you. But, of course...."

"Hell," exploded Hank Karns, "running comet-dew's no sin. Wisht I had a decimo for every gallon I've hauled. Once in a coon's age I get stuck with a little fine, but shucks--the customer'll allus pay that for you."

There followed more dickering, but the upshot of it was that Hank Karns signed up for everything that had been offered him.

"Bon voyage," said Mr. Dement. "If you ever pass this way again, drop in and visit."

"Sure will," said Hank Karns, looking his man in the eye. He was interested in his host's forehead. About an inch from the right temple there was a slight depression--the ineradicable scar of an old skull injury.

* * * * *

Mercury was still a big disk behind when the _Swapper_ straightened out on her earthward trajectory.

"Step alive there, Billy, we got lots to do."

All the blandness, all the gullibility and child-like faith were gone from Hank Karns' face now. He looked much more like work-ridden gnome than an emaciated Santa Claus. For they had unpacked every case and strewn its contents on the deck, looking for contraband of a more serious nature than the harmless comet-dew. But no case contained anything except what the invoice declared. Hank left the job of repacking to the boy and went about a minute search of the ship itself.

In that he was not a moment too soon. Behind the control board--hidden under the vine-like mass of electric leads--were two thermobombs. Their detonating coils were already hot. The control board was divided into three panels, each controlling an opposite pair of the six tubes which were arranged hexagonally about the stern. Two of the panels were about to be ruined by fire.

Hank Karns' first impulse was to snatch the bombs loose and let them burn out harmlessly on the deck, but suddenly he checked it. Instead he withdrew his hand and stuck his blistered fingers in his mouth. Then he shouted a warning to Billy Hatch.

"Hey! Stand by for a blast. Bring an extinguisher, quick!"

The boy ran up, but nothing happened for several minutes. Then the two boards flashed fire. They put the fire out, but the damage was done. The _Swapper_ was not nearly up to acceleration. She could never get to Earth at that velocity. She would have to limp into Venus on her two remaining tubes and have yard electricians renew her wiring.

"Pretty neat," said Hank Karns, admiringly, contemplating his ruined controls.

"I did the best I could, Cap'n," said Billy, modestly, thinking the compliment was meant for him.

"You did all right, son," said the skipper. "Supposing you turn in now. I'll do what's left."

Hank Karns did not at once change course for Venus. He was still unsatisfied that he knew all he should know about his ship and its seemingly innocuous cargo. It was too obvious to miss that Dement had ordered the bombs planted to ensure the _Swapper's_ going into Venus. It was an easy guess that the suggestion to take liquor on board was a device to ensure the ship's arrest and the confiscation that was sure to follow, Venusian courts being what they were. But to Hank Karns' suspicious mind there was much more to it than that. In the first place, he could have obviated both. He could have snatched the bombs before they exploded, and he could yet jettison the liquor. Moreover, if the mere elimination of all visitors to Mercury was what they were after, those bombs could just as well have been of feroxite and designed to destroy the ship entirely, as was done in the case of the openly hostile Merrill and Carter. No, the master plot required the _Swapper_ to go into Venus and be done away with there. Why? He thought that over.

Suddenly he arose and unlocked his little safe. From its lead container he withdrew a small pellet of radium and set up his fluoroscope. Then he dragged out one of the trockelbeck hides. He searched it systematically from horn to stubby tail, from the scaly back to the claws of the feet. Then he put his fluoroscope away. Grinning into his beard, he went aft and got a pair of pliers, a hammer and a cold chisel.

One of the horns came away as he screwed it off. He knew already from its fluorescence that it was hollowed out and filled with some substance, but he wanted to make sure. He shook the pale green powder inside out into his palm and sniffed it. Yes, that was it. There was the unmistakable odor of crushed cherries and the sickish sweetness of the hashish of the skies--trilibaine! Ah, now he was getting somewhere. And as he split a few back scales at random he found that each had a few grams of the insidious drug within it. One such hide would supply a retail peddler for many months, each scale a separate delivery.

He delayed no longer. He shifted his course toward Venus and at the same time sat down to his radio key. He sent:

"URGENT: Venusberg Sky Yard. Attention assistant dockmaster. Four tubes disabled account switchboard fire. Please reserve for me berth twenty-three. Litigation in prospect. Can you recommend lawyer? (signed) Hank Karns, captain, TS Swapper."

"Well," he said to himself as he carefully swept up the tell-tale green dust from the deck and added it to the bundle of broken scales and neatly bored and threaded horns preparatory to firing it all through the garbage tube into his wake, "I've shot my wad. Now let's see how smart Mr. Brown turns out to be."

* * * * *

He learned very soon that the thermobombs were but an added precaution. He had not been waiting more than a couple hours when his loudspeaker began to buzz. He glanced at it in surprise, as he was still a long way from Venus. The message began coming through, harsh and peremptory, "Lay to, _Swapper_, to receive a boarding party. Lay to, or take the consequences. Sky-guard calling. Lay to!"

Hank Karns cut his rockets and went to the airlock to await the arrival of the cruiser. It was not long in coming.

Two smartly uniformed young officers sprang in.

"Let's see your manifest," ordered one, curtly, while the other headed for the hold. In a moment the second came back with two flasks of the pale violet comet-dew.

"The old boy is lousy with the stuff," he reported to the other. "Cases and cases of it."

"Yes," said the first, "and not a damn word about it in the manifest. This makes the second one of these old coots we've hauled up this month--what do you say, shall we call this one conspiracy?"

"Why not?" countered the other.

Karns said nothing beyond the usual blustering protests that would be expected of him. Then he lapsed into silence as the two took over after ordering their own vessel to proceed.

They did not go to the commercial sky-yard, but to the official one. Other officers met them, and Hank Karns was led straight away to jail. He protested every step of the way, demanding to be taken before the Terrestrial resident commissioner, or to be booked in the usual way. Both those demands were refused, whereupon he asked for a lawyer.

"Don't kid yourself, old man," said one of his guards. "You're in Venus now. Here you are."

There he was. There was no question about that. The barred door slammed behind his departing escort with an air of utter finality.

"Hi-ya, pop!" screamed some hoodlum down the corridor. "Whatcha in for?"

After that nothing happened. Hank Karns looked about him at his cramped cell and settled down to make the best of it. It would be tiresome, locked up alone this way, but in a day or so perhaps the mysterious Mr. Brown would put in his appearance.

The next day came, but no Mr. Brown. However, early in the morning another visitor came in his place. Karns heard footsteps approaching and the jangle of keys. His door was flung open and a tall stranger stepped in. The man was quite old and clad in the blue uniform, faded and patched, of a space skipper. He was obviously a lone trader, but if he was, he was the only one in the universe that Hank Karns did not know. For this man, with his beetling gray eyebrows and hard steely eyes beneath, he had never laid eyes on before.

"Two minutes, no more," warned the guard, and stood back in the corridor where he could both see and hear.

"Howdy Hank," said the newcomer. "Danged if it ain't gitting so that Tom Bagley spends half his time bailing you out or paying fines. Why, I'd hardly landed here but what I heard you'd been slung into the calaboose again, and I says to myself, says I...."

"Yeah, Tom, I know," said Hank Karns, penitently, trying not to look at the eavesdropping guard. Inwardly he was seething with doubt and curiosity. Could it be that this was some minion of the collector trying to trick him, or was he acting for Mr. Brown? He remembered telling the fellow in the wickerware place that what he really needed was a man of his own type. Maybe they had found one. At any rate, he chose to pretend he knew him.

"Anyhow," went on the stranger, "I looked up a feller named Brown that I know here and asked him what to do. He said things looked pretty black and his advice was to plead guilty and say nothing. Might get off with a fine or something. And that he had a little money of yours. He got me this pass, but said he couldn't work it twice. Now tell me, Hank, what do you want me to do? I gotta get out of here for Mercury in a day or so."

Hank Karns looked at the man steadily for a moment. He was on the spot. The man was evidently from Brown, but he knew neither of them personally. But worse, the guard was listening to every word, and there were doubtless dictaphones as well. But the two minutes were running out and there would not be a second visit.

"I'll tell you, Tom, there isn't but one thing you can do. I'll have to take my medicine, I guess, but I hate like everything to lose them trocklebeck hides and horns. The critters is dying off--poisoned by pagras. Them danged snakes are all over Mercury. You might not have money enough to buy 'em in, but sorta keep track of 'em, won't you? They're not worth much now, but they'll be _mighty_ valuable some day. There's a man here from Io that'll pay a good price for 'em, ef you can find him."

"Time's up," snapped the guard, coming forward.

"All right, you old scalawag," said the phony trader captain, jovially, "I'll do my best. But watch your step with that jedge. He's tough."

"I know," said Hank Karns, despondently, and settled his face in his hands.

The door slammed and the footsteps withdrew, ringing emptily down the metal passage.

Dreary day followed dreary day. Time after time Karns heard footsteps ringing in the corridor, and as often he heard the rattle of keys as some door was opened and another unfortunate was ordered out to meet his doom--the sentence that was to change his state from slow dry rot to the swift wet rot of the Swamp. But it was never Karns' door.

Then at last came the day when guards took him to the identical court where Wilkerson had been tried. The evidence was brief and to the point. He was apprehended trying to sneak into Venus when his clearance papers called for Terra as his destination. He had on board eight cases of illicit liquor. He had no acceptable explanation. Guilty. Two years in the Swamp and the loss of his ship was the sentence. Then they took him back to his cell to await the next caravan to the penal camps.

The second stretch of waiting was harder to take than the first, for he had placed the enigmatic collector now in his memory. The man was Von Kleber, thought to have died many years ago in the uranium mines of Sans Espérance. Karns knew him to be a convict from the fact that he had grafted new skin on his face and head so that the burns and baldness caused by radioactivity would not show. But that he was the notorious Von Kleber himself had not occurred to him. And with that recognition came the other. Raoul Dement was the man known as Frenchy the Hop, vice-president of the Von Kleber ring. It was he who had operated the narcotic racket while the big boss turned his attention to such other lines as piracy, white-slaving and smuggling in general. If such men could flourish unchecked in the well-policed Jovian satellites for more than a decade, it was hopeless to expect to dislodge them from their place on corrupt and autonomous Venus.

And so time dragged on and Hank Karns sat, awaiting the day when he would be taken away to the Swamp. He wondered apathetically whether he would be sent to the same camp where Wilkerson and Hildreth were. But at last there came a day when footsteps rang again in the corridors and he heard doors being opened and men taken away. Finally men stopped before his own cell and called him forth. Between two soldiers they marched him away.

To his surprise they took him first to the street, where three sedan chairs were waiting. The guards very politely indicated that Karns was to get in the middle one and they took the others. Hank clambered in and they set off. Shortly they drew up before the courthouse.

He was met inside by a tall, slender man of nearly his own age who wore the uniform of Chief Inspector of the Interplanetary F.B.I.

"How are you, Captain?" he said cheerily. "Sorry you had such a long stay in jail, but we'll try to make that up to you. Come in here and let me show you something?"

Hank Karns looked at the inspector in amazement. He was Frank Haynes, the man who had broken the Von Kleber case years before. There had been a time when they worked closely together on the information that Karns furnished when he was released from Sans Espérance. He said nothing in reply, though, as Haynes was leading the way into the courtroom. In the dock were two baldheaded prisoners--Von Kleber, erstwhile Collector of the Port, and Mr. Dement, manager of the Mercurian drug works. The judge was a new one--a judge who looked like a judge should look.

"There they are, thanks to you," said Haynes, pointing. "Two as clever criminals as ever plagued the system. We've been a long time catching them. But their career is over now.

"Our local operative, known as Brown to you, has been trying for months to locate the source of the trilobaine flood but without avail. The Venusian authorities blocked him at every turn but there was nothing we could do about that unless we could hang a Federal offense on them. It was you who did that for us. I am very glad I gave you that identification ring after our cleanup on Callisto and the list of the secret addresses of our agents. I felt then that you were a man of discretion and would not abuse its privileges and today I most certainly am more than justified. When I interviewed you in your cell...."

"You!"

Inspector Haynes grinned at Hank's surprise.

"Pretty effective disguise, eh? Well, as I was about to say--you gave me all the tips that were needed. First of all, your mention of the scourge of pagras told me it was trilobaine you had aboard, for that is a distillation of pagra venom. That gave us jurisdiction. I attended the secret auction and tried to bid. Everything in the ship went for a song to Von Kleber's pals, but when I went to bid on the trocklebeck hides I ran into stiff opposition. They were not to be had at any price. So I stopped bidding.

"Our operatives trailed those hides through five sets of owners before we came to the Collector himself. Early this morning we made our raid and took in all their supplies of drugs and twenty-five of their peddlers. Previously we had raided Mercury and those men came in about an hour ago. They had quite a thriving little business, and why we didn't think of their method of smuggling in the trilobaine before this I'll never know. We knew, of course, that it must be coming in the ships that they confiscated. That much we were sure of. But we couldn't prove a damn thing until we knew _how_. Thanks to you, the ring is busted now, and we can do something for those poor devils who were innocently duped into being carriers of the drug. Runners have already been sent to the Swamp to bring back your friends. And there you are. You'll find your old _Swapper_ in the Yard, completely overhauled and stocked to the gunwales with grade A trade goods."

Hank Karns, trader, tugged at his grizzled beard and looked rather sheepishly at the floor.

"Dag it all," he said "that's fine enough. But gosh, I sure hated to make a damfool of myself in front of everybody thataway."

Inspector Haynes broke into laughter and crossed over and slapped him on the back.

"You old liar. You loved it!"