Part 2

As yet, no explanation of his presence in the desert had occurred to him, except that he had been carried out there to die. But if that were the case, he wondered why he had not been killed in the Starhouse. Did it mean that the leaders back of the dope ring knew his identity and were afraid to murder an SBI man? He wasn't sure. And he couldn't think straight on the problem for the golden voice and the golden hair of Alayna pervaded his senses. He felt infinitely saddened by her connection with this ring of vice and murder.

The office of the SBI in Heliopolis was in the highest shimmering spire that looked down upon the chromium city. Every time Roal looked down upon the splendor of the city from that high tower it reminded him of a fruit rotten at the core.

For Heliopolis was rotten. Rank vice and corruption filled its streets. And the Starhouse was the most vicious of all. But it would not remain long, now that its location was known. The only thing that puzzled Roal was that it had not been noticed before in Heliopolis. He thought every dive on seven planets was listed in the files of the SBI, but the Starhouse had evaded listing until now.

* * * * *

Landing on the rooftop, he went quickly to Commander Calvin's office. Shorty Mullins had made no mistake about Calvin's state of rage.

He greeted Roal. "Another of my double-barreled idiots back safely in the fold. I wonder why some of you can't stay permanently lost. Then maybe I could get me a good crew."

Roal knew he'd have to let the Commander roll on until his momentum was worn down.

"Imbeciles! Children losing their play-things. By all the stars and little planets it would seem that the SBI would attract the services of at least one pair of brains."

"Beside your own, of course," Roal said.

"Of course," Calvin snapped. "What are you here for? Put it in a written report. I haven't time to listen to your mouthings. Ignorant, stupid trash that call themselves operators--can't hang onto anything--"

"Something lost?" Roal inquired mildly.

"Oh, no! Nothing's lost--nothing at all. Just that that idiot Markham let his antidote capsule be stolen and he swears he doesn't know where it could have been pinched. Oh, why aren't there brains--??" Commander Calvin finished weakly.

"Perhaps this theft explains a part of the events in connection with my own troubles," Roal said.

"Put your troubles in a report and file them!"

"Perhaps you'd be interested to know that they started in the Starhouse, that I've sat at a table with the Queen of the Silver Stars."

Calvin's mouth dropped open and then clamped tightly. "So they got even you," he muttered.

"What do you mean?"

"Your rational mind is of course aware, my boy, that the Starhouse and the Queen are only myths of drugged minds. They do not exist in reality."

"The Starhouse is right here in Heliopolis, on Transite Street, the 800 Block."

"Where is your antidote?" Calvin roared suddenly.

"I ate it."

"You what?"

"I told you I was in the Starhouse. I found the drug, _harmeena_, and the manner in which it is used. I tried the antidote against it. It was only partially successful."

"Partially--a generous term."

"I have something else, too. The first sample of _harmeena_ to fall into the hands of the SBI."

Calvin's eyes lighted in spite of himself. "If you're telling the truth--"

Roal fumbled in the secret pocket where he had hidden the sphere. His fingers roamed up and down. The pellet was not there.

In sudden anxiety he whipped out a knife and methodically ripped the coat to shreds. The _harmeena_ was gone.

His mind went back over the intervening hours. He had felt the sphere when he had awakened on the desert. He couldn't have lost it in the meantime. Nothing could possibly get out of that secret pocket. Except by--

He sat down weakly as he remembered the Martians. He remembered their crowding in the dark burrow, their strange behavior and their fumbling fingers that touched him.

The withered Martians in the desert had stolen the _harmeena_. Somehow they had known he had it and had been ordered to get it. But how and by whom?

III

"You swear you cannot account for the antidote?" said Commander Calvin. His seriousness had overridden his rage now. "If that gets into the hands of the dope ring and they know we have it, we'll never catch up to them. It's possible that they don't have Markham's."

"I'm serious, Chief," said Roal. "I found the Starhouse last night. I ate the antidote and submitted to a dose of the drug. It finally knocked me out, but I know the antidote was a great help. Why I was dumped in the desert, I don't know. But come with me right now and I'll show you where Starhouse is. Why it should ever have become known as the phantom tavern, I don't know. It's right down on Transite Street."

"You've been a good operator, Roal," said Calvin. "But I can't believe a word you're saying. I know every dive on Transite. Starhouse is not there, but to show you I trust you and want to believe this wild tale I'll go with you right now and see what you have to show me."

They left the chrome and glass tower and descended into the core of Heliopolis, deep into its rotten core that centered on Transite street. Fumes of forbidden drugs drifted out into the streets from behind shuttered doors and windows; loud, drunken laughter and shrill voices spilled out even in midafternoon. Roal knew they must have passed a dozen murderers in their walk from the monorail stop to the 800 block Transite Street.

The dingy street looked just as it had the night before, except that daylight was not so kind to the dives and houses as were the vargon bulbs that lit the street at night.

There was Charley's Cafe, and Minna's Bar. The next was--no, it must be the next one.

Roal halted. Beyond Minna's bar was a battered warehouse, a relic of the days when Transite was a commercial street. The Jinx house was the next dive.

Roal swore softly. "It was right here, last night. I swear it was, Chief--and now--there's nothing but that old warehouse."

"Which has been there for thirty years," said Calvin.

"Yeah, I know it now, but last night it just seemed as if the Starhouse belonged there, that it had been there all along. I don't understand it. The Starhouse was here--it couldn't have been moved since last night. Chief, it _was_ last night, wasn't it? Didn't I report in yesterday?"

Commander Calvin nodded. "I'm afraid I know exactly what happened, boy. You were on Transite Street, all right. But somehow they slipped you the drug and stole the antidote before you had time to use it. Then they found you were an SBI man and didn't dare kill you, so they dumped you in the desert. All this tale about the Starhouse and the beautiful, wondrous Queen of the Silver Stars is exactly the same tale that you yourself have heard from a thousand starmen. You ought to know that it was only induced by the drug."

For a moment Roal felt as if his mind were tottering. What if Commander Calvin were right and all this were merely the result of an actual dose of _harmeena_? He tried to think back, to retrace the events prior to the time he had gone into the Starhouse. But he could remember nothing except that he had gone directly from his hotel room for a walk along Transite to see what business for the SBI might be turned up. And the Starhouse had turned up right where this warehouse now stood. He would stake his life and reputation on it.

He whirled suddenly on Calvin. "I know how I can prove it! That cape I left in your office. Alayna touched it. If we can get her finger prints off it--"

The Commander did not share Roal's enthusiasm, but he patiently returned with Roal to the headquarters of the SBI. His own mind was puzzled and distracted by the mystery of Starhouse. He didn't believe Roal's story, but he didn't quite believe his own, either. He didn't know what to believe.

Roal took the cape into the finger print laboratory. The operating technician examined the collar at the point Roal remembered Alayna grasping it impulsively.

"There're plenty of prints here," said the technician. "Let's see what yours look like."

He examined Roal's fingers minutely, then turned back to the coat. "There are some here that aren't yours, all right. Want pictures?"

Roal nodded. Calvin said, "It won't matter. Dozens of prints besides yours might be there."

"Not in that exact place unless someone had fastened my cape about his neck. And no one else had done that except--"

The Commander raised his eyebrows. "And how does it happen that this alleged Queen of the Silver Stars had your cape on?"

"Nuts!" Roal knew he was being baited. "Send the prints to the Identification Office and order a report sent direct to my office," he told the technician.

* * * * *

The report would not be ready until morning. Roal went to the physiological lab for a blood test in the hope his blood might betray the presence of the drug and the antidote. That finished the day. In the morning he had to wait impatiently until ten before the pictures and report came in.

He tore the envelope and read:

_Memo to Hartford:_

"_The subject prints are those of one Mariana Sebours. Our files give the following information concerning this person: Age, 23; Race Terrestrian Caucasian; Height 5' 7"; Weight 125 lbs.; Hair, blonde; Eyes, blue...._"

Detailed measurements, and skin and blood textures followed, but they were not of immediate significance to Roal. The fact was that his cloak bore the prints of someone named Mariana Sebours, and unless she and Alayna were the same he didn't know how the prints came to be there. This proved at least that his story was not the fiction or dream that Calvin assumed it was.

Roal considered showing the report to the Commander, but there was more to be done. The descriptive picture in the report fitted his memory of Alayna, but a photograph would tell him for certain. He called the Identification Office for a full report with pictures on Mariana Sebours.

It came through on the televise about an hour later. He was waiting for it.

"Hello, Roal?" said Tim Atkins, the identification clerk.

"Yes. What do you have?"

"I hope your interest in the Sebours girl is personal, rather than business."

"Why?"

"Well, from her photos she'd be something worth having a personal interest in. Except that she seems to have vanished."

"Give me the whole story. Where's the pix?"

"Coming up. Here you are. Mariana Sebours was born in the United States. Her father is of French-Greek extraction and her mother was American. Mariana herself had notable singing talent and made an operatic debut at sixteen. She went up fast, but always seemed to stop short of the top. For six years she was featured in opera houses throughout the system, and did much concert work. She was listed with the Brooks Agency here in Helio, but they haven't carried her on their books for more than two years. She did a lot of concert work and was last known in New York. Then there just isn't any more of Mariana Sebours."

"What do you mean, there isn't any more? The records should carry the last movement from place of residence. Everyone has to file that information."

"That's just it. No transfer notice from New York was filed. The last address has no record of her for over eighteen months. She's gone, vanished, disappeared."

"All right. I'll wait for the pictures. You may have to do some footwork on this case for me, so don't forget Mariana Sebours."

Even as Roal hung up the door opened and the messenger arrived with the pictures. Roal ripped open the envelope and the prints spilled out. Glossy, glamorous shots of a blonde opera diva slipped out onto the desk. And one look told Roal what he wanted to know.

Mariana Sebours was Alayna, Queen of the Silver Stars, and her fingerprints were on his cloak. His dream was not a dream. It was cold reality. Except--

Where was the phantom tavern, Starhouse?

IV

Roal sent a work sheet down to Tim Atkins, but he started on the case independently. He would show Calvin something yet.

Harry Brooks was the nearest and most accessible lead, so Roal made a call at Brooks' office. Harry shifted his cigar as Roal entered. He lurched heavily to his feet. "Hi, there, Hawkshaw. It's been a long time since you've searched for crooks in my bailiwick. Who's done what, and when?"

"Hello, Harry." Roal sat down, refusing one of the black stogies. "I'm not sure what has been done or who has done it, but I want to know about a girl named Mariana Sebours."

"Mariana--" Brooks' eyes suddenly became starry. He blew a kiss to the winds, and stared far away. "Mariana. I'd give you ten thousand dollars if you could tell me where she is today. What a wonderful girl was Mariana. It was only that tiny fault in her voice that kept her from reaching the peaks that should have been hers, but it could be cured now. The doctors have told me--I think that must have been what discouraged her and caused her to abandon her career at its height. That and the ape she called her father."

"What was the matter with her throat?"

"Just some defect in her voice box. She had it worked on, but it didn't improve. It could be fixed now. Only an expert could detect the fault. She was a girl of exquisite beauty and talent. But, more than that, she was a great woman, was Mariana Sebours."

"Was she ever married?"

"No."

"Boy friends?"

"That's the one peculiar thing about her. After she became about eighteen and men really began to take an amorous interest in her she gave them all a cold shoulder. I asked her about it once, and she got in a terrible rage. She blurted out something about not being fit to think of men and marriage. I never found out what she meant by it. We never spoke of it again."

"Hereditary stain of some kind?"

"I don't know what it could have been. Her mother was a charming woman like herself. Her father was a healthy ape-like cuss. An anthropologist, but perfectly straightforward and normal. Mariana, however, developed a strange attachment for him that in itself was perhaps abnormal. She would never appear towards the last of her career unless he was present and many times she cancelled engagements because Sebours would not be in the same city. Finally, she gave up appearances altogether--in order to stay with him, perhaps. I don't know."

"Did it seem like a psychological abnormality?"

"I'm not qualified to say, but it seemed to me that she was afraid of something happening to him. Perhaps that was abnormal. I don't know."

"What was her father like?"

"I think I have an old snapshot of Mariana and him somewhere here."

Harry Brooks got up heavily and began rummaging through a file drawer. "Yeah, here it is."

Roal took the snapshot. It was small and not very good, but the identity of the man beside Mariana was unmistakable.

It was the giant who had appeared in the doorway of the room at Starhouse.

Roal took the picture back to the office with him and called in Ralph Bowen, a slender young artist who was head of the art department of Heliopolis SBI.

"Think you can do some front views and profiles of this gent from this snapshot," said Roal. "It's not much to go on, but I've seen him and can go along with you and give you descriptions of his features."

Bowen nodded, "I think so. If it doesn't come out the way you think it should look, I can touch it up to your specifications. The big boy done something?"

"I wish I knew," said Roal.

Roal found it necessary to spend the rest of the day with Bowen, coaching him from his memory of that fleeting glimpse of Sebours in the Starhouse. In the late afternoon the drawings were finished to Roal's satisfaction, however.

"I'll want them reproduced," he said. "Distribution is to be made to every operator in the system, but first to those on Mars. I'll issue the necessary orders tomorrow if you can have the reproductions by then."

"First thing in the morning," promised Bowen.

* * * * *

In the dimming Martian sunset Roal Hartford watched the city below. Somewhere in its depths was the phantom tavern Starhouse, and tonight there would be new spacemen lured to the drug _harmeena_ by the golden-haired Alayna, Queen of the Silver Stars. A queen whose heart revolted at the role she was forced to play--Roal was sure.

But who or what was forcing her into it? Her father? Roal felt that he must be, but it appeared as if Sebours was the master mind behind the whole dope gang. And, as yet, no explanation of the mysterious, elusive location of the Starhouse appeared.

Roal had presented all his findings to Commander Calvin but the head of the department was still not certain that Roal had not been drugged and had dreamed up the story of Starhouse and Alayna. It was easy, he had said, to think that Roal's drugged mind would quickly associate the mythical Alayna with the first picture of a beautiful girl that he encountered. The fingerprints he dismissed as having come from a visit to one of the dives. Probably Mariana Sebours was a waitress or dancer in one of them and had accidentally picked up the investigator's cape.

Lacking support of the Chief, then, Roal was forced entirely upon his own initiative. And that had about run out. He had the forces of the SBI working to bring in Mariana and her father, but he had little faith that they would be found.

Somehow he had to get back to Starhouse, the phantom tavern. He knew it was real, that it existed somewhere, but why he could not find it after having walked once directly to its doors was something he could not fathom. He knew he had not been drunk or drugged when he entered the place.

And through all the mystery there floated the husky, plaintive voice of Alayna with the golden hair. Should he never see her again, Roal knew that her song and her loveliness would haunt him for the rest of his life. But, somewhere, somehow, he would find her.

As the darkness grew and it became increasingly difficult to make out objects in the room the televise flashed its light and rang shrilly in the silence.

He flicked it on. "Hartford speaking."

"Roal Hartford! Please help me. Come to Starhouse tonight on Transite Street. I need your aid. Be careful. You are known."

"Who are you?" Roal burst out. The screen had remained blank.

"I am Alayna, I--"

The soft, golden voice was suddenly cut off with a shrill exclamation. And then there was no more. Cursing, Roal switched off. There was no way of telling now where the call came from.

He called three of his agents, Sims, Parkhurst, and Riley, ordering them to the address on Transite street. He donned his cape and checked his flame lance. No need for disguise now. Alayna had said that he was known.

But by whom? That was the question. Obviously a break must have come between Alayna and those who held power over her, and Roal had not a doubt that she was in danger of her life at this very moment. And there was nothing he could do except go to Transite Street and hope that by some magic the Starhouse would again be there.

* * * * *

He drove swiftly through the brightening streets. But it was fifteen minutes before he arrived. The agents were already there lounging carelessly across the street from the address he had directed them to.

"I hope we didn't muff it, Captain, but I can't see anything here," said Parkhurst.

Roal stared along the length of Transite Street. There was no Starhouse with the garish crimson sign he remembered. But the old abandoned warehouse was still where it had always been--where he would have sworn Starhouse should have been.

Roal began to question his own sanity. Surely he could not be so wrong about it as this indicated. He knew he had received the phone call, but he couldn't be too sure it was Alayna's voice because the narrow circuits stripped away most of the golden overtones that made her voice a sound of such exquisite beauty.

Or someone might be playing a colossal joke on him. He didn't know--except he knew that somehow he had failed.

He circled the block, directing the deputies to cover adjacent squares. When they finally met again in front of the old warehouse full blackness had settled over Heliopolis and all the blaze of its million lights boiled skyward into the blackness of space.

"It must have been a bum steer," said Roal, "There's nothing more that we can do tonight. I'll check up on my information and let you know."

"O.K., Captain," said Parkhurst dubiously. His manner made it evident that they wondered if Roal were off the track a bit. He had never appeared so fumblingly on an investigation before.

When they were gone, Roal circled the block once again and then walked up and down the length of Transite amid the glare of the signs and the roaring bedlam of the street of crime.

There was simply no Starhouse. It was maddening to know he had followed this very path right to its door. He knew it was no illusion or drug-inspired dream. But it did not lead to Starhouse now.

Alayna was in deadly danger, and he knew of no way to find her or help her.

He was about to turn about and return to his office for a futile check on the progress being made by the Identification Office, when a thought formed in his mind. There was yet one clue that he had not exploited--a clue that stuck out so close to his face that he hadn't seen it.

The Martians--the Martians who had stolen the pellet of _harmeena_ from him on the desert. They were in contact with the dope peddlers of Starhouse.

He raced to the nearest televise booth and called Commander Calvin's home. But as the signal rang at the other end of the line Roal slowly replaced the receiver.

He knew what Calvin's reaction would be. A hundred years of strict peace with the Martians could not be violated by forceful entry into one of the burrows. Calvin would never consent to that, especially since he believed that the whole mystery was only a pipe dream in Roal's mind anyway.

Roal abandoned the call and placed another one. In a moment he got an answer.

"Hello, Shorty," he said. "Do you feel like a job tonight?"

"Sure, if it's a shooting job. I haven't had any excitement for a long time."

"I'm serious, Shorty, and it may turn out to be a shooting job. Bring along your lance."

Shorty sobered. "Sure, Cap. When and where?"

"Right now. I want you to take me out to the desert to the same spot where you picked me up the other day. I want to visit again that Martian burrow located there."

"Waaait a minute. If this is a shooting job, are you visiting or invading?"

"I'm going in that hole again. Anyway I have to get there. We're on our own. Calvin knows nothing of it. If my hunch is wrong this will cost us our ranks, jobs, and probably land us in the pen. But I'm going and I need you badly. Are you with me?"

Shorty answered, "I'm with you, Roal. Your hunches have always been right with me."

V

The slim, torpedo shape of the patrol craft rose in a long slant over the glittering Heliopolis. From his logbook Shorty had checked the course taken on the previous trip to the desert. He reset the controls to the same course and carefully watched their speed.

"It won't be too easy to find this place in the dark," he said. "I hope you know what you're doing."

Roal rapidly outlined the situation to him. "There's not a tag end of a clue to hang onto except this burrow," he finished. "And I'm sure that Alayna has been captured for her attempted warning to me. If she's not already dead she hasn't much longer to live, I'm certain, unless we can find a clue to the mystery of Starhouse."

"I can't see how this desert burrow can lead anywhere."

"I'm not expecting much out of it, either, but it's all we have to go on. And we know the Martians are somehow in communication with the dope gang."

"Perhaps not. Maybe they just liked the smell of the stuff and lifted it from you."