Duane cursed the lack of foresight of the early Earth governments. They’d made a prison planet of Callisto; had filled it with the worst scum of Earth. Then, when the damage had been done—when Callisto had become a pesthole among the planets; its iniquities a stench that rose to the stars—they had belatedly found that they had created a problem worse than the one they’d tried to solve. One like a hydra-beast.
Criminality was not a thing of heredity. The children of the transported convicts, most of them, were honest and wanted to be respectable. And they could not be.
Earth’s crime rate, too, had not been lowered materially by exiling its gangsters and murderers to Callisto. When it was long past time, the League had stepped in, and set a governor of its own over Callisto.
If the governor had been an honest man a satisfactory solution might have been worked out. The first governor had been honest. Under him great strides had been made. The bribe-proof, gun-handy League police had stamped out the wide-open plague spots of the planet; public works had been begun on a large scale. The beginnings of representative government had been established.
But the first governor had died. And the second governor had been—Andrias.
“You can see the results!
” Duane thought grimly as he swung into the airfield in his rented ground car. Foreboding was stamped on the faces of half the Callistans he’d seen—and dark treachery on the others. Some of those men had been among the actual exiled criminals—the last convict ship had landed only a dozen years before. All of those whom Andrias planned to arm were either of the original transportation-men, or their weaker descendants.
What was holding Andrias back? Why the need for smuggling guns in?
The answer to that, Duane thought, was encouraging but not conclusive. Clearly, then, Andrias did not have complete control over the League police. But how much control he did have, what officers he had won over to treachery, Duane could not begin to guess.
Duane slid the car into a parking slot, switched off the ignition and left it. It was night, but the short Callistan dark period was nearly over. A pearly glow at the horizon showed where the sun would come bulging over in a few minutes; while at the opposite rim of the planet he could still see the blood-red disc of mighty Jupiter lingering for a moment, casting a crimson hue over the landscape, before it made the final plunge. The field was not floodlighted. Traffic was scarce on Callisto.
Duane, almost invisible in the uncertain light, stepped boldly out across the jet-blasted tarmac toward the huge bulk of the Cameroon, the rocket transport which had brought him. Two other ships lay on the same seared pavement, but they were smaller. They were fighting ships, small, speedy ones, in Callisto for refueling before returning to the League’s ceaseless patrol of the System’s starlanes.
Duane hesitated briefly, wondering whether he ought to go to one of those ships and tell his story to its League commander. He decided against it. There was too little certainty for him there; too much risk that the commander, even, might be a tool of Andrias’.
Duane shook his head angrily. If only his memory were clear—if only he could be sure what he was doing!
He reached the portal of the ship. A gray-clad League officer was there standing guard, to prevent the ship taking off.
“Official business,” Duane said curtly, and swept by the startled man before he could object. He hurried along the corridor toward the captain’s office and control room. A purser he passed looked at him curiously, and Duane averted his face. If the man recognized him there might be questions.
For the thousandth time he cursed the gray cloud that overhung his memory. He didn’t know, even, who among the crew might know him and spread the alarm.
Then he was at the door marked, Crew only—do not enter! He tapped on it, then grasped the knob and swung it open.
A squat, open-featured man in blue, the bronze eagles of the Mercantile Service resting lightly on his powerful shoulders, looked at him. Recognition flared in his eyes.
“Duane!” he whispered. “Peter Duane, what’re you doing in the clothes of Andrias’ household guard?”
Duane felt the tenseness ebb out of his throat. Here was a friend.
“Captain,” he said, “you seem to be a friend of mine. If you are—I need you. You see, I’ve lost my memory.”
“Lost your memory?” the captain echoed. “You mean that blow on your head? The ship’s surgeon said something … yes, that was it. I hardly believed him, though.”
“But were we friends?”
“Why, yes, Peter.”
“Then help me now,” said Duane. “I have a cargo stowed in your hold, Captain. Do you know what it is?”
“Why—yes. The rifles, you mean?”
Duane blinked. He nodded, then looked dizzily for a chair. The captain was a friend of his, all right—a fellow gunrunner!
“Good God,” he said aloud. “What a mess!”
“What’s happened?” the captain asked. “I saw you in the corridor, arguing with Stevens. You looked like trouble, and I should have come up to you then. But the course was to be changed, and I had to be there. … And the next I hear, Stevens is dead, and you’ve maybe killed him. Then I heard you’ve lost your memory, and are in a jam with Andrias.”
He paused and speculation came into his eyes, almost hostility.
“Peter Duane,” he said softly, “it strikes me that you may have lost more than your memory. Which side are you on. What happened between you and Andrias? Tell me now if you’ve changed sides on me, man. For friendship’s sake I won’t be too hard on you. But there’s too much at stake here—”
“Oh, hell,” said Peter, and the heat gun was suddenly in his hand, leveled at the squat man in blue. “I wish you were on my side, but there’s
