Part 1

The Martian Circe

By RAYMOND F. JONES

Who was this sweet-voiced singer weaving a spell of dreams and drugs that drove men mad and threatened to smash the System? SBI Captain Roal Hartford dared the death of the Thousand Minds to learn her dreadful secret!

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Summer 1947. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

That's what they called her, Alayna, Queen of the Silver Stars, and she was singing when Roal Hartford stepped into the Starhouse.

The setting was the same--the swirling blue smoke from scores of zhema cigarettes, the odor of stale alcohol and penetrating Valcoso. The setting was the same as in a thousand other taverns hovering in the backwash of man's advancing conquest of the planets. Only Alayna made this Martian tavern any different from the rest.

The silence while she sang was tribute. The brawling and the laughter and the loud curses stopped for no other tavern singer but Alayna.

As Roal Hartford stood motionless in the doorway, listening, he knew why they called her the Queen of the Silver Stars. She was a queen to these men. Those who listened were men who had no home, and she sang of home to them. She sang of green fields and blue skies and of lovers and of children. Her voice was so low and deep that it was like a husky sob in her throat and they had to strain to hear.

Roal glanced at a table where bearded, drunken space miners listened to the dream of which she sang. One of them with a livid burn scar across his face turned away from his companions and ran a finger over his eye.

For an instant Roal himself was lost in that dream. He thought of far Earth, which he had not seen for so long. The conquest of space seemed suddenly futile. It was nothing but a vain waste of lives and energy and brought no one happiness. Yet why should a man live except for happiness? Someone like Alayna could be happiness for him, he thought. The Queen of the Silver Stars could be happiness.

He dragged his mind abruptly out of the dream world of Alayna's song. He was Captain Roal Hartford of the Solar Bureau of Investigation. His world was the world of dope peddlers, thieves, and murderers that infested the starways. He was a little cog in a great machine and he knew that he had to keep going to keep the machine from breaking down. It wouldn't do for him to wonder why the machine should be kept running at all.

Alayna's song ended, but the silence hung on for an instant. Then slowly the spacemen and gamblers turned back to one another, avoiding each others' eyes until they were sure their own were dry.

* * * * *

Roal Hartford moved away from the doorway and picked his way among the tables. He was not here in the guise of Captain Roal Hartford of the SBI. His matted beard and space-worn garb was like that of the dozen meteor miners scattered through the tavern room. Miners who kept going day after day because of the yarns of occasional fabulous treasure found floating on the spaceways. But no one of them had ever seen such treasure--they had only heard of it, and kept going in the hopes of some day making a strike that would in turn create new fables of vast treasure.

Roal moved with the shambling gait of one worn and haggard by months among the meteors. When he sat down at a table he rested his head on his hands a moment until one of the shy little Martian girls came to take his order.

The Martians were like withered flowers. The little creature beside him must not be more than twenty of her planet's years, Roal thought, but her skin was like old and dried leather. The bones could be seen through the flesh almost. Only her eyes were bright and they peered at Roal with a staring glance that gave him uneasiness. All the Martians were that way. He thought it was as if he were a deadly enemy and they looked at him as if they were sure of eventual victory over him.

He shrugged the thought away. In the hundred years of Terrestrial association the Martians had not been guilty of a single overt act. At first, of course, there had been conflict, but a century of peace stood to assure continued amicable relations.

"Valcoso," Roal ordered.

Silently, the Martian moved away and Roal turned his eyes to the surroundings in the room. While he had pretended to be resting he had kept his glance on Alayna. It seemed incredible that after a year on the starways he should suddenly find her like this. He had listened to a thousand tales of spacemen who had sworn to having visited the phantom tavern, Starhouse, of hearing the song of Alayna, who could shake the stoutest of spacemen with the tenderness of her songs in that husky, almost inaudible voice.

He had thought of a thousand things that she might be, but he had never pictured her like this. He had even begun to doubt the reality of her existence. Now he had found her he didn't know what he was going to do.

She was slender and sweet, and she could not possibly be the mistress of death and insanity that was sweeping through the planets and outposts. Surely she could not be the lure that enticed men into the gripping tentacles of the drug, _harmeena_.

But every clue he had picked up bore a thread that linked with the Queen of the Silver Stars. Miners with shattered minds had spoken in their last hours of Alayna, and in their croaking voices had tried to sing her songs before they died. Because of her they died with smiles upon their lips.

But, because of her, many of them died.

The SBI had a hundred agents scattered in every part of the System. No one took seriously the miners' and spacemen's yarns of a phantom tavern where a golden-haired girl sang songs that lured them into a dream world from which they could never return.

No one, that is, except Roal Hartford. He knew that somewhere in the tales repeated by a thousand dying throats there must be a thread of truth, regardless of how fantastic it might be. Somewhere there must exist the phantom tavern, Starhouse, though one spaceman told of visiting it in Heliopolis and another spoke of its existence in the swamp city, Tarma, while still others swore that it was in Vegrath across the planet from Heliopolis.

Roal had placed investigators at every point where Starhouse had been reported, but nothing had ever come of it.

* * * * *

Nothing--until he had walked along the night streets of Heliopolis and suddenly seen Starhouse there where it seemed to him that it had always been.

And the moment that he had entered and heard the first note of Alayna's song he knew he had found the Queen of the Silver Stars.

Her beauty must have been exquisite and flawless, once, Roal thought. It was still the nearest thing to perfection that most men would ever see. But there were traces of strained lines, and hollows where her cheeks should have been more rounded. There was something, too, in her eyes that Roal could not bring himself to look upon for long as she suddenly caught his gaze and stared back at him.

He turned his eyes away. And, when he looked again, he swore. It seemed he had looked away only for an instant, scarcely long enough for her to have crossed to the nearest wall, yet she was gone. And the space miner she had been talking to had also vanished.

Without appearing to be concerned, Roal glanced about, searching the walls and side passages where she might have gone. From upstairs there came sounds from the gambling rooms. Elsewhere in the building were other rooms of doubtful uses. Passageways opened from the main tavern room to these other chambers, and there was no telling which way Alayna had gone.

Then abruptly she returned--alone. Roal saw her standing in a doorway leading from a hall opposite him. And she was going to come to him. The thought that he was at last to meet the mysterious Queen of the Silver Stars filled Roal with mixed feelings. Her eyes were upon him, speculating, weighing, he felt, his susceptibility to her charms that would make him her next victim.

As she came slowly towards him the transparent folds of the garments that thinly veiled her floated like a nimbus of light about her figure. And the eyes of the men in the room were upon her. She sat down beside Roal.

"You're a stranger here." Her low, husky voice made it a statement, rather than a question.

"The dream of every spaceman is to visit Starhouse and hear Alayna, Queen of the Silver Stars, at least once before he dies."

"You're far from dead, miner."

"My good fortune in coming here so soon."

"Starhouse is a place of rest and dreams for weary spacemen. They all find their way here sooner or later."

"I have heard stories--from those who have found dreams here," Roal said cautiously.

"Yes--you would share the dreams of Starhouse?" Alayna spoke with even more caution. Roal felt her eyes trying to weigh and evaluate him in terms of the worn, haggard spacemen who were the regular habitues of Starhouse.

"I would like to know the dreams of Starhouse," said Roal.

"Come with me."

Heart beating more rapidly, Roal downed the last of the Valcoso and rose to follow Alayna. He did not miss the throbbing pulse that beat in the white column of her throat, nor did he miss the faint sweep of revulsion that crossed her face for an instant as she rose and felt the scores of eyes staring at her--through her filmy garments.

Seizing upon this faintly-revealed trait, Roal suddenly drew his heavy cloak from his own shoulders and laid it upon her. Instinctively, she grasped its protection and drew the collar tight about her throat. Then, realizing her betrayal of her role, she hurled the cloak to the floor and stamped upon it.

"Your insolence will find you trouble, miner!"

Silently, Roal reached down and picked up the cloak while guffaws rained upon him from nearby tables. But he had seen enough--enough to know that Alayna, Queen of the Silver Stars, was putting on an act that was repulsive to her own instincts. Some compulsion was forcing her to remain in the stinking, smoke-filled tavern, exposing her loveliness to the lewd stares of starmen nightly.

She held her golden head high as Roal followed her past the tables into one of the halls leading out of the tavern room, but as they passed out of sight of the tables, her head inclined and her shoulders slumped almost imperceptibly.

"Poor little Alayna--" Roal whispered.

She whirled on him, her azure eyes ablaze, but whatever hot words trembled on her lips were not spoken. Nor did her hand that stretched back come up to sting his cheek.

While her moment of rage persisted, Roal memorized every line of tension in her lovely face. Beneath her beauty and the husky tenderness of her voice, strong storms of conflicting motives surged with force enough to tear her slim body.

But the moment passed and Alayna subdued the storm, not daring to speak. She whirled her back upon Roal and continued to lead the way down the hall.

The passage was dimly lit and thickly carpeted. The sounds of the distant tavern room were deadened and only silence prevailed. Doors, silent and closed, lined the hall. Roal wondered what lay behind them. Abruptly, Alayna stopped and opened one and stood aside to allow Roal to enter.

"The place of dreams, miner. Pleasant dream to you." From a cupboard against one wall she took a bottle of wine and poured a glassful. Then two glistening white spheres like pearls were taken from a drawer and dropped into the wine. Instantly, a white smoke rose from the glass of wine and began to fill the room.

Alayna stared at it for a moment, then broke. "Miner, quickly! Don't inhale! Come with me, quickly." She was sobbing unrestrainedly now. She flung open the door to plunge into the hall. But she didn't leave the room.

* * * * *

In the doorway stood the biggest man that Roal thought he had ever seen. Not fat--_big_.

His bare biceps revealed by a sleeveless blouse were like huge brown logs. His great chest was like a slowly swelling drum of polished leather. Alayna's golden head collided with it as she darted outward.

The man made no move nor uttered any word. He merely remained in the doorway, arms akimbo. His hairless, polished skull was immobile as a brown boulder. Only the pin-point lights of his eyes betrayed life and fury.

Alayna gave a short gasp that ended in a sob of torment. Then she ducked under one of those great arms and left the room. Only then did the man move. He stepped backward and slammed the door before Roal's astonished senses could lead him to make a motion.

He tried the door uselessly.

During all that long interval of Alayna's outburst he had held his breath against the rising smoke from the wine glass. Now he plunged down on the soft couch in the center of the room. Gladly, he noticed that the artificial lights in the room were dimming. From his jacket he extracted a brown capsule and broke it between his teeth, covering his act so that anyone spying upon him might not detect the capsule. Then, as his vision grew spotty from lack of oxygen, he allowed himself to breathe cautiously.

The secret antidote against the effects of _harmeena_ had never been tried before.

It had been prepared by chemists of the SBI from analysis of the bodies of dead miners who were known to be addicts. Every agent of the SBI carried the antidote. None had ever had the opportunity to try it before. Roal prayed that it might work.

The lights had dimmed completely now. But the gas from the dissolving pellets in the wine glass was filling the room with luminescence. Its ghostly glow swirled and twisted like crazed demons and poured into every corner and crevice of the room.

Upon this ghostly screen Roal knew that the wild dreams and fantastic visions induced in his brain by the drug should be projected. He waited in tense anxiety, hoping they would not come, hoping that the antidote the SBI chemists had devised was correct.

The visions did not come. That screen of luminous gas remained blank. But it spun and swirled about him as if it were a living thing and realized the defeat he had administered to it.

It seemed to spin tentacles that leaped out and beat upon him, twisting and dragging at him as if to beat down his last resistance. A wild impulse to laugh back at the ghost demons possessed Roal. He almost gave way to it.

Then sweat broke out upon his brow. Perhaps _this_ was evidence in itself that the drug was prevailing against his senses in spite of the antidote.

The ghost demons fighting against his senses were only phantoms of unreality, but he had to fight back their reaching fingers. He closed his eyes against them and told himself that they weren't there. But they were. They took on form and shape and horrid faces. Laughter rang in his ears until he couldn't stand the sound of it. He knew that he had work to do. He must make an examination of the place, find escape from this room somehow and search through the halls and rooms of Starhouse to find out its forbidden mysteries.

He rose from the couch and all the silver demons in the room pounced upon him, beating his skull with tenuous lashes. He made his way to the cupboard despite their onslaught and took out one more of the _harmeena_ spheres and dropped it into the secret pocket in the lining of his jacket.

But more than this, he could not do. The devils beat him back to the couch and pounded his head with psychotic hammers until his senses slowly waned and died.

II

Blazing hot sun out of a Martian noon sky fell upon Roal Hartford when consciousness returned. He was lying face down upon the hot sand and it was in his mouth and eyes and stung his nostrils. It seemed as if he had been groveling in the sand, trying to burrow into it in his unconsciousness.

He struggled up, and the memory of those beating, silvery demons haunted him in the sunlight. But they were not to be seen now. Neither was anything else of the phantom tavern, Starhouse. Not that nor even Heliopolis itself.

He was alone in the barren desert and arid sand dunes stretched as far as he could see. Yet on the horizon was the faint suggestion of the towers that might be Heliopolis beyond the sands. But he knew it was no use trying to find his way there by walking. The mirages of Mars are treacherous beyond reason.

Roal got to his feet and felt at his waist for the tiny SBI transmitter that could place him in communication with the SBI office in Heliopolis. The communication unit seemed not to have been disturbed by those who had dumped him in the desert, probably to die.

On the tiny instrument he dialed the call of Commander Calvin, head of the department on Mars. In a moment, answer came.

"Commander Calvin? This is Hartford. I've been taken for a ride."

There was a moment of violent sputtering on the other end of the circuit, then a trace of clarity came into the speech. "You dunderheaded idiot! How did you let yourself get into that kind of a jam?"

"I'll report if you will send out a pickup ship."

"I don't know if there's one in port or not. All we do is pick up you infants who get lost and can't find your way home. Where are you?"

"Out in the desert somewhere. I'll keep a carrier on for a direction finder if you can make it in an hour or so."

"Well, just between the two of us I hope your battery runs down and we can't find you."

Calvin cut off amid Roal's grin. The Commander would be burning up the channels right now ordering a plane to pick him up as quickly as possible, Roal knew.

There was nothing to do but wait, leaving the transmitter on to guide the ship. It didn't matter whether its power lasted or not. Once they got a bearing on him, they could find him as long as he stayed right there.

The sun was almost unendurable with his lack of water. He scooped out a deep spot in the sand until he came to a layer still cool from the night's radiation. He sat in the trench and covered himself up to his neck, then covered his head with his cloak. In relative comfort he could wait a considerable time, even if one of the treacherous sand storms should come up.

He let his mind drift back to the events of the previous night. The antidote of the SBI chemists had been only partially successful, he knew now. There had been no such fanciful, absorbing visions of peace and loveliness as he had heard described by others, but the effects he had seen were enough for him. The demon attacks had been the natural conflict between the drug and the antidote.

The strange mystery of the phantom tavern and its mysterious Queen of the Silver Stars was no nearer solution than before, however. He knew only that they did exist and that was something.

But who was the fabled Alayna? Why was she playing the role of temptress in that ghastly place against her will? For Roal was certain that if she was not there against her will she was at least held by some force that overpowered her own real desires.

The Starhouse was a den of evil and vice, lust and violent death. But Alayna? Roal shook his head and wondered if he had been merely overcome by the same illusions that seized all who went to the Starhouse. Was Alayna herself only a part of the dream of peace and happiness that Starhouse doled out with the deadly drug _harmeena_? Or was her loveliness and hidden tenderness something real?

Roal remembered the slight, almost hidden gesture of loathing she had made when she rose before the hungry eyes of the patrons of Starhouse, the instinctive shrinking beneath his cloak when he had placed it about her. He remembered the throaty song of hers in which she painted dreams of green Earth and lovers under blue skies.

That dream was not part of her act. That dream was Alayna. It was the only real thing in the whole ugly fabric of Starhouse. He was going to gamble on that.

A sudden rustling in the sand brought his eyes darting about. It was too early for the patrol ship. Then he saw the source of the sound. Two brownish, desiccated Martians stood not ten feet away, staring down at him. They had seen him, so there was no reason for obeying the instinct to keep silent.

"Have you water?" he called in their native tongue.

"We have water, Earthman. We will help you. Come to the burrow of Toomar."

"I must wait here for my ship. Can you bring me water?"

"Our burrow is close. It is cool and we have much water."

In his mind Roal had been trying to cautiously avoid the subject of water. Now that he had allowed it in the forefront of his consciousness a parching thirst burned within him. He had to have drink, and soon.

He scrambled out of the hole and looked in the direction of the pointing finger of Toomar, the friendly Martian.

"Only a quarter of a mile," he estimated. "They can't miss me if I move that far. Let's go."

* * * * *

Taciturn, after the manner of their kind, the Martians made no conversation on the way. Their burrow was invisible on the surface to the untrained eye, but Roal's experienced vision detected its presence as they approached. A sand colored slab moved aside to offer them entrance.

Descending into the cool depths beneath the sand, Roal found himself in the near darkness which the Martians loved. This seemed to be an unusually large family and the chamber into which he came was crowded with the withered, shrunken creatures who made no comment as Toomar introduced him.

The cool of the burrow felt wonderful after the hours in the blistering sun, but after his drink Roal arose. "I've got to get to the surface. My plane might miss me if I remain. Good years to you for your services."

"Please remain," the guide said. "We have food."

Roal gagged at the thought of partaking of the repulsive soup of desert lizards which was the Martians' mainstay.

"It has not been long since I have eaten," he said. "Many thanks for the water. I must wait for my ship."

They crowded about him. Their foul smelling bodies pressed close. They seemed not to have heard what he said. Their fingers touched his arms and seemed to fumble at his clothing. Worried by the alien behavior, he glanced around the group. Their dried-prune faces told him nothing.

Then, abruptly, Toomar spoke, "Of course. We would welcome you to our hospitality. But you must go to your ship. Go with our blessings. You have graced our burrow."

The crowding Martians melted away and allowed him access to the ladder leading to the surface. He scurried out of the stinking burrow, glad to breathe again the clear, light air of the desert. But a sudden sound as he emerged from the shaft made him whirl his head about.

A low flying patrol plane was vanishing rapidly northward.

Roal switched on the controls of the transmitter which he had cut off in the burrow. "SBI patrol. Hartford calling. Directly behind you."

"Look, Bud. What's the idea playing hide and seek in that hole?"

Roal grinned into the mike. "Hi, Shorty. Lucky you didn't have to come dig me out of it. Calvin might have been real mad."

"Maybe you think he isn't anyway. He was sore enough when you called, but right after that something else stirred his dander and he's really off on a tear. You'd better have a good story for him."

"Maybe you think I haven't," Roal murmured.

Shorty Mullins, the SBI patrol pilot, landed his ship a moment later, flinging a sand cloud into the sky with his customary dramatic handling of the ship.

The ship required only a few minutes to make the trip to Heliopolis. Roal had been barely out of sight of it.