HEALING RAYS IN SPACE

                         By J. HARVEY HAGGARD

           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
                            Comet March 41.
         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]


                               CHAPTER I
                            STRANGE BARGAIN

The big library was of platinum-and-teakwood. There were two occupants,
a monstrous man who wore expensive vitrilex, and a wisp of a girl in a
wheel chair. One entire wall space was taken up by a chart of the solar
system. Below the chart was the label: _Marshall Space Lines, 1990 to
2055, First In Astral Commerce_.

Spaceports, marked by red pins, dotted the entire chart. The large man
was humming as he thrust other scarlet pins into Ceres, Pallas and Juno
with such a savagery as one might use in thrusting swords.

"Feel better, dad?" The wisp of a girl was speaking. Misty locks of
sheeny hair lay on the back of the invalid chair like starclouds on a
summer night. A beautiful frame for a picture of lifeless, transparent
features.

"I ought to! It took fifty years to scalp the Thallin Starways!"
gloated Keith Randolph Marshall, looking proudly at the carmine
clusters that marked new interspace commerce lanes. "You bet! Fifty
years to skin old Rufus Thallin's hide! Why, every ship he owns is mine
now.

"He's going to come and beg! I've got it figured out. He'll come
today, before the foreclosure. He'll be on his knees and I'll like it.
He'll want more time on his notes, the ones I bought from mortgage
owners long ago. That's another little surprise for him. Right now my
secretary is waiting down below, and will send him up."

"You must be very proud," said the girl listlessly, and the leonine
man brought his pacings up very short. Pain marked the tycoon's face.
Deepening lines went snaking from his puckered brows.

"Eh? I'm proud enough, but I'll never be really happy! That's the
bitter edge of crushing an enemy, I guess. I'd give everything I ever
owned, turn over every red copper, if I could only make you well again,
cure you from the Venus plague. You know that, darling."

Wistful eyes glimmered moistly, and her feeble hands pressed his
monstrous one against her cheek.

"As a last resort," bellowed a new voice, "I'd even take you up on
that, Marshall! I believe you were expecting me!"

Marshall spun and his gray mane quivered. It angered him to be caught
off guard. Glaring past the glistening pyrite cases of interplanetary
souvenirs, he saw the doorway. In it stood a man garbed roughly as are
those accustomed to space travel, a great fellow fully as large as
himself, who had to stoop to get in.

Stalking forward grimly came the mastodonic spaceman, while wellworn
asteroid boots cut insolent gashes in the varnished teakwood floors,
leaving scars that struck sparks in the owner's outraged eye as he
watched the careless advance.

A spectacled secretary thrust his head in at the doorway, panting in an
effort to overtake the caller.

"Mr. Rufus Thallin to call upon you," he gasped and withdrew
apologetically.

"Mister who?" demanded Marshall.

"Rufus Thallin was my father," announced the young giant softly, and
his grey eyes kindled. "They put him away yesterday, scattered his
ashes to the infinities he loved. He made me promise to keep the old
Thallin Starways going, whatever I did. That's why I'm here."

There was a small space-ship on Marshall's desk, spindle-shaped, a
model of the latest Marshall anti-gravity spacer. It was a symbol of
power, of survival of the fittest in space. Marshall was shocked by the
news, but pretended a sudden interest in the miniature.

He stared through a window over his acres of a vast California rancho.
So old Rufe Thallin, lean of girth, leathery of visage, was dead. Queer
that he would never face him again. The executive went over to his desk
and plopped down in a chair.

"Have a seat, son," he said in a quavering voice that surprised
himself. He knew at once it was the wrong tone. Young Rufus had
straightened, had scuffed new chicken tracks into the polished floor.

"Don't call me son!" burst out the young man angrily. "My father told
me all about how you've hounded him, underbid all of his contracts,
drove his spacers out of business. I'm warning you I'll do anything,
anything at all, to get back at you. That's how I feel about it!"

The young whippersnapper! This was more like it. Marshall was glad he
wouldn't have to waste sympathy on the young pup.

"Have a stogie, kid," he growled condescendingly, "and don't get huffy!
Your old man stuck to out-moded rocket pushers, and I graduated with
anti-gravity wings. He always was hard-headed!"

With two clattering steps young Rufus stalked forward and slammed fists
down on the desk before Marshall.

"Listen, Marshall!" he snorted. "I know all about that! Don't go over
that and rub it in. What do you think I've been doing at California
Astro-Tech? I've studied up some good stuff that will make your gravity
wings look like rowboats. I've got a propulsion system that will knock
weeks off the regular schedule. All I need is a try! I'm asking that
you give me a few months' time. With that new drive in performance I'll
raise money and pay you back."

In another few minutes this young devil would be on his knees,
promising anything, even his soul.

"Too bad, Thallin," said the astral magnate with cold satisfaction.
"Can't do a thing for you. We're not flying kites! You played and lost.
Take it like a man. If you've really got something good, and can put on
a demonstration, I'll handle it at a profit for you--"

He wasn't prepared for the next move. The blonde caller of Nordic
dimensions seemed to leap over his desk. One big hand grabbed the
lighted cigar and ground it to shreds. The other seized his shirt
front.

"You'd like it that way!" he challenged. "Then I'd be penniless, and
you could make an easy steal! Nothing doing. I'm not out of the game
yet. If I thought I was I'd grab your spindly old neck in my hands and
wring it, right now. We'd both go out in grand style."

Sweat popped out on Marshall's forehead. It was hard to tell just how
far the young jackanapes would go. Then the wheel chair lurched forward.

"Get back, Thallin," commanded Marshall as a frail hand thrust a flame
gun at his caller's middle. "Or I'll tell Alyce to sear you. You're
going a little too far with your threats!"

Rufus glanced at the muzzle of the electronic gun, flushed and backed
away. The girl, already panting with the exhaustion brought on by
excitement and the scant action, let the weapon fall back into her
lap. It was hard to think of this shadow of a woman as that young and
beautiful society débutante whose pictures had been plastered over all
the pleasure bars from Mercury to Pluto. Venus plague strikes without
mercy! In less than a year she was but a ghost of that former self.

"Guess I kind of forgot myself," admitted the young man sheepishly. "I
sort of owe you an apology, Miss."

"You ought to be jailed," stormed Marshall uncertainly, rising partly
to his feet. His big visitor did not cringe.

"You're big and strong," scoffed young Rufus scornfully. "And all
puffed up with your own importance. Like a robber baron! Lots of power
in your hands, and worlds to tremble at your decisions, but there's
some things you're weak at. One thing--"

He looked suggestively at the limp little being in the wheel chair,
so pallid and impassive. Her handling of the gun had been almost
mechanical and quite without feeling. Marshall swayed, and young Rufus
knew he had struck a vital spot.

"Thallin, I'll kill you for that!" he promised brokenly.

"She's your daughter, isn't she?" demanded the blond giant ruthlessly.
"And a year ago she was queen of the interplanetary cafés. The doctors
that attend her say she'll die in six months. What will you give for
her life, Marshall?"

Falling back loosely into the seat, Keith Randolph Marshall began to
quiver in every muscle of his body. Because he knew by the other's
manner that he was serious.

"I've studied all the tricks of modern medicine," continued Rufus
goadingly, "and know all the late practices and kinks. I'm not such a
fool at that as I may be at running spacelines in the void!"

"I'll tell you," whispered Marshall savagely, his soul bare for the
other's gaze. "And I'll tell you the truth! I'd give every cent I ever
owned if she were sound and well. I'd give every space-ship I've got if
she had the vitality of your oxlike body."

Whirling around, young Rufus pounced without warning, snapped up the
flame-gun from the girl's lap, and held it before him. Then he began to
rock with wild bursts of laughter.

"There's only one chance for her," he chuckled. "It's a cure most
doctors, even now, are afraid to speak much about. But I've seen it
happen. Out in space, a person's body is permeated with lots of solar
rays you never get on Earth. Sometimes unhealthy tissue will heal like
magic. The chances are slim, one in a hundred, but they're better than
nothing."

Now Marshall's eyes were glazing with horror, and he seemed too
paralyzed to move. The other's mockery drove him frantic.

"You wouldn't dare!" he gasped. "The physicians have said the shock on
going to space will kill Alyce. It would be plain--murder!"

"You're a man of your word," yelled young Rufus. "I'll take that word.
Don't forget that, Marshall! If I ever come back, it'll be to collect!"

With the flame-gun held expertly he leaned and scooped the girl's
fragile body up in one powerful arm, then backed slowly away. Reaching
the doorway, he leaped out of sight. His pounding feet echoed from down
the hallway.


                              CHAPTER II
                         TWO LIVES ARE GAMBLED

Staggering toward his desk, Keith Randolph Marshall began to jab at
buttons affixed on its top. When servants appeared, he began screaming
orders to pursue and apprehend the kidnapper.

Almost unable to breathe from sheer horror, he slumped at a window and
gazed into a courtyard below. The big man was springing lightly across
the lawn, and the puny wisp of the girl looked a light burden in his
massive arms. A last leap, and they went through the open port of the
moored space-flyer.

Spurts of flame came from smoky rear jets. A sound like thunder rolled
into being, shaking the house and rattling the windows. For an instant
the space-flyer was cushioned on a turmoil of flames. Jets beneath the
prow tilted the nose upward. Then it darted swiftly into the heavens.

People over the solar system called the grizzled old man a dictator
of the spacelanes, yet it would have been hard, even for a close
acquaintance, to recognize Keith Randolph Marshall in the broken
man who now stooped over the tele-panels, pleading for a wireless
connection with the Space Police Bureau.

His next connection went through to a Dr. Haliburton, in the Medical
Towers Building of San Francisco. Marshall was calmer now, but
controlled himself only with an effort.

The mirror cleared to reveal a tall man in a laboratory apron, bent
absorbedly over a retort. As the features turned to Marshall, a look of
surprise gleamed behind gold-rimmed glasses and he tugged at the point
of a distinguishing Van Dyke beard.

"What's wrong, Mr. Marshall?" he demanded. "Is Alyce ill--"

"Everything!" gasped Keith Randolph Marshall. "I'll explain later. Tell
me, do you know young Rufus Thallin?"

"Indeed I do," responded the scientist with a frown. "I've been in
private practise for several years since leaving the faculty of
California School of Technology. An excellent pupil. Aptness for
medicine. A future for him there, if he wants it....

"Since you speak of it," went on Dr. Haliburton curiously, "he was here
only yesterday to talk over old times."

Marshall was tense as spring steel now and trying hard to conceal his
extreme excitement.

"Then he's pretty good in a medical way?" he wanted to know savagely.

"Pretty good is no word for it!" exclaimed Dr. Haliburton. "Why, I saw
him do a plastic operation once that would have stumped an old hand at
surgery. It was on a Venus expedition of the faculty, and a man had
become drunk and staggered into a grove of leper-plants. The flesh was
peeling from both hands, and Rufus operated--with only a native dirk,
mind you! He grafted plastic protoplasm to the tendons and saved both
hands. An exceptionally fine bit of surgery...."

"Just what," demanded the dictator of spacelanes, "does he know about
the Venus plague?"

Dark eyes narrowed and sparkled through the transparent lenses.

"Blue virus!" he exclaimed. "He's very interested. We discussed it at
length, and also went over the records of your daughter's case. I gave
her six months to live, as you know, and he--"

"That damned devil!" snorted Marshall in uncontrolled rage. "He was
planning it all the time. Now he's kidnapped her and taken her to
space."

For a moment the physician was stunned. He went quietly to a cabinet
case and jerked open a drawer. His face above the beard became ashen.

"Her case records are gone," he said dazedly. "You must be right."

Incoherently, Marshall poured forth the story, and the savant listened
incredulously, tugging at his trim beard.

"If she dies," shouted Marshall, swinging his fist, "he'll pay for it
in the atomic blast chamber, with his life."

When the telecaster was silent, Dr. Haliburton stood for a long while,
merely staring.

"No other would have dared!" he whispered awedly. "And there is a
chance, a tiny chance. He risked his life on it. How I wish I had his
courage!"

       *       *       *       *       *

Rufus Thallin was afraid neither of his pursuers nor of their bullets
as he fled from the Marshall manor. Not as long as the precious little
bundle in his arms held the dim spark that was heir to the Marshall
millions. Widely opened blue eyes were peering up at him, but not with
fear. Only with a strange wonder that bordered on mental stupor.

"Don't be frightened," said young Rufus as they lumbered into the port
aperture of the space-flyer. "I'm not going to hurt you."

He laid her on a pendant space cushion and she did not struggle.

"I'm not frightened," she said in a leaden tone. "All you could do
is kill me. And I am not afraid of death. Neither would you harm me
bodily, since I am no longer attractive as other girls are."

Hand on the controls, Rufus faltered, looking back at the tumbled maze
of glinty hair.

"Whoever told you that?" he demanded, feeling poignantly sorry for her
for the first time. Up until the present instant, he had considered
her impersonally, rather as a key or possible solution for his own
troubles. It made him aware of the tremendous risks he was taking with
her life. Yet it was too late to back out now.

Under his guidance, the space-flyer lurched up at the sky, hurled
itself through the thinning blue stratosphere and smoked a fast trail
for the outer depths of space.

Strange, or was it?--that up till now he had thought only of that final
memory of his gaunt death-beckoned father, of the promise he had made
looking into the stern exactness of fading eyes.

When young Rufus swore he would keep the Thallin Starways going, would
preserve that proud tradition that went back to former times when the
first gallant rocket-ships bellowed like fire-breathing monsters and
hurtled fearlessly into the void, he had meant every word of it.

His feelings changed. Again the girl was only a pawn. Everything else
had failed. He had seized upon her and the sickness that lay prey to
her body as a means toward an end. He felt that there was a good chance
of her being cured when exposed to the healing rays of the void. He was
gambling not only her life, but his own as well. For if he failed in
his mission the Space Police would hound him to an eventual ignoble end.

In the visor screens, earth was falling away swiftly. As he watched
a scattering of dots appeared, drifted slowly across the face of the
globe, into space. Police craft, of course.

The girl's pale face was watching and he knew that she also was aware
of the pursuit. To those who followed their space-ship could be but a
dwindling mote that floated out of place in the pattern of encircling
stars.

Yet they had him! He read that conviction deep in her listless eyes.
The jaws of a gigantic trap were closing down about him in space.
With the superior speed of the Marshall gravity-impelled speedsters,
overhauling was certain, and then it would be a mere matter of clamping
him in magnetic grapples and making up a forced boarding party in space
toggings.

He pushed the controls down, built the discharge blasts to their
limit, and mopped sweat from his brow.

"They'll catch you, won't they?" He was surprised at the limpid words.
Alyce was lying on the swinging spring-couch, watching him in a
detached lethargy.

"Good girl!" he exclaimed jubilantly. Her faint interest was evidence
that there was still sap left in her body. "No, I don't think they'll
catch us. Now, don't move around and exert yourself. Just remember that
I'm your doctor now, and a pretty good doctor at that."

Right now those radiant, penetrating rays might be going through the
hulls of the ship, passing through diseased cell tissue, rearranging
the cellular patterns. He was determined not to frighten her. Words
might soothe her. So he pointed to the dots in the rear vision screens,
which were becoming larger.

"They're getting closer! That's because they're using the gravity
repulsion system, and I'm still using rockets. The rockets are on full
blast. There are about ten police ships hot on my trail. If I depended
entirely on rocket blasts, I'd never get away from anti-gravity
chasers."

As he spoke he was engrossed in making changes on the oval mechanism
board.

"My new drive doesn't use an explosive blast," he explained. "The fuel
doesn't explode, but changes into primitive radiation! This radiation
shimmers away--at almost the speed of light. Due to its increased mass
with its enormous velocity, it will exert an enormous force in the
opposite direction."

An instrument on the board cackled, and he flipped a switch. A
telescreen began to lighten. Those pursuit spacers were dangerously
close now. Close enough to see uniformed men standing on their bridges,
peering through glassite. From the nearest cylindrical shape a long
tentacle was shot forth.

Magnetic grapple! It slithered past the front cowling of his space
flyer, looped out and whipcracked back. If it had fastened to the
outer berylumin hull, escape would have become impossible. Through
transparent ports on all sides he saw the bulky noses of the Space
Police ringing him in. Many eyes were watching him over the sights of
grapple rockets.

Big Rufus Thallin grinned, turned and waved goodbye through the nearest
port, then slammed a power throttle down.

"So long.... Howling Jupiter! What a jolt!"

Long trailers of flame vanished behind his jets. Now only a shimmering
column of radiant force appeared. Rufus was jerked back against the
seat. It was as though the space-flyer had just scooted into motion
from a standstill.

One startled glance told him that the girl had passed into a coma.
Jerking himself upright, he began to fight the throttle, which was
jammed to the last notch and held there by the motion of swift
acceleration.

In the nearest police craft a top-notch pilot was staring with popping
eyes as the fugitive craft leaped ahead.

"Great blazing Antares!" exploded the "ace" spaceman, following the
departing space-ship with his eyes. "Where'd he get that power? Lordy
me, what speed!"

"Feed the juice into this star wagon!" groaned a Space Police
commander, deeply chagrined. "He's got some new propelling force that
has everything beat."

"They're getting away," gritted the pilot bitterly. "They're getting
away, and we can't do a thing. All we can do is stand here and watch
while that crazy man escapes to space with the poor girl."

In the craft ahead, Rufus' body was pulling away from the throttle.
Blood was clogging up in his respiratory system. Though his breathing
was smothered he held on grimly. The throttle snapped and he catapulted
in a wild heap across the control room, smashing against a wall.

A sickening knowledge swept him. The lever had snapped at a
crystallized joint, and was of no use now. He dropped it and went
crawling across the floor on all fours.

Alarmed by the smoothness of the space-flyer's motion, he shot a
fearful glance up at the accelerometer, to find the needle floating at
zero. The power-thrust of radiant force had ceased as quickly as it had
come into being.

It took little effort to get to his feet now. The police craft had kept
on his trail and were gaining again. Automatically he reached out and
snapped the rocket blasters into action to steady his space-ship. With
the new propulsor disabled, he could only coast along with his newly
gained momentum. The police ships were getting big again on the visor
screens.


                              CHAPTER III
                             AN OLD FRIEND

He reached for the flame-gun at his belt, then glanced at the pale
features of the girl on the swinging couch. No, it wouldn't do. He
wouldn't resist when they boarded. They'd get him in the end and it
would only endanger her life foolishly.

A chattering of the space-wireless signal told him he was being
contacted for communication.

Heart sinking, he plugged in, cutting in a serried bank of glowing
tubes. Static rattled, and a mottled picture began to form.

"That's odd!" he told himself. "They didn't try to contact me before.
And odd because those police are blue devils for radio wizardry. I've
never seen their power so low!"

A pleased chuckle came from an amplifier.

"Don't worry none, Doc," the hoarse voice continued. "It ain't th'
coppers! Hell, my televiz panel's not so hot, but I like 'em that way."

Murky on the reforming mirror, he saw a dark visage with keen piercing
eyes, a tiny mustache over a cruel hyphen of a mouth. The features were
vaguely familiar.

"Who are you?" he demanded of his mysterious caller. "And where are you
calling from?"

"My name's Frenchy Logrieux!" spoke the black image. "We're up ahead of
you, some fifty space-ships, and every one a battler. The police won't
dare come up to us, so just head your space-flyer into our middle, Doc.
Look here, Doc, remember these!" Great hamlike hands were thrust before
the televisor screen. Scarred and misshapen, the flesh had obviously
been grafted back to the tendons.

"Venus Colony!" exclaimed Rufus Thallin amazedly. "And the leprous
fang-weeds. Now I remember you, Frenchy."

"Sure you do," grinned the slit of a mouth. "And I ain't never forgot
a young doc by the name of Thallin. When I hears the police broadcast,
giving out that you'd kidnapped ye a wench and made off wid her, I
says, now he's after yer own heart, Frenchy. I got a bit of sparkle for
romance in me blood, and here's a good half hundred stout space-ships
flyin' the skull and crossbones that'll see you through, Doc, till high
hell freezes over."

"Okay," returned Rufus Thallin. "I'll make a run for you. Give me your
position, and I'll split right through."

He sighted the cluster of dark hulks against a darker background
of space, but he also sighted the police craft, moving near again
and preparing to fire out their magnetic hooks. Pushing a starboard
jet-throttle down, Rufus corrected his angle of flight, losing a
precious bit of momentum as he did so, heading his space-flyer straight
for the pirate craft.

The space police were drifting away in the rear. Temporarily, their
pursuit would be ended. It was impossible that they had not noticed
the large flotilla of piratical space-ships ahead. To have tried to
break through would have been sheer folly.

The black spindular hulls held a rough circle formation. Rufus aimed
the prow of his spacer through them and flashed beyond. Ahead of them
was the dull grayness of open space.

He was hardly aware that the furtive image of Frenchy Logrieux was
still on an upper panel, and that the keen piercing eyes were flashing
rapidly over the interior, coming to rest at last on the motionless
shape of Alyce Marshall.

"Right nice little space-flyer ye got there, Doc," chuckled the space
buccaneer. "Care to join up with a bunch of me hearties?"

"No thanks, Frenchy," answered Rufus Thallin, waving farewell. "This
makes us even."

"Sure thing, Doc," said Frenchy Logrieux, smirking significantly toward
the bed. "I got a streak for frills meself. Happy voyage, Doc, and I
can't say I care much for yer taste fer wenches."

The image faded and Rufus Thallin said nothing. He had no relish for
the idea of being obligated to a pirate. He was glad that his score was
even with Frenchy Logrieux.

Ahead of him, a black planet was swimming out of the void. Dark and
foreboding, that lustreless sphere had an evil repute throughout the
solar system. It was a barren, lifeless world, and one to be avoided by
living creatures. Rufus Thallin headed the spacer in that direction. He
knew that it was Pluto.

Repairs were made, and Pluto was far in the shimmering wake of the
improved radiotron--again an opalescent beam of pure radiation hurled
the space-flyer into the astral depths at speeds his accelerometer was
incapable of registering.

The outside planets, discovered only during the last decade, came and
went. Tiny Minerva, like an icy pearl under its coating of liquid air,
whisked by. The black spongy mass of huge Siegfried, a burned-out hulk
of a world, lumbered to the rearward. Then at last huge Hermes, the
outer guardian, with its monstrous satellite Cerberus, hove into view.
A sentinel and his watch-dog.

Now they were in open space, with only the vast abysses beyond.
Days flickered by rapidly. The sunlight, so much fainter now, was
collected by huge mirrors and thrown into the front compartment of the
space-flyer, where Rufus Thallin had rigged curtains to give the girl
privacy when she slept. Days were marching by unmarked--for here in
space there was no beginning and no end--only the roll and sway of the
space-ship as it plunged on and on.

Rufus Thallin was fighting the battle of his life, despite the
extraspacial serenity. Not with actual, living opponents. That was what
made his struggle so hard. He couldn't get his big fists on the blue
virus that made diseased flesh look like jelly in a strong sunlight.

Always there was the grim knowledge that behind them the pursuit would
never end. Though the Space Police had been thrown off the trail, they
would be questing even now for new leads, new spoors that might send
them speeding in the wake of the space-flyer, even here in this Stygian
depth of outer space.

Of course he had a watch to measure hours. He used it to plot a diet of
synthetic foods for the girl, and followed it religiously. He was not
so careful with his own.

Her spark of life was still glowing, though dimly. It needed kindling.
New energies must build that spark to a flame, but those energies could
not be fed from the outside.

He could take a microscope and look deep into her body, see the
arteries pulsate, watch the slow rivers of great veins heading back
toward her heart. But the virus, if such it was, remained invisible, a
skulking menace he could only sense. A menace vulnerable, as he knew,
only to the mysterious radiations that came out of the macrocosmos.

Yet before nature began its healing work that inner spark, the vital
"will" to live, must be nurtured. The body itself would only respond
when her desire to continue life had been instilled. And that would
never be when she lay in that perpetual coma, not caring whether she
lived or died.

He began to plot desperately, knowing that this twilight state would
not last forever. Perhaps the sound of a loved one's voice, the
awakening of old memories of earth, would reach through the gloom and
arouse her lethargic brain. At least it was worth a chance.

The curtains across the control room were shoved back against the
wall. He was sitting nonchalantly before the mechanisms when the
space-wireless began to sputter, roar harsh words.

"This is ZIX, Earth Space Station in San Francisco!" shouted the
amplifier. "Tonight we are cutting into our regular programs so that
a frightened, sick old man can make a last desperate appeal over the
ether. To ships of space, and especially to one pirate craft on whose
board is a kidnaper, we give you the voice of Keith Randolph Marshall!"

The thin face against the coverlet had moved. The eyes were wide and
staring, watching him. He hoped desperately that she was listening as
well.

Over the space-wireless a familiar voice began speaking, vibrantly but
brokenly.

"I am hoping that Rufus Thallin, kidnaper of my daughter, will hear me
now. If you do, you will know that your crime will be forgotten if you
return my little girl to me. She is all that I have, all that I have
ever loved. Somehow, against my better judgment, I feel that she is
still alive. Bring her back to me, and you may have my pledge. Every
spacer of the Marshall Spacelines will be turned over to you."

The announcer's voice, booming and sympathetic, cut back in, "So you
have heard the final plea of a tired old man, whose health has been
broken and is under the constant care of doctors, who is hoping against
hope that a miracle may be achieved, and the hard heart of a criminal
softened by a father's plea...."

Alyce was moving. He didn't dare look, as he pretended to deliberate
the words from the radio, then stalked across the metal floor slowly.
He snapped the switch on the announcer's voice, then wheeled about.

She was standing there, a frail phantom, but her eyes were like jets
of flame. Terrible hate burned from the wasted contours. Now she was
tottering toward a wall, with one hand reaching where a holstered
flame-gun was hung. The weapon was too high. Upon this realization, she
collapsed.

Rufus caught her in his arms, returned her to the couch. There he
administered a sleeping gas. Even after that brief exertion she must
have rest.

But he was exuberant. Seized with unbearable emotions of delight, he
grabbed the controls and sent the space-flyer in dizzy spirals and
crazy patterns while the girl lay sleeping.

His scheme had been triumphant, though not as he had expected. A tiny
mechanism, unrolling a strip of celluloid film, had been buried on the
space-wireless, and a beam of light had carried his clever imitation of
voices from the supposed broadcast.

The spark of life was being fanned, not by an emotion aroused from the
sound of a familiar voice, but from hate. She had seen him standing
there, uncaring, with a grin on his face, and she had wanted to kill
him. Wanted to do it so badly that she had wasted her last bit of
strength when her eye chanced to fall on the flame-gun.

Rufus Thallin chuckled. He hadn't planned that she should hate him so
terribly, but that would do just as well. It would give her a reason
for living.

There was a terrestrial calendar in the bottom of a cabinet drawer. At
its top was a picture of a nearly nude beautiful girl, poised over the
waters of a moonlit lake. Laughing hoarsely, the earthman began ripping
the months away, one by one. At last he came to a sheet encircled by a
ring of crimson. That meant death for Alyce. That was the deadline set
by the physicians who had made their examinations on earth.

His big hand continued to jerk away at the month sheets, until the
calendar year was bare, and only the picture of the alluring girl
beckoned at him from the calendar. It would be a great joke on those
brilliant savants. For the six months had gone by--and as many more.

And Alyce Marshall had just learned to hate.


                              CHAPTER IV
                           SPACE THE HEALER

There were a hundred ways to build hate in the mind of the
convalescent, and Rufus Thallin used them all. He circled back among
the worlds of the planetary system, and began skirting the habitable
planets to arouse her curiosity. That was the way he encountered
Frenchy Logrieux again.

Luck had not gone well with the little pirate. Several rash encounters
with armed merchantmen had cost many piratical lives. There had been no
plunder, and much grumbling had ensued among the remaining buccaneers.
The ships began to split up into small groups and drift apart. Finally
his own quarter-deck was the scene of a bloody mutiny. His officers had
been butchered and Frenchy Logrieux was abandoned on Cerberus.

He was sitting on the edge of a big spire of glassy rock, overhanging a
gulf, when the space-flyer landed. Weeks of exposure to the weather, of
living on fruits and tubers, had given him the appearance of a wild man.

"_Nom du Nom_," he had screamed with delight, flinging himself bodily
against a glassite porte. "But it's me old friend, the Doc! How's the
kidnaper? And this little wench that ye--"

He paused uncertainly, having lurched over the threshold, for the woman
sitting quietly on the edge of the bed was surely not that wretched,
pitiable slip of a human being he had glimpsed on the sick-bed months
ago. To Frenchy's mind, this was a creature of Heaven's fashioning, a
graceful feminine being such as he had never seen outside of Paris, and
he could never return there. Such of her rounded limbs as he saw were
flushed with glowing health. The eyes were of a cerulean blue as seen
only on earth. Yet the cascading wealth of cloudy hair was the same.

"This lydee, I mean," he stammered. "Why, where'd ye get her, Doc?
She's class, she is! A beauty if I ever see one--jes' like a dream, if
ye don't mind my sayin'--"

Rufus Thallin rose from his seat and frowned irritably. He had seen the
pleased smile flicker over the woman's face. It might have been hard
for him to explain his own irritation.

"I'm certain the lady doesn't care to hear of it," he said gruffly.
Alyce shot him a malignant glance.

"Oh, but I do!" she cried indignantly. "And the man is human, just as I
am human, though you treat me like a dog."

"Come on outside, Frenchy," snapped Rufus angrily. "I want to talk to
you." The amazed pirate followed him into the chilled gloom of the
Cerberusian landscape.

"She hates me!" he explained hurriedly. "And it's necessary that she
keeps on hating me. Sometimes she tries to kill me, and she always
keeps plotting--"

"Oh yeh?" grated Frenchy Logrieux, bringing his big doughy hands up in
a strangling motion. "Whyn't ye give her this, Doc? The best lookin'
wench in the world, won't do that to Frenchy. I'll fix her up good and
proper, Doc, if ye'll only get me back to a little asteroid I know of--"

"Keep your hands off her!" commanded Rufus, shuddering a bit as the
scarred hands fell on his metallin shirt. "And we'll see about the
other."

Shaved and freshly clothed, Frenchy Logrieux was handsome in a dark
furtive way. His gallantry and thinly veiled compliments seemed to
amuse Alyce Marshall, yet they drove Rufus Thallin into a silent fury.
He resolved that the space-flyer would leave Cerberus without Frenchy
Logrieux, and that was all there was to it.

He needed a fresh water supply for the space-flyer. It had landed in a
big valley of tremendous naked rocks. Each night it rained on Cerberus
and the water flowed into a large crystal pool at the other end of the
valley. Frenchy showed him a path leading down to the water.

"Ought to do, after it's distilled," commented Rufus, bending over
to examine the chemical rings deposited on the rock by higher water
levels. It was Frenchy's opportunity. Rufus saw the swart features in
the pool's reflection, then felt the shock of a blow that hurled him
down into the deep pool.

He sank swiftly, for the water was not as heavy as that of earth. Long
arms pumped like pistons, stirring up filmy clouds of white silt from
the submarine floor. But he quit struggling. No use trying to swim in
that thin fluid. He'd have to climb!

Lungs near to bursting, he jammed his hands into the crevices of
the precipitous walls and began to pull upward. His fingers tore on
knife-edged formations of lime and silicate, leaving crimson smears in
the water below, but he kept climbing.

At last his head broke water and he gulped in precious lungfuls of
rarefied atmosphere. Frenchy Logrieux was nowhere in sight. The thin
air was being split by a clap of thunder. Rocket blasts!

Dripping water, he lurched up along the trail, his bleeding fists
clenched at his sides. Young Rufus Thallin had cast off his exhaustion
with his first few lungfuls of air, and as he raced up the broken trail
of glassen fragments his grim face became as dark as a thundercloud.

He saw the space-flyer, cushioned on its jets of rocket blasts, could
make out Frenchy's dark face hovered over the controls. Then the flames
died away with a final swoosh and the space cruiser settled. The
pirate was fighting the controls insanely, his nervous fingers flying
everywhere in an effort to get a response from the rockets.

Rufus darted across the blackened rock, still warm from those first
flame spurts, and his big fingers searched deftly along the outer rim
of the airlock. Both the inner and outer doors of the airlock slammed
open. The girl was lying on the bed, her arms and legs having been
bound hurriedly from strips of her torn skirt.

Now he halted in the doorway, shouted for the pirate to come out.

"I've got a gun, Frenchy!" he yelled. "Come out with your flippers
in the air, if you want to live! You didn't think I'd leave the
space-flyer so you could run it, did you?"

A roaring figure came out suddenly. Frenchy had a knife in one large
crooked hand and was going to chance the ray. Rufus pulled the trigger
of the flame-gun, but it had become jammed with silt in the sandy floor
of the pool. He used it to parry the metal that darted down toward his
heart.

Arms interlocked, they went hurtling from the airlock to the black
table of lavalike rock. The smashing jar of collision wrenched their
bodies apart. For a moment the pirate seemed about to flee, and Rufus
would have let him go. Then the beady eyes fastened upon the space
cruiser, and he came for Rufus swinging. One of them would go back to
earth with the girl. Frenchy Logrieux didn't intend to spend the rest
of his life as a castaway.

So the pirate came forward furiously, hacking the air before him with
the long knife, and big Rufus Thallin backed slowly away. He was not
fool enough to walk in close where Frenchy's snaking blade could find
a vital spot. He was being backed up a slow incline to the edge of the
precipitous spire where the pirate had been perched when they came.
His footing narrowed to a mere ledge, with precarious depths to either
side. Soon he would be able to retreat no more.

Glancing hurriedly about, he saw another parallel spire jutting over
the gulf, some ten feet away. Poising quickly, Rufus leaped across the
intervening gulf and landed catlike. Then he began to run down the
incline toward the cruiser.

Frenchy Logrieux's blade was out of reach now, but he took a chance,
poised for a moment, and hurled his weapon in a glittering streak.
Expecting this move, young Rufus dragged his toe in the rugged slope,
fell to his hands and knees. The blade clattered off into lower depths.

It is the unexpected that counts for most in a struggle. That was why
Rufus Thallin spun around and again leaped the gulf between the twin
glassy spires that overlooked the precipice. As he landed, his big fist
shot out like a hammer, landing squarely on the swarthy chin.

Crumpling slowly, Frenchy tottered over into the depths and disappeared.

[Illustration: _Crumpling slowly, Frenchy Logrieux toppled into the
depths of the abyss and disappeared._]

When Rufus went back up the trail he saw Alyce Marshall, standing in
the outer porte. She had managed to free herself of the hasty bonds and
was watching him strangely. He shook her away as she came to help apply
bandages to a bleeding gash on his arm.

Alyce Marshall stamped a slender foot and her face became livid with
cold fury.

"You heartless devil!" she shrieked. "I wish he'd killed you! He at
least had the desire to be a decent, respectable citizen again, even if
you--"

Rufus had frozen as the import of her words reached his mind, was
watching her. She gasped to a stop, looked startled. He came closer to
her, his eyes narrowed and suspicious. She glanced fleetingly toward
the space-wireless, and that stopped his advance.

"The dirty rat!" he cried wrathfully. "He communicated with the space
police. Offered to sell me out, if they'd give him a fresh start. He
did that, didn't he, and they made a deal with him? Of course they'd do
that!"

She was not retreating and her little head was held high.

"Other people besides you can make bargains!" she cried. "And they'd
have kept them with Frenchy Logrieux, even as my father would keep
your bargain. Why don't you take me back to earth now? I'm not ill any
longer, and I'm certain you can buy any number of sleek space-ships in
return for my body."

"Well, why shouldn't I?" demanded Rufus furiously. "That's what I
intended to do when we came here. If your father lives up to his word
that is just what is going to happen!"

"Don't worry about my father!" burst out Alyce Marshall proudly. "He'll
pay everything he promised. And I don't like to hear you cast evil
reflections about him in everything you say. He said he'd give every
space cruiser he had if I were sound and well again, and he'll do it,
if you ask him to."

"What makes you think I won't?" demanded Rufus, striding for the
controls. "At least I'm not going to be fool enough to wait here for
the space police to come and trap me."


                               CHAPTER V
                           LUNAR RENDEZVOUS

Long crater shadows were crawling across the dead seas of Luna. In
the very edge of those long shadows which moved so slowly, tiny
phosphorescent wrigglers, the only form of life on the satellite, kept
pace with the strange twilight of this slow dusk.

A cold, frigid world was the moon, passing into the dusk of existence,
even as the month-old day was passing from the dead seas.

From out of space something moved, a silver dart that came twisting
out of the reflected sunlight and levelled out in a long gravitational
glide over the dead Sea of Serenity.

At last it swooped down, landed on a high ledge that was almost
obscured by jetty walls that went ever higher and higher, to end
brokenly where the last lingering rays of moonset made crowns of foamy
refraction.

A man in a fat, grubby spacesuit of metallin came from a porte, gazed
around, and having sighted a dim glow of light, went warily toward
where the black wall was indented with a deep grotto. He stepped on
the threshold, saw an atomic lantern glowing in the hand of a waiting
figure, also clad in spacetogs.

"Rufus!" called the newcomer excitedly. "That you, Rufus?"

"Yes, Dr. Haliburton," returned Rufus Thallin. "Where's Marshall?
Wouldn't he come?"

"Oh, yes," replied Dr. Haliburton, who was having the dickens of a time
keeping his gold-rimmed spectacles on inside of his helmet. "He came
all right. But he wanted me to make certain you were here."

"Go bring him," said Rufus Thallin. "I trust you, Dr. Haliburton, but
I'm not so certain about Keith Randolph Marshall. Did he come prepared
to complete the--bargain?"

The space-clad man turned. He saw the academic features of the
physician but dimly.

"He came with a property deed to every space-ship he has," said Dr.
Haliburton. "I think you'll find that Marshall is a man who always
keeps his word, no matter how the bargain is made."

Rufus Thallin made no answer but stood holding the atomic lantern until
two space-clad figures walked from the space-flyer and came toward
him. The faceplate of the larger helmet was turned into the lantern's
glow and he made out the massive, aquiline countenance of Keith
Randolph Marshall, glaring at him.

"You remember our bargain?" he asked curtly through the space-phones.

Marshall shook a leathern pack of documents in his metal-gloved hand.

"I remember," he muttered hoarsely. "And if Alyce is completely
recovered, as you say she is, I will sign every space-liner I own over
to you."

"Very well," said Rufus Thallin. "Follow me."

He led them down a curving corridor carved from solid volcanic rock,
and at length emerged into a gigantic cavern. The floor of the cavern
ended abruptly in a ledge that fell sheer into black depths. Perched on
the brink of the black abyss was Rufus Thallin's space-flyer. No hint
as to how it had been transported here could be gained from the black
unfathomable shadows that girded it around.

Alyce was waiting inside. She was beautiful in that happy moment of
reunion, vastly more beautiful than mere words could have told, and her
blue eyes were radiant with expectant joy. The tall space-clad man ran
ahead eagerly and clambered through the aperture of an airlock.

Rufus felt Dr. Haliburton's gauntleted hand on his arm.

"Perhaps they'd rather be left alone," he said. "Remember, they'll be
like strangers almost, meeting for the first time." Through a port
they could see the big man, now without the upper portion of his space
suiting, and the girl sobbing on his shoulder.

"You have done a wonderful thing," said Dr. Haliburton enviously.
"Alyce is completely transformed. Rufus, there is some magical quality
about the outer rays of cosmic space. If we could pin it down, we'd
make enormous strides in preserving eternal health for the human body."

The young giant was looking up into black vaults. When he spoke his
eyes were dreamy.

"I can see them now," he whispered. "Big cruisers, done over with
the new radiotron drive, whisking across the gulfs as though they
were nothing. The Thallin Starways will blaze an eternal trail across
interplanetary space. Dad would have liked it that way."

Dr. Haliburton sighed. "If only you'd think more of science, and not
of--"

Rufus Thallin was no longer listening. He had whirled around and was
peering into the indigo blackness of the cavern from which they had
come.

"My nerves," he said at length. "I guess I'm jumpy. Let's go in now. I
want a talk with Keith Randolph Marshall."

He waited for the slighter figure of the doctor to enter the airlock,
waited until the inner sigh of atmosphere told he was inside. All of
the while, Rufus stood tense, peering into a blackness that was so
thick it was like a cushion. Then he, too, went through the airlock.

His metal arms moved swiftly, unfastening the middle of his space
togging. Keith Randolph Marshall was signing a bunch of papers against
a berylumin strut.

"Here," he grunted, screwing up his fountain pen and returning it to
his coat pocket, "They're yours, every space scuttler! The Marshall
lines are yours, lock, stock and barrel."

"I told you father would keep his bargain," said Alyce Marshall,
clinging to the arm of the erstwhile dictator of the spacelanes. "I
only hope he never regrets it."

"He won't," said Rufus drily. "He won't, because I'll never get hold of
them."

Another helmet fastening came loose and the slender upper body of Dr.
Haliburton appeared. He adjusted his glasses hurriedly and glared at
Rufus Thallin. A strange smile of triumph lingered on the heavy lips of
Keith Randolph Marshall.

"Don't mind him, Alyce," said Marshall. "I've kept my bargain. Next
week, after you've rested, I'm going to stage a coming out party for
you. He has the papers, hasn't he? Come on. Let's get out."

"Wait a minute!" cried Rufus sharply. "Yes, I have the papers. But
they'd never let me file them, not with charges of kidnaping against
me. And once convicted, a thing your lawyers could see to, it would be
illegal for me to own any property in space! Isn't that true, Marshall?"

The space commerce king shrugged his shoulders.

"Its truth does not concern our bargain," he began evasively.

"Nor do the space police who followed you," went on Rufus calmly.

"What's that?" demanded Dr. Haliburton. "I assure you, we came in
utmost secrecy, and that--" He stopped, having seen the plain guilt on
the face of Keith Randolph Marshall.

"Oh, damn the man!" stormed Marshall angrily. "What if I did? I'm a man
of my word, and he's a man of his. Yes, your jig is up! You might as
well give yourself up quietly, Rufus."

Marshall's hand came up from the lower part of his space suiting,
holding a flame-gun that was pointed at Rufus Thallin, but that young
man was no longer there. Leaping with all of his strength, he dove
clear across the room. His shoulders struck the metal suiting and the
gun flew from Marshall's hand.

One balled fist came up to a defensive position, kept on going. Rufus
followed it with another, a straight punch that carried his full weight
behind it. Keith Randolph Marshall went down. He wasn't out, but when
he looked into the face of the man standing over him, he stayed down.

"Get out!" snorted Rufus furiously. "Get your spacetogs on and get out
before I really do commit murder. Go out to your precious, skulking
space coppers. And just let them try to take me--alive!"

He picked up the flame-gun where Marshall had dropped it and watched
the three of them as they fastened space toggings about their bodies.
Marshall was the first to go through the airlock. Dr. Haliburton,
looking slightly dazed, went next. There was only room for one of them
at a time.

Alyce Marshall stood hesitant, waiting for the hiss of escaping gas
that would be the signal for her turn. As she did Rufus Thallin stalked
to her side, wrenched loose the upper fastening of her spacetogs. When
her face came free he brushed back her tangled hair and kissed the
exposed lips savagely.

"That wasn't in the bargain either!" he ground out furiously, and spun
on his heel.

She was gone. He sat at the controls and waited. She would be going
from the outer door of the lock now, and the space police would be
creeping nearer. Perhaps Alyce would tell them how he had gained
entrance to the cavern, but by that time, it would be too late.

His hand flickered over the controls. A low thunder shook the
space-flyer. On the outside a seething cushion of flames would be
supporting it. Through the glassite he glimpsed retreating figures, saw
the cavern abruptly become as light as day.

The space-flyer floated out over the edge of the abyss and dropped.
It descended straight for three miles, then followed the curl of the
titanic crevice toward the horizontal. Ancient civilized men had shaped
the upper cavern, men of a lost generation, but this titanic lower
abyss was a fault created by nature herself.

Rocket flames cast a weird illumination on the monstrous grotto, sent
grotesque shadows leaping far ahead. The volcanic walls fell away
from either side and were gone. Overhead he glimpsed crusty stars
that twinkled like diamonds. On all sides were high black walls. The
space-flyer had emerged in the giant crater called Copernicus.

The down-lash of flames became more furious, lifted the spacer high.
Prow jets spat additional flames and sent the nose of the space-flyer
angling vertically toward the dim, dark regions of outer space.

It held poised on the maelstrom of unleashed flame for an instant like
a living thing of metal. He reached down, snapped on the radiation
propulsion beam. Instantly the space-flyer began to accelerate.

The dark side of the moon was cleft asunder by a puff of high flame
that lingered for a moment and then was gone. Only a thin column of
shimmering light rose, slim and tall and straight. On its peak a
space-flyer was hurtling on its way.

Rufus Thallin leaned back in his leathern pilot seat and relaxed. He
felt very, very tired. A clicking sound aroused him. He turned to see a
space-clad figure emerging from the airlock.

The helmet came away and she emerged from the spacesuit like a
butterfly from a cocoon.

"You--you didn't give me time," said Alyce Marshall, evading his eyes.

"Look here!" snorted Rufus Thallin. "There was plenty of time to get
out of the lock. What were you doing in there all of that time?"

"Thinking," answered Alyce, folding the spacesuit neatly and putting it
into place on a nearby rack. "And it was your own fault, Rufus Thallin.
It was on account of what you did just before--before--

"Anyway, I was thinking that you had deliberately made me hate you all
along. But you overdid it, Rufus. Did anyone ever tell you how closely
related are the emotions of extreme hate and the emotions of extreme--"

"Extreme what?" demanded Rufus Thallin in incredulous amazement.

"We can pull through anything, Rufus, if we hold out--together."

"Together, Alyce?" he whispered. "You mean it that way? Why, together
we could lick the universe."