Produced by Sankar Viswanathan, Greg Weeks, and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
Transcriber's Note:
This etext was produced from Planet Stories July 1952. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.
BRIDE OF THE DARK ONE
By FLORENCE VERBELL BROWN
_The outcasts; the hunted of all the brighter worlds, crowded onto Yaroto. But even here was there salvation for Ransome, the jinx-scarred acolyte, when tonight was the night of Bani-tai ... the night of expiation by the photo-memoried priests of dark Darion?_
* * * * *
The last light in the Galaxy was a torch. High in the rafters ofMytor's Cafe Yaroto it burned, and its red glare illuminated a galleryof the damned. Hands that were never far from blaster or knife; eyesthat picked a hundred private hells out of the swirling smoke where awoman danced.
She was good to look at, moving in time to the savage rhythm of themusic. The single garment she wore bared her supple body, and thighsand breasts and a cloud of dark hair wove a pattern of desire in theclose room.
Fat Mytor watched, and his little crafty eyes gleamed. The Earth-girldanced like a she-devil tonight. The tables were crowded with theoutcast and the hunted of all the brighter worlds. The woman's warmbody, moving in the torchlight, would stir memories that men hadthought they left light years behind. Gold coins would shower intoMytor's palm for bad wine, for stupor and forgetfulness.
Mytor sipped his imported amber kali, and the black eyes moved withseeming casualness, penetrating the deep shadows where the tableswere, resting briefly on each drunken, greedy or fear-ridden face.
It was an old process with Mytor, nearly automatic. A glance told himenough, the state of a man's mind and senses and wallet. Thistrembling wreck, staring at the woman and nursing a glass of thecheapest green Yarotian wine, had spent his last silver. Mytor wouldhave him thrown out. Another, head down and muttering over a tumblerof raw whiskey, would pass out before the night was over, and wake inan alley blocks away, with his gold in Mytor's pocket. A third wanteda woman, and Mytor knew what kind of a woman.
When the dance was nearly over Mytor heaved out of his chair, drew therich folds of his native Venusian tarab about his bulk, and paddedsoftly to a corner of the room, where the shadows lay deepest.Smiling, he rested a moist, jeweled paw on the table at which Ransome,the Earthman, sat alone.
Blue eyes looked up coldly out of a weary, lean face. The voice wasbored.
"I've paid for my bottle and I have nothing left for you to steal. Wehave nothing in common, no business together. Now, if you don't mind,you're in my line of vision, and I'd like to watch the finish of thedance."
The fat Venusian's smile only broadened.
"May I sit down, Mr. Ransome?" he persisted. "Here, out of your lineof vision?"
"The chair belongs to you," Ransome observed flatly.
"Thank you."
Covertly, as he had done for hours now, Mytor studied the gaunt, paleEarthman in the worn space harness. Ransome had apparently dismissedthe Venusian renegade already, and his cold blue eyes followed thewoman's every movement with fixed intensity.
The music swept on toward its climax and the woman's body was a stormof golden flesh and tossing black hair. Mytor saw the Earthman's palelips twist in the faint suggestion of a bitter smile, saw the longfingers tighten around the glass.
Every man had his price on Yaroto, and Ransome would not be the firstMytor had bought with a woman. For a moment, Mytor watched the desirebrighten in Ransome's eyes, studied the smile that some men wear onthe way to death, in the last moment when life is most precious.
* * * * *
In this moment Ransome was for sale. And Mytor had a proposition.
"You were not surprised that I knew your name, Mr. Ransome?"
"Let's say that I wasn't interested."
Mytor flushed but Ransome was looking past him at the woman. TheVenusian wiped his forehead with a soiled handkerchief, drummed fatfingers on the table for a moment, tried a different tack.
"Her name is Irene. She's lovely, isn't she, Mr. Ransome? Surely theinner worlds showed you nothing like her. The eyes, the red mouth, thebreasts like--"
"Shut up," Ransome grated, and the glass shattered between hisclenched fingers.
"Very well, Mr. Ransome." Whiskey trickled from the edge of the tablein slow, thick drops, staining Mytor's white tarab. Ice was in theVenusian's voice. "Get out of my place--now. Leave the whiskey, andthe woman. I have no traffic with fools."
Ransome sighed.
"I've told you, Mytor that you're wasting your time. But make yourpitch, if you must."
"Ah, Mr. Ransome, you do not care to go out into the starless night.Perhaps there are those who wait for you, eh? With very long knives?"
Reflex brought Ransome's hand up in a lightning arc to the blasterbolstered under his arm, but Mytor's damp hand was on his wrist, andMytor's purr was in his ear, the words coming quickly.
"You would die where you sit, you fool. You would not live even toknow the sharpness of the long knives, the sacred knives of Darion,with the incantations inscribed upon their blades against blasphemersof the Temple."
Ransome shuddered and was silent. He saw Mytor's guards, vigilant inthe shadows, and his hand fell away from the blaster.
When the dance was ended, and the blood was running hot and strong inhim, he turned to face Mytor. His voice was impatient now, but hismeaning was shrouded in irony.
"Are you trying to sell me a lucky charm, Mytor?"
The Venusian laughed.
"Would you call a space ship a lucky charm, Mr. Ransome?"
"No," Ransome said grimly. "If it were berthed across the street I'dbe dead before I got halfway to it."
"Not if I provided you with a guard of my men."
"Maybe not. But I wouldn't have picked you for a philanthropist,Mytor."
"There are no philanthropists on Yaroto, Mr. Ransome. I offer youescape, it is true; you will have guessed that I expect some servicein return."
"Get to the point." Ransome's eyes were weary now that the woman'sdancing no longer held them. And there was little hope in his voice.
A man can put off a date across ten years, and across a hundredworlds, and there can be whiskey and women to dance for him. But therewas a ship with burned-out jets lying in the desert outside thiscrumbling city, and it was the night of Bani-tai, the night ofexpiation in distant Darion, and Ransome knew that for him, this wasthe last world.
After tonight the priests would proclaim the start of a new Cycle, andthe old debts, if still unpaid, would be canceled forever.
Ransome shrugged, a hopeless gesture. Enough of the cult of the DarkOne lingered in the very stuff of his nerves and brain to tell himthat the will of the Temple would be done.
But Mytor was speaking again, and Ransome listened in spite ofhimself.
"All the scum of the Galaxy wash up on Yaroto at last," the fatVenusian said. "That is why you and I are here, Mr. Ransome. It isalso why a certain pirate landed his ship on the desert out therethree days ago. _Callisto Queen_, the ship's name is, though it hasborne a dozen others. Cargo--Jovian silks and dyestuffs from the moonsof Mars, narco-vin from the system of Alpha Centauri."
Mytor paused, put the tips of fat fingers together, and looked hard atRansome.
"Is all of that supposed to mean something to me?" Ransome asked. Awaiter had brought over a glass to replace the broken one, a
nd hepoured a drink for himself, not inviting Mytor. "It doesn't."
"It suggests a course, nothing more. In toward Sol, out to Yaroto byway of Alpha Centauri. Do you follow the courses of pirate ships, Mr.Ransome?"
"One," Ransome said savagely. "I've lost track of her."
"Perhaps you know the _Callisto Queen_ better under her former name,then."
Again Ransome's hand moved toward the blaster, and this time Mytormade no attempt to stop him. Ransome's thin lips tightened with somepowerful emotion, and he half rose to look hard at Mytor.
"The name of the ship?"
"Her captain used to call her _Hawk of Darion_."
Ransome understood. _Hawk of Darion_, hell ship driving through blackspace under the command of a man he had once sworn to kill. Eightyears rolled back