The Stars My Destination Read online

  'If it's there.'

  'Dagenham's here, isn't he? That's proof it's there. We'll have to cut the whole safe out of the Nomad and get it into the Weekender. Then we blast.'

  'But -'

  'Just listen to me and do what I say. Go back to the Weekender. Empty it out. Jettison everything we don't need . . . all supplies except emergency rations.'

  'Why?'

  'Because I don't know how many tons this safe weighs, and the ship may not be able to handle it when we come back to gravity. We've got to make allowances in advance. It'll mean a tough trip back but it's worth it. Strip the ship. Fast! Go, girl. Go!'

  He pushed her away and without another glance in her direction, attacked the safe. It was built into the structural steel of the hull, a massive steel ball some four feet in diameter. It was welded to the strakers and ribs of the Nomad at twelve different spots. Foyle attacked each weld in turn with acids, drills, thermite and refrigerants. He was operating on the theory of structural strain . . . to heat, freeze and etch the steel until its crystalline structure was distorted and its physical strength destroyed. He was fatiguing the metal.

  Jisbella returned and he realized that forty-five minutes had passed. He was dripping and shaking but the globe of the safe hung free of the hull with a dozen rough knobs protruding from its surface. Foyle motioned urgently to Jisbella and she strained her weight against the safe with him. They could not budge its mass together. As they sank back in exhaustion and despair, a quick shadow eclipsed the sunlight pouring through the rents in the Nomad hull. They stared up. A spaceship was circling the asteroid less than a quarter of a mile off.

  Foyle placed his helmet against Jisbella's. 'Dagenham,' he gasped. 'Looking for us. Probably got a brew down here coming for us too. Soon as they tally to Joseph they'll be here.'

  'Oh, Gully . . .'

  'We've still got a chance. Maybe they won't spot Sam's Weekender until they've made a couple of revolutions. It's hidden in that crater. Maybe we can get the safe aboard in the meantime.'

  'How, Gully?'

  'I don't know, damn it! I don't know.'

  He pounded his fists together in frustration. 'I'm finished.'

  'Couldn't we blast it out?'

  'Blast . . .? What; bombs instead of brains? Is this Mental McQueen speaking?'

  'Listen. Blast it with something explosive. That would act like a rocket jet . . . give it a thrust.'

  'Yes, I've got that. But then what? How do we get it into the ship, girl? Can't keep on blasting. Haven't got time.'

  'No, we bring the ship to the safe.'

  'What?'

  'Blast the safe straight out into space. Then bring the ship around and let the safe sail right into the main hatch. Like catching a ball in your hat. See?'

  He saw. 'By God, Jiz, we can do it.'

  Foyle leaped to the pile of equipment and began sorting out sticks of dynamite, gelatine, fuses and caps.

  'We'll have to use the shortwave. One of us stays with the safe; one of us pilots the ship. Man with the safe talks the man with the ship into position. Right?'

  'Right. You'd better pilot, Gully. I'll do the talking.'

  He nodded, fixing explosive to the face of the safe, attaching caps and fuses. Then he placed his helmet against hers. 'Vacuum fuses, Jiz. Timed for two minutes. When I give the word by shortwave, just pull off the fuse heads and get the hell out of the way. Right?'

  'Right' 'Stay with the safe. Once you've talked it into the ship, come right after it. Don't wait for anything. It's going to be close.'

  He thumped her shoulder and returned to the Weekender. He left the outer hatch open, and the inner door of the airlock as well. The ship's air emptied out immediately. Airless and stripped by Jisbella, it looked dismal and forlorn.

  Foyle went directly to the controls, sat down and switched on his micro-wave set. 'Stand by,' he muttered. 'I'm coming out now.'

  He ignited the jets, blew the laterals for three seconds and then the forwards. The Weekender lifted easily, shaking debris from her back and sides like a whale surfacing. As she slid up and back, Foyle called: 'Dynamite, Jiz! Now!!'

  There was no blast; there was no flash. A new crater opened in the asteroid below him and a flower of rubble sprang upwards, rapidly outdistancing a dull steel ball that followed leisurely, turning in a weary spin.

  'Ease off' Jisbella's voice came cold and competent over the earphones. 'You're backing too fast. And incidentally, trouble's arrived.'

  He braked with the rear jets, looking down in alarm. The surface of the asteroid was covered with a swarm of hornets. They were Dagenham's crew in yellow and black banded spacesuits. They were buzzing around a single figure in white that dodged and spun and eluded them. It was Jizbella.

  'Steady as you go,' Jiz said quietly, although he could hear how hard she was breathing. 'Ease off a little more . . . Roll a quarter turn.'

  He obeyed her almost automatically, still watching the struggle below. The flank of the Weekender cut off any view of the trajectory of the safe as it approached him, but he could still see Jisbella and Dagenham's men. She ignited her suit rocket . . . he could see the tiny spurt of flame shoot out from her back . . . and came sailing up from the surface of the asteroid. A score of flames burst out from the backs of Dagenham's men as they followed. Half a dozen dropped the pursuit of Jisbella and came up after the Weekender.

  'It's going to be close, Gully,' Jisbella was gasping now, but her voice was still steady. 'Dagenham's ship came down on the other side, but they've probably signaled him by now and he'll be on his way. Hold your position, Gully. About ten seconds now ....'

  The hornets closed in and engulfed the tiny white suit.

  'Foyle! Can you hear me? Foyle!'

  Dagenham's voice came in fuzzily and finally cleared. 'This is Dagenham calling on your band. Come in, Foyle!'

  'Jiz! Jiz! Can you get clear of them?'

  'Hold your position, Gully . . . There she goes! It's a hole in one, son!'

  A crushing shock racked the Weekender as the safe, moving slowly but massively, rammed into the main hatch. At the same moment the white-suited figure broke out of the cluster of yellow wasps. It came rocketing up to the Weekender, hotly pursued.

  'Come on, Jiz! Come on!'

  Foyle howled. 'Come, girl! Come!'

  As Jisbella disappeared from sight behind the flank of the Weekender, Foyle set controls and prepared for top acceleration.

  'Foyle! Will you answer me? This is Dagenham speaking.'

  'To hell with you, Dagenham,' Foyle shouted. 'Give me the word when you're aboard, Jiz, and hold on.'

  'I can't make it, Gully.'

  'Come on, girl!'

  'I can't get aboard. The safe's blocking the hatch. It's wedged in half-way . . .'

  'Jiz!'

  'There's no way in, I tell you,' she cried in despair. 'I'm blocked out.'

  He stared around wildly. Dagenham's men were boarding the hull of the Weekender with the menacing purpose of professional raiders. Dagenham's ship was lifting over the brief horizon of the asteroid on a dead course for him. His head began to spin.

  'Foyle, you're finished. You and the girl. But I'll offer a deal . . .'

  'Gully, help me. Do something, Gully. I'm lost!'

  'Vorga,' he said in a strangled voice. He closed his eyes and tripped the controls. The tail jets roared. The Weekender shook and shuddered forward. It broke free of Dagenham's boarders, of Jisbella, of warnings and pleas. It pressed Foyle back into the pot's chair with the blackout of 10G acceleration, an acceleration that was less pressing, less painful, less treacherous than the passion that drove him.

  And as he passed from sight there rose up on his face the blood-red stigmata of his possession.

  Part Two

  With a heart of furious fancies

  Whereof I am commander,

  With a burning spear and a horse of air,

  To the wilderness I wander.

  With a knight of ghosts and shadows


  I summoned am to tourney,

  Ten leagues beyond the wide world's end

  Methinks it is no journey.

  - TOM-A-BEDLAM

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The old year soured as pestilence poisoned the planets. The war gained momentum and grew from a distant affair of romantic raids and skirmishes in space to a holocaust in the making. It became evident that the last of the World Wars was done and the first of the Solar Wars had begun.

  The belligerents slowly massed men and material for the havoc. The Outer Satellites introduced universal conscription, and the Inner Planets perforce followed suit. Industries, trades, sciences, skills and professions were drafted; regulations and oppressions followed. The armies and navies requisitioned and commanded.

  Commerce obeyed, for this war (like all wars) was the shooting phase of a commercial struggle. But populations rebelled, and draft-jaunting and labor-jaunting became critical problems. Spy scares and Invasion scares spread. The hysterical became Informers and Lynchers. An ominous foreboding paralyzed every home from Baffin Island to the Falklands. The dying year was enlivened only by the advent of the Four Mile Circus.

  This was the popular nickname for the grotesque entourage of Geoffrey Fourmyle of Ceres, a wealthy young buffoon from the largest of the asteroids. Fourmyle of Ceres was enormously rich; he was also enormously amusing. He was the classic bourgeois gentilhomme, the upstart nouveau riche of all time. His entourage was a cross between a country circus and the comic court of a Bulgarian Kinglet, as witness this typical arrival in Green Bay, Wisconsin.

  Early in the morning a lawyer, wearing the stove-pipe hat of a legal clan, appeared with a list of camp sites in his hand and a small fortune in his pocket. He settled on a four-acre meadow facing Lake Michigan and rented it for an exorbitant fee. He was followed by a gang of surveyors from the Mason and Dixon clan. In twenty minutes the surveyors had laid out a camp site and the word had spread that the Four Mile Circus was arriving. Locals from Wisconsin, Michigan and Minnesota came to watch the fun.

  Twenty roustabouts jaunted in, each carrying a tent-pack on his back. There was a mighty overture of bawled orders, shouts, curses, and the tortured scream of compressed air. Twenty giant tents ballooned upward, their lac and latex surfaces gleaming as they dried in the winter sun. The spectators cheered.

  A six-motor helicopter drifted down and hovered over a giant trampoline. Its belly opened and a cascade of furnishings came down. Servants, valets, chefs and waiters jaunted in. They furnished and decorated the tents. The kitchens began smoking and the odor of frying, broiling and baking pervaded the camp. Fourmyle's private police were already on duty, patrolling the four acres, keeping the huge crowd of spectators back.

  Then, by plane, by car, by bus, by truck, by bike and by jaunte came Fourmyle's entourage. Librarians and books, scientists and laboratories, philosophers, poets, athletes. Racks of swords and sabers were set up, and judo mats and a boxing ring. A fifty-foot pool was sunk in the ground and filled by pump from the lake. An interesting altercation arose between two beefy athletes as to whether the pool should be warmed for swimming or frozen for skating.

  Musicians, actors, jugglers and acrobats arrived. The uproar became deafening. A crew of mechanics melted a grease-pit and began revving up Fourmyle's collection of vintage diesel harvesters. Last of all came the camp followers: wives, daughters, mistresses, whores, beggars, chisellers and grafters. By mid-morning the roar of the circus could be heard for four miles, hence the nickname.

  At noon, Fourmyle of Ceres arrived with a display of conspicuous transportation so outlandish that it had been known to make seven-year melancholics laugh. A giant amphibian thrummed up from the south and landed on the lake. An L.S.T. barge emerged from the plane and droned across the water to the shore. Its forward wall banged down into a drawbridge and out came a twentieth-century staff car. Wonder piled on wonder for the delighted spectators, for the staff car drove a matter of twenty yards to the centre of camp and then stopped.

  'What can possibly come next? Bike?'

  'No, roller-skates.'

  'He'll come out on a pogo-stick.'

  Fourmyle capped their wildest speculations. The muzzle of a circus cannon thrust up from the staff car. There was the bang of a blackpowder explosion and Fourmyle of Ceres was shot out of the cannon in a graceful arc to the very door of his tent where he was caught in a net by four valets. The applause that greeted him could be heard for six miles. Fourmyle climbed on to his valet's shoulders and motioned for silence.

  'Oh God! It's going to make a speech.'

  'It? You mean "he", don't you?'

  'No; it. It can't be human.'

  'Friends, Romans, Countrymen,' Fourmyle began earnestly. 'Lend me your ears. Shakespeare. 1564-1616. Damn!'

  Four white doves shook themselves out of Fourmyle's sleeves and fluttered away. He regarded them with astonishment, then continued, 'Friends, greetings, salutations, bonjour, bon ton, bon vivant, bon voyage, bon - What the hell?'

  Fourmyle's pockets caught fire and rocketed forth Roman Candles. He tried to put himself out. Streamers and confetti burst from him. 'Friends . . . Shut up! I'll get this speech straight. Quiet! Friends -!'

  Fourmyle looked down at himself in dismay. His clothes were melting away, revealing lurid scarlet underwear. 'Kleinmann!' he bellowed furiously. 'Kleinmann! What's happened to your God-damned hypno-training?'

  A hairy head thrust out of a tent. 'You stoodied for dis sbeech last night, Fourmyle?'

  'Damn right. For two hours I stoodied. Never took my head out of the hypno-oven, Kleinmann on Prestidigitation.'

  'No, no, no!' the hairy man bawled. 'How many times must I tell you? Prestidigitation is not sbeech-making. Is magic. Dumbkopf! ! You haff the wrong hypnosis taken!'

  The scarlet underwear began melting. Fourmyle toppled from the shoulders of his shaking valets and disappeared within his tent. There was a roar of laughter and cheering and the Four Mile Circus ripped into high gear. The kitchens sizzled and smoked. There was a perpetuity of eating and drinking. The music never stopped. The vaudeville never ceased.

  Inside his tent, Fourmyle changed his clothes, changed his mind, changed again, undressed again, kicked his valets and called for his tailor in a bastard tongue of French, Mayfair and affectation. Half-way into a new suit, he recollected he had neglected to bathe. He slapped his tailor, ordered ten gallons of scent to be decanted into the pool, and was stricken with poetic inspiration. He summoned his resident poet.

  'Take this down,' Fourmyle commanded. 'Le roi eat mort, les - Wait. What rhymes to moon?'

  ' June,' his poet suggested. ' Croon, soon, dune, loon, noon, rune, tune, boon . . .'

  'I forgot my experiment!' Fourmyle exclaimed. 'Dr Bohun! Dr Bohun!'

  Half-naked, he rushed pell-mell into the laboratory where he blew himself and Dr Bohun, his resident chemist, half-way across the tent. As the chemist attempted to raise himself from the floor he found himself seized in a most painful and embarrassing stranglehold.

  'Noguchi!' Fourmyle shouted. 'Hi! Noguchi! I just invented a new judo hold.'

  Fourmyle stood up, lifted the suffocating chemist and jaunted to the judo mat where the little Japanese inspected the hold and shook his head.

  'No, please.' He hissed politely. 'Hfffff. Pressure on windpipe are not perpetually lethal. Here I show you, please.'

  He seized the dazed chemist, whirled him and deposited him on the mat in a position of perpetual self-strangulation. 'You observe, please, Fourmyle?'

  But Fourmyle was in the library bludgeoning his librarian over the head with Bloch's Das Sexual Leben (eight pounds, nine ounces) because that unhappy man could produce no text on the manufacture of perpetual motion machines. He rushed to his physics laboratory where he destroyed an expensive chronometer to experiment with cog wheels, jaunted to the bandstand where he seized a baton and led the orchestra into confusion, put on skates and fell into the scented swimming pool, was hauled out, swearing fulmino
usly at the lack of ice, and was heard to express a desire for solitude.

  'I wish to commune with myself,' Fourmyle said, kicking his valets in all directions. He was snoring before the last of them limped to the door and closed it behind him.

  The snoring stopped and Foyle arose. 'That ought to hold them for today,' he muttered, and went into his dressing-room. He stood before a mirror, took a deep breath and held it, meanwhile watching his face. At the expiration of one minute it was still untainted. He continued to hold his breath, maintaining rigid control over pulse and muscle, mastering the strain with iron calm. At two minutes and twenty seconds the stigmata appeared, blood-red. Foyle let out his breath. The tiger mask faded.

  'Better,' he murmured. 'Much better. The old fakir was right, Yoga is the answer. Control. Pulse, breath, bowels, brains.'

  He stripped and examined his body. He was in magnificent condition, but his skin still showed delicate silver seams in a network from neck to ankles. They looked as though someone had carved an outline of the nervous system into Foyle's flesh. They were the scars of an operation and they had not yet faded.

  The operation had cost Foyle Cr 200,000 bribe to the chief surgeon of the Mars Commando Brigade and had transformed him into an extraordinary fighting machine. Every nerve plexus had been rewired, microscopic transistors and transformers had been buried in muscle and bone, a minute platinum outlet showed at the base of his spine. To this Foyle affixed a power-pack the size of a pea and switched it on. His body began an internal electronic vibration that was almost mechanical.

  'More machine than man,' he thought. He dressed, rejected the extravagant apparel of Fourmyle of Ceres for the anonymous black coverall of action.

  He jaunted to Robin Wednesbury's apartment in the lonely building amidst the Wisconsin pines. It was the real reason for the advent of the Four Mile Circus in Green Bay. He jaunted and arrived in darkness and empty space and immediately plummeted down.

  'Christ!' he thought. 'Mis-jaunted?'

  The broken end of a rafter dealt him a bruising blow and he landed heavily on a shattered floor upon the putrefying remains of a corpse.