CHAPTER IV

The doors were protected by rigid barriers of projected force, and the light-pistol burned out before Shane had quite finished cutting through the wall. But he had taken a long knife from the dead _Pervod_ in the third guard-car. He finished the job with it.

So, finally, they were inside, crawling through an ever-murkier blackness while the silence hammered at them like a living thing.

And then, suddenly, out of the ebon stillness, a voice said: "Welcome, Earthman!"

A man's voice, this; or at least, a voice not of woman: not loud, but harsh and alien; not thunderous, but vibrant with savage power.

"Welcome, Earthman!" the voice repeated. "_Welcome to death!_"

Shane flung himself sidewise. He crashed against some piece of furniture. The burned-out light-gun clattered to the floor.

The voice mocked: "Can you not see me, Earthman? And your pistol--why do you not pick it up? Does the darkness get in your way?"

Somewhere--very far away, it seemed--Talu whispered raggedly: "_Sha_ Shane ... _Sha_ Shane...."

Shane said, "Here, _Malyalara_. This way." He groped over the floor as if feeling for the now-useless pistol; slipped and fell flat, and under cover of it, slid the _Pervod's_ long knife out of view beneath his jacket.

"Shall I give you light, great _gar_?" the voice taunted. "Shall I let you see me now?"

Shane's moving hand touched the light-pistol. His fingers gripped it--but flat to the floor, not lifting it. Muscles flexed, he poised, eyes probing the darkness. His voice echoed defiance: "Show yourself if you dare, _starbo_!"

"If I dare--!"

Like a quirst striking, Shane hurled the pistol at the voice.

The missile struck home with a meaty thud. A choked oath slashed the blackness.

* * * * *

Shane lunged forward. But he crashed into more furniture and fell again. Before he could rise, lights blazed.

For the fraction of a second Shane froze. Then--very slowly, very carefully--he turned and pulled himself to his feet.

Talu was already up--breathing too fast, a hand at her throat. Her dark eyes were wide and set, riveted on an open doorway in the opposite wall.

A strange figure loomed hulk-like in the shadows there--a gaunt, raw-boned giant in the _vree_-leather garb of the space rovers, with a light-pistol hanging ready in one webbed hand.

Yet this was no ordinary wanderer. The difference stood out in line and stance--a weird note of deviation that caught the eye instantly, even in a universe where bizarre and norm were one.

And about the waist was drawn a great iron belt ... Shane's belt, the belt of the asteroids.

Shane sucked in air.

The figure brought up one hand in a peremptory gesture of command.

Weapons poised, a half-dozen guards moved through the doorway. Nondescripts, being drawn from the backwaters of strange planets, they fanned out in a silent, menacing arc before Shane and the slave girl.

Wordless, cold-eyed, Shane stared them down. They halted, hesitating.

Now the giant in the doorway stalked forward, clear of the shadows.

Numbly, almost, Talu took a dragging step towards the hulking goliath, then another ... another....

"Out of the way, _Malya_! Let him see me!" The very repression that echoed in the giant's words was infinitely more fearsome than roars or rantings. A webbed fist lashed out backhanded at the slave girl, and the force of the blow sent her careening almost to Shane's side. "Remember me, Earthman? Remember?"

Shane did not move. He did not speak.

The creature standing there walked on two legs like a human. Its thumbs were opposed. It spoke through its mouth instead of a throat-sac.

* * * * *

But the great lobed eyes that saw in the dark were pure _Fantay_, and the scaly roughness of the mottled skin was _Pervod_. The bulge of the skull went with Mars; the peculiar, pad-footed stride with the swamplands of Io. Hybrid, mongrel, the thing was a queer, off-trail mixture of all the races of Mars and Earth and Venus, and the gods of the far stars knew where else.

And there, at its waist, hung the belt of the _Chonyas_.

"I remember," Shane said. "You're Reggar, Quos Reggar--the slaver, the _theol_-peddler." Deliberately, insultingly, he spat on the floor. "Or are you running light-guns to Mimas this time?"

The creature that was Reggar chuckled, but the sound held no mirth. "Your memory's good, you _chitza_! Maybe it even goes back to the days when you passed the word through the spaceports that you'd feed my heart to the _kiavis_ if I ever ramped ship in the asteroid belt again."

"I said it; I meant it." Shane's eyes were bleak. He stood unyielding, jaw outthrust, and his words slashed. "When the _chonya_ chiefs came in and struck their banners and picked me, an Earthman, as _gar_ of the asteroids to lead them, I swore on the star-stone of Hiaroloch that I'd stop scum like you--"

"Only now I'm back," Reggar cut in harshly. "I'm bigger this time, Shane; big enough to make up for all the years I've had to stay away. My fleets are stronger than yours, and my brain is better. Today, when you broke free and fled, I said to myself: 'Where would the Earthman go? What will his first thought be?' And I know the way you think so well that I was here in Kyrsis' rooms before you!"

"So?"

"So I've taken your belt, and now I'm going to take your _yodor Chonyas_, too. I'll hit the asteroids, one after another, and clean them out, till there isn't a _Chonya_ anywhere left free." The great lobed eyes glittered balefully. The alien voice struck a deeper note. "And you're going to help me, Shane!"

"You're mad as a _ban_, Reggar," Shane said tightly.

"Mad? You call me mad?" There was a sort of obscene glee in the other's chuckle. "Is it mad to strive for power, great _gar_--the kind of power you've held these years? Is it mad to hunt slaves for a market that pays triple prices and begs for more? No! That's why I brought you here--"

"Here or a million miles across the void, what makes you think I'd help you?" Shane slashed savagely. Beneath the jacket, his fingers caressed the hilt of the _Pervod_ knife. "For that matter, how _could_ I help you? Do you see the _Chonya_ chiefs as such fools that they'd follow me into your net, no matter what I said or did?"

* * * * *

The creature before him grinned hideously. "It won't be as hard as you tell it, Shane. The trick is to split the Federation--and there is where I need you."

"The Federation--?"

"Your acting falls short of your memory, Earthman. Your secret conference on the slave raids--I know about it. You should have been there by now; the meetings start tomorrow. When you don't appear, there'll be talk about the _Chonyas_ and _Malyas_, and how they always were slavers till the Federation beat them down."

"You talk nonsense, Reggar," Shane said curtly. But of a sudden his mouth seemed a trifle dry.

"Do I?" The alien voice rang with a note of dark triumph. "I have friends, Earthman ... friends so respectable, so high-placed, that they would not admit that they even so much as knew my name. But they have their price, and so they still play my game. They will be there, at the conference. They will cry out that the _Chonyas_ and _Malyas_ are behind these raids as in the days gone by."

"And when we deny it--?"

"You'll have no chance to deny it. Reports will come in--confirmed reports that say the Earthman, Shane, great _gar_ of the asteroids, has gone the _Chonya_ way. That he, himself, is leading raiders, sweeping the lesser moons for slaves."

Bleakly, Shane stared at the creature. His fists clenched spasmodically, and knots of muscle stood out at the hinges of his jaws.

Then that, too, passed.

"A lie is a lie, Reggar," he said tonelessly. "Someplace, sometime, it always breaks down."

"But there will be no lie, great _gar_," the other mocked. "The reports will speak the truth. For as you say, a lie breaks down, and this is one time I dare not chance a gamble. So you will be out there in the void, in a _Chonya_ raider ship. I myself shall supply it. A wild _Chonya_ crew will man it, drawn from the dregs that you cast out of the asteroids when the chiefs came in and named you _gar_. Shane the slaver, the worlds will call you."

"And then?" clipped Shane.

* * * * *

The note of triumph in the mongrel's voice rose higher. A scaly fist came up, in a gesture that spoke of arrogance and power. "Chaos will sweep the void, Earthman--and I shall sweep the asteroids! The fools in the Federation will hang deadlocked for a time, for some still fear war more than they fear raiders. So long as that deadlock lasts, the void is mine! The _Chonyas_ have given up their war fleets; they cannot strike back. Yet no matter how they cry of raids and beg for mercy, no one will believe them. My friends will talk of their pleas as stratagems to lure out the Federation fleet. And when at last the deadlock breaks and the war-heads roar down on Ceres and Pallas and the rest--why, what will it matter to me? For by then my slavers will have taken the last _Chonya_ off and stripped the last rock bare!" The creature paused; hammered the two webbed hands together. "A well-laid plan, is it not, Earthman? Can you find even one small flaw?"

Shane stood motionless for a moment. Then, slowly, his lips twisted into the ghost of a smile. "Yes, Reggar. I find one."

The other eyed him curiously, with an air that might have been a sort of repressed mirth. "And that one, great _gar_--?"

Shane said: "The flaw is me. For your plan to work I must go along. That leaves a decision in my hands: a choice. And I've already made it: no matter what you say or do, I'll have no part of your schemes." His jaw set. "You should have known that without my telling you, Reggar."

The mongrel nodded. Again, the strange note of mirth was in him. "Of course. I did know. As for choices--there are three, not two."

"Three choices--?"

"Three. The first, you may already know. We focused a Paulsini beam on the ship that was carrying you to the meeting on the slave raids. The frequency of the impulses in your brain was changed. My will became yours. I forced you to come here."

"Yes?"

"It is your first choice. You know the pain when your brain's frequency is forced to change. But if you insist, I shall use it--take control of your body, send you out to raid as I would."

Shane breathed deeply. "And the second?"

"That is even better. You know what happens to a man whose blood has three times tasted _theol_?"

"Yes."

"I sent the woman"--Reggar gestured to Talu--"to you with an injector. It held _theol_ ... a special high-potency solution. If you wish, you shall have the three full doses I'd planned for you. After that, I can send you anywhere without fear, for the _theol_ will break your will like any other, and you'll do the things you're told to do and always come crawling back for more, and more, and more."

Shane shifted. He flicked a glance to Talu.

* * * * *

She had not moved from the spot where she had fallen. Dark eyes unfathomable, face expressionless, she lay there, following Reggar's every gesture.

"Do my choices hit you so hard you cannot speak?" sneered Reggar. "Surely the great Shane would not crawl like an _etavi_, even before he hears my third offer?"

Shane folded his arms and met the creature's glare. His hand clenched on the hilt of the hidden knife. "There's been no groveling yet, Reggar. For my part, there'll be none. Get on with your babblings!"

"I like this third choice best of all," the other said, and his voice now was almost silky. "It is so simple, too! You raid as a slaver under me; of your own free will, you do my bidding: that is all."

"All--?"

"Your word is good across the void, Earthman. I, too, trust it. Pledge me on your soul that you'll serve me as faithfully and well as you know how, take my interests as yours, and you shall leave here as free as any man who ever breathed."

Again the hideous grin split Reggar's face. He rocked with harsh, horrible laughter.

"Do it, Earthman! I beg you, do it! It would be the sweetest revenge of all--you, Shane, _gar_ of the asteroids, turning slaver to save your own worthless skin! You, the legend, the man without fear, crushing down your precious _Chonyas_ rather than walk the other paths I've offered! Your name linked with mine, your fate in my hands by your choice--"

"One question, Reggar--" Shane broke in. Under cover of his folded arms, he drew the _Pervod_ knife half clear. His weight was on the balls of his feet, now; his muscles ready.

"What--?"

"Will your loot buy back your soul from hell when the maggots are eating through your brain?"

"_What?_"

* * * * *

Shane's voice rose to sudden thunder: "Armor your heart, too, Reggar! The _kiavis'_ teeth are sharp, and I swear they'll feed on you and the scum that ride with you! I'll see you dead, and your head will rot on a pike at the gates of Ceresta--"

The mottling on the mongrel's face turned livid.

"You want chaos, Reggar? Cry chaos, then! Because if chaos comes, your death comes with it! The _Chonya_ war fleet will hunt you down--"

"You _starbo_!" roared Reggar.

He lunged at Shane.

Talu, the slave girl, cried out.

The guards rushed forward.

Shane moved like a leaping tiger. The knife was out, his muscles flexing. A shout of wild triumph rose in his throat.

Again Talu screamed.

Something struck Shane behind the knees--a heavy impact, hard and low.

He lurched--off balance, toppling. His blow went wild.

The next instant Reggar smashed him in the face. The knife flew out of his hand. A guard sledged him from behind.

Shane crashed to the floor. Desperately, he jerked up knees and elbows; twisted, trying to shield himself from Reggar's savage kicks.

His hands slapped another body sprawled against his--the body that had knocked him down. His fingers knotted in silken hair.

Spasmodically, he jerked.

A woman's sharp cry of pain rang out in answer.

It was Talu.