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Read Ebook: Lady Into Hell-Cat by Mullen Stanley McWilliams Al Illustrator
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Ebook has 230 lines and 10200 words, and 5 pages
LADY INTO HELL-CAT
Tracking her across black space-lanes and slapping magnetic bracelets on her was duck soup for S.P. Agent Heydrick. Only then did he learn what a planet-load of trouble he'd bought.
The inspector of security police dropped his shoes on the floor and put his feet on the desk where he could watch his toes wriggle.
"Sure we're sloppy here," he said belligerently. "You pretty boys of the Space Patrol don't know what it's like in a slime-hole frontier town like 9 Ganymede."
Lee Heydrick smiled grimly. "I guess you didn't catch my name. I earned these service bars of mine. I was one of four survivors of the first Trans-Plutonian Expedition."
The inspector suddenly became respectful. "Oh, you're that Heydrick?" He referred to the credentials on his desk. "What's a pirate-chaser like you doing on an assignment like this? Seems like picking up fugitive murderers for the disintegrators is a job for the security police."
Heydrick grunted. "So it is. I don't like the job any better than you do. But this is no ordinary murderer. She's a red Martian. Killed Feyjak, third man in the Red Council. Worked in his laboratory. They suspect a Wilding plot."
"Feyjak, eh? They ought to give her a medal. I feel sorry for the girl--good-looker, too. Still sounds like a police job."
Heydrick growled. "Yes, it does. Just some more rotten politics. There's not supposed to be any politics in the Space Patrol. Hooey! The Red Scientists are in power, and my foster father, Tyko, is head man of the Blue. So I get assignments like this. Just so they can get a whack at Tyko. They hope I'll fail--that's all they want."
The inspector warmed noticeably. "So Tyko's your foster? I'm a blue myself ... out of working hours. That's why I'm stuck in a last frontier hellhole like this. Anything I can do to help?"
Heydrick loosened up and sat down. "I don't know. It's a mean job any way you look at it. The girl says she didn't kill him. They can't use scopolamine. She's a desert dweller of the old blood, and it doesn't work on 'em. Why would she kill Feyjak? He wasn't a bad sort. A bit dim, but that's all. Of course, if she's a Wilding, that would explain after a fashion. They're all fanatics, but why Feyjak? They could knock off a lot of others more important. We got a tip she's hiding out on Ganymede. A place called the Spacerat's Roost. Know anything about it?"
The inspector whistled. "Not much. Enough to stay clear of the place. It's a dive in the Interplanetary Quarter, a damn tough hole. Mostly Plutonium prospectors and fungi hunters hang out there. We suspect it's mixed up in the illegal Moondrug traffic, but can't prove anything. I never send my boys into that quarter unless it's necessary, and then only in squads of four. Sure you don't want help?"
Heydrick grinned sourly. "I wouldn't want your boys to get their pretty uniforms dirty. Do you think you could make me look like a Plutonium prospector?"
"Can do--that all?"
"Draw me a map of the district. I'll need to know my way around."
"I'd rather draw it than show you. I wouldn't go there alone. Not at night. They don't like cops."
"If you're not back in two days, we'll come in after you."
"I'll be back."
The air in the Spacerat's Roost was thick with Fung-weed smoke. Heydrick mingled with the crowd inside the doorway and noticed men from every inhabited world in the Solar System. He spotted a vacant table and elbowed his way to it. A drug-soaked horror from Venus, obviously the bouncer, looked dubiously at the newcomer in his scuffed prospector's leather. Heydrick pounded on the table for service.
The waiter was a Jovian octopus man with five tentacles and three eyes. He came and hovered over the table, blinking sadly, as if life was a burden to him.
"What'll you have?"
"What've you got?"
The waiter waved a tentacle airily. "Anything you can name--Snow-grape Champagne from Mars, Deimos rice-nectar, Toad's-eye brandy and Banana-beer from Venus ..." he paused dramatically, leaned close and whispered, "even a bit of Blue Moonfoam from Callisto for special customers."
Heydrick winked. "I'm a special customer."
"You must have more money than sense," the waiter observed. "It'll be twenty vikdals, Martian."
Heydrick flicked a hundred vikdal platinum coin on the table. The octopus man uncoiled a tentacle and snatched it up, tested it for weight, then shambled off. He returned with a dusty bottle and the change. Heydrick let the change lie.
"Would you like to earn the rest of it?"
The octopus creature clucked somewhere within the unholy cavern which served him as mouth. "I'd kill anyone on Ganymede for half of that," he observed. "What'ya want me to do?"
The waiter consulted a wrist-chron. "Anytime now. She's temperamental."
"When she's finished her turn, ask her to come to my table." The Jovian shrugged and moved off.
The houselights dimmed suddenly. A shower of colored lights played upon the raised stage. Soft nostalgic music poured from an unseen source. Soundlessly, a series of colored crystal screens slid back. At the back of the stage was a shadowy figure half-concealed by clouds of gossamer stuff blown wildly by concealed fans. Slowly, with infinite insolence, the figure moved to the point of the triangular stage. She stood motionless, waiting, while the babel of unearthly tongues died away in silence. The music grew louder. Veil by veil she flung off the filmy draperies until she stood revealed. Klathgar....
She wore the conventional garb of a woman of the ancient desert dwellers, jewelled copper breast-plates, a circlet of beaten bronze binding her wealth of red-violet hair, her eyes glittering like emerald fire; and the long divided skirt concealed little of her shapely body. Leashed, beside her, was the restless, slithering shadow of a red sand-leopard.
The song ended upon a note of earth-sick despair, a haunting melancholy for things that will never again be as they were, never, if the planets swing round a dead sun in an empty sky.
The singer bowed, half-contemptuously, to the storm of applause, then retired.
Heydrick drew the identification space-photo from his pocket and studied it. There was no doubt. Despite the heavy make-up, the features were the same. Ria Tarsen and Klathgar were the same.
In moments the girl was back. She had shed her glamor-costume and was nearly naked in the briefest of skirts, legs shimmering in painted stockings, high-breasts caught in a tight sheen of semi-translucent material. This time she sang a bawdy song, "If Asteroids were Asterisks," about a girl who went for a rocket-ride with an octopus man, and had to hitch-hike home from the Moons of Jupiter.
The crowd went wild. The number finished with a rowdy burlesque dance which went considerably beyond the bounds of good taste, but was screamingly funny.
The girl ducked out the wings, and Heydrick nodded to the waiter. The octopus man winked one of his three eyes and vanished. He came back through the door to the dressing rooms, and the girl was with him. He pointed to Heydrick. Klathgar looked at him insolently. A puzzled frown wrinkled her face.
Lithe as a sand-leopard, she moved among the crowded tables, still clad in the gaudy costume of her last number.
Heydrick looked closely at her. Could this be the same girl who sang the love song so full of fiery passion that it was madness set to music? The uncanny warble of flutes and the triple throb of bone-drums still echoed in his ears. But this girl was tired; strain and unutterable weariness lurked behind her eyes.
"Why did you send for me?" she asked.
"I wanted to talk to you--is that so unusual?"
"Men always want to talk to me," she said, sneering. "I don't have to associate with the customers--not even those who can buy Moonfoam."
Heydrick noticed suddenly that the sand-leopard was with her. The animal's tail swished savagely back and forth. Its lips curled and a snarling burr of sound came from the ugly rows of teeth. It seemed like an echo of the girl's sneer. Klathgar put down one hand to stroke the beast's spade-shaped head. It rubbed against her in silent ecstasy.
"Perhaps I can change your mind," suggested Heydrick. "Won't you sit down?"
"You flatter yourself," she snapped. "I can hear what you have to say standing up."
"I wonder if you can," Heydrick mused aloud. "First, who are you?" The ghost of fear trembled behind her mask.
Klathgar laughed. "Ask anybody who I am. Klathgar. The Red Leopard."
Heydrick threw Ria Tarsen's dossier card on the table, face up. Klathgar glanced at it without a flicker of emotion.
"Is that supposed to mean something to me?" she asked contemptuously.
"It should--it's yours."
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