Part 2

"Clever. I might not have been the first." He jerked his head aft. "Ahead of me. March."

"I'm not ... dressed."

He tossed her a blanket. "Use that. Show me that safe, _Recorder_." Her proud title, in his bitter lips, was an epithet, and she bristled. But she obeyed.

She moved into the dimly lit corridor beyond her little suite, feeling her way along the warped and battered passage. They had not attempted to utilize this part of the vessel, although it lay within their atmospheric seals, and she had rough going. Kurland moved close behind her, hand on his gun, but she made no move to oppose him. Her one hope of safety lay in acceding to this madman's demands, trusting to her erstwhile companion, Heywood. He must be somewhere about. And Kurland did not seem to know of his existence.

The office was a broken shambles, records and papers heaped against the forward bulkhead. The massive safes had been torn bodily from the wall and lay upended in the litter. Kurland strode swiftly to the smallest, motioning her to immobility with his gun. Supplied with Gion by the proper combinations, he spun the six dials expertly and the three doors fell open. He took out a small leaden box, then four more.

Prismatic fire blazed roof-high as he flung back the cover of one, jetting iridescently from a tumbled mass of primitive goldwork encrusted with the unbelievable gems of Orion. He lifted a heavy golden torque, studded with blazing gouts of crimson flame and slung on an inch-thick rope of giant Venusian pearls worth each the lives of twenty men. A yellow diamond Chalcidite rolled across the scarred steel of the open door and came to rest, winking like an evil eye in the dim light sifting down the corridor behind Kurland.

His voice was soft, terrible in its hatred as he looked at her, blanket clutched frozen across her bosom. His eyes blazed as balefully as the huge jewel winking before him.

"Will you lie now, Recorder? These are the Jewels of Orion!"

She did not answer, less for the contemptuous accusation in his voice than the more dreadful thought her trained mind thrust at her as insistently. If the _Plutonian_ had been sabotaged and wrecked for such world-loot, as his sure knowledge, his very presence indicated, then his first assumption must inevitably be true. The survivor he considered her must indeed be the hellish wrecker. And she was not the only survivor.

Her eyes were enormous. A mound of living fire grew upon the dusty steel as he piled up the blazing rings and brooches of the long-dead Orion kings. He tossed down a circlet of hammered gold, wreathed for the brows of some ancient queen, and the thirty pendant gems tinkled musically in the silence. Each could have bought the souls of an army, round, glinting stars of purest emerald green deep-sunk with tiny suns of icy diamond lustre. Kurland paused in his magical task, looking across at her.

"Are they worth the blood we walked upon to reach them, Recorder?" he asked, quietly.

"I ... I didn't know," she faltered, meeting his gaze with growing firmness.

"Men have died before over these bright toys," he shrugged, opening another box and pouring it in a blazing cascade over the first heap of white fire. "Men will die again. And among them, Gion."

"The Marward of Jupiter?" she whispered. "He knows? He sent you here, knowing this?"

"Your message reached him. The Marward is swift to serve his servants. Particularly those ... bearing gifts."

"You betray yourself," she flashed, pointing at the gems. "Gion is evil, but would he trust any messenger with _those_?"

Kurland looked quietly at her. "The Marward holds me in tighter bonds than you think, Recorder. If I fail him, five of my friends hang. Skyhigh."

She looked searchingly at him. "Who are you? You rate your friends very high, Black-beard."

* * * * *

Kurland smiled, a hard grin with no mirth in it. "I am Eldon Kurland, as I told you. Outlaw. Gion made. Were you a true Recorder, you should know of me, and know I hold my men dearer than this trumpery glass from beyond the Milky Way." His gloved hand struck the gems contemptuously, tossing jewels to right and left upon the papered flooring. She followed their meteoric flight, then glanced up in astonishment as Kurland swayed, knees buckling, and sank with a clash of heavy armor to sprawl across the fortune he had struck aside. Behind him a bright, feral countenance smiled wolfishly and the slight figure which had slipped silently into the room from the passage straightened up triumphantly, gun in hand. Allen Heywood smiled upon her benignly.

III

Kurland opened his eyes dizzily, then shut them again. The thick voice of Gion purred through the spinning darkness.

"You might as well, Kurland. It's real."

He opened them again, fixing his unsteady regard upon the heavy, impassive countenance of the Jovian Marward. Gion sat across the table, his hands folded upon the polished surface. The leaden boxes were stacked neatly beside his arm. A thinly wavering smile touched Kurland's lips as he glanced back at Gion.

"Your arm is longer than I thought, Gion."

"You had your warning," shrugged the Marward.

"How did she do it?"

Gion smiled, a gross caricature of mirth. "It would be amusing to let you go in that misapprehension, I suppose. Perhaps profitable. But you've earned the right to know. The girl wasn't my agent. So much the worse for her. While you were reviling her, the man who wrecked the _Plutonian_ walked up behind you. Heywood isn't one to take chances, as your head probably indicates."

"Heywood?"

Gion waved a casual hand at a slight, elegant figure seated at his right, and the evil little jackal permitted himself a tight-lipped grin at Kurland, the chained lion. The outlaw studied him without affection.

"And what do you have on _him_?"

"Nothing in particular," shrugged Gion. "Heywood is devoted to my interests, seeing they're his own. I have no more loyal follower, no better friend."

Allen Heywood fidgeted under the unusual expansiveness of his patron, allowing a tinge of color to stain his cold pallor. The look he gave the Marward was an amazing blend of adulation and open suspicion, and Kurland smiled thinly. He did not anticipate leaving this little rocky underground room alive, and had no objection to sowing dissention as a parting legacy. His dark eyes sought the Marward's.

"Our gentlemen's agreement, I take it, is off?"

Gion nodded indifferently. "But naturally. It was not you who fetched me the Orion jewels, Kurland. Your intentions may have been honorable, and in all honesty I admit so much, but it was Allen Heywood who brought me the stones. The reward I meant for you shall be his."

Kurland glanced at Heywood with some pleasure. The little man might not care for that.

The burly Marward rose, pulling his gun. The outlaw noted that the alert Heywood was on his feet as promptly, his own gun opening in his hand. But Gion meditated nothing at the moment, apparently, save ridding himself of evidence even one of his eminence could not brook revealing. He motioned Kurland to rise.

The outlaw got up, noting his feet were hobbled by a short rope. His wrists were lashed behind his back, his holster empty. From the aching dizziness in his limbs and head he realized that Heywood must have drugged him after striking him down back upon the asteroid where the _Plutonian_ had crashed, taking no chances whatsoever on the long voyage back to Jupiter in Kurland's ship, bearing captive and loot. The feral little man slipped behind him, prodding him with his blaster.

"Move, wolf's-head." He shuffled silently after Gion, moving ahead down rocky, dim-lit corridors. There was no sound but the rasp of their boots and the growing rumble of underground water not far ahead.

* * * * *

The massive stronghold of Montalven where Gion squatted, playing at power behind the scenes, was far more fortress than palace, relic of an earlier day when Earthmen maintained their sway by the strength of their ships and spreading armies rather than by the gentler rule of law. The taste of power was sweeter in the Marward's mouth than the empty display indulged in by the appointed viceroys whose strength he had sapped by gold and treachery, rudely expanding beyond the borders of the northern province legitimately his own until all the Earth colonies and many of the native kingdoms trembled at his slightest word. Kurland was being afforded a further glimpse of the reason. He had been outlawed and hunted across Jupiter for his defiance of that lawless sway. He was to die for it now.

They came out upon a rough stone platform where a swift underground river glanced roughly by in rude channels, spitting foam and spray as it dashed against the stone. A flimsily built raft made from an old door and several planks tied together with rope was moored at the quay's edge, a foot or so below the floor level, and lying bound upon it, gagged, lay the girl Kurland had found in the wreckage of the _Plutonian_, Irene Francinet. Her white dress was already soaked as the wretched craft bobbed and swayed in the swift current.

Kurland halted, swung angrily on Gion. "What is this, Marward? You disclaimed the woman."

"So I did," placidly agreed Gion. "I told you Allen was thorough. He brought back _everything_."

"And ... we know too much?"

"Too much to hang," replied Gion, frankly. "Not with your friends. You're going down the river. It doesn't come out."

"She's a woman, Gion. What's her word against yours?"

"She's a Recorder, a trained Government official of the highest rank. Their word against kings and princes, my friend. I don't take chances, my friend. Step down. Allen, see that he does."

Under the sudden pressure of Heywood's weapon, there was nothing for Kurland to do but obey. He stepped down upon the raft, tipping it dangerously and soaking the Francinet woman to the hips. He squatted down, obediently.

Gion nodded. "Tie him to those hinges, Allen. They'll drift for miles before the roof slopes down and sinks the raft." There was a sudden gleam in his bulging eyes as the lighter man swung down upon the raft, but Kurland said nothing. He owed the wrecker-vulture nothing.

Roped to the worn hinges, he sat quietly watching the bulky Jovian ruler and his dapper lackey. Gion smiled.

"Tight enough, Allen. Get back and cast them off." And he gave Heywood his hand to assist him. Dazzled by the condescension of his noble confederate, Heywood failed to notice that it was the left hand of the Marward he grasped. The powerful muscles contracted to heave him to safety on the rough-hewn quay, and, as he came, the right arm of the Marward swung abruptly to drive a heavy dagger to the hilt in the startled little fiend's unprotected throat. Allen Heywood had for once neglected his caution.

Contemptuously, Gion released the suddenly slack fingers of his devoted henchman, the dying man falling heavily back upon the raft, choking in his bubbling blood. He rolled to one side, staining Irene's white dress a horrid crimson as he clutched her body, his eyes a glaring horror as he stared at the faintly smiling Marward watching him, then fell back limply. His head dropped, his clawed hands relaxed, and he sagged into the water. A booted leg, caught between two broken planks, held him precariously, half-submerged. The green waters rushing past darkened thinly as he fled along the death-trail upon which he had been so cheerfully embarking Kurland and the hapless Irene Francinet.

Kurland looked up stonily at the Marward.

"It doesn't pay to work for you, does it, Gion?" he asked, quietly.

"I promised him your reward," Gion smiled, bending to cut the rope holding the raft. "You may share it with him. Bon voyage, my friends."

The rope parted, the flimsy contraption darting away into the current. Their last view of the Marward was of a jocular farewell waved after them as they dashed wildly into the round tunnel below the cavern where the landing crouched. Shadows engulfed them as the raft swayed drunkenly through the sibilant darkness.

IV

Even as Gion vanished, Kurland exploded into action. His shoulders knotted and he exerted every available ounce of strength in a ferocious test of his wrist lashings. But their dead passenger had been an expert. They held fast. Writhing over on his side, he doubled himself and his body tensed, steel-hard muscle and powerful bones and sinew against the Marward's treacherous bonds. For long moments, as they whirled and swayed deeper into the darkening tunnel beneath the rocky hills of Jupiter, he pulled and strained evenly at his leg ropes.

* * * * *

Here, too, Heywood had done with professional skill his bravo's work, but he had lavished no such care on the makeshift raft designed for the last journey he had not thought to take himself. The rough board holding Kurland's boots bent upward, cracked, bent double, and split lengthwise. He jerked his legs free.

Hooking his boots under a second plank, he slid his bare feet from the sleek black leather. Twisting about, he clamped a body-scissors on the gasping Irene Francinet. His powerful back muscles doubled, coiled upon themselves, lifting her inert figure from the dark water running over the partially submerged planks where she lay bound. They creaked, straining, as he exerted a pitiless pressure on her bowed ribs and chest. The steady leverage of her body slowly twisted loose the outer planks of the raft, and split two of them cleanly from the rough framework.

Gasping, he let her fall, then swung her again in her loosening bonds, letting her drop down against his own chest.

"Quickly," he snapped. "Your hands to my wrists! Before the ropes swell."

She pressed herself against him, wet and cold in the gathering darkness, fumbling with the ropes still holding him fast which had given him the tremendous leverage to break her own bonds. It was a struggle between her slim fingers and the expanding Jovian fibers of the cords, but he had been in time. She undid the knots and a moment later he had torn his hands free and sat up. With one swift move he slipped her gag off and ripped at her remaining bonds. Board after board tore free and shot off into the darkness, and when he had unfastened the last of the thin ropes holding her, stuffing them under his gun belt, there was little of the raft Heywood had thrown together but the big door they crouched on and a tangle of crazily-angled planks astern where the dead jackal's booted leg still thrust up stiffly from the swirling waters.

"Here!" Kurland bit at her, thrusting a broken shaft of wood into her chilled, numb fingers. "Paddle, girl, if you want to see the Sun again!" And he dug in on his side with another fragment of the plank he had broken.

Irene bowed, exerting what strength her long, drug-induced sleep from the planetoid and consequent imprisonment had left, trying her best to keep up with Kurland's long, plunging strokes. The raft's wild career into the depths of the Montral mountains was checked, then halted. They watched the distant circle of light marking the tunnel entrance, hoping against hope that its faint glimmer of phosphorescent light might not fade and dwindle once more. For a moment the raft held, then slowly inched backward against the current, lurching perilously through the dashing tunnels of the underground river.

Kurland glanced swiftly about. An element of his success both as peaceful racketeer and hunted outlaw had been his ability to subordinate his naturally sanguine temperament to the circumstances of the moment. He realized the awkward craft must collapse long before it was forced upstream to the quay from whence it had been launched. And should it hold, it was only too evident the paddlers could not. He tossed aside his board and stood up, drawing her up beside him.

"You can swim?" he asked. It was more a statement than a question, for the proud corps of Recorders were the pick of the Solar System's trained agents.

"Yes," she replied. "Can we make it?"

He tossed her the end of the thin rope he pulled from beneath his belt. "Knot that on your wrist, Recorder. We've travelled so many miles together, I'd not be parted on this last one."

She bowknotted the line, then poised, shivering and soaked, drenched with the brackish river water, stained with Heywood's blood. He looked at her, seeing in the dusk the slim, beautiful lines of her body under the torn white robe. She flung him a glance, impatient, tense.

"Ready, Kurland. We're drifting."

"Ride the eddies," he warned, his arm tightening for an instant about her half-bare shoulders. "We'll hug the wall." He bent for a moment, seizing the dead man's boot and plunging his arm beneath the surface. In his hand when he arose was the jackal's blue-black glare-pistol. Holstering it, he pressed her hand, swung forward, and launched himself flatly into the stream, her white body streaking at his side. They emerged near the rocky wall where the swirling riffles were white in the shadowy dusk and the ragged teeth of the overhead rocks bit wickedly down at them as they swam. The raft turned about two or three times, then sped silently downstream into the bowels of the planet, bearing the dead Heywood to the unknown tomb he had meant for them.

* * * * *

Thereafter, it became a nightmare neither could ever quite remember nor forget. Rocks battered them. Shallow water, giving a moment's respite from effort, made the struggle upstream seem the harder. Foam and spray blinded them. Eddies spun them crazily in the dark. Narrow sluices tore at them forcing them relentlessly back into the depths. Only the rope connecting their arms saved both on more than one occasion, and within yards of the entrance it parted. Kurland's powerful arm closed about Irene, the renewed light from the nearing tunnel-mouth bright on her upturned face. He grinned down at her from the tangled black hair framing his shadowed face.

"Stick it, Recorder," he whispered, and felt her go limp in his arm. The title was no longer a biting imprecation. She took a breath, flung back her own tangled curls, and leaned forward into the current once more. He could not see her face. Heads down, they bent stiff arms, threshed leaden thighs, and fought again the grim river boiling into the tunnel. The open cave was full in view.

Less than an hour after they had been flung to death from its worn stones, they lay gasping on the rude quay, their hands dug into the rocky surface as though to anchor themselves forever to the solidity it represented. There were no signs of Gion or any of his men.

Kurland stirred, sat up. Irene just looked at him, not troubling to lift her head from the quay. He pulled off his torn jacket, his massive chest and powerful arms strangely white in the brilliant atomic overhead. The tangled black beard dripped upon the floor, the faint drops loud in the silence. He shook himself, getting to his feet, a wild, ragged, outlandish figure. The heavy gun swinging low on his hip gleamed blackly.

She sat up, the water running from the rags of her once-dainty gown. She ran her hands through her black hair, watching him. His face was flinty, shadowed in the brilliance.

"What now, Kurland?"

His hand stroked the gleaming butt of his gun. He looked at her, unseeing.

"Gion."

"No." Her voice was oddly flat, accented.

"We made a good bargain, Gion and I," he replied, his eyes accepting her. "The jewels for my men's lives. Now, I collect."

She came to her feet, lithe and graceful even in her ragged tatters. "Not with guns, Kurland! I can free your men. I can ruin Gion, smash his rotten empire. I'm a Recorder. My word could break him in any court from here to Pluto. The law can handle him."

"Our law is here," replied Kurland, gravely. His hand patted the black leather holster sheathing Heywood's gun.

"Outlaw guns!" she flared. "Is that your justice, here on Jupiter?"

"You have tasted Gion's!" he grimly reminded her. "Courts! Laws! And who will serve the Marward with the warrant, girl? He feeds a thousand men within this single fortress city. He rules the rest through fear."

She looked up the passage where the Marward had vanished and there was a strange and haunting look upon her lovely face.

"It will not hold them now," she said, her voice unsteady. "Gion is dead."

His face blanked. She nodded.

"Your reason?" His eyes bored into hers. Only the sibilant gurgle of the river glancing past disturbed the quiet of the ancient dungeon.

"Why did Gion send across the System to wreck the _Plutonian_?" she replied. "Perhaps to avert suspicion, yes. But I can tell you why. He had to, because the _Plutonian_ would never come to Jupiter. Because the Jewels of Orion were slipping beyond his grasp forever."

"You mean ..." Kurland began, slowly.

"They did not dare. They were exhibited on all the inner worlds, but not on Saturn, nor on Jupiter. They're unstable, crystallized gas from a galaxy a million miles beyond the belt of Orion."

"We handled them," he urged.

"In Terran atmosphere, yes. The Council dare not risk them free in anything less. Let the Cranford elements touch those jewels ..." Her shrug was expressive.

"The jewel boxes were upon his desk when I awoke," he rejoined, tugging thoughtfully at his beard.

"He had not opened them," she replied, positively. "They were his bait, to dull his jackal Heywood's wits, to speed him into carelessness. You saw his impatience to be done, to divide the spoil. He was in haste for his reward."

"Gion did not keep him waiting," replied Kurland, a grim laugh in the words. "I did not know of this."

"It is known to few, Recorders among them. I tell you that you may leave the Marward to his fate."

* * * * *

Kurland shook his head. "But not my men. His remain, and mine are outlaws by his decree. I cannot abandon them."

"I revoke your outlawry, and your men's." Her mien was imperious, and he did not demur.

"You have the power?" he asked, quietly.

"He had no authority to sentence. Authority or none, my word outweighs his, my will his law." She watched him steadily, and he smiled back, a glow about his heart at the fine, proud spirit of this woman fighting hard against his rocky will.

He took her arm. "You have a theory. Let us test it, on Gion." They moved softly into the rough-cut corridor. The lights were very old and dim with ancient grime, but the way was plain enough. Kurland grinned at her. "They did not plan on our returning."

"They did not plan on many things," she whispered, her voice suddenly venomous. "I remember nothing after Heywood stunned you, there in the _Plutonian_, until he tied me to the raft just before you came. He was kind enough to inform me that I was on Jupiter, under Gion's fortress, and could expect to die there. When he spoke of the reward he had earned by his treachery, I realized what Gion had become and how justly he might be punished."

While she whispered, they had swiftly stolen along the stone tunnels cut long ago by the Jovians for the first wild troops of Earth. Kurland unerringly led the way, following the dusty trail of footsteps he himself had earlier trodden under the guns of the Marward and his agent. Suddenly he paused, feeling a rough projection under his palm still warm. He pushed, and a clumsy panel gave, swinging in to reveal a deep, shadowy pit sinking far down into the depths of the rocks, extending upward until it was lost in the darkness. He thrust in his head. Above him the twinkling stars glimmered down through the opening of the rough volcanic blow-hole, or vent. Directly opposite the panel, a plank leading to its open port, his own black fighter sat poised nose-up, and locked in shining modern cradles below were three lesser craft, dark and wearing no colors.