Part 2

Fanned out to either side of the racing liner, two sleek grey racers of fast, if obsolescent design, whirled silently through the void. They bore a red sun on needle prows.

"You wanted adventure," Thorne dryly chided Iris. Her deep breast heaved and her hands were clenched, but there was no fear in her beautiful face.

"I wanted life," she retorted, flashing him a glance of impatience.

"This is Death," he replied grimly.

"They liven our trip," she laughed, seizing his arm. "We've been dead since leaving Earth, you Mars-crawler. I could kiss them!"

Thorne laughed aloud, flinging an arm about her. "They may afford you the opportunity, you scatter-brain," he returned. "We have no armament."

"All ships carry toss-mines today," she snapped.

"They are already abreast of us," he pointed out. "They're calling the Patrol by now, of course."

"The Patrol!" she scoffed. "Shiny ships and sleepy men! Rather an honest pirate than a butter-brain in black and gold!"

Her open sneer cut short as from the nearer of the ships drawing closer and closer abeam sprang a pink glow and a stabbing beam of golden yellow to reach out and gently tap the liner.

It rocked under the impact of the force beam and the steady, drumming roar of the engines broke unevenly. The beam snapped off, but the engines sputtered and gasped, throwing the vessel off course. Again the yellow beam lanced out, crushing the tall stern fans and sending the liner staggering drunkenly. Futile in her agony, she launched the tiny throw mines which were her only armament, but the sleek raiders easily avoided their slow trajectories. The throbbing engines were gasping and barking as the vessel rolled on her uneven course.

Metallic voices broke the frightened silence in which the huddled passengers watched the unequal combat. Over the intercom pilots spoke sharply: "Stand by. Patrol ship within sight, coming up fast. Hold your positions."

* * * * *

Even as they cried out in relief, the attacking ships suddenly arced upward and swung away toward Venus, their fiery wakes a long trail of incandescent crystal in the inky void. Their parting shots missed the liner as she swerved on a new course to avoid just such vengeful rage, and a moment later they were lost among the sparkling stars. A sleek cruiser of the Planet Patrol swept by far astern, angling to cut off the fleeing pirates, but already too far away to more than frighten them from the prey they had already accounted theirs.

A joyous babble of voices broke out as the passengers reacted from their scared immobility. The liner was limping badly but not structurally damaged, and with that assurance the light butterflies aboard relaxed into their earlier gayety.

Iris Chanler, however, did not seem to so easily recover from the brief flurry of adventure which she had so ardently applauded. She was all Senator, and spoke with sharp feeling on the subject of the Planet Patrol and its many and manifest shortcomings. So outspokenly angry did she become that Thorne almost hesitated to continue the planned routine, fearing to drive her through sudden shock into outright denunciation of a service which apparently could not prevent such hideous tragedies as lay ahead on Banya Tor. Wise in women, he made no effort to counter her fury, nor point out that if the Planet Patrol was undermanned and ill equipped, she had no one to blame but her own parsimonious father, "Scrooge" Chanler. He wondered uneasily if the scowling old miser had indeed returned in the more attractive guise of the lovely daughter.

When she learned the liner's rocket tubes had been so damaged she could not proceed to Triton, but must put in at the nearby asteroid of Banya Tor, she exploded furiously. Thorne blandly pointed out that this was merely a minor inconvenience in the romantic interlude of the pirates and all but had his head taken off for his pains. Her revulsion seemed complete, but he determined to continue the plan in which the faked attack had only been intended as a means of diverting the ship to Banya Tor without arousing her suspicion when she found what horror she had been led to witness. The iron was hot and he must strike quickly before her natural light-heartedness overcame her frightened wrath.

It was a race against time, for they were still two days out of Banya Tor the following evening and she had apparently recovered. As a lark, she and the other girls had taken over the galley and prepared the evening meal for all hands. It had been a surprising success and they were relaxing with music in the inner saloon when Iris rejoined them.

Switching from domesticity with her usual flare, she was enticingly cased in a long black evening gown sweeping to the polished floor. A cluster of Mercurian fire stars blazed on her deep bosom and there were others netted in the rippling waves of her dark hair. She brushed aside the attentions of her party and came to Thorne, sitting in the front row of the little group facing a blonde girl seated before them with a miniature oval instrument on which she evoked sharp, wild music foreign to any he had ever heard. Seeing his absorption, Iris settled in a lounge a little to his rear. He nodded, but did not speak.

From his place, he could see the deserted outer saloon and the wheeling circles of the passing stars. He paid no attention, however, concentrating on the lovely player before the silent group. But, as he glanced again through the parted leaves of the inner doorway, he froze in sudden horror.

The huge bulk of a space-ship, blotting out the stars, was already upon them.

Its ports glowed suddenly red, as though with internal explosions, and a wide cone of golden light sprang from her prow to envelope the unsuspecting liner. Too late Thorne remembered he had not replaced the broken wires activating the directo-beam and the regular crew had apparently not discovered the damage. And the black ship rushing upon them was already not a thousand feet away.

Thorne's warning shout was never uttered. As the golden ray struck, the room was livid with its sudden glare, then dark and sullen red.

The girl with the musical instrument, cutoff in midflight, bowed stiffly forward and fell heavily to the floor at his feet. Her accompanist swayed sideways and toppled like a wooden doll from his low seat. A cold chill bit into Thorne, numbing him from neck to heels, but leaving his brain only too clear. Sodden thuds behind him as members of the Chanler party fell to the floor only confirmed his dread. If it were not the Avitt paralysis, it was a starker ray he had never known. A more dreadful fear which had been nagging at his subconscious for days bit deep and, as he turned his head with painful slowness, came to horror-stricken realization.

"Be silent, Captain Thorne," came a cold hard voice. "No sound, or you die."

It was the voice of Iris Chanler.

III

For a long minute he studied her, over the barrel of the small Blandarc she had whipped up from the cushions of her lounge seat. And at last he saw what it was that had been troubling him so long. Her hair was dark and her color and figure warm and sultry, but the hard grey eyes were flinty pale and glinting. Killer's eyes....

"So you _were_ a pirate, after all," he breathed, slowly.

Her icy laugh crawled over his twitching skin. "Did you think I had my wealth from my father's dribbling salary? He left me a better legacy, Captain Thorne."

"The family business, apparently," he returned, his dry lip twisting. For much was only too painfully clear. Her eyes narrowed, but she did not move.

"In a way. But I branch out."

"What's the deal?" he asked roughly. He had recovered full use of his faculties moments after the first paralyzing shock, but to her he seemed as immobile as all who lay sprawled unconscious about the saloon. If she had prepared for his partial resistance to the effects of the ray, due to the unusual condition of his t'ang-soaked nerves, she had fatally underestimated his powers of recovery. But he remained motionless. At the moment, helpless under her Blandarc, he could see the pirate vessel swinging along-side.

"Your friends?" he added, glancing through the door at the growing bulk of the raider. She smiled.

"My partners, rather."

"How do you work it, Senator?"

"As my father did, Captain Thorne. Years ago the outlaws banded together and made up an annual purse for the member of the appropriation committee who controlled the funds of the Planet Patrol. To obstruct and cut down the bill was his only duty. My father took it over from Senator Denton and I managed to take over from him after his death."

It was so simple. And had been so effective, hamstringing the Planet Patrol in its own bases.

"And now, open piracy. You destroy yourself, Senator. What does it get you?" He watched her, brows knit. She shrugged.

"You, Captain Thorne. Just you."

There was no need to explain. The wealthiest man since Croesus, an enormous ransom could well be torn from him, to say nothing of what could also be extracted from the families of the young folk lying senseless about them. And, in all probability, capping the situation with a trim jest, a tidy sum for the safe return of the excellent Senator Iris Chanler herself. It was very clever, and no less disturbing.

The liner quivered and groaned as the pirate ship hooked on, a black merchantman of latest design. There came the hiss of air and the clang of bolts as the pirates began to come aboard through the connecting airlocks. He looked back to Iris, sitting tensely in her deep blue lounge seat.

"Chain Lucas?"

"There is no Chain Lucas," she smiled, coldly. As he digested that startling remark, footsteps resounded along the passage and the saloon door was thrust rudely open.

Framed in the opening, a tall, raffish fellow in trim blue grinned at them. Iris leaped to her feet and ran to him, flinging her arms about his neck as he engulfed her in a bearish hug. Thorne took no advantage of their preoccupation, for several other hard-looking men in flying clothes were crowding into the room, gun in hand. As they began picking up the unconscious passengers and shoving them roughly back into their seats, the pirate and the girl broke their enraptured embrace and moved coolly over to Thorne.

"You really got him," he exulted, sallow skin glowing with an unhealthy tinge. He was not unhandsome, but his full lips had an ugly downward curl Thorne disliked.

"This is Captain Thorne," she replied, a certain pride in her voice.

"We're through, Iris," he crowed, clasping her with one long arm. "Through."

"Through with life," agreed Thorne, coldly. He eyed the intruder arrogantly, his body motionless, his eyes intent. "Your name, you?"

The pirate leader sprang backward, releasing Iris, his hand on his gun. "You turned your back on him, you fool, and he's awake!"

Iris laughed. "Captain Thorne has a very unusual constitution, my dear. I did not trust the crystals entirely, but though he can move his head, he is as paralyzed as the rest of them."

Thorne turned a contemplative eye upon his erstwhile companion of the misdirected adventure. "I remember, you were our cook this merry evening, Senator Chanler."

His formal insistence upon her betrayed trust did not trouble her. "The yellow ray is entirely harmless unless the prospective victim has certain mineral salts in his system. I supplied them in your food."

"Eating none yourself," he agreed. "A clever method. You had no qualms, striking down your friends for this gay blade?"

"They go to ransom, as you do," she replied, her lovely face hardening. "No friends of mine, Captain Thorne. If they accepted me, it was because I had money and position. I have no love for their silly kind."

The pirate chief swaggered forward, grinning. "Let us leave the moral questions for others, Captain Thorne, and speak of more solid matters. Solid gold, let us say."

* * * * *

Thorne balked instantly. Time was all he had left to play, aside from his unsuspected ability to move and his ruthless speed with guns, time for Bannerman or General Wheelwright to realize something had gone amiss with the plan to expose Iris Chanler to the bloody ruins of Banya Tor. He could have wept with rage at the futility with which they had laid their ingenious trap.

"If you refer to a ransom," he coldly replied, "I demand something better than the word of a flash-gun rock-trader like yourself that you have any right to hold me at all."

They gaped at him. "We hold you, Captain Thorne. Is that insufficient?" demanded Iris, teeth glinting between livid and unpleasant lips.

"You know what I mean," he sternly accused her. "You yourself told me you pirates had banded in this attempt to bribe and suborn members of the Government. As you well know," he added, his scorn dying her cheeks angrily.

"If this ... merchant receives the ransom, how may I be sure twenty more of your association will not be instantly upon us for their share, if not for a separate ransom for all?"

It was not a worry which would trouble him greatly once the money had been paid, he knew, for neither he nor any of those aboard the liner stood any real chance of surviving at all. These people talked too freely. They would see none repeated their confidences.

"You misunderstand, Captain Thorne," Iris replied, her voice earnest with conviction. "There is no syndicate, no organization among us. Fifty thousand credits annually is the sum paid my father, and now myself. When all who feel they gain by sabotaging the Planet Patrol have left what they can on a deserted asteroid, the money is paid in at New Yott. There is no more than that to the cooperation I mentioned. There are no partners, no associates." She laid a hand on her companion's arm. "This is Captain Thomas Dallis," she added, with some pride in which Thorne took no pleasure at all. He eyed the tall fellow unpleasantly.

"The name is familiar. Export business?"

"Of course. Most of us," he added. A thin grin split his pale face. "So convenient to explain our unusual cargoes."

"Shall we do business?" wondered Iris calmly, seating herself facing Thorne on a lounge Dallis thrust forward. He slounched comfortably on the arm, watching the granite-faced captive. The other pirates had left the room.

"If we can come to terms," Thorne assented, quietly. "You say it will be to you the ransom must be paid?"

"Exactly."

"What of Chain Lucas?"

Iris laughed aloud, a mocking, airy sound that rang eerily through the silent ship.

"A myth, a shadow," she explained. "Some poor romantic fool we hired to play at pirate. He serves as the herring to draw across the train of Dallis here and others who really do the pirate's work."

"You _hired_ him?" Thorne was frankly startled.

"Of course. He was sailing to and fro in a cape and mask, cutting out single ships, raiding mining camps, playing Robin Hood. But he was colorful and had made a reputation for chivalry we needed. We bought it. He continues these daring raids as before, robbing the rich and helping the weak, covering the real attacks by unknown pirates who leave no trace."

"Me," said Dallis, softly. "No trace at all, Thorne."

"Others cash in on the exploits," she admitted. "But it is Tom who pays him. A good investment, all considered."

"To show up the Planet Patrol?" wondered Thorne. "An investment in obstruction." He looked at her with dawning comprehension. "I begin to see," he added, slowly. "Those telecasts ... your work?"

She smiled. "Of course. One of my first. I bought into a cheap little movie company and put out the first blood and rocket melodrama." A laugh bubbled to her red lips. "It made money. We expanded and started the whole cycle years ahead of its normal course. We still make money."

"You seem to have it all worked out," he said. "A normally apathetic public, soothed by a whole cycle of propaganda telecasts, a finger in the heart of the Planet Patrol, an honest, open business that takes you anywhere in the System, and a masked front man to take credit for the whole witches brew." He laughed shortly. "I suppose I can guess what will happen. Once you have the ransom you go respectable for good, leaving the unfortunate Chain Lucas to cover your trail and take the blame."

Both Dallis and Iris laughed, a merry, discordant jangle.

"Perhaps," said the man, rising to stand over Thorne. "But enough of Lucas. What of you?"

"How much?"

"Who knows how much you have?" Dallis ground out. "Set up half for us and you go free. We know half will be ample for any need."

"Then free these others," Thorne argued. "Their ransoms will be unnecessary."

"Nonsense." Iris rose and stood over Thorne, her breast heaving. "Ransoms for all, or there may be suspicion. The Council may pay mine," she added contemptuously.

* * * * *

Thorne did not laugh or move. Looking beyond the precious pair, at the heavy merchantman Dallis had turned into a raider, he sat amazed beyond speech as it slowly, silently fell away from the liner's airlocks and drifted off to starboard, its black sides crumpling visibly. A lifeboat, spurting from its little lock, snapped and broke as a violet ray from some unseen vessel above the liner cut it down. The pirate crew were trapped aboard and died there in soundless fury. The few aboard the liner were cut off from any retreat.

Neither Dallis nor Iris had noticed the loss of their ship, as sound did not penetrate the liner's hull. Thorne set himself to hold their attention until it should be too late.

"Break this paralysis, then," he growled, apparently making a fierce and unsuccessful struggle to move his arms as they lay along the padded rest of his deep lounge. "I can do nothing here."

"We can do nothing for you," shrugged Dallis. "Your body will remain paralyzed until it has absorbed the chemicals activated by the ray. Perhaps a day." He eyed Thorne in some admiration. "You withstand it very well."

"Thanks," said Thorne, shortly. It was not necessary to tell Dallis that he had withstood the paralysis so effectively nothing could save the exultant pirate should Thorne drop his hand the few inches to the heavy butt of the Blandarc he still wore. But the death of the sly-faced raider was the least of Thorne's desires.

"What is your own estimate of your wealth, Captain Thorne?" asked the woman, hewing as always to the main issue. He shook his head, remembering just in time not to shrug.

"Offhand, I couldn't say. It's not all liquid. The Vadirrian I retained to steady the market cannot be touched, of course, nor the foundations set up throughout the System for education and other purposes." He pondered a moment. "Say thirty billion on call," he finally replied.

They goggled.

Iris recovered soon enough. "Then let us call upon it, Captain Thorne," she enjoined. "We'll scale down our demand in cash. Half that sum would drown us in gold and criminals. We'll settle for six billion, share and share alike."

"Most reasonable, I'm sure," he agreed. "Will you still require the fifty thousand blood-money this fellow pays you?"

She slapped him, hard. "Remember your place, you dope addict," she snapped viciously.

"I am," he replied evenly. A black ship, ribbed with scarlet, was easing gently, silently into position at the airlocks from which it had blasted the pirate vessel. He could feel the gentle thump in his toes as she bit in and fastened her grips. The others, lost in wealth, felt and saw nothing but the golden Midas sitting immobile before them.

"You've left me little else," he added, directing a cold glare at the man standing before him. "How do you mean to collect this ransom? The usual way?"

"As usual." Dallis' eyes were glittering. The red lips were parted, glistening. He was no longer handsome.

"And, once collected, what of these people? Your party?"

They glanced carelessly about at Iris' sprawled companions.

"They have seen nothing, know nothing," she replied. "Our ransoms will arrive together. We'll go back to Earth together."

"Dallis to join you later, giving up his hazardous merchant trade," agreed Thorne. "And what of me?"

They stared at him. Moment by moment the mirth and exultation died from their faces. As he saw the darkness descend, he knew only too well what would become of himself, what had been in their evil minds from the first. He could not be permitted to survive.

"I see." He was grimly calm. "I knew it all along, of course, but I wanted to see your faces. They're very expressive."

"What could you expect, you fool?" burst out Iris, taking refuge in anger. "Why did you resist the paralysis? Can we leave you at large to reach out and destroy us?"

"Then you may go whistle for your ransom," he snapped. "Shall I buy my own death warrant?"

* * * * *

Her face went hard and the full lips thinned cruelly. The blue eyes turned pale as ice.

"There are men on Dallis' ship who can change your mind, Captain Thorne."

"With hot irons, I suppose," he sneered. "You're a primitive sort of brute, Iris."

"We won't touch you, Thorne," interposed Dallis, coldly. "But we'll put these kids under the knife one by one until you sign." He nodded to the unconscious group about them. "Shall they deal with them as they did to the passengers of the 'Orion' and the 'Pantagruel' and a dozen others? It'd be slow and ugly, Thorne."

He looked from one to the other of them. Greed and weakness marred the symmetry of their handsome faces, drawing down their lips in cruel, heartless determination that would brook no obstacle. They would not falter.

He was spared an answer by a thunderous bang in the liner's engine room. A second and a third echoed instantly, then a rolling crescendo of fast pistol-shots.

Iris looked back with a cry, her skin blanching as she flung up her gun, but Dallis only laughed uproariously. "They didn't all sample your wares, Iris," he jeered her. "The boys must have found some conscious back there."

There were no further sounds and she lowered her gun, smiling weakly. Neither saw Thorne's hand slip half-way down the lounge arm to pause directly above the butt of his Blandarc. But he had one more card to play.

"What of your own crews?" he demanded. "What of your dupe, Chain Lucas?"

The thin mask of restraint broke and the mean, naked soul of Thomas Dallis glared venomously at him. Even Iris stared at her boon companion in alarm.

"We take care of our own crews our own way, you fool! If you go, they go with you. There'll be no blackmailing us when we roll ashore, my friend, if that's what you mean. There'll be no one left. I saw to that." His sharp teeth gleamed.

Thorne was not perturbed. The panel door behind the intent conspirators, where Dallis had first appeared, was slowly inching open.

"And a like end for your other dupe, Chain Lucas," he contemptuously replied. Dallis grinned again, wolfishly.

"Of course. We'll wreck this ship and plaster her with evidence tying him with every piracy for the last ten years. The Patrol can hunt him down."

"He won't like that," offered Thorne, gently. Dallis swore in exasperation.

"Do I care?" he shouted. "Why worry over Chain Lucas, you gilded idiot?"

A beatific smile overspread Thorne's face. "Principally," he admitted, "because he is standing directly behind you, Dallis."

Iris' choked scream ripped the silence and her gun fell thumping to the floor. Dallis, half-turning, stared transfixed at the tall figure standing quietly in the doorway, hands on the side.

IV

The golden chains which had given him his name glimmered richly in the soft light, sparkling across his broad chest and about the rich black tunic. A black-masked steel helmet concealed the face no one living had ever seen.