Chapter I: Front Matter

BUCCANEER OF THE STAR SEAS

By Ed EARL REPP

"... and thou shalt be immortal!" Such was the
curse of that 13th Century sorcerer. Now Carlyle
roamed the uncharted star-seas, seeking Death
as he sought the richly-laden derelicts in that
sargossa of long-vanished space-galleons.

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Fall 1940.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

An unpleasant shudder went through Thaddeus Carlyle as the great iron door thundered behind him. Reading Gaol's raw, damp atmosphere seemed to settle into his bones. Hobbling on rheumatic legs, the aged turnkey preceded him down the vaulted stone corridor.

"'Tis the first time my key has disturbed Friar Bacon's lock these six months," his grumbling voice came to Carlyle's ears. "Plagued few they are that visit the roguish priest. Not even the canon comes now, to exhort him to renounce his black magic."

Thaddeus Carlyle's dark eyes flamed with quick interest. "Then he practices still these works of the devil?" he queried softly.

The turnkey stopped, his narrowed eyes mirroring fearful thoughts. With his crooked forefinger he tapped the young nobleman's gold-cloth tabard.

"Only last month he asked for brimstone, charcoal and niter. We gave him the stuff, seeing no harm. A week ago, as I am passing his cell, there was a great flash and roar. The devil's powders had exploded as steam bursts a tight-lidded vessel! He carries still the marks of a burn."

"No!" Carlyle's smooth features were blank. "Fire--from such stuff as that?"

"That's not all, my Lord. Friar Bacon tells me that if we would give him enough of the stuff and a long tube, he could throw an iron ball across the Thames!"

Turning away with a crafty nod and a meaningful blink, the turnkey led on to the mean little cell in which Roger Bacon had now spent nine years. The visitor was openly affected by the jailer's incredulous story. He had heard strange and terrible things of the Gray Friar. The church, in incarcerating him, had accused him of consorting with the devil. Some whispered that he had learned the secret of immortality. That was the rumor which had brought Thaddeus Carlyle, the second Lord Monfort, into the gloomy confines of Reading Gaol.

The lock scraped shrilly as the jailer turned it. Throwing the heavy door open, he grinned: "Lucky for him you came, my Lord! In another month this lock should have been rusted past turning. Then Friar Bacon would have been forever without hope!"

"Have I, indeed, such hope now?" a soft and gloomy voice inquired.

The turnkey merely winked at the nobleman and hobbled off.

Carlyle was suddenly seized by panic. Now that he was so close to the notorious philosopher, fear smote him and he was on the point of turning back. Yet, ridden by an even greater fear, he stiffened his purpose and advanced. Closing the door, he stared at the white-bearded man seated before a great calfskin-bound book on a ponderous table.

"What hast thou with me, young man?" demanded Roger Bacon, peering shrewdly from under ragged brows.

"Only the admiration of an ignorant man for a very learned one," said Thaddeus Carlyle simply.

Bacon's eyes misted. Precious years of his waning life had he spent in prison because there was no man to say such a thing before.

"You--you do not believe what they say of me, that I consort with Satan?" he queried. "That my science and my secrets are Lucifer's?"

"Well--as to that," said Carlyle, his confidence returning, "I am again the ignorant one. Where you get your knowledge I neither know nor care. I only know that your learning is great ... and that that learning can help me!"

* * * * *

The Gray Friar wagged his head wonderingly. His eyes went over Thaddeus. He saw a strapping young man over six feet in height, with a muscular development such as came only from constant participation in the strenuous contests popular among the nobility. His skin was brown as leather, burned, Bacon reckoned, by hot Oriental suns during the last Crusade. He saw a man whose rich clothing spoke of a fat purse. And he was asked to help him--he, who could not help himself!

"Who are you, young man?" he asked, at last.

"Thaddeus Carlyle, the second Lord Monfort," was the reply.

"A noble--!" Bacon murmured. "But you--you jest with me!"

"Not so!" Carlyle threw a leg across the corner of the table and peered earnestly into the monk's face. "You are old and wise, Friar Bacon. Perhaps you do not know the fear of death. I do! Always it is with me, haunting my pleasures, disturbing my sleep--Fear of growing old and toothless, of losing my strength--of dying as helpless as the day I was born!"

"But how can I help you?" frowned Bacon. "All men must face that fear."

"But not as I know it! I, who have so much to make life worth the living." Thaddeus rubbed his sweaty palms on his velvet-clad thighs, his brown young face set. Abruptly, he blurted: "They say you possess the secret of immortality, Friar. Is that true?"

"They say many things of me," muttered the philosopher.

Carlyle leaned toward him. "That doesn't answer my question," he snapped. "I have heard that you added twenty years to your own life by magic!"

Bacon stared strangely at him. "You believe that I could save you from death?"

"Implicitly!" Carlyle replied. "If you wished to!"

* * * * *

For the first time, Bacon stirred from the chair. His eyes flashed briefly to a brass-bound chest, near his pallet of straw. Then he stopped with his back to the wall, staring at the young nobleman.

"But even if I could do this--!" he frowned. "You do not know what immortality means. Perhaps it would be worse than death!"

"If so, I could easily put an end to my immortality," retorted the other.

Roger Bacon did not speak for long seconds. Then: "They speak true of me. I do possess this secret. But to release it would mean one more atom of misery thrown upon the world."

With his first words, Thaddeus had hunched forward, teeth shining behind drawn lips, eyes glittering. "Has the world been good to you?" he shot at him. "Do you owe it any consideration?"

"None," the Gray Friar muttered. "Tell me; what month is this?"

"November, Friar," the younger man replied frowningly.

"November!"

In Bacon's mournful syllables lay all the bitter coldness of the winter itself. "November, Anno Domini twelve hundred and eighty-seven. Nine years since I was thrown into this place of stone and despair. The world has little loved me, my friend, and I hold no love for the world. _Inopem me copia fecit_--abundance made me poor. Abundance of foresight and inventiveness that might have made the world over."

The monk had paced to the window through which he got his only small view of the world. Now he swung back. "Yes, my Lord Monfort. I will do what you ask!"

Carlyle lurched forward to grasp his arm. "Friar," he breathed. "I only dared hope. But if you do what you promise, I will see that you are freed within the year!"

"_Dominus vobiscum!_" Bacon said, tiny lights shining in his eyes. He crossed to the massive chest and opened it. Digging around for a moment among hundreds of curious objects the like of which Carlyle had never seen, he at last returned to the table with two shining articles in his hand.

"I told you this would bring a certain amount of grief to the world," he said, when Carlyle was seated beside him on a stool. "I say it again. For each lifetime you add to your own, another must die. And always it shall be a woman ... a woman whose love you have won."

Carlyle stared at the philosopher with a mixture of hope and horror in his face.

"You must understand," said the Gray Friar, "that the life-spirit, as I call it, is not so deeply rooted in a woman as a man. You hear often of a woman dying of a broken heart, yet never of a man. This is because the woman simply wills her spirit to leave her. It will be your task to cause a woman to give you her life-spirit because she loves you sufficiently."

"Yes, Friar," Thaddeus whispered, his heart hammering against his ribs.

Bacon placed in his palm a tiny crystal heart dependent from a silver chain. It was crudely carved, yet alight with unholy brilliance.

"You will give this to the woman to wear. You yourself will wear this plain silver band I now give you. The process may take days or weeks. When you are with her, cause your own ring to be always touching the crystal heart. Gradually she will grow weaker, while your own strength increases boundlessly. When she dies ... you will have earned perhaps seventy years more of life."

"Must it be this way?" Thaddeus groaned, staring horrified at the baubles.

"It is the only way," Bacon murmured. "If at any time you decide that you prefer death to immortality, destroy either the heart or the ring and you will not long survive it. Old age will come swiftly."

Thaddeus got to his feet, his stomach a lump of ice in him. He suddenly felt a necessity to get into the open air, where he could think. Hastily he muttered:

"I will do as you say, Friar Bacon. Thank you for what you have done. I will see that you are freed as soon as possible."

Wise old Roger Bacon knew the struggle that was going on within the young lord, and he made no attempt to prolong the visit. "_Pax vobiscum_," he nodded soberly. "The Lord guide you in this."

"Th-thank you, Friar!" Thaddeus faltered, and hastily fumbled at the door and left.

* * * * *

For a month the crystal heart and the ring lay untouched in a small chest in his treasure-room. Then his old fears and nightmares drove him to take them out. He had become accustomed to the grisly demands and they no longer loomed so blackly in his mind. Pictures of himself as an ancient ruin with the skin hanging loosely from all his bones helped in this.

For a long time Thaddeus had known that the young daughter of Lord Cartwright secretly loved him. Tremblingly, one night, he bestowed on her the gift of death ... in the form of a tiny crystal pendant. Within a month the girl was dead.

And Thaddeus Carlyle ... in his body surged and leaped such strength as he had never dreamed of. He felt he must live forever. His friends began to change, growing wrinkled and less virile, but never he. Soon he saw he must change his abode, lest men suspect him.

It was ninety years before the need came upon him to renew the life-spirit in his body. He found a dark-eyed girl in Seville on one of his journeys whom he nominated for his second victim. It was easier, this time. Before she was laid away that old feeling of boundless youth was his again.

And so Thaddeus Carlyle saw kings change and nations dissolve, saw a German named Gutenberg print the first book and an Englishman named William Shakespeare write the most perfect prose ever devised. Saw wars and tragedy and comedy, and grew sick with the seeing. Gladly would he have given it up, had he the courage.

Down the corridors of time he passed, seeking death as many seek wealth. In peace and war, he was ever in the most dangerous occupations. When aviation came in, he was one of the first and most reckless pilots. Then space travel merged from dreams into reality.... Carlyle became a test pilot, taking on million-mile journeys any craft with a rocket tube and a steering device. To his disgust, he always came back.

He had not the courage to shatter the crystal heart and grow old swiftly. He who had condemned so many beautiful women to death was now chained to something worse--eternal life.