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                         The Death From Orion

                           By W. J. MATTHEWS

            Tiny suns set in rare metals, crystals of fire
              that mocked Terra's diamonds and pearls as
            lusterless pebbles and pale glass, the ancient
                treasure left behind the same time-worn
             trail of sudden blood and stiffening corpses!

           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
                      Planet Stories Winter 1948.
         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]


For a long minute the big man did not speak, rocking gently on his
heels, hands clasped behind his broad back. The dim glow of the atomics
in the corridor cast shadowy bars of gold and sable across his cold
face, picked glints of steel and silver from his heavy gunbelt and
saffron uniform. The only sound was the gentle tinkle of leg-irons
as the prisoner lounging on the cell-bench idly swung his crossed
leg, returning the heavier man's reptilian stare with a detached,
infuriating coolness.

It moved him to break his silent regard. The thick voice rasped in the
dim-lit cell.

"You know why I am here, Kurland?"

The black-bearded outlaw shrugged, a glitter of white teeth splintering
his calm stare.

"Were you other than Gion, Marward of Jupiter, I should know. As it
is, I do not."

Gion's hard lips smiled briefly at the iron compliment.

"I rate you higher than you think, Kurland. I should have come farther
still to see you hanged at dawn."

The outlaw shrugged. "I might say the same, had I had your luck."

The big man nodded, his eyes never leaving Kurland. The sharp brows
over his enormous eyes lay straight and commanding, and there were
lines about his tight mouth Kurland had never seen. Slowly, softly,
Gion went on, rocking easily on his booted heels.

"Suppose, came dawn, you did not hang, Kurland?"

The swinging leg halted, the big body tensed in its chains. Then slowly
Kurland eased back against the cold stone wall, a thin, mocking smile
playing across his face.

"You should know me better, Gion. I am not for sale, even at such a
price. Nor my comrades."

Cold pride flashed in Marward's eyes. "I buy no man's loyalty," he
retorted. "Were yours for sale, I should not be here, nor would you. I
offer a supposition, nothing more."

Kurland rose, a powerful, black-clad figure imposing even in torn
uniform and clinking chains. He stared fiercely at the heavy sub-ruler
of the outer Jovian plains, the iron-souled tyrant who had broken and
suborned Earthly sway until much of the giant planet lay supine and
trembling before him.

"You have not come to taunt me, nor play with suppositions, Marward.
Why not be plain?"

"I shall be plain enough," promised Gion, dropping a hand upon the
heavy butt of his silver-mounted glare-pistol. Kurland's teeth flashed
in the gloom. There was magic still in his flaming name.

"You know the Jewels of Orion?"

"I have heard of them."

"They have vanished."

The outlaw shrugged, half a laugh breaking through his beard. "My
regrets, Marward. I had no hand in it."

Gion bared his teeth wolfishly. "I did."

Bland astonishment swept Kurland's face. Then, slowly, a grim smile
thrust aside his wonder.

"Forgive my start, Marward. You have stolen so much."

Fiercely Gion brushed aside the cold insult. He stepped back, his face
in shadow. The prison cell was electric with his vibrant hate. "You
will have it, will you, Kurland? I came to make an offer."

"Go on," said the outlaw, immobile.

"I am not loved, here on Jupiter," said Gion. "I usurp the authority of
greater men. I intrigue, I plot. I conquer and steal, if you will. It
requires gold. A fortune." He paused, watching the outlaw. "An agent
on Venus flashed me word that the Jewels of Orion, crown jewels of a
vanished race on some forgotten planet beyond the stars, were to be
shipped once more to Betelgoran. A hundred fortunes, Kurland. I gave
orders and he shipped as passenger, with the consigned jewels."

"And then?" Kurland's eyes burned through the gloom.

"The _Plutonian_ crashed somewhere ten million miles out in space,"
said Gion slowly. "My agent. He died with her, and with her people. But
he sent the coordinates through even as she went down on some uncharted
asteroid. I know where the hulk lies piled, an iron coffin for the
Orion jewels."

Kurland's glare was deadly. "Make your offer, vulture."

"Go and bring me the jewels."

       *       *       *       *       *

Kurland flung back his head, a sudden roar of laughter in his muscled
throat. The chains clashed on wrist and ankle as he flung derision in
the other's paling face.

"You send a wolf on a jackal's errand, Marward! You think I would
return, or venture one lean hungry mile on such a rat's voyage to help
you on your way, you whom I have fought these many months, you who
broke and exiled me, you who made me outlaw and today must hang me for
it?" His scorn rasped bitingly in the prison cell, but Gion of Jupiter
was not moved by the love or hate of men. He nodded to the tiny barred
window.

"Look from the window."

Kurland looked, seeing in the growing pearl of dawn the black and ugly
shapes athwart the sky were six gibbets stood ranged along the ramparts
of Gion's northern fortress in the Montral foothills.

"You understand," nodded Gion, leaning against the door. "You will
return, and with the jewels, or your five young companions will be
swinging there to greet you when my men take you, as they took you once
before, Kurland."

The outlaw turned, ice-veined, but Gion did not stir.

"I am a prisoner. Judged and doomed. No ship, no crew."

"Escapes have been arranged before."

Kurland surveyed the big man curiously. "Why not go yourself on this
golden errand, Marward?"

Gion shrugged. "Leaving my empire to the wolves? You know I dare not,
nor trust a lieutenant in my place. This is not a secret for friends or
followers."

"I am no friend of yours. You dare trust me?"

"Outlaw, fugitive, renegade ... need I fear you, Kurland?" smiled Gion
coolly. "My word against yours."

Kurland nodded slowly. "I see. But should I return with the jewels,
what assurance have I that my crew and I do not instantly decorate your
gallows yonder?"

"None," admitted Gion. "Reliance upon my word, I imagine, would
give you scant comfort, but it is not to my interest to have even
the slightest suspicion turned upon me while the jewels are in my
possession. Compared to them, you and your arrogant little band are not
worth the snapping of a broken twig. Bring me the Orions, Kurland, and
your five slip the noose with a day's grace to be beyond my grasp. What
more do you require?"

"A ship and my crew to man her," replied Kurland, steadily. "I am your
enemy forever, Gion."

Gion smiled, not without malice. "If you will have it so, Kurland. I am
a bad enemy."

"You used me once too often, Gion. I was an honest man when first my
ships came trading here, too stiff to crawl to your thieving crew, too
callow to stomach your vicious thrust to power. Exiled, dishonored,
branded, I bear a prouder title than yours, Marward. I am your enemy."

"Serve me, then, and I promise you scant reward," Gion calmly agreed.
"Your ship lies in the hangar, beyond the outer towers. Fueled. The
chart is marked, your course is set. There are no guards."

Kurland suggestively clanked his chains.

Gion stepped into the corridor, his heavy face set and intent. Drawing
his gun, he leveled a short tube with his left hand, focussing it on
Kurland's chains through the doorway grill. As the outlaw pulled, links
parted like melted cheese in the tinted purple glow.

"There will be reprimands and stern punishments that you were allowed
to conceal a dis-tube about your person," explained Gion, holding
Kurland motionless with the threat of his leveled gun. "You comprehend.
Your companions will be spared, that you be hanged together on your
recapture. There will be no questions, no suspicion. On your return,
you will place the jewels beneath the seat where you have lain, taking
the key you will find there to release your men. Vanish, Kurland. Stay
beyond my power. Expect no mercy, for justice shall be no more swift
and certain to punish your crimes than I to still your tongue for once
and all. You have your warning."

"You make yourself quite plain," agreed the outlaw, hand on hip. "We
understand one another, Marward of Jupiter. You shall have your mangy
jewels. Nothing else."

Gion laughed contemptuously. "Have you seen them, wolf's-head? What
else do I need?"

"Friends, Marward."

"I have an enemy," Gion mocked, vanishing up the dim-lit corridor in a
blur of fading saffron. His throaty laugh came thickly back to Kurland
as the clicking lock swung the heavy door gently wide.

Kurland was through it instantly, alert for a treacherous blast,
darting into the shadows of the poor stone corridor, patched and
ragged with broken plaster and creeping moss. Gion had vanished, but
he did not dare venture anything in that direction, bearing as he did
the lives of all his captive crew. Softly he passed down the empty
corridors to the broad upper court overlooking the hillside ramparts.

His broad chest swelled with the fresh breath of freedom, strained
though it might be through the rude beams of the new-made gallows he
was cheating. The cords along his bearded jaw tightened. His hands
found a tiny pill in a slot of his bread belt, pressed it swiftly
against the unguarded wood of the gallows. He melted into the shadows
of the stairs as a wave of heat and acrid smoke billowed out, engulfing
him and hiding him from view. The startled guards in the towers above
saw the tall gibbets wreathed in sudden consuming flame even as they
stared.

Rushing to the conflagration, none saw the shadowy figure dart through
the postern far below and vanish into the rocks fringing the landing
ground at the wall's base. A moment later, the deserted hangars erupted
flame and boiling smoke, hurtling into the starry Jovian sky the slim
black fighter manned once again by Eldon Kurland, outlaw. Gaping, they
watched it vanish among the paling stars of dawn.


                                  II

Heywood, Gion's jackal, moped sullenly about the rocks of the jagged
little asteroid, scowling through his vitrine helmet at the tiny figure
moving slowly along the crater floor near the distant bones of the
wrecked _Plutonian_. The intolerable glare of the naked sun, hidden
by the rock's toothed horizon, yet thrust flaming whorls of gold and
scarlet above the mountains to hideously outline the ragged ribs of the
vessel he had diverted from its course to its death on this uncharted
worldlet.

A scowl he kept hidden from his companion darkened his handsome, waxen
face, and for the hundredth time he muttered imprecations upon his
ill-fortune in the moment of triumph. He had not counted on the girl.

Allen Heywood depended on nothing save himself, for which his master
Gion valued him more highly than any other tool and trusted him not at
all. Surreptitiously relaying to the Marward the coordinates of the
space-ship on which he had slipped as passenger, Heywood had coldly
blown out the stern-tubes with a delayed-action bomb and sent the big
ship crashing into the selected uncharted asteroid, thinking nothing of
the fifty lives that flared out in the exploding wreckage. More careful
of his own, he had simply stepped out an emergency lock in a space-suit
a moment before the ship struck, allowing himself to slowly drift with
his own momentum and the asteroid's faint gravitational pull. He had
landed a mile from the ship perhaps an hour after it crashed, only to
find himself confronted by another suited figure, the woman Francinet.

Shaken by the encounter, he realized she had no suspicion of the part
he had played, or that the crash had been less than accidental. She
had herself been saved by the merest freak, having been clad in a
space-suit for a photograph-minded acquaintance. When the ship split,
she had been shot upward through a rent in the hull, drifting slowly
down as had he. They were hopelessly marooned.

The ship was ruined, if not completely destroyed. Heywood pushed aside
the horrible steel-hard blobs of red which had been human beings with
no apparent qualms, nor troubled himself that it had been he who had
slain them all as surely as with gun or knife. With the bows crushed
shapeless by the headlong smash into the asteroid and the stem blown
wide by its own thermoblast bombs, nothing was left them but a length
or two of warped and twisted main cabin hardly capable of retaining the
Earth atmosphere still flowing through the tiny purifier engines he had
seen to preserving. Cleaning out the unrecognizable dead, he rigged up
a rough shelter for them. They had occupied it by now for over a week.

He kicked again at a rock, watching it spiral slowly up and over a
crevasse in slow-motion. The jewels were still intact, hidden in
the ship's safe. He had not risked her discovering him tampering
with either, nor the safer course of destroying her as he had her
companions. There was no assurance that another ship than Gion's
rescuing craft might not discover them first.

That Gion would send a ship for him he believed with implicit faith,
tempered by the knowledge that it would be the loot and not the thief
that the powerful Marward coveted. He had no illusions concerning Gion,
and so had survived. Thus, as he glanced skyward to see a tiny star
moving perceptibly across the blazing night of interspatial glory,
Allen Heywood flattened himself behind a huge rock quite as promptly as
from the devil himself.

A blaster slid into his hand. The green eyes were intent.

The little ship was coming down.

       *       *       *       *       *

The long blue glare paled across the unwinking stars and a red column
of fire poured viciously from Kurland's ship, whitening to a rigid
arc lancing into the broken rocks below. Eyes intent, the outlaw bent
forward over his keys, searching the ragged terrain as he braked his
easy dive. Then his firm lips thinned, cruelly hard in the thick beard
masking his copper face. The broken ribs of the lost space-ship thrust
up against the sun, half-hidden in the shadows of a stoney ledge.

Kurland shut off his drive, thrusting in breakers and snapping down his
forward beams. The eight-man ship he had made known and feared through
all the distant Jovian system drifted easily through the empty sky,
feeling its way on walking tractor beams. The star-shine glinted on the
black lines and heavy armament, hesitating to further lighten the dark
menace of the craft.

A green beam lanced into a nearby crag, splitting it from top to
bottom, and toppling it in soundless ruin across the crater floor.
Nothing stirred about the silent wreck.

Lightly the ship touched the crater floor, rocking gently on its beams.
A broad figure in black swung down and moved swiftly across the rock
toward the broken hulk of the _Plutonian_. Heywood softly drifted into
the shadows, floating easily from hollow to hollow, following.

Kurland stood silent, looking up at the gigantic ruin, majestic even in
its awful desolation, and the look upon his face was not good to see.
There were no deeper hells than those for wreckers, no fate too grim
for one who callously snapped the bright, thin thread of life reaching
out from Earth to all the Solar planets and their hundred circling
satellites. The Marward of Jupiter would buy an empire with this
tangled pile of riven steel. He should find the bargain dear.

There was no need to seek airlocks in the _Plutonian's_ side. Three
were visible, ripped and gaping, and there were a score of torn holes
twenty feet and more in width broken through the shell where the vessel
had plowed her way into the rocks. Clothes instruments, furniture,
books, and a hundred intimate possessions lay crumpled to view in the
gutted cabins or scattered wide across the shining plain. For a moment
Kurland looked at a headless doll, then moved forward, his face a
deadly mask.

Swiftly he climbed, mounting the broken stone and twisted metal that
led him to a greater gash leading into an inner saloon. He forced his
way through the debris, then straightened, looking about him curiously.

Furniture and drapes lay crushed, torn, heaped against the broken
forward bulkheads, but nowhere could he see the dead who must have
died here by the tens and by the score. There was no blood upon the
walls, for blood exposed to the instant void of interstellar space
crystallized in the very bodies of the injured, but in the debris at
the foot of the muralled bulkhead many tiny marbles of dreadful scarlet
rolled and tinkled silently as he searched.

He moved forward, passing through the shattered bulkheads where open
swinging doors gave acute evidence of the unexpectedness of the
catastrophe which had overwhelmed the ship. Ruin and destruction were
everywhere, but nowhere a trace of the bodies he knew had exploded into
scarlet dust as the biting death of space lanced its deadly vacuum into
the rending vessel. There could be only one answer, and it brought his
gun into his hand as he moved warily through the corridors.

His search ended in the open, metal-sprayed bowl which had been the
forward pilot cabin, for here, piled hideously in red tangles, the
rigid blots whose life-blood had rolled beneath his feet in bright
pellets as he walked lay sprawled in horrible disfigurement. There were
no longer anything at all. Simply _color_, encompassed in torn and
broken clothing.

Whiter than the fleshless bone displayed before him, Kurland thrust
to the swinging door, welding it shut in one impulsive burst of his
blaster. No man should see what lay beyond. Shaking with a terrible
anger, Kurland strode furiously back the broken ship, gun in hand, and
flung his curses on ahead. He opened nothing, but shot doors and panels
from their hinges as he advanced, eyes glaring for the faintest sign of
movement. Only the man who had planned and executed this horror could
have survived it.

       *       *       *       *       *

Midway in his stride the outlaw halted, gun lifted. The pilot light
over the central chambers glowed softly. There was atmosphere within.
Kurland snarled, closed his gloved hand on the twisted lever. He jerked
and the battered door swung open, revealing a rough airlock improvised
from the usual intercommunicating chamber. He darted in, snapping the
door behind him. Air sighed into the chamber as he drew another rude
lever down from the box nailed to the bulkhead.

Removing his vitrine helmet, Kurland holstered his gun and thrust open
the inner lock. The air was clean and fresh, Earth-crisp. The room
was battered, but not structurally damaged, and the furnishings were
neatly in place. There were signs that other chambers had been looted
to furnish this one, and Kurland smiled mirthlessly. He silently moved
across the thick blue rug.

The room beyond was a sleeping cabin, with male attire in the slotted
racks. The stamp of occupancy lay everywhere in the worn, neat articles
stamped with a golden H. The other room of the suite had been fitted
with heat tubes for warmth and cooking, and were piled high with
salvaged foodstuffs.

Continuing, Kurland found a broken passage beyond this kitchen, leading
deeper into the shop's waist, but cut off from the first suite by
locked doors. The outlaw grinned wickedly and, reversing the charge
silently burned the doors from their slides. There was no sound, no
vibration as he laid them against the wall. Gion had not hunted him for
nothing.

The room beyond was deep in rugs, the panelled walls well-hung with
costly paintings. A recorder was singing beyond a brocaded drape, and
Kurland could hear footsteps moving lightly across the padded floor.
With one swift bound he was across the anteroom, ripping the drapery
from its flimsy hangings, and stood upon the threshold of the inner
room, a black, terrible figure looming in the warped doorway like the
angel of Death. His voice rang softly through the sudden frozen silence
as he faced the survivor.

"My apologies. I underestimated Gion."

Irene Francinet, whirling in anger at an intrusion she attributed
to the hitherto circumspect Heywood, froze at the sight confronting
her, a huge black-bearded stranger with the bronze face of a Japanese
devil-mask. The gloved hands were gargoyle claws, hovering over the
blasters slung at the intruder's steel-black hips, the blazing eyes
lances piercing her to the heart. This was ... Death.

She had been preparing for a sun-bath under a lamp built into the wall
over the bed. The hand clutching her garments across her breast sank
for a moment, evoking a mirthless grin from the giant that froze her
already icy blood.

"You needn't trouble," he said, his voice so low she barely heard him.
"It won't work."

She drew herself up, dark head high, and tried to still the tremor of
her knees. There was good blood in Irene Francinet, and long years of
iron discipline.

"You are intruding," she said, and her voice was steadier than she
hoped. "Who are you? Where is your ship?"

His courtesy was insulting as he bowed, his eyes never leaving hers.
"Your pardon. I am Eldon Kurland, late of North Jupiter. _You_ need no
name."

"I am Irene Francinet, Recorder, of Earth." Her voice was angry,
uneven. "I do not understand you."

"Let it suffice that I understand you," he replied, his tone acid with
ruthless disdain. He moved slowly forward, his eyes chill diamonds
under the softly glowing atomics, and slowly she retreated, no longer
able to conceal her fear. His hands never left the black handles of his
guns.

"I knew the Marward's arm is long," he went on, grimly. "None better
than I. I had not thought it long enough to drag the proud name of
Recorder in this bloody mud."

She halted, stamping her foot on the rug. "What is this talk? Marward
of where? Why do you fling him in my face like ... like refuse?" Bright
color stained her pale cheeks, and he eyed her curiously.

"You do that well enough, Francinet." He surveyed her from head to
toe, savoring the midnight hair, the eyes flaming bluely into his, the
straight nose and the strong red mouth. "Disclaim Gion of Jupiter if
you will. He's no friend of mine. But save your anger for better men.
I've seen your work."

Her face was blank, and he answered her brutally.

"I stand within it. It stinks in the sun. I walked in blood to fling
it in your face, you treacherous snake! I'll see the color of Gion's,
yes, and yours, before either of you hears the last of this!" he blazed
in a sudden whirl of recurring anger. "You'll play at words with me!
You know this ship's cargo! You sent Gion her position even as you blew
her tubes and sent her crashing here with all her helpless people." He
flung a hand back at the door by which he had entered. "Walk out there,
Recorder, and feel their blood roll beneath your feet! You who are so
free with other's lives to win the treacherous praise Gion lulls you
fools asleep with while he robs and slays!"

"What are you saying?" she whispered, lips stiff in her blanched face.
"You think _I_ wrecked the _Plutonian_? You think I killed those
people?"

"You live," was his brutal rejoinder.

"But why? _Why?_" she wailed, abandoning her firm dignity as he loomed
over her, black with anger. "Why should I do so horrible a thing? What
reason could I have?"

"My reason," he snarled. "Because you must, as I came here because I
must. I to save my comrades from the noose, you for Gion's gold. Well,
you've earned it, and triply over, woman. Where are the jewels?"

"I have no jewels," she faltered, her hand indicating her few personal
belongings salvaged from the wreckage of her cabin. He brushed them
aside, turned a jeering grin on her.

"You haven't opened the safe, then? By Throaze, but Gion knows his
tools! Where is it?"

       *       *       *       *       *

She stared at him. "Back there. In the purser's office, I suppose." Her
voice was frankly trembling. "I haven't touched it."

"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.

[Illustration: _The outlaw stiffened, then his knees buckled._]


                                  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.

"Heywood came last, drifting in on gravity beams," he whispered, moving
aside that she might see. "No one saw him arrive ... nor his cargo."

"What ships are those?" she asked, peering down.

"Gion's. Escape craft. The regular cradles on the open field could
go, but he keeps ships here in this forgotten blow-hole, unmarked and
unknown. Insurance. Trust a rat to have a way to leave the sinking
ship. We'll remember them." He closed the door gently.

They slipped on. Above them the distant sounds of fortress life drifted
through the deserted corridors, but in these depths they met no living
thing. His hand checked her, hard on her soft arm.

"Beyond that. The room where Gion sat, watching me." His gun was out,
the powerful slides poised and ready in his hand. "Wait here."

"I needn't," she replied, quietly. "You will not find him, Kurland."

He rounded the corner, paused. The rough wooden door of the room stood
half ajar. A dim light burned above it, casting dark and mocking
shadows across the worn grey stone. Somewhere a man whistled merrily,
faded away into the distance.

They moved forward, silent, barefoot on the stone. He sighted on the
door's edge, stepped forward abruptly. She saw him freeze, the gun
lifting, then sway back, his body slowly relaxing. The blaster was
hip-high, level, ruthless as the steel within his greying eyes. The
door swung silently open at his touch.

Gion sat beyond the table, the leaden boxes piled beside him. One lay
open, tilted carelessly upon its side, and across the gleaming surface
of the table lay a tumbled heap of ruddy golden chains and bangles and
massive, chiseled collars. Bright glints of white and blue and green
sparkled cleanly through the twisted coils of hammered gold, but the
white-hot glare the outlaw knew no longer blazed within the priceless
settings.

The Jewels of Orion were ... gone.

       *       *       *       *       *

Kurland and the girl moved forward, their eyes on Gion, sitting in
silence, his hands buried wrist-deep within the tumbled fortune
spilling from the leaden box. He made no move, nor spoke.

They paused, standing by the table's edge, a golden heap of ancient
rings winking clean white sparks through their coils. A look of
infinite wonder darkened Kurland's face as he studied Gion's.

"He has escaped us," the outlaw said. "And so easily. He never knew."

The woman nodded. "They said of him, like Midas, that he had the golden
touch, that everything on which he laid his hand was his. He made it
so, and came to this. A fatal gift, Kurland."

The Marward's garments stirred to a vagrant draft, shifting in a silver
ripple across his massive chest. But a chest of human flesh no longer.
The Orion jewels had gone, dissolved into air like dreams, and before
the silent Marward lay the empty settings, flaunting their remaining
simpler jewels in barren poverty, but the loss no longer troubled
Gion. Beneath his simple robe his flesh shone with a thousand lustrous
lights, his muscles ridged with Phidian carving in purest emerald
green. His deep-sunk eyes were topaz gold, shot through with jetting
bits of white, and his startled lips were purple as fire-shot jade.
His massive head was translucent through and through, a vein-sprayed
sculpture in Venusian glass where truant silver bubbles froze in silent
thunder as they burst. His hands were coral white, the bones within
curling to and fro like vagrant bits of scarlet ruby, all caught and
held forever in one eternal crash of living color. The Jewels of Orion
had but changed their form, burst from the ancient golden settings to
plunge and explode and freeze anew in living human flesh.

Gion, Marward of Jupiter, had become himself a jewel.

Slowly Kurland sheathed his blaster.

"Our work is done, Irene. And by the Marward himself."

She looked up at him, pale-faced, dark-eyed, watchful. "I could have
told him as much." Her eyes fell to the table, to the four boxes
remaining unopened, then rose to his. "Must I tell you?"

He slowly picked up the boxes, weighing their priceless, deadly
contents.

"My crew is caged back there in those side corridors, near those ships.
We'll take them and go. There's nothing to hold us ... now." His hand
touched her shoulder. "You will come with us?"

She smiled, and gestured toward the boxes that held the Jewels of Orion.

There was a pause, and his face slowly paled. But his eyes never left
her. He nodded slowly, then extended the boxes to her. "A Marward
couldn't hold them, and I've been an outlaw too long."

But her hands gently repulsed his offer. There was color again in her
damp cheeks, a rushing glowing tide of color that warmed her cold body
like wine.

"We'll deliver them to the authorities. But, until then--hold them for
me, Kurland."

His eyes glittered as he laid the leaden boxes suddenly on the table
and his hands were rough upon her shoulders.

"So you make an honest pirate out of me, Irene? You give me name and
ship again, you trust me as you would trust any decent sailorman? Then
take the consequences!" And his lips were hard and fierce on hers, his
arms crushed tight about her ragged body. She stiffened, then slowly
relaxed, her eyes laughing into his.

"Did I pardon you for less?"