Read Ebook: Flame-Jewel of the Ancients by Graber Edwin L McWilliams Al Illustrator

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Ebook has 430 lines and 28855 words, and 9 pages

Vaguely he was aware of the less restrained laughter of patrons who had already reached the second stage, having passed through the vibrator screen that simulated a soothing color movement. The function of the vibrator was to give jaded sensibilities the physical fillip necessary to convince reluctant laggards that they really were ready for the second stage. Glayne was also aware of his table's slight movement toward the vibrator screen and he felt a wave of irritation at the prospect of chasing through nine stages in this outlandish place looking for his contact.

Suddenly the annunciator light in the center of his table began to glow an intermittent red-orange. Glayne looked at it, eyes narrowed. Experimentally he stabbed its speaker stud and a voice seemed to emerge from the empty air before his face.

On the other hand, she had not made herself known with the code which had been selected beforehand. Puzzled and suspicious, he flicked the transmitter stud and said cautiously: "Where are you?"

"You can't miss me, darling," she replied. "Just stand up."

She was perfectly correct. He couldn't miss her from ten light years, much less thirty feet. She was tall and graceful in a tailored green jumper which half suggested, half concealed the long, smooth curves of her young body. She had coppery red hair and wide-set green eyes that smiled boldly at him. She rested a hand on her hip in mock impatience.

"Well, don't just stand there, fat-head!" she cried across the tables. "What do you usually do when you haven't seen someone for years and years?"

With an effort Glayne collected himself, assayed a weak smile, and maneuvered around the tables to her side.

"Oh, you look perfectly gorgeous," she said, oblivious to the amused people around her. "Dance with me--you always were a divine dancer. You know, I was telling Jani just today how I wished you'd come for a visit--we haven't seen you for such a long time...."

She prattled gaily on. Somewhat dazed, Glayne led her to the resilient dance floor, an absurdity which had suddenly become the very latest rage overnight. The girl slipped smoothly into his arms, her fragrant, perfumed hair under his chin.

He wasn't at all prepared for the hard tones of her voice when she said: "I regret to inform you, Captain Glayne, that the agent you were supposed to meet here is dead. He had an unfortunate accident with a Cardy gun."

Glayne stiffened perceptibly. "Who did it?"

"Probably Delban espionage. They know that something is in the fire and they're not wearing kid gloves to find out what it is."

"Did they discover the identity of the person he was supposed to meet?"

"No," she replied. "But they're looking. Fortunately the organization was not in the dark as to whom he would meet. Otherwise I could never have found you."

"If you will notice their eyes," the girl remarked dryly, "you will find that a good proportion of the Yarga's clientele are high on Soames drug."

Glayne started and looked more closely at the couples entering the stage. Then he saw what she meant. Here and there he saw eyes--burning eyes--eyes that glittered with a brilliant fire that emanated from huge, dilated pupils. They were using the marvelous Soames energizing drug; it fairly blazed from their slitted lids. Its purpose was to accelerate physical reaction speeds--but why use it on a small planet like Lorle IV? With the question came the answer. Their quarry had the .95 reaction index of a big-planet man. That was Glayne's index. And that meant that they were right on top of him.

"I think," he intoned softly to the girl, "it would be wise for us to move on to the next stage."

In reply she slipped smoothly from his arms, seized him by the sleeve of his loose-fitting jumper, and propelled him to the tingle screen. When he balked she grinned at him and stood in the field of the screen herself and laughed at him. It was a bubbly, elated laugh. Glayne liked it. And he liked the way the soothing color movements of the tingle screen caressed the long curves of her figure. But he didn't like the nervous manner in which the glittering, dilated pupils flickered at them and held them curiously, then flickered casually away.

The girl was clever, he realized. The keyed-up Delban agents would be far less likely to suspect an intoxicated couple of dark designs. Suddenly the red-headed girl stumbled, accidentally pushed from the other side of the screen. Instinctively Glayne reached out to steady her--reached out with a long, liquid motion of his powerful arm. In one instant every Soames-dilated eye in the room was upon him. In another, Cardy guns were magically appearing in a dozen hands.

But, fast as they were, Glayne was faster. He drew his own weapon with blurred speed, fired, and flung himself and the girl through the screen into the second stage. The Delban agents hesitated to fire blindly through the screen and rushed after them. The big Guardian hurtled through the exotic darkness of the second stage with the girl in his left arm. He scattered and smashed tables right and left, littering the floor with bewildered and drunken patrons.

The exit toward which he was heading was suddenly no longer an exit. It was filled with a crowd of huge, glittering eyes and wicked looking Cardy guns. In a single movement, Glayne dropped to the floor and fired.

The second stage was in an uproar. Now agents were pouring through the tingle screen in pursuit. Desperately Glayne sought for a means of escape. Then he saw the portal that evidently led to the kitchen or the bar. He grabbed the dazed red-head and rushed through the portal, swept down a short corridor, turned, and straight-armed two tray-bearing waiters as he dashed through a second portal. And suddenly he was behind the entrance bar where he had taken his first drink. He tensed for a fraction of a second, then vaulted the low bar.

A bartender and two customers stared at them with blank amazement but there was not a Delban agent in sight. Swiftly Glayne set the girl upon her feet and together they fled from the building. He noted approvingly the capable-looking Cardy she held in her small fist.

"My flier is outside," he said. "They've probably surrounded the place, but in the confusion the ones outside won't know us. We'll try to bluff through."

She nodded and put her gun away. As they approached the flier parking area she clutched his arm with intoxicated possessiveness. Glayne was right; here and there a Delban agent glanced at them suspiciously--then looked contemptuously away. The object of their search was alone. Controlling his heavy breathing with difficulty, Glayne approached an attendant, digging out his micro-wave key jewel.

"Here! Get my air-jet," he panted.

But instead of the expected response, the man stiffened for a measureless instant, then whirled with blurred speed. A Cardy blaster magically materialized in his hand and his eyes burned with Soames-induced ferocity. But Glayne was a shade faster. His left streaked with dazzling speed into the agent's stomach and the Delban folded up, his motor nerves paralyzed from the blow in the solar plexus.

Crouching, they ran toward Glayne's air-jet. A Cardy bolt splashed into the side of a flier just above Glayne's head, battering the tough beralloy and sending a shower of white hot droplets in all directions. As they reached his air-jet, Glayne whirled and fired rapidly and with murderous accuracy at the pursuing Delban agents. As they scuttled for cover, Glayne turned and waved the talisman through the micro-wave field and the door swung open.

Instantly he shoved the girl into the cabin, then climbed in behind her. He let the tiny atomic engine thunder beyond audibility, then fed power to the jets in huge gulps. With a tremendous surge the little craft leaped into the air and roared over the roof of the Yarga. A couple of Delban energy bolts slapped viciously into the air-jet, but soon Glayne out-distanced them, flying low over the dark countryside.

The girl sighed beside him. "This has been a very warm evening. Do you think they'll catch us?"

"I don't think they're organized that well," Glayne grunted, busy with the course-computer. "Their whole assault was hasty and ill-timed. I doubt if they even had time to set up an air net."

"But, now that they are out in the open, they will move quickly. Do you have a specific plan in mind, Captain Glayne?"

In reply the girl bent past his shoulder toward the luminous figures which floated in the dial of the computer, announcing the course. The delicate lines of her face were hard in the faint light. Again Glayne felt a twinge of uneasiness and it was not dispelled by the soft touch of her body against his.

"What is your name?" he asked belatedly, trying to make out the features of her face in the dim light from the instrument panel.

She chuckled in the darkness and he fancied he heard a note of triumph. "Lieutenant Niala Chodred," she said. "Espionage Bureau of Imperial Terra. At your service, Captain."

Of Imperial Terra! The words fairly blazed in Glayne's consciousness. His hand shot like lightning for the Cardy in his arm-pit holster, then stopped in mid-motion as he became aware of a hard, cylindrical object thrust into his ribs. It was her tiny Cardy blaster.

Through the waves of chagrin and impotent fury that surged up within him, Glayne heard her say mockingly: "Guardian warriors are supposed to function like machines when on missions, aren't they, Captain? Since when are machines rattled by pretty girls?"

The lines on Glayne's face deepened but he said nothing. Her taunting rebuke was well-deserved. He had certainly lacked the emotionless precision which was the Guardian ideal. But the mere fact that he had been caught napping was inconsequential beside the implications of her presence as a Terran agent. How much did Terra know? The question hammered urgently in Glayne's mind.

Even as it flashed through his head, he heard her amused voice say: "In time of crisis, Captain Glayne, the Stellar Guardians invariably throw allies and friends to the dogs in order to gain time. This is common knowledge. So all we had to do was determine the direction of the Guardian move. We immediately thought of Lorle. And we even thought that you might be the man the Guardians would send, Glayne, because we have a complete file on your activities for the past ten years. We know that you have been on good terms with Delban brass since that successful exploring job you performed at Jorger Sun, five years ago."

With growing horror, Glayne listened to her unfold the deepest Guardian secrets--derived by Terran Espionage through simple induction. What a fool he had been for trusting her even for a minute! Unless he could stop her, she could utterly destroy all Guardian hopes to overcome the Delbans. His great body tensed as he stared at her from the corner of his eye, watching for the slightest sign of inattention.

"Glayne," she continued, in a hard, objective voice with no trace of amusement, "Imperial Terra is not itself adverse to a policy of throwing someone to the dogs in order to gain time. But we want to give the dogs someone who can put up a fight. Poor Lorle would not be much of a match for Gort Bro-Doral and she wouldn't gain us much time. But the Stellar Guardians would. In fact, the Stellar Guardians themselves will commit the overt act--with a little help."

The Guardian Captain was stunned at the very audacity of her plan. He had to admit that its logic was undeniable. But how could she possibly seek to accomplish such an incredible feat as forcing the Guardians into a suicidal attack upon the Delbans? Unless....

Then his worst suspicions were realized as she said: "The Ganser mind-conditioning treatments will not harm your essential-ego, Captain Glayne. But, if you struggle against them, your mind will be shattered and you will be left an idiot when the effects wear off."

A cold thrill of fear caressed Glayne's spine as he heard her words. The brutal, tearing fingers of the horrible mind-conditioner devised by the Delban Espionage Chief, Hoteh Ganser, would change his goals and values in the space of only a few hours. What seemed to him irrational now would be the height of reason after his conditioning. As the ramifications of Imperial Terra's plot came clear to him, Glayne realized with increasing urgency that he simply had to overcome the girl.

"You may be sure that your attack on Sterle II will not be in vain," came the girl's brittle tones. "Admiral Bardled will station units of the Imperial Terran Fleet in hyper-space with the purpose of cracking the wave length of the broadcast power and locating its source.

"Our plan is much cleaner and nobler than yours, is it not, Captain Glayne? You Stellar Guardians are all hard, ruthless fighters. You can take care of yourselves. But poor little Lorle wouldn't have a chance. Don't you agree, Captain? Don't you find it heroic to sacrifice yourself to the Delban dog pack to gain time for the rest of the galaxy?"

Glayne ignored the mockery in her voice. A sudden wave of bitter anger swept over him at the presumptuous manner in which they were all bent upon throwing one another to the dogs. Surely they were not so tactically poverty-stricken that they could not conceive of a better plot which would not demand such a tremendous sacrifice of human life.

Suddenly, almost without warning, the tiny spark of rebellion within him blazed up in hot determination. To hell with Garstow and the Stellar Guardian Policy Organ. To hell with Admiral Bardled and the Terran fleet. To hell with everyone. The vague suggestion of a plan was forming in the recesses of his mind, breath-taking in its audacity and possibly, just possibly workable.

But what of the girl? To think about overpowering her was one thing; actually doing it was another. She had already killed one Guardian earlier this evening, he presumed. She would not hesitate to kill another. That meant that he would have to meet cunning with cunning.

"You don't mind if I smoke one last cigar while I am still in control of my essential-ego, do you?" he asked, trying to match her mocking, satirical mood. "I don't believe the Ganser-personality enjoys tobacco as much as the average Guardian Captain."

She alerted instantly, but the Cardy didn't waver the least fraction of an inch. "You are not the average Guardian Captain," she said in a strange, low voice. "But go ahead and smoke."

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