The Golden Age of Science Fiction Novels Vol 02 Read online

  He was amusing himself with me. And yet, looking back on it now, I believe he was more than half serious. From his pouch he drew a small cylinder. "Have a drink, Grant. After all I bear you no ill-will. A man can but follow his trade: you were trying to be a good Government agent."

  "Thanks."

  "And then you may make it possible for me to pick a nice ransom. Here."

  "I hope so." I declined the drink.

  "Afraid for your wits?"

  I said impulsively, "I want all my wits to make sure you handle this ransom properly, De Boer. I'm as interested as you are: in that at least, we are together."

  He grinned, tipped the cylinder at his lips for a long drink.

  "Quite so--a mutual interest. Let us be friends over it."

  His gaze wandered back to Jetta. He added slowly:

  "She is very lovely, Grant. A little woodland flower, just ready for plucking." A sentimental tone, but there was in his expression a ribald flippancy that sent a shudder through me. "She has quite overcome you, Grant. Well, why not me as well? I am certainly more of a man than you. We must admit that Perona had a good eye."

  * * * * *

  My thoughts were wandering. Suppose I could not find an opportunity to escape with Jetta? De Boer might successfully ransom me and take her to Cape Town. Or if he feared that to try for the ransom would be too dangerous, doubtless he would kill me out of hand. An ill outcome indeed! Nor could I forget that there was half a million of treasure involved.

  It was obvious to me that Hanley would not permit the patrol-ships to attack De Boer with the lives of Jetta and myself at stake. Hanley knew, or suspected, that De Boer was operating an invisible flyer, but I did not see how that could help Hanley much. Markes, acting for Nareda, would doubtless be willing to ransom Jetta: the United States would ransom me. I must urge the ransom plan, because for all the money in the world I would not endanger Jetta, nor let this bandit carry her off.

  Or could I escape with her, and still find some means to save the treasure? It was Jetta's treasure now, two-thirds of it, for it had legally belonged to her father. Could I save it, and her as well?

  Not by any move of mine, here now on this flyer. That was impossible. In De Boer's camp, perhaps. But that, too, I doubted. He was too clever a scoundrel to be lax in guarding me.

  But in the effecting of a ransom--the exchange of me, and perhaps Jetta, for a sum of money--that would be a delicate transaction, and some little thing could easily go wrong for De Boer. There would be my chance. I would have to make something go wrong! Get in his confidence now so that I would have some say in arranging the details of the ransom. Make him think I was only concerned for my own safety. Appear clever in helping plan the exchange. And then so manipulate the thing that I could escape with Jetta and save the treasure--and the ransom money as well. And capture De Boer, since that was what Hanley had sent me out to accomplish.

  * * * * *

  Thoughts fly swiftly. All this flashed to me. I had no details as yet. But that I must get into De Boer's confidence stood but clearly.

  I said abruptly, "De Boer, since we are to be friends--"

  "So you prefer to sit down now?"

  "Yes." I had drawn a small settle to face him. "De Boer, do you intend to ask a ransom for Jetta?"

  "You insist with that question?"

  "That is my way. Then we can understand each other. Do you?"

  "No," he said shortly.

  I frowned. "I think I could get you a big price."

  "I think I should prefer the little Jetta, Grant."

  I held myself outwardly unmoved. "I don't blame you. But you will ransom me? It can be worked out. I have some ideas."

  "Yes," he agreed. "It can be worked perhaps. I have not thought of details yet. You are much concerned for your safety, Grant? Fear not."

  An amused thought evidently struck him. He added. "It occurs to me how easy, if I am going to ransom you, it will be for me to send you back dead. You might, if I send you back alive, tell them a lot of things about me."

  "I will not talk."

  "Not," he said, "if I close your mouth for good."

  * * * * *

  I had no retort. There was no answering such logic; and with his murders of Spawn and Perona, and the deaths of some of the police guards at the mine, the murder of me would not put him in much worse a position.

  He was laughing ironically. Suddenly he checked himself.

  "Well, Jetta! So you have awakened?"

  Jetta was sitting erect. How long she had been awake, what she had heard. I could not say. Her gaze went from De Boer to me, and back again.

  "Yes, I am awake."

  It seemed that the look she flashed me carried a warning. But whatever it was, I had no chance of pondering it, for it was driven from my mind by surprise at her next words.

  "Awake, yes! And interested, hearing this Grant bargain with you for his life."

  It surprised De Boer as well. But the alcholite had dulled his wits, and Jetta realized this, and presumed upon it.

  "Ho!" exclaimed De Boer. "Our little bird is angry!"

  "Not angry. It is contempt."

  Her look to me now held contempt. It froze me with startled chagrin; but only for an instant, and then the truth swept me. Strange Jetta! I had thought of her only as a child; almost, but not quite a woman. A frightened little woodland fawn.

  "Contempt, De Boer. Is he not a contemptuous fellow, this American?"

  Again I caught her look and understood it. This was a different Jetta. No longer helplessly frightened, but a woman, fighting. She had heard De Boer calmly saying that he might send me back dead--and she was fighting now for me.

  De Boer took another drink, and stared at her. "What is this?"

  She turned away. "Nothing. But if you are going to ransom me--"

  "I am not, little bird."

  * * * * *

  She showed no aversion for him, and it went to his head, stronger than the drink. "Never would I ransom you!"

  He reached for her, but nimbly she avoided him. Acting, but clever enough not to overdo it. I held myself silent: I had caught again the flash of a warning gaze from her. She had fathomed my purpose. Get his confidence. Beguile him. And woman is so much cleverer than the trickiest man at beguiling!

  "Do not touch me, De Boer! He tried that. He held my hand in the moonlight--to woo me with his clever words."

  "Hah! Grant, you hear her?"

  "And I find him now not a man, but a craven--"

  "But you will find me a man, Jetta." De Boer was hugely amused. "See Grant, we are rivals! You and Perona, then you and me. It is well for you that I fear you not, or I would run my knife through you now."

  I could not mistake Jetta's shudder. But De Boer did not see it, for she covered it by impulsively putting her hand upon his arm.

  "Did you--did you kill my father?" She stumbled over the question. But she asked it with a childlike innocence sufficiently real to convince him.

  "I? Why--" He recovered from his surprise. "Why no, little bird. Who told you that I did?"

  "No one. I--no one has said anything about it." She added slowly, "I hoped that it was not you, De Boer."

  "Me? Oh no: it was an accident." He shot me a menacing glance. "I will explain it all. Jetta. Your father and I were friends for years--"

  "Yes. I know. Often he spoke to me of you. Many times I asked him to let me meet you."

  * * * * *

  They were ignoring me. But Gutierrez, lurking in the door oval, was not: I was well aware of that.

  "I remember you from years ago, little Jetta."

  "And I remember you."

  I understand the rationality of her purpose. She could easily get De Beer's confidence. She had known him when a child. Her father had been his business partner, presumably his friend. And I saw her now cleverly altering her status here. She had been a captive, allied with me. She was changing that. She was now Spawn's daughter, here with her dead father's friend.
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br />   She turned a gaze of calm aversion upon me. "Unless you want him here, De Boer. I would rather talk to you--without him."

  He leaped to his feet. "Hah! that pleases me, little Jetta! Gutierrez, take this fellow away."

  The Spanish-American came slouching forward. "The girl's an old friend, Commander? You never told me that."

  "Because it is no business of yours. Take him away. Seal him in D-cubby."

  I said sullenly. "I misjudged both of you."

  Jetta's gaze avoided me. As Gutierrez shoved me roughly down the corridor, De Boer laughed, and his voice came back: "Do not be afraid. We will find some safe way of ransoming you--dead or alive!"

  I was flung on a bunk in one of the corridor cubbies, and the door sealed upon me.

  CHAPTER XV

  In the Bandit Camp

  The dark cave, with its small spots of tube-light mounted upon movable tripods, was eery with grotesque swaying shadows. The bandit camp. Hidden down here in the depths of the Mid-Atlantic Lowlands. An inaccessible retreat, this cave in what once was the ocean floor. Only a few years ago water had been here, water black and cold and soundless. Tremendous pressure, with three thousand or more fathoms of the ocean above it. Fishes had roamed these passages, no doubt. Strange monsters of the deeps: sightless, or with eyes like phosphorescent torches.

  But the water was gone now. Blue ooze was caked upon the cave floor. Eroded walls; niches and tiny gullies; crevices and an arching dome high overhead. A fantastic cave--no one, seeing it as I saw it that morning at dawn, could have believed it was upon this earth. From where De Boer had put me--on the flat top of a small, butte-like dome near the upper end of the sloping cave floor--all the area of this strange bandit camp was visible to me.

  A little tent of parchment was set upon the dome-top.

  "Yours," said De Boer, with a grin. "Make yourself comfortable. Gutierrez will be your willing servant, until we see about this ransom. It will have to be one very large, for you are a damn trouble to me, Grant. And a risk. Food will come shortly. Then you can sleep: I think you will want it."

  He leaped from the little butte, leaving the taciturn ever-watchful Gutierrez sitting cross-legged on the ledge near me, with his projector across his knees.

  * * * * *

  The cave was irregularly circular, with perhaps, a hundred-feet diameter and a ceiling fifty feet high. A drift of the fetid, Lowland air went through it--into a rift at this upper end, and out through the lower passage entrance which sloped downward thirty feet and debouched upon a rippled ramp of ooze outside. It was daylight out there now. From my perch I could see the sullen heavy walls of a ridge. Mist hung against them, but the early morning sunlight came down in shafts penetrating the mist and striking the oily surface of a spread of water left here in the depths of a cauldron.

  De Boer's flyer was outside. We had landed by the shore of the sea, and the bandits had pushed the vehicle into an arching recess which seemed as though made to hide it. All this camp was hidden. Arching crags of the ridge-wall jutted out over the cave entrance. From above, any passing flyer--even though well below the zero-height--would see nothing but this black breathing sea, lapping against its eroded, fantastic shore-line.

  Within the cave, there was only a vague filtering daylight from the lower entrance, a thin shaft from the rift overhead, and the blue tube-light, throwing great shadows of the tents and the men against the black rock walls.

  There seemed perhaps a hundred of the bandits here. A semi-permanent camp, by its aspect. Grey parchment tents were set up about the floor, some small, others more elaborate. It seemed as though it were a huddled little group of buildings in the open air, instead of in a cave. One tent, just at the foot of my dome, seemed De Boer's personal room. He went into it after leaving me, and came out to join the main group of his fellows near the center of the cave where a large electron stove, and piped water from a nearby subterranean freshet, and a long table set with glassware and silver, stood these men for kitchen and eating place.

  * * * * *

  The treasure had not yet been brought in from the flyer. But, from what I overheard, it seemed that the radiumized ingots of the ill-fated Spawn and Perona were to be stored for a year at least, here in this cave. I could see the strong-room cubby. It was hewn from the rock of the cave wall, its sealed-grid door-oval set with metal bars.

  I saw also what seemed a small but well-equipped machine shop, in a recess room at one side of the cave. Men were working in there under the light of tubes. And there was a niche hollowed out in the wall to make a room for De Boer's instruments--ether-wave receivers and transmitters, the aerial receiving wires of which stretched in banks along the low ceiling.

  There was no activity in there now, except for one man who was operating what I imagined might be an aerial insulator, guarding the place from any prying search-vibrations.

  The main cave was a bustle of activity. The arriving bandits were greeting their fellows and exchanging news. The men who had been left here were jubilant at the success of the Chief's latest enterprise. Bottles were unsealed and they began to prepare the morning meal.

  My presence caused considerable comment. I was a complication at which most of the men were ill pleased, especially when the arriving bandits told who I was, and that the patrols of the United States were doubtless even now trying to find me.

  But De Boer silenced the grumbling with rough words.

  "My business, not yours. But you will take your share of his ransom, won't you? Have done!"

  And Jetta, she had caused comment also. But when the bottles were well distributed the grumbling turned to ribald banter which made me shudder that it should fall upon Jetta's ears. De Boer had kept his men away from her, shoving them aside when they crowded to see her. She was in a little tent now, not far from the base of my ledge.

  My meal presently was brought from where most of the bandits now were roistering at the long table in the center of the cave.

  "Eat," said Gutierrez. "I eat with you, Americano. Madre Mia, when you are ransomed away from here it will please me! De Boer is fool, with taking such a chance."

  * * * * *

  With the meal ended, another guard came to take Gutierrez' place and I was ordered into my tent. The routine of the camp, it seemed, was to use the daylight hours for the time of sleep. There were lookouts and guards at the entrance, and a little arsenal of ready weapons stocked in the passage. The men at the table were still at their meal. It would end, I did not doubt, by most of them falling into heavy alcoholic slumber.

  I was tired, poisoned by the need of sleep. I lay on fabric cushions piled in one corner of my tent. But sleep would not come; my thoughts ran like a tumbling mountain torrent, and as aimlessly. I hoped that Jetta was sleeping. De Boer was now at the center table with his men. Hans was guarding Jetta. He was a phlegmatic, heavy Dutchman, and seemed decent enough.

  I wondered what Hanley might be doing to rescue me. But as I thought about it, I could only hope that his patrols would not find us out here. An attack and most certainly De Boer and his men in their anger would kill me out of hand. And possibly Jetta also.

  I had not had a word alone with Jetta since that scene in the control room. When we disembarked, she had stayed close by De Boer. But I knew that Jetta had fathomed my purpose, that she was working to the same end. We must find a way of arranging the ransom which would give us an opportunity to escape.

  I pondered it. And at last an idea came to me, vague in all its details, as yet. But it seemed feasible, and I thought it would sound plausible to De Boer. I would watch my chance and explain it to him. Then I realized how much aid Jetta would be. She would agree with my plan, and help me convince him. And when the crucial time came, though I would be a captive, watched by Gutierrez, bound and gagged, perhaps--Jetta would be at liberty. De Boer and Gutierrez would not be on their guard with her.

  I drifted off to sleep, working out the details of my plan.

  CHAPTER XVI

 
Planning The Ransom

  I was awakened by the sound of low voices outside my tent. Jetta's voice, and De Boer's, and, mingled with them, the babble of the still hilarious bandits in the center of the cave. But there were only a few left now; most of them had fallen into heavy slumber. I had been asleep for several hours. I figured. The daylight shadows outside the cave entrance showed that it was at least noon.

  I lay listening to the voices which had awakened me. De Boer was saying:

  "But why, Jetta, should I bother with your ideas? I know what is best. This ransom is too dangerous to arrange." His voice sounded calmly good humored; I could hear in it now more than a trace of alcoholic influence. He added, "I think we had better kill him and have done. My men think so, too; already I have caused trouble with them, by bringing him."

  It jolted me into full wakefulness.

  Jetta's voice: "No! I tell you it can be arranged, Hendrick. I have been thinking of it, planning it--"

  "Child! Well what? The least I can do is listen; I am no pig-headed American. Say it out. What would you do to ransom him safely?"

  * * * * *

  They were just at the foot of my ledge, in front of De Boer's tent. Their voices rose so that I could hear them plainly. For all my start at being awakened to hear my death determined upon, I recall that I was almost equally startled by Jetta's voice. Her tone, her manner with De Boer. Whatever opportunities they had had for talking together, the change in their relationship was remarkable. De Boer was now flushed with drink, but for all that he had obviously still a firm grip upon his wits. And I heard Jetta now urging her ideas upon him with calm confidence. An outward confidence; yet under it there was a vibrant emotion suppressed within her even tone; a hint of tremulous fright; a careful calculation of the effect she might be making upon De Boer. Had he not been intoxicated--with drink and with her--he might have sensed it. But he did not.

  "Hendrick, it can be done. A big price. Why not?"

  "Because if we are trapped and caught, of what use is the price we might have gotten? Tell me that, wise one?"

  "We will not be trapped. And suppose you kill him--won't they track you just the same, Hendrick?"

  "No. We would leave his body on some crag where it would be found. The patrols would more quickly tire of chasing a killer when the damage is done. They want Grant alive."