And that memory ended.
Duane got up, stared at his haggard face in the cracked mirror over the bed. “They say I’m a killer
,” he thought. “Apparently I’m a gunrunner as well. Good lord—what am I not?
”
His reflection—white, drawn face made all the more pallid by the red hair that blazed over it—stared back at him. There was no answer there. If only he could remember—
“All right, Duane.” The deep voice of a guard came to him as the door swung open. “Stop making eyes at yourself.”
Duane looked around. The guard beckoned. “Governor Andrias wants to speak to you—now. Let’s not keep the governor waiting.”
A long, narrow room, with a long carpet leading from the entrance up to a great heavy desk—that was Andrias’ office. Duane felt a click in his memory as he entered. One of the ancient Earth dictators had employed just such a psychological trick to overawe those who came to beg favors of him. Muslini, or some such name.
The trick failed to work. Duane had other things on his mind; he walked the thirty-foot length of the room, designed to imbue him with a sense of his own unimportance, as steadily as he’d ever walked in the open air of his home planet.
Whichever planet that was.
The guard had remained just inside the door, at attention. Andrias waved him out.
“Here I am,” said Duane. “What do you want?”
Andrias said, “I’ve had the ship inspected and what I want is on it. That saves your life, for now. But the cargo is in your name. I could take it by force, if I had to. I prefer not to.” He picked up a paper, handed it to Duane. “In spite of your behavior, you can keep alive. You can even collect the money for the guns—Stevens’ share as well as your own. This is a release form, authorizing my men to take four hundred and twenty cases of dehydrated foods and drilling supplies from the hold of the Cameroon—the ship you came on. Sign it, and we’ll forget our argument. Only, sign it now and get it over with. I’m losing patience, Duane.”
Duane said, without expression, “No.”
Dark red flooded into Andrias’ sallow face. His jaws bunched angrily and there was a ragged thread of incomplete control to his voice as he spoke.
“I’ll have your neck for this, Duane,” he said softly.
Duane looked at the man’s eyes. Death was behind them, peeping out. Mentally he shrugged. What difference did it make?
“Give me the pen,” he said shortly.
Andrias exhaled a deep breath. You could see the tension leave him, the mottled anger fade from his face and leave it without expression. He handed the paper to Duane without a word. He gave him a pen, watched him scrawl his name.
“That,” he said, “is better.” He paused a moment ruminatively. “It would have been better still if you’d not stalled me so long. I find that hard to forgive in my associates.”
“The money,” Peter said. If he were playing a part—pretending he knew what he was doing—he might as well play it to the hilt. “When do I get it?”
Andrias picked up the paper and looked carefully at the signature. He creased it thoughtfully, stowed it in a pocket before answering.
“Naturally,” he said, “there will have to be a revision of terms. I offered a hundred and ten thousand Earth-dollars. I would have paid it—but you made me angry. You’ll have to pay for that.”
Duane said, “I’ve paid already. I’ve been dragged from pillar to post by you. That’s enough. Pay me what you owe me, if you want any more of the same goods!”
That was a shot in the dark—and it missed the mark.
Andrias’ eyes widened. “You amaze me, Duane,” he said. He rose and stepped around the desk, confronting Duane. “I almost think you really have lost your memory, Duane,” he said. “Otherwise, surely you would know that this is all the rifles I need. With them I’ll take whatever else I want!”
Duane said, “You’re ready, then. …”
He took time to think it over, but he knew that no thought was required. Already the hands that he had locked behind him were clenched, taut. Already the muscles of his legs were tensing.
“You’re ready,” he repeated. “You’ve armed the Callistan exiles—the worst gutter scum on nine planets. You’re set to betray the League that gave you power here. … Well, that changes things. I can’t let you do it!”
He hurled himself at Andrias, hands sweeping around to grapple for the dark man’s throat. Andrias, off-balance, staggered backward. But his own hands were diving for the twin heat guns that hung at his waist.
Duane saw his danger, and reacted. His foot twisted around Andrias’ ankle; his hands at the other’s throat gripped tighter. He lunged forward, slamming the hard top of his head into the other’s face, feeling flesh and cartilage give as Andrias’ nose mashed flat. His own head pin-wheeled dizzily, agonizingly, as the jar revived the pain of his earlier accident.
But Andrias, unconscious already, tumbled back with Duane on top of him. His head made an audible, spine-chilling thud as it hit the carpeted floor.
Duane got up, retrieving the two heat guns, and stared at him.
“They tell me I killed Stevens the same way
,” he thought. “I’m getting in a rut!
”
But Andrias was not dead, though he was out as cold as the void beyond Pluto. The thick carpeting had saved him from a broken head.
Duane stepped over the unconscious man and looked around the room. It was furnished severely, to the point of barrenness. Two chairs before Andrias’ ornate, bare-topped desk and one luxurious chair behind it; a tasseled bell cord within easy reach of Andrias’ chair; the
