Part 1

THE BLUE VENUS

By EMMETT McDOWELL

Out of their mountain hideout came the terrified band of The Renegade. Through the valleys of Venus they swept, seeking a greed-maddened slaver who planned an experiment so cruel and barbaric it would destroy the very foundation of mankind.

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Spring 1946. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

The hooded figure of a man detached itself from the shadows beside the door, paused, listening. Nothing stirred. The huge sprawling plantation house was silent and yet alive with the feel of sleepers.

Then from below stairs, he heard a door slam. The tinkle of laughter ascended to his ears. He crouched. His hand slipped inside his coat, fondled the slug gun nestling in its shoulder holster. The voices drifted out of hearing. Uneasy silence settled back over the plantation house.

The hooded man let his breath escape between his teeth. He slid back the door, passed inside like a shadow, shut the door behind him.

The room which he'd entered was lit by the intense, green radiations from the Venusian vegetation. The cold phosphorescent light streamed through the open windows, glinted from a glassite desk, soft flexoglas lounging chairs and sofa. It was the typical office from which the plantation owners directed the affairs of their feudal estates.

As silent as a night hawk, the hooded man drifted to the wall, ran his fingertips over the wood paneling. There was a faint click. The panel slid back revealing a wall safe.

A needle ray of light streamed suddenly from the hooded man's hand, splashed off a paper which he'd drawn from his pocket. He checked the string of figures printed there, returned the paper to his pocket. He worked swiftly, surely. Then with a sigh of satisfaction he swung back the heavy door.

There was a faint thump in the corridor outside the office that broke the silence.

The hooded man snapped erect, the compressed air slug gun in his hand. He was sharply conscious of the hum of Venusian night life outside the windows. The room felt sticky, close. His hand was damp with sweat about the pommel of the slug gun.

He waited five minutes, ten minutes without moving, but the noise was not repeated.

He drew a breath, set to examining the papers in the safe by the aid of the midget flash. Most of them he put back carefully, just as they'd been, but two packets he stuffed into an inside coat pocket. He closed the door, spun the dial. He heard a sharp click behind him, leaped around.

At the same instant, the room was flooded with bright white light.

"Please don't!" said a girl's voice.

The hooded man arrested his hand halfway to his shoulder holster.

A startlingly beautiful girl, he saw, was standing in the doorway to the corridor covering him with a wicked dart gun. She was a tall girl with the yellowest hair he'd ever seen. She wore a spun glass negligee and her skin was blue. It was the pastel blue of a Terran dawn flushed with rose.

She came all the way inside, slid shut the door.

"Who are you? What do you want?"

"Why don't you turn in the alarm?" said the hooded man dryly. The poisoned needle gun was sending goose flesh quivering up his spine. A scratch would be fatal. His jaw tightened beneath the hood. His eyes were hard green discs, the dangerous eyes of a hunted man.

"Oh no." The blue girl's voice was low. "I wouldn't do that. I'd never be able to get the safe open by myself."

"What?"

"I want you to open the safe for me."

* * * * *

The hooded man didn't reply for a moment. At length, he asked: "What then?"

The girl giggled. "I take what I want, and you take what you want," she explained naively. "See. And you'll be blamed for taking it all. Only you're going to be disappointed!"

"Disappointed? How?" He took a step toward her.

"Bemmelman never keeps his money on the plantation. It's all at Venusport. There aren't fifty monad in the safe."

"Maybe I'm not after money." He took a second step, his green eyes opaque.

She looked at him intently, made a thin gasping noise. "You're the Renegade!" The dart gun trembled in her small blue fist. "Oh my God! I didn't guess. You're the Renegade!"

Without affirming or denying the statement, he asked, "What do you want from the safe?" and took a third step.

"Don't come any closer! I'm a very good shot. See!"

The little gun went spat. The hooded man heard the dart whisper past his ear, thunk into the paneling behind him. His stomach felt suddenly hollow.

"My dear girl," he said dryly; "if you do that again, I won't be able to open a book, let alone that safe. I'm a mass of jelly now."

"Then you will open it for me?"

"What is it you want?"

"Evidence!" Impulsively she took a step toward him, allowed the dart gun to waver out of line. "Evidence to send Bemmelman to the disintegration chamber!"

The hooded man felt appalled at the sheer animal hate in her violet eyes. Her skin was too light for her to be a full blooded Jovian primitive. She must be a cross. He mentally snapped his fingers. That was it, of course. The Blue Venus! The slave for whom Hal Bemmelman was asking five thousand monad on the Venusian Slave Mart. He said:

"You aren't overly fond of Bemmelman?"

"I loathe him!" With a savage jerk, she yanked her white negligee down from her left shoulder. "See that?"

He saw a scar on the pale-blue skin above her breast. It was the shape of a fern leaf and he could have covered it with his thumb.

"Branded!" she spat. "My father was a Jovian Dawn Man--an animal! But my mother was an Earth woman. Hal Bemmelman kidnapped her!"

The hooded man regarded her pityingly. She was only a kid, he realized. He said:

"You can't get Bemmelman like that. He runs the government at Venusport. He'd never come to trial." He stopped, realizing that she wasn't listening.

Nostrils flaring, head erect, the girl was looking through him blankly. A glimmer of fright flitted across her mobile features. Then she raised the dart gun, pointed it full at his chest.

"Put your hands on top of your head, please!"

His green eyes contracted angrily. He didn't move.

"I mean it! Put your hands on top of your head, please."

With a shrug, he obeyed. He saw the door to the corridor slide back. A heavy red-faced man in his late forties and a wrinkled snuff brown suit stared in at them. The red-faced man's sparse sandy hair was plastered to his skull, and he had little mobile brown eyes like a pig.

"Is that you, Hal?" The blue girl didn't turn around, didn't take her eyes off the hooded man. "I've caught the Renegade!"

The red-faced man's jaw dropped. "Yes sir," he said. "Yes sir, it's me, Sofi." A shrewd gleam flickered in his pig-like eyes.

"I caught him trying to open the safe."

"So I see! So I see!" Bemmelman rubbed his hands together, came into the room. He pulled a dart gun from the belly band of his trousers and leveled it at the Renegade. "Stand aside, Sofi."

The hooded man felt his stomach turn slowly upside down. He considered hurling himself behind the glassite desk, snatching out his slug gun.

Bemmelman said: "Did you get his gun, Sofi?"

She shook her yellow head.

Alarm stiffened the planter's features. "Get it, girl! No! No! Don't get between us! Get behind him!"

The hooded man felt the girl's hands pat his chest, draw forth the heavy slug gun.

The florid color crept back into Bemmelman's gross features. "You may go, Sofi. I want a word with the Renegade."

* * * * *

Sofi shot him a child-like pouting glance, but retreated obediently from the room, drawing the door shut behind her.

The lean young man in the hood watched, weighing his chances. He didn't say anything.

"You're surprised, eh, that I don't turn you in to the Security Patrol?" Bemmelman began. "They'd like to get their hands on the Renegade, they would. But the fact is I want you more than they do. Yes sir, this is a piece of luck for me. I've been trying to contact you for months."

The hooded man said dryly: "I'm listening," and allowed his hands to sink to his side.

"Put your hands back on your head!" Bemmelman's voice registered alarm. "No tricks. I can use you, lad, but no tricks." He glared speculatively at the Renegade, added: "Yes sir, that I can. And now, if you'll take off that hood we'll get down to business."

"If it's business, I'll keep the hood on."

"No sir," the planter blustered. "Off with the hood or I shoot. When I do business with a man, I like to know who he is."

The hooded man's green eyes were reckless. The law on Venus was harsh, implacable. There were no pardons. The disintegration chamber at Venusport yawned for him inexorably.

"You know, Bemmelman, I'd be completely at your mercy if I unmasked?"

"You are right now. Yes sir. You can take it off alive, or I'll take it off of you dead."

The hooded man was half crouched against the glassite desk. He said softly: "You don't leave me much choice," and dived beneath the dart gun.

His head struck the slave breeder's paunch like a cannon ball. Bemmelman went, "Ooof!" and sat down with a thud. The dart gun spat a needle into the ceiling where it quivered viciously.

The hooded man was on him like a cat. One swipe of his hand knocked the dart gun clattering under the sofa. Purple faced, gasping Bemmelman scrambled to his feet. A look of fright swept his gross features, and he began stabbing a button on the glassite desk.

The hooded man could hear the shrill clamor of alarm bells pealing through the rambling building. He leaped for the door, threw it back.

"Ahhh!" he said.

Sofi stood in the entrance, her dart gun almost against his chest.

Like a whip, the hooded man twisted sideways, snatched the gun from the startled girl. He saw Bemmelman charging across the room. He grinned, shoved the girl into the planter's arms, slammed the door.

The sound of shouts drifted up to him. He saw a Venusian serf, armed with a bell muzzled ray rifle, dash into the corridor. The serf caught sight of him. A yellow ray streamed from the gun, splashed off the wall; but the hooded man already had vanished up the stairs.

Bemmelman burst from the office. "Which way did he go? The force screens are up! He can't escape!"

"He got in," Sofi pointed out coolly.

Half a dozen armed serfs dashed into the hall. The alarm bells were still ringing.

"Which way?" Bemmelman roared.

The serf said: "Up."

"We've got him. That leads to the roof. He can't get off!" He charged the steps followed by the pack of Venusians.

At the roof Bemmelman paused, shoved up the trap. With considerable respect for his own skin, he ordered one of the serfs through first.

"Careful," he advised. "The man's desperate."

The serf climbed fatalistically onto the roof, turned around and around.

"He's not here."

"Impossible!" The planter roared and squeezed his bulk through the opening.

The green phosphorescent glow of the vegetation lit the flat roof eerily. A raucous screech from some night flying bird floated down from the cloud mass overhead. There was no plane, no sign of a plane; but the man with the hood was gone.

II

Mia MacIver tried to concentrate on her head overseer's report. She felt hot and sticky and the figures ran together, didn't make sense. Moreover, the delicate notes of a flute kept scattering her thoughts. They came through the casement window from the patio outside her study.

"Damn," said Mia MacIver and wriggled at her desk.

She was barefooted, clad only in a short yellow tunic, but she felt as if she were locked in a steam bath. She'd never get used to Venus, she supposed, to its turkish bath atmosphere, its lush phosphorescent vegetation, its ridiculous mingling of periods, Paleozoic, Mesozoic, and the glass age all flourishing together. The Pan-like notes continued to assail her ears from outside the study.

She wrinkled her nose, wiped a trickle of sweat from the end. In despair, she flipped on the Newscaster.

The features of a plump young man flashed on the screen.

"Last night," his voice came through the audio, "the plantation of Councillor Bemmelman was raided by the Renegade. Luckily, he was discovered immediately and the Security Patrol notified. But as usual the Renegade had vanished without a trace."

Mia MacIver snapped to attention. It was absurd, she felt with a surge of anger that a man could make fools of the Venusian authorities as the Renegade had done for years.

She knew little of Venus. Her life had been spent in boarding schools on Earth. But when she'd received news that her father was dead, murdered by the Renegade, she'd booked passage to Venusport at once, determined to manage the plantation herself.

"Here's a special bulletin," the announcer was saying. "The plantation owners are subscribing ten thousand monads to be added to the price already on the Renegade's head. That makes a total of fifty thousand monads for his capture. A punitive expedition is also being organized against his headquarters in the Cloud Mountains."

Mia MacIver switched off the Newscaster, stood up. The notes of the pipes drifted into her study, exotic, compelling. She bit her lip, stepped through the window onto the vine roofed patio.

"Stop that noise, Cosmo! You're driving me insane!"

Cosmo Horn took the Venusian pipes from his mouth, said dryly, "I didn't think I was that bad."

He was sprawled in a hammock, looking like a handsome, rather distinguished tramp.

"Did you hear the Newscaster, Cosmo?"

"No." He shook his head. He had a lean, hawk-like visage, close cropped brown hair, green eyes.

"The Renegade was at the Bemmelman plantation last night!"

"Sure enough?"

Cosmo sat up, put the reeds in his pocket. He was wearing only coat and trousers. The brown triangle of hair on his chest extended in a thin line down his flat belly. "How much did he nick that dealer in flesh for?"

"Nothing. They scared him off before he had a chance to take anything. Cosmo, why can't they catch him?"

"No one's seen him without his hood. They don't know who he is; they don't know where to look, or what to look for."

"On Earth ..." began Mia.

"On Earth there wouldn't be a Renegade," interrupted Cosmo dryly. "Earth is unified. It isn't split up into hundreds of independent countries like Venus. They don't have slavery or serfdom or the feudal system on Earth. Men aren't driven into outlawry...."

"Driven!" said Mia in a heated voice. "What makes you think he was driven? I'd say he was doing exactly as he pleased."

Cosmo stood up, towering over the girl, took several short paces across the patio.

"I don't think anyone would enjoy being constantly hunted. Everyman's hand against him. Always on guard against treachery, surprise. And no matter how careful he is, sooner or later he's bound to be caught. He can't even quit, now. I feel sorry for him."

"Feel sorry for him! I'd like to see him shot!"

* * * * *

Cosmo looked startled. "You're a blood-thirsty little devil." He grinned suddenly. "What I've been saying must have buzzed in one ear and out the other."

Mia said: "He murdered father."

Cosmo regarded her in surprise. "Great guns, Mia, where did you get that idea?"

"Hal Bemmelman told me. He found father down in the tara field where...." Her voice faltered, but she recovered herself, went on. "Where the serfs had hacked him to pieces with grass knives. They were the Renegade's men."

"Did he? Did he indeed?" Cosmo's voice was grim. "What was Bemmelman doing there?"

Mia frowned. "He was trailing a runaway serf. Why?"

"Of course he was." Her gray eyes widened. She stared at him. "Surely you aren't accusing Bemmelman of murdering father. Why he's the most influential member of the Council of Land Owners. He's...."

"Did you ever hear of the Blue Venus?" he interrupted.

"The Blue Venus? What's that?"

Cosmo's face was grim, his green eyes cold. "She's a cross between a Jovian Dawn Man and an Earth woman. She's supposed to be the most beautiful girl in the System. She belongs to Bemmelman. He forced her mother to mate with a Jovian primitive as an experiment. He's asking five thousand monad for her on the Slave Mart. Hal Bemmelman is a slave breeder."

"I don't believe it!" Mia said in horror, then asked with feminine perversity: "How do you know?"

Cosmo sat down in the hammock, grinned faintly. "I'm going to tell you something I've never told anyone but your father, Mia. I think you ought to know, because you're in danger." His green eyes twinkled. "Quit chewing your fingernails."

"Go on," said Mia. "Go on, for the Lord's sake, before I burst."

He said: "Twenty-six years ago my father owned the Bemmelman plantation. He was murdered under almost the same circumstances as your father. So was my mother. My nurse escaped with me, hid me out in the mountains. I was only five."

"Who did it?"

"Jovian Dawn Men. Slaves imported from Jupiter. They run amok during their rutting season, you know, and they were supposed to be amok at the time."

"But ..." began Mia.

"Wait a moment. Bemmelman held notes on the plantation. He moved in. But before Bemmelman took over our plantation, he was a slave runner. He imported Dawn Men from Jupiter for the Venusian Slave Mart."

"You--you think Hal Bemmelman was in back of it?"

"Yes," he said flatly.

"But why? Couldn't he buy land?"

"No," said Cosmo, "he couldn't. Land here is entailed. It stays in the same family from generation to generation. Mu is one of the few countries on Venus where Terrans have been able to settle at all. Bemmelman's only chance was to have my people murdered and forge notes."

"Does he know who you are?"

Cosmo nodded. "He's tried to have me assassinated several times," he said indifferently.

Mia swallowed. "You--you said I was in danger."

"Doesn't it strike you there's a great deal of similarity between your case and mine. Your father has been murdered, supposedly by the Renegade. It looks like Bemmelman is getting ready to expand."

"He--he wouldn't kill me!" said Mia indignantly. "Would he?"

"No," said Cosmo, a smile quirking the corners of his wide, grim-lipped mouth. His lean, narrow jaw and thin, hooked nose gave him a saturnine cast. "But I wouldn't put it past him to kidnap you. Remember the Blue Venus. I happen to know Bemmelman's been anxious to repeat that experiment, but a beautiful Terran girl is hard to get."

She shivered slightly, said: "That's preposterous! He wouldn't dare! Would he?"

But Cosmo had leaped to his feet. "There's a plane coming!" he said in an edgy voice.

A surface flying car flashed to the edge of the patio, stopped, settled to the ground. The extreme altitude of the bullet-shaped vehicle was under three hundred feet, Cosmo knew. But even that height was impractical for flight on Venus, roofed as the planet was by the low, swirling cloud blanket. As a rule, the planes barely skimmed the surface.

A door in the monoloid hull swung open. A heavy set man got out.

"Why it's Hal Bemmelman," exclaimed Mia. "What does he want?"

"Speak of the devil," drawled Cosmo.

* * * * *

Bemmelman strode across the patio, his eyes on Cosmo, said in a disagreeable voice: "If it isn't the fortieth-century troubadour."

Cosmo's features set blankly. He didn't reply.

"Mia." Bemmelman took both the girl's hands in his big paws. "I've bad news. Yes sir, very bad news. Three of my serfs ganged my second overseer, chopped him to pieces with grass knives."

"What?" Mia's eyes dilated in horror.

"They got him from behind, I guess. Then they broke into the arsenal. They're armed, Mia, and heading this way. I dropped everything to fly over and warn you."

"Coming this way?" Mia firmly disengaged her hands. "But why?"

"They're trying to reach the Cloud Mountains and join the Renegade. Your place lies directly between mine and the mountains."

"The Renegade!" Mia's level gray eyes frosted with hate. "The rurals can't catch him. He makes monkeys out of the Security Patrol. What is he? A wizard?"

"You've heard the news?" Bemmelman interrupted. "The Renegade was at my place last night. I've been worried about you, Mia, alone here on the edge of the mountains. Yes sir, I came to take you to my plantation until we have these murderous serfs behind bars."

"But I'm quite safe. I--I...."

"This isn't Earth, Mia," he said in a silky voice. "I haven't much time. No sir. I must return to organize the pursuit. We'll teach those brutes a lesson they won't soon forget."

"If you catch them," put in Cosmo in an amused voice.

"We'll catch them!" Bemmelman turned his small, brown, pig-like eyes on Cosmo. "Yes sir, and the Renegade, too."

Mia said with a grimace: "Thanks, Hal, but I'm not coming."

Bemmelman lowered his head like a bull. "I haven't the men to spare to guard you, even if I could trust them. I was too good a friend of your father's, Mia, to leave you here with those three murderers roaming in the neighborhood. You're coming with me."

Cosmo, observing quietly, frowned to himself. What was the planter trying to pull?

"I'm not," said Mia indignantly. "Really this is preposterous. It's...."

Bemmelman glared at her, seized her arm. "Girl, don't be a fool. If those runaways show up here, they'd chop you to pieces. Come along." Unceremoniously, he began to drag her toward his plane.

"Cosmo!" Mia's gray eyes snapped open like saucers.

Cosmo's hand fell on Bemmelman's shoulder, spun him around.

"You heard Miss MacIver." Two rouge-like spots sprang out on Cosmo's high cheek bones. His green eyes were opaque.

"Get your dirty paws off me!" Bemmelman roared in surprise. He almost choked with rage. "By Jupiter! I'll teach you a lesson you won't soon forget! Yes sir!"

With a growl, the red-faced planter lashed out with his fist. The blow struck Cosmo on his right cheek bone, snapped back his head.

"You shouldn't have done that," said Cosmo. He turned loose Bemmelman's shoulder.

The planter swung again wildly. Cosmo slipped the blow. With a straight left, he knocked Bemmelman down.

The planter shook his head. There was a surprised look on his beefy red features. Sinking his head in his bull neck, he scrambled to his feet.

Cosmo knocked him down again.

Bemmelman turned his brown pig-like eyes up to Cosmo. He tried to rise. Cosmo knocked him down for the third time.

He said: "Bemmelman, get out of here. If you ever lay hands to me again, I'll kill you."

The planter heaved himself to his feet, lip drooling blood. He crossed to his surface plane, scrambled inside. Then he shook his fist at Cosmo.

"I'll get you for this, Horn. You haven't MacIver to protect you now. I'll get you."

Cosmo took a step toward the plane.

Bemmelman hastily slammed the door. The vehicle swooped from the ground, sped away like a silver bullet.

"He will," said Mia in a small voice. "You shouldn't have done that, Cosmo. He's powerful. He controls the Council of Land Owners."

"He struck me." Cosmo's lean features were like clay. "If he does it again, I'll kill him."

Mia shivered. "Do you always get so violent?"

"He hit me," said Cosmo. "I should have killed him."

All at once Mia said: "Cosmo!" in a strained, frightened voice.

He flicked a glance past the startled girl, stiffened in alarm. At the edge of the patio, three men stood in a silent group.

One, he saw, was a serf. Naked to the waist, the Venusian was darker, squatter than the Fozoqls, the killer caste of Venus. But he had the same venomous green eyes. A grass knife was thrust through his sash, and he held a ray rifle at a menacing angle.

It was the second figure, though, that took his breath away. A huge, naked, blue giant. His only weapon was a club.

"A Jovian Dawn Man!" said Mia in a stifled voice.