s.p.a.cEWAYS.

THE PLANET MURDERER.

by John Cleve.

SCARLET HILLS.

Alas, fair ones, my time has come. I must depart your lovely home- Seek the bounds of this galaxy To find what lies beyond.

(chorus) Scarlet hills and amber skies, Gentlebeings with loving eyes; All these I leave to search for a dream That will cure the wand'rer in me.

You say it must be glamorous For those who travel out through s.p.a.ce. You know not the dark, endless night Nor the solitude we face.

(reprise chorus)

I know not of my journey's end Nor the time nor toll it will have me spend. But I must see what I've never seen And know what I've never known.

Scarlet hills and amber skies, Gentlebeings with loving eyes; All these I leave to search for a dream That will cure the wand'rer in me.

-Ann Morris

It's a wicked world. And when a clever man turns his brain to crime, it's the worst of all.

-S. Holmes, detective

1.

Death, at midnight, goes a-dancing, Tapping on a tomb with talon thin .

-Henri Cazalis He came into the Labyrinth and onto the monitor in Pearl's pleasure-bowl just after eight, just as the Handsome Man had said he would. A freak. A strange broad-shouldered near-giant over 190 sems tall. Though he was lean enough, he showed a heavy musculature on that 1.9-plus meters of height; a musculature uncommon except among slaves. He looked as if he'd actually worked. Manual labor, even.

The aspect that really distinguished him and made him unique (a freak, many would say) was not his height or physique. It was his skin. His skin was purple, incredibly, with a bizarre amethyst glow. Swallowing, Pearl watched him pause before the lift. He tilted back his battered, helmet-like headgear, which was visored both fore and aft and ridged on top. Pearl stared. His hair was lavender!

Just then he turned, and she was better able to see his face. A clean-cut, strong-boned, friendly face with mirth-crinkles about the mouth and at the corners of the eyes. Those eyes also showed a certain wariness, along with alert intelligence and wit.

So he's purple, she mused. He's also tall, just beauti- 1.2.fully built, and good-lookin'! What could the Handsome Man have against this fr-this unique stranger!

But that was dead-end thinking of a kind Pearl couldn't afford. Not if she was to escape this Musla-cursed planet Croz, hemorrhoidal a.n.u.s of the universe, and get %ack to comfort and sensual excitement on Thebanis, in her beloved city of Raunch.*

In that same moment the Purple Man clapped his hardhat back on. (Pearl found it easier to think about men in terms of labels rather than names. Most of her contacts with them were brief and they often preferred anonymity anyhow.) He stepped onto the lift and off Pearl's monitor. She rose hastily and tossed aside her cloak. She'd spent her last cred for it, after that swinish slaver Vettering had dumped her here. After all, she could hardly go out on the streets clad only in skirt and red strap-t.i.tser. It still irked her, the way that smirky little Saipese clerk had fobbed her.

"Rahman green," the snip had called it. That had sounded delightfully exotic; cla.s.sy. Besides, it was the only cloak Pearl had the price of. Only later had she discovered that once again her taste-or lack of it-had betrayed her. When a bust in The Oddford had referred to the cloak in none-too-sly disparagement as "vomit green," the s.p.a.ce-farers at the table with her had collapsed in guffaws.

Certainly it was not the thing to wear on a pickup as vital to her as this one. The abbreviated strap-t.i.tser-a Thebanian outer bra consisting mainly of straps-was a better ploy for sure. She wished only that she had more jiggle-flesh to bulge between the straps. That d.a.m.ned Akima Mars series had made a warhead-lover of practically every male along the s.p.a.ceways!

This was hardly the time to be fretting about her figure. She had to get down below, and fast. If some other hust should decide to dig her claws into that strange stranger . . . ! That was a chilling thought that sent Pearl's hands rushing up to check her tired old Terasaki coil and ginger-check her dimple-scars. With a prayer that she hadn't * Where, in the Loophole Bar, we first met Pearl, along with her friend Pacy as well as Shieda and Vettering, in s.p.a.ceways #2, Corundum1's Woman.

3.chewed off her cerulean lipstain in her nervousness, she stepped out of her pleasure-bowl and onto the lift. It dropped. Her stomach quivered as she was whisked down to the lowest level. Wobbling queasily, she stepped out into the Labyrinth's irradialited dimness and tinkling Bergal sound.

Having solid floor under her didn't help her nausea much, here.

That was the trouble with the Labyrinth. The reason it had deteriorated from an outlander's dream of a plush luxury entertainment center to a shabby, sleazy bar in Croz's depths. The techs said the issue was something called synesthesia, an effect that somehow translated vital stims into sounds and vice versa. In the process it also made too many people's stomachs churn in what amounted to seasickness. It was not an effect to encourage drinking.

(The elaborate explanations that it was due to subliminal pressures induced at this depth by Croz's erratic rotational spin made no difference whatever.) The Labyrinth had gone downhill in a hurry. In the process it had acquired the nickname of Hust's Haven. Most of its income now came from payoffs on the privacy/pleasure-bowls. They were suspended at varying intervals about the entrance shaft, where synesthesia was no problem. Holographic windows enabled a wh.o.r.e's mark to dial anything from nostalgic scenes of his own planet to Akima Mars shows or perversircs of exotic depravities.

Pearl fought the effect. Nausea was a luxury she couldn't afford. Not here; not now. Not when the Purple Man was her key to pa.s.sage back to her own Thebanis!

Resting a hand against the nearest upright to steady herself, she scanned the room. She spotted him after a moment: on the far side, over by the bar. Adjusting her sagging blue-coiled Terasaki wig as she went-and fighting down queasiness-she headed for that double-billed hardhat. She hardly took note of the fact that business tonight was even slacker than usual. What few customers there were lounged in subdued-or maybe sullen, or plain ugly-silence, while the tinkling music seemed to fracture into shattered beads of sound.

4.The Chank barkeep saw her coming, teeth clenched, weaving her way among the tables. Conveniently he found some ch.o.r.e at the far end to keep him busy. She gave him a small smile and was glad she'd made her peace (or piece, she thought) with him, in a vacant bowl back when Vettering had abandoned her here.

Her path took her past an alcove that eddied tendrils of pungent smoke. Ordinarily the acrid, nostril-tingling narcostick scent of redjoy sticks would have been enough to warn her. Redhigh was a sweet-burning, mild-high "cigaret"; redjoy was a dangerous lascivicant + aphrodizzy that affected different people in different ways, some dangerous. But tonight her whole attention was focused on the Purple Man. Running her tongue along her lips, she tightened the muscles at the corners of her mouth in preparation for the swift, sensuous smile of greeting that was every bust's stock in trade. One hand moved automatically below her navel to check the hipband of her skirt.

And out of the dimness of the alcove, a hand shot up to clutch her wrist. A hoa.r.s.e, redjoy-slurred voice followed.

"Hey, Purl, gurl. We din't redshift after all. Cap'm's hookin' on another pod of cargo. We got all night t'celebrate!"

She didn't need to see the man to know the voice: a s.p.a.cefarer named Karim, off the merchanter Idris out of Luhra. Two other crudos, real animals, sat with him. Frantically Pearl sought to free her wrist. The cool she had worked so hard to build dissipated like n.o.bac smoke.

"Let go, you-you pig, you grossporker! You bought a cycle with me, not forever."

Karim came up out of his seat and the alcove like a pouncing grat. Still gripping her wrist, he lashed out with his other hand. That slap might well have broken Pearl's neck had it landed full-face, as the flainer intended. Instead, she managed to twist just enough to escape the worst of it. At that it drove her to her knees and left her head ringing.

Dimly she thought, Pearl, you fool! To say a thing like that to someone that redjoy makes mean . . .

Another slap landed and her brain seemed to split into two segments. The cells in one half screamed, My face, 5.

my face! No-o! What if he rips me, marks me? The other focused on a booted, back-drawn foot: Oh mother, the monster's going to boot me, kill me!

Only then, out of nowhere, she glimpsed purple. Time stood still, or paused. Her vision cleared enough for her to see that the Purple Man had somehow joined the scene. Incredibly, he was smiling. A sardonically warm and friendly smile. And he had Karim by one shoulder in a grasp the s.p.a.cefarer obviously found painful.

Baring his teeth in a snarl that would have done credit to one of those tiger-things from his home planet, Karim twisted free. He launched an enviably heavy blow at the Purple Man's face.

The Purple Man kept right on smiling. Rather than feint or dance back, he simply ducked his head forward in a sort of nod. Thus he took Karim's blow on the top of his spined headgear. The thud of impact contained elements of crispness, as of the snapping of fingerbones. Karim's high bellow of anguish quite overpowered the tinkle of music.

Now here came his fellow s.p.a.cefarers, though, out of the alcove. One whipped a knife from a chest-sheath that proclaimed him a Bleaker. Pearl tried to scream a warning. In the tumult she could never be sure whether she had made a sound.

Not that it was needed. The Purple Man was definitely not blind. Now standing erect and alert again, he wore an expression of pleasure and . . . amus.e.m.e.nt? Deftly he swept off his battered hardhat. Dropping to one knee as the dagger-man moved in, he slashed upward with the helmet's rear visor.

Apparently the neckguard was razor-edged. It caught the knife-hand where wrist and palm-heel joined. Blood spurted. The knife dropped. Gaping stupidly, clutching at his sliced wrist in an effort to halt the pulsing blood, the Bleaker' staggered backward. The third s.p.a.cefarer, eager a moment ago to join the fray, appeared to think better of it. Shooting the Purple Man a venomous glare, he contented himself with herding his wounded crewmates toward the lift.

When he mouthed a curse over his shoulder, the Purple Man whooped delighted challenge and made a false lunge.

6.The fellow broke and ran. Still laughing, the Purple Man waved at the bartender-who leaned on that bar, sighting along a stopper barrel-and returned to Pearl. His face sobered with concern as he helped her up. She made it a point to sway giggily and press a hand to her still-stinging cheek.

"Oh sir-"

"Call me Jesti."

"Jesti." Pearl rolled her eyes in what she hoped would come through as sweet grat.i.tude and adoration. "You saved my life, Captain Jesti!" And then, sham-shyly, "I am Pearl."

The man who called himself Jesti grinned wryly. Pearl had a feeling that the twist of his lips bespoke total cynicism as to her pretenses. He said, "I'm no s.p.a.cefarer, uh, Pearl. I'm a kiracat miner."

"Sure does make you strong! And you risked your life!-I mean, those three were s.p.a.cemen, mean ones, on redjoy! They might have killed you. To take that chance for me, a stranger ..."

Jesti's grin broadened. "So I took a chance, stranger. An Eilan miner likes a fight. That's part of what life's all about. s.p.a.cemen! Huh-they never had a chance. Besides- it wasn't just for you."

Those words were like another slap in her face. She was staggered, groping despite her efforts to preserve and project her chosen image.

"Not ... for me?"

"Firm." The smiling Purple Man slapped his headgear on at a jaunty angle. "I was spoiling for a fight when I came in. You and those tunnelworms-that just gave me an excuse."

She couldn't believe such straightforward honesty. She also couldn't tell him to go to Sheol, not this man. "I-I don't understand." She didn't, either. What a thrilling, straightforward . . . idiot!

Her purple knight shrugged good-naturedly. "Try harder. I come from Eilong. That's a planet you likely never heard of. Neither has anyone else, unless he's in the tint business."

"Eye-long? Tint?"

7."Tintinnabulate alloys. They're what make high-tech s.p.a.cers go. The Galaxy couldn't run without 'em."

"Oh."

That was the best Pearl could do. She wished she'd let them spin the tech tapes for her, back when she was just an unbaked little cake in the Quarter on Thebanis. But Raunch's bars had been more fun any day, and the exotic s.p.a.cefarers, and to h.e.l.l with edutapes.

Besides, idle curiosity was a nothing thing just now. What counted was the big shot: shuttlevator pa.s.s and ticket back to those bars! She wondered if Pacy still sort of hung around the Loophole, waggling her warheads at the more prosperous-looking s.p.a.cefarers who came along. The two of them had teamed with that fat but nice and extremely strong Shieda . . . and then Vettering. That rotten sister-slicing b.a.s.t.a.r.d of a slaver! With luck, Pearl would get her chance to pay him back some day. A blade between the ribs would be nice. Or a shot of cyno in a drink. Or one of Shieda's exploding darts stuck up his ga.s.sy r.e.c.t.u.m.

Even as the thought flashed her, she knew she'd never carry through on any of it. She was a velvet touch, a born victim. The best she could hope for was that one way or another she'd leave this robe-happy planet and make it back home. For years she'd had her hopes set on the legendary Jonuta . . .

The important thing now was to carry out her contract on the Purple Man. This Eilan called Jesti. For that she already had her answer, and for that she had only to put her plan into operation. Gingerly, she touched her cheek. She winced at its sensitivity.

"I'm sorry. I want to stop the swelling, but I do want to hear more about Eilong. Uh . . . I've got a privacy bowl up the shaft where I can clean up a little while we talk. I'm still a little shaky-why don't you come up with me, have a drink?"

The violet-skinned man nodded. For the first time he appeared to inspect her more closely. She tried to be un.o.btrusive about taking a deep breath when he looked at her scarlet strap-t.i.tser and its contents.

They rode the lift up together. That made for some 8.cramping, of course-though not so cramped, she noted with cynical satisfaction, that Jesti's arm had to press so frequently against her warheads. Meanwhile, she learned more about Eilong and tint alloys and kiraoun catalysts than she had any remote desire to know. At least Jesti kept the tone light enough to be amusing.

Only when he came to his being on Croz did his manner change. Good humor and laugh-crinkles faded and were replaced by a cold-eyed, tight-lipped anger too deeply rooted to be concealed.

The issue, he admitted bluntly, was Eilong's backwardness and isolation. And its miners, the men who went below ground to gouge out the vital kiraoun catalysts. It was a worse than dangerous job. Death and accident rates ran appallingly high.

Too, exposure to the catalysts' radiation did things to the miners' metabolisms. It was responsible for their purple skin and hair, as well as some other physical anomalies. Yet the Council of Elders who ruled Eilong would hear no talk of anything so alien/progressive as cybernetic mining. They preferred backwardness and isolation, believing that with mechanization-remote TP cybermining by engineers and techs-would come domination by giant CongCorp. That interplanetary mineral extraction/transport/processing cartel (and presumed TMSMCo subsidiary) was forever urging change, change.

Why? Because change of any sort could not help but threaten the Council's power.

When Jesti and a handful of others had pressed the matter, reprisal by the Elders had been swift. Some "malcontents" had succ.u.mbed to "accidents." Others were remanded (sentenced!) to "rehabilitative therapy." In a few cases there had even been outright a.s.sa.s.sination, that nice word for murder.

Jesti had received a tip of impending personal disaster while he was at work. Risking his neck to ride an ore-belt to the surface, he'd slipped onto a shuttle-ship that carried him offplanet, to Eilong's s.p.a.ce station. There he had stowed away on a freighter/merchanter slated for swift departure.

9.He was discovered a few hours.out. The outraged captain had insisted on dropping him off here on Croz.

''I've been stranded here ever since."

The parallel with Pearl's situation was such that sympathy welled up in her. Since that was an emotion she didn't dare indulge in with this man, she stubbornly thrust it down. Of all the men to feel something for. . . !

They entered her privacy/pleasure-bowl. While not the most luxurious available, it included supasilient suspension, a velvasponge floor, and oversize liqualay couch-bed. Despite its sag, the upholstery's shabbiness, and the crack in the overhead mirror, Jesti was visibly impressed. (A normal enough reaction, Pearl felt, from a man who wore permanently stained work clothing and his battered miner's hardhat.) She flicked the lift's switch to privacy position and twisted her shoulders sensuously while she half turned her back to Jesti. She had nice shoulders.

"My, ah, bandeau's too tight . . . that slap down in the bar ... something feels sprained. Ow-I can't reach the meld. Could you loosen it a little for me?"

Jesti looked almost ready to drool as he stepped close behind her. That made Pearl feel good. He was so naive, compared with those thrice-cursed, sisterslicing s.p.a.cefarers! A man for me to control, manipulate-stead of being manipulated by him Pearl was only eighteen, and very aware of it.

Rather clumsily, he twisted at the backstraps, discovered the nevelcro closure, loosed it. He let go the tabs and his hands slid in under her arms to cup her bared b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Tentatively at first, then more firmly.

She made it a point to giggle, even as she locked her hands over his with a wriggling pretense of pulling away. Of course she let herself be drawn back, twisting so that her rearward cheeks rubbed against his fly. She noted with satisfaction that the area featured an already stiffening protrusion. Under the stim of her b.u.t.tsy friction, it grew even harder.

Laughing, she slipped away from him. "That feels so 10.nice-but I promised you a drink, remember? Do you like orbisette?"

"What's...o...b..sette?"

It was all she could do to keep her eyes from widening. A man who didn't know what orbisette was! It was hard to believe. Eilong must really be off the beaten track!

"It's a drink," she said, "that really puts you into orbit, you know? One pla.s.s of it and you'll flash so hard your ears ring and you hit black center.''

Jesti swallowed hard, gazing at her. "Every day and every way!" he said with much enthusiasm. His eyes were glowing green and purple.