CHAPTER I

STRANGE BARGAIN

The big library was of platinum-and-teakwood. There were two occupants, a monstrous man who wore expensive vitrilex, and a wisp of a girl in a wheel chair. One entire wall space was taken up by a chart of the solar system. Below the chart was the label: _Marshall Space Lines, 1990 to 2055, First In Astral Commerce_.

Spaceports, marked by red pins, dotted the entire chart. The large man was humming as he thrust other scarlet pins into Ceres, Pallas and Juno with such a savagery as one might use in thrusting swords.

"Feel better, dad?" The wisp of a girl was speaking. Misty locks of sheeny hair lay on the back of the invalid chair like starclouds on a summer night. A beautiful frame for a picture of lifeless, transparent features.

"I ought to! It took fifty years to scalp the Thallin Starways!" gloated Keith Randolph Marshall, looking proudly at the carmine clusters that marked new interspace commerce lanes. "You bet! Fifty years to skin old Rufus Thallin's hide! Why, every ship he owns is mine now.

"He's going to come and beg! I've got it figured out. He'll come today, before the foreclosure. He'll be on his knees and I'll like it. He'll want more time on his notes, the ones I bought from mortgage owners long ago. That's another little surprise for him. Right now my secretary is waiting down below, and will send him up."

"You must be very proud," said the girl listlessly, and the leonine man brought his pacings up very short. Pain marked the tycoon's face. Deepening lines went snaking from his puckered brows.

"Eh? I'm proud enough, but I'll never be really happy! That's the bitter edge of crushing an enemy, I guess. I'd give everything I ever owned, turn over every red copper, if I could only make you well again, cure you from the Venus plague. You know that, darling."

Wistful eyes glimmered moistly, and her feeble hands pressed his monstrous one against her cheek.

"As a last resort," bellowed a new voice, "I'd even take you up on that, Marshall! I believe you were expecting me!"

Marshall spun and his gray mane quivered. It angered him to be caught off guard. Glaring past the glistening pyrite cases of interplanetary souvenirs, he saw the doorway. In it stood a man garbed roughly as are those accustomed to space travel, a great fellow fully as large as himself, who had to stoop to get in.

Stalking forward grimly came the mastodonic spaceman, while wellworn asteroid boots cut insolent gashes in the varnished teakwood floors, leaving scars that struck sparks in the owner's outraged eye as he watched the careless advance.

A spectacled secretary thrust his head in at the doorway, panting in an effort to overtake the caller.

"Mr. Rufus Thallin to call upon you," he gasped and withdrew apologetically.

"Mister who?" demanded Marshall.

"Rufus Thallin was my father," announced the young giant softly, and his grey eyes kindled. "They put him away yesterday, scattered his ashes to the infinities he loved. He made me promise to keep the old Thallin Starways going, whatever I did. That's why I'm here."

There was a small space-ship on Marshall's desk, spindle-shaped, a model of the latest Marshall anti-gravity spacer. It was a symbol of power, of survival of the fittest in space. Marshall was shocked by the news, but pretended a sudden interest in the miniature.

He stared through a window over his acres of a vast California rancho. So old Rufe Thallin, lean of girth, leathery of visage, was dead. Queer that he would never face him again. The executive went over to his desk and plopped down in a chair.

"Have a seat, son," he said in a quavering voice that surprised himself. He knew at once it was the wrong tone. Young Rufus had straightened, had scuffed new chicken tracks into the polished floor.

"Don't call me son!" burst out the young man angrily. "My father told me all about how you've hounded him, underbid all of his contracts, drove his spacers out of business. I'm warning you I'll do anything, anything at all, to get back at you. That's how I feel about it!"

The young whippersnapper! This was more like it. Marshall was glad he wouldn't have to waste sympathy on the young pup.

"Have a stogie, kid," he growled condescendingly, "and don't get huffy! Your old man stuck to out-moded rocket pushers, and I graduated with anti-gravity wings. He always was hard-headed!"

With two clattering steps young Rufus stalked forward and slammed fists down on the desk before Marshall.

"Listen, Marshall!" he snorted. "I know all about that! Don't go over that and rub it in. What do you think I've been doing at California Astro-Tech? I've studied up some good stuff that will make your gravity wings look like rowboats. I've got a propulsion system that will knock weeks off the regular schedule. All I need is a try! I'm asking that you give me a few months' time. With that new drive in performance I'll raise money and pay you back."

In another few minutes this young devil would be on his knees, promising anything, even his soul.

"Too bad, Thallin," said the astral magnate with cold satisfaction. "Can't do a thing for you. We're not flying kites! You played and lost. Take it like a man. If you've really got something good, and can put on a demonstration, I'll handle it at a profit for you--"

He wasn't prepared for the next move. The blonde caller of Nordic dimensions seemed to leap over his desk. One big hand grabbed the lighted cigar and ground it to shreds. The other seized his shirt front.

"You'd like it that way!" he challenged. "Then I'd be penniless, and you could make an easy steal! Nothing doing. I'm not out of the game yet. If I thought I was I'd grab your spindly old neck in my hands and wring it, right now. We'd both go out in grand style."

Sweat popped out on Marshall's forehead. It was hard to tell just how far the young jackanapes would go. Then the wheel chair lurched forward.

"Get back, Thallin," commanded Marshall as a frail hand thrust a flame gun at his caller's middle. "Or I'll tell Alyce to sear you. You're going a little too far with your threats!"

Rufus glanced at the muzzle of the electronic gun, flushed and backed away. The girl, already panting with the exhaustion brought on by excitement and the scant action, let the weapon fall back into her lap. It was hard to think of this shadow of a woman as that young and beautiful society débutante whose pictures had been plastered over all the pleasure bars from Mercury to Pluto. Venus plague strikes without mercy! In less than a year she was but a ghost of that former self.

"Guess I kind of forgot myself," admitted the young man sheepishly. "I sort of owe you an apology, Miss."

"You ought to be jailed," stormed Marshall uncertainly, rising partly to his feet. His big visitor did not cringe.

"You're big and strong," scoffed young Rufus scornfully. "And all puffed up with your own importance. Like a robber baron! Lots of power in your hands, and worlds to tremble at your decisions, but there's some things you're weak at. One thing--"

He looked suggestively at the limp little being in the wheel chair, so pallid and impassive. Her handling of the gun had been almost mechanical and quite without feeling. Marshall swayed, and young Rufus knew he had struck a vital spot.

"Thallin, I'll kill you for that!" he promised brokenly.

"She's your daughter, isn't she?" demanded the blond giant ruthlessly. "And a year ago she was queen of the interplanetary cafés. The doctors that attend her say she'll die in six months. What will you give for her life, Marshall?"

Falling back loosely into the seat, Keith Randolph Marshall began to quiver in every muscle of his body. Because he knew by the other's manner that he was serious.

"I've studied all the tricks of modern medicine," continued Rufus goadingly, "and know all the late practices and kinks. I'm not such a fool at that as I may be at running spacelines in the void!"

"I'll tell you," whispered Marshall savagely, his soul bare for the other's gaze. "And I'll tell you the truth! I'd give every cent I ever owned if she were sound and well. I'd give every space-ship I've got if she had the vitality of your oxlike body."

Whirling around, young Rufus pounced without warning, snapped up the flame-gun from the girl's lap, and held it before him. Then he began to rock with wild bursts of laughter.

"There's only one chance for her," he chuckled. "It's a cure most doctors, even now, are afraid to speak much about. But I've seen it happen. Out in space, a person's body is permeated with lots of solar rays you never get on Earth. Sometimes unhealthy tissue will heal like magic. The chances are slim, one in a hundred, but they're better than nothing."

Now Marshall's eyes were glazing with horror, and he seemed too paralyzed to move. The other's mockery drove him frantic.

"You wouldn't dare!" he gasped. "The physicians have said the shock on going to space will kill Alyce. It would be plain--murder!"

"You're a man of your word," yelled young Rufus. "I'll take that word. Don't forget that, Marshall! If I ever come back, it'll be to collect!"

With the flame-gun held expertly he leaned and scooped the girl's fragile body up in one powerful arm, then backed slowly away. Reaching the doorway, he leaped out of sight. His pounding feet echoed from down the hallway.