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Read Ebook: Centauri Vengeance by Marlowe Stephen Terry W E Illustrator
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Ebook has 74 lines and 6067 words, and 2 pages
CENTAURI VENGEANCE
George Haven was the most powerful man in the galaxy; now he had returned to Centauri and he was afraid--for his past was staring at him!
Haven began to realize it was a mistake returning to Centauri with his wife even before they reached their hotel. For Louise Haven said, as soon as the Centaurian porters had taken their baggage at the starport with cold, aloof correctness:
"Why, George! They don't seem to like you. I thought you would be a hero to them, from what you told me."
George Haven said nothing. He was a big, powerful-looking man in his late thirties. He was expensively dressed and he had taken the most expensive suite in Alpha City's best hotel and he had an expensive, young, and beautiful wife.
He thought: Today I'm one of the most powerful men in the stellar confederacy. What does she expect, that I'll win a popularity contest too? Well, I guess she'll learn eventually what makes an important man truly important. Could you sum it up in a word, in a single clearly understood word? he wondered. He decided that you could. The word was ruthless.
"The others are already here, Mr. Haven. They are waiting."
Of course the others had already arrived, Haven thought. You had to keep people waiting. Let them know their own importance didn't add up to a hill of beans.
"It's a beautiful suite, George," Louise Haven said after they had taken the pneumotube to their floor and entered their suite through the irising door. "At least the Centaurians saved the best for us."
"I'll always get the best for you, baby," Haven said, and took this beautiful young woman who had been his wife for exactly two months--long enough to reach Centauri--into his arms and kissed her.
Was there something unexpectedly stiff and cold about Louise's response? Haven did not know; he wondered if he had imagined it. Was the coldly correct behavior of the Centaurians getting on his nerves?
"Man's got to get his start somewhere," Haven said, surprised that it sounded defensive. "Besides, that's why we've come to Centauri."
Haven showered and dressed and wondered about the reunion. It had been his own idea. For here on Centauri was the one mistake which could ruin Haven, here where there were no politicians to be bought. The thought of it had weighed on Haven for fifteen years. It seemed safely hid, his secret. Hadn't fifteen years elapsed? But still, there was no predicting the Centaurians. No predicting them at all.
The reunion was a necessity, assuming Haven had to come. For, if you couldn't buy Centaurians, you could at least buy Earthmen. And Haven might need help.
He chuckled. He hadn't seen anything of these men for fifteen years, but he'd been paying them off regularly, like clockwork. Blackmail? It was hardly blackmail. Haven knew what they knew. Haven had offered them money almost from the beginning, and all of them had accepted. Ruthless, Haven thought again. In their own small way, these half dozen men were ruthless, too. Failures in life, of course, except for the money Haven paid them every month. But ruthless.
"Ready, George?" Louise asked.
Haven looked her up and down slowly. She was ravishingly beautiful. She was George Haven's property. He had made her what she was. He didn't even know her background, had purposely not delved into it. Forget about the past, he'd told her on the eve of their marriage. It's the future which counts. The future....
"The future!" toasted Allen Vorhees, lifting his glass of Centaurian liquor. "To all our futures."
The six Earthmen who knew Haven's secret drank with secret smiles. The smiles were for Louise--Louise who apparently knew nothing, Louise who looked up to her husband with the blind faith of a naive young girl.
Haven raised his own glass. "May the future treat all of you as well as the past fifteen years have," he said, and drank. The smiles faded around the table. They'd drink to that, all right, Haven thought. But they didn't like the idea.
But this way, the way it worked out, thought Haven, the galaxy gets all the uranium from me. The whims of the strange Centaurians didn't matter. It was for the good of the galaxy, wasn't it? Haven smiled, remembering. Galaxy, hell. Why didn't he admit it, at least to himself? It was for the good of George Haven. And in the process, in bringing about that good, Drexell Tolliver had had to die.
"... go out and visit the old mines," Angus MacCready was saying.
The last course was served. Vorhees suggested they could start for the mines in the morning, and they all agreed. Even Louise seemed fascinated by the idea, and this surprised Haven. Louise had never showed much interest in his enterprises--except, now that he thought of it, for the Centaurian mine.
Now he had to reach that body, had to hide it some way, with the help of these six men he'd been paying off for fifteen years because they'd been working for him and Tolliver and knew what he knew....
"I'd just love to go out there," he heard Louise saying.
"No, Louise," he said firmly. "I don't think you'd like it. Cold. Nothing to see, really. Why don't you just stay in the hotel when we get started in the morning?"
"But I insist," Louise said, smiling at him sweetly.
"Let the little lady go," MacCready said, smiling blandly.
Before Haven could answer, the little Centaurian waiter came by. "Glacier move," he mumbled.
"What did you say?" said Haven, startled.
"Nothing," said the Centaurian, and shuffled from the room. Haven got up and started after him, but saw Louise watching. He settled back and waited uncomfortably through the small talk of the reunion. It did not break up until the early hours of the morning and Haven went directly to their suite with Louise.
"No nightcap?" she asked him.
"Need plenty of sleep for the morning. But Lou, honey, I still don't think you ought to go."
"I'm going, George. That's all. It's the beginning of the George Haven legend, and I want to see it. Can you blame me?"
Haven had to admit that he could not. They went up to the suite, where Haven undressed and got into bed and pretended to fall asleep quickly. After what seemed a very long time to him he heard Louise's regular breathing.
"Sleeping honey?" he whispered.
No answer.
Haven got up quietly and dressed in the dark. He tiptoed to the door, looked back once, listened. Louise was still breathing regularly. Even before the reunion celebration was over, Haven had made up his mind. If Louise was going out there with him and the others in the morning--and apparently she was--then Haven had to go out there first, in the darkness, alone if necessary, to see what he could do about the body....
He closed the door softly behind him and stepped into the dim, night-lit hallway. He almost bumped into a small figure crouching there and jerked away from it with a startled exclamation.
It was the little Centaurian waiter.
Haven grabbed the collar of his tunic. "All right," he said. "All right, you're just the man I'm looking for. What did you mean, glacier move?"
"Glacier move. You know. You know!" The Centaurian offered a tentative smile.
"No, damn you, I don't know!" Haven whispered furiously, dragging the Centaurian into the stairwell.
"Glacier on mine then. Glacier not on mine now. All city know."
"Then where is it?"
"Glacier is river of ice. Glacier flow. Glacier one, two miles from city now."
"That glacier, yes."
"Take me there," commanded Haven, all but strangling the little Centaurian with his big hands.
"I take you," the blue man managed. His azure skin had gone a pale sky blue with fright. They're all the same, thought Haven. If you can't buy them you can scare the hell out of them.
"Then let's get started," Haven said.
It took hardly more than moments to reach the huge, amazingly transparent glacier. Fifteen years, thought Haven. Fifteen years is nothing to this river of ice. Fifteen hundred years--and it will still hold Drexell Tolliver's body, perfectly preserved. Drexell Tolliver's body, the wound inflicted by Haven's knife, the knife still there, in the dead man's side with Haven's fingerprints on the haft because for the first and only time in his life Haven had been frightened and thus careless....
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