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

"It should--it's yours."

Her laugh was shrill. "At least you have a new approach. In either case, you're mistaken. What's your racket?"

The girl was growing angry. "It's in my dressing room; I'll get it."

Heydrick was on his feet. "If you don't mind, I'll go with you."

"I do mind."

"I'll go anyway."

The girl shrugged and led the way among the crowded tables, the leopard padding silently beside her. Curious glances went with them. Suddenly Klathgar turned. "On second thought, I have it here," she said. She knelt quickly and unsnapped the leopard's leash. Heydrick's hand reached for his gun, but the girl was holding a card out to him. Even as he took it, he wondered if the gesture were a trick to occupy his gun hand.

One glance at the card was enough. "I hope you didn't pay too much for this," he told her. "It's a clumsy forgery."

Klathgar muttered a low word to the leopard, then slipped through the sliding door of plastic. A bundle of furred muscle launched itself at Heydrick. It was touch and go for a minute. Deadly talons raked through the leather tunic like razors. The man got a grip on the jewelled collar and twisted savagely. He wrenched the great cat away long enough to get out a paralysis gun and fire it. The drugged needle went into a soft spot behind one furred ear. Instantly the beast let go and crumpled.

Heydrick leaped for the door. Someone tried to trip him, but he got through and slammed the plastic door shut.

Cutting down the intensity of his blaster, he ran the blunt muzzle up and down the joint where the heavy slab of plastic fit, sealing it tightly as the plastic flowed and fused. "That should hold them," he thought. Something crashed against the door.

In the dim passageway, Heydrick could see several doors, all shut. Which door?

He tried three, then saw one marked with a glittering star. It was locked, but he put his shoulder against it and shoved violently. The thin screen buckled.

The girl was rummaging in a drawer. She turned and lunged at him with an ornamental dagger. Heydrick wrenched it away from her.

"Nice try, Ria."

She leaped on him, kicking and scratching. Locked together they crashed into the mirror. All three went down in a smash of glass. The girl lay still.

Heydrick took a needle from the paralysis gun and scratched her lightly. Her breathing steadied and she lay relaxed, while he opened the window and looked out. Below him, bathed in eerie Jupiter-light, lay the rooftops of the city. He could just make it to the next roof. Ria was lighter than she looked.

At security police headquarters, Heydrick sat back for a quiet smoke. He had changed back into the crisp silvery grey of the Space Patrol. The inspector was in an official mood. He had his shoes on.

"What's the quickest transportation back to Mars?"

The inspector grinned. "Anxious to get her off your hands, eh? I don't blame you. The Martian Express is the quickest--you can get it at City 1. It doesn't stop, of course, but they pick up ore-lighters as they go past Ganymede."

"How can I get to City 1?"

"I'll lend you a patrol flier. They're all old crates, rocket drive. If it gets you there, you can leave it; we'll pick it up. If not, maybe we'll get some decent equipment."

Heydrick walked down the dim passageway to the cell in which he had deposited Ria Tarsen. She glowered at him.

"Did you kill my leopard?"

"He's all right. Be stiff a couple of days, that's all. I used the paralysis gun. How d'you feel."

The girl did not answer. Heydrick went on. "I'm sorry, Ria. I'll have to take you back now." He unlocked the cell, and the girl strode into the corridor. She was still arrogant and glared at him with cold insolence.

"You must feel proud of yourself," she said icily. "You'll never get me back to Mars."

"I thought of that." He took a metal bracelet from his pocket. "Try this on for size."

"That's a funny handcuff; it's not chained to anything," she said as he clasped it on her wrist.

"Try running away," he suggested. Ria darted down the corridor, then stopped as if she had run smack into a dur-steel wall.

"Magnetic," he explained. "Can be set for distances up to fifty feet. Once that's on you, and the mate to it's on me, we're linked together to the end of the trail. It's sealed with a coded beam of light. I don't have the combination. I just don't want you to try anything silly, that's all."

"I'll kill you for this," Ria promised, her green eyes glowing with ugly light.

"Seems you've killed one man too many now," Heydrick commented. "Even if you were lucky enough to kill me, we'd still be linked together; you couldn't escape with a corpse."

"I didn't kill Feyjak 9," she shrieked. "I didn't kill him. It was an accident. I don't know anything about it."

Heydrick looked at her soberly. "I don't believe you, Ria. And, if I did, it wouldn't matter. You were tried and sentenced. I'm sorry for you, but it's my job to take you back to the--to your punishment."

"I won't go back to the disintegrators," Ria stated, her face pale but tearless. "You'll never get me there alive."

In the antiquated patrol flier, Heydrick set the auto-pilot for City 1. The girl was sleeping quietly under the effects of the paralysis drug. Heydrick went back to the galley and opened a can of hot coffee. A sudden tug at the metal circlet on his wrist sent him racing to the controls.

It was too late. The girl held a heavy bar of dur-steel ready to crash it down on the maze of keys and switch-bars. The bar descended in a glittering crescent. Blue flame shot through the tiny cabin. Rocket jets fused and exploded at the tail of the rocket-flier.

The shock knocked Heydrick to his knees. He scrambled to the control board and reached for the girl. In one movement, she turned and struck at him with the bar. It missed his head, but a numbing jar went through his shoulder. A clip on the jaw sent her reeling.

Frantically Heydrick worked at the wrecked controls, splicing burnt wires, bending keys back to position. Sick nausea clawed at his insides. The ship was going down in a free fall, spinning. The thin atmosphere of Ganymede went round the hull with a crescendo, whistling scream. A jagged wilderness of saw-toothed rock and volcanic ash whirled up at the flier.

The slight gravity of Ganymede was bad enough, but if they struck at full rocket velocity, the hull would crumple like an eggshell. With a length of wire, Heydrick burned his fingers shorting the switches to the forward tubes. It was too late to do much. If he could only slow the fall.

A series of explosions forward jarred through the ship. Deceleration flung Heydrick on top of the girl.

The flier buried her nose in soft ash and skidded thirty yards in a choking shower. A sharp needle of jagged rock reached up through the dust to catch her. With a shriek of riven metal the flier rose on end. The fused-quartz port-holes bulged and gave way.

Supercharged air whistled out of the cabin. As the artificially heavy air blew itself out, Heydrick felt his head swell as if it were going to explode. His eyes seemed to be squeezing out of his head. Dazed, he groped to the locker and got out the space-suits. The cold bit into him like needles of ice till he struggled into his suit. He set his atmosphere control, then fought his way through the shattered wreckage to Ria. She was in no condition to resist as he forced the bulky space-suit on her. He set the controls on her suit, then talked into his microphone.

"You are a problem child," he said. "How'd you manage it?"

Ria was sick and dizzy. She staggered on her feet. "I had some benzedrine--stole it from the emergency kit. Your paralysis needle barely scratched me anyhow."

She fell weakly against the bulkhead. Heydrick seized her and dragged her through the riven shell of the control room into the shelter of a gaunt outcropping.

"The forward rockets are building up. They'll go any minute."

A bellowing geyser of dust-shrouded flame roared up. Flying metal clattered brutally on their shelter.

"Just in time," he said. Ria lay on the ground, retching weakly. "Well, the security boys get a new ship. They'll be happy. From here on, we walk. I hope you're satisfied."

The upper limb of an immense crescent rose above the horizon. Jupiter. Its sombre light revealed a savage wasteland of barren rock and volcanic ash.

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