Chapter I: Front Matter

THE BLUE VENUS

By EMMETT McDOWELL

Out of their mountain hideout came the
terrified band of The Renegade. Through
the valleys of Venus they swept, seeking
a greed-maddened slaver who planned an
experiment so cruel and barbaric it would
destroy the very foundation of mankind.

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Spring 1946.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

The hooded figure of a man detached itself from the shadows beside the door, paused, listening. Nothing stirred. The huge sprawling plantation house was silent and yet alive with the feel of sleepers.

Then from below stairs, he heard a door slam. The tinkle of laughter ascended to his ears. He crouched. His hand slipped inside his coat, fondled the slug gun nestling in its shoulder holster. The voices drifted out of hearing. Uneasy silence settled back over the plantation house.

The hooded man let his breath escape between his teeth. He slid back the door, passed inside like a shadow, shut the door behind him.

The room which he'd entered was lit by the intense, green radiations from the Venusian vegetation. The cold phosphorescent light streamed through the open windows, glinted from a glassite desk, soft flexoglas lounging chairs and sofa. It was the typical office from which the plantation owners directed the affairs of their feudal estates.

As silent as a night hawk, the hooded man drifted to the wall, ran his fingertips over the wood paneling. There was a faint click. The panel slid back revealing a wall safe.

A needle ray of light streamed suddenly from the hooded man's hand, splashed off a paper which he'd drawn from his pocket. He checked the string of figures printed there, returned the paper to his pocket. He worked swiftly, surely. Then with a sigh of satisfaction he swung back the heavy door.

There was a faint thump in the corridor outside the office that broke the silence.

The hooded man snapped erect, the compressed air slug gun in his hand. He was sharply conscious of the hum of Venusian night life outside the windows. The room felt sticky, close. His hand was damp with sweat about the pommel of the slug gun.

He waited five minutes, ten minutes without moving, but the noise was not repeated.

He drew a breath, set to examining the papers in the safe by the aid of the midget flash. Most of them he put back carefully, just as they'd been, but two packets he stuffed into an inside coat pocket. He closed the door, spun the dial. He heard a sharp click behind him, leaped around.

At the same instant, the room was flooded with bright white light.

"Please don't!" said a girl's voice.

The hooded man arrested his hand halfway to his shoulder holster.

A startlingly beautiful girl, he saw, was standing in the doorway to the corridor covering him with a wicked dart gun. She was a tall girl with the yellowest hair he'd ever seen. She wore a spun glass negligee and her skin was blue. It was the pastel blue of a Terran dawn flushed with rose.

She came all the way inside, slid shut the door.

"Who are you? What do you want?"

"Why don't you turn in the alarm?" said the hooded man dryly. The poisoned needle gun was sending goose flesh quivering up his spine. A scratch would be fatal. His jaw tightened beneath the hood. His eyes were hard green discs, the dangerous eyes of a hunted man.

"Oh no." The blue girl's voice was low. "I wouldn't do that. I'd never be able to get the safe open by myself."

"What?"

"I want you to open the safe for me."

* * * * *

The hooded man didn't reply for a moment. At length, he asked: "What then?"

The girl giggled. "I take what I want, and you take what you want," she explained naively. "See. And you'll be blamed for taking it all. Only you're going to be disappointed!"

"Disappointed? How?" He took a step toward her.

"Bemmelman never keeps his money on the plantation. It's all at Venusport. There aren't fifty monad in the safe."

"Maybe I'm not after money." He took a second step, his green eyes opaque.

She looked at him intently, made a thin gasping noise. "You're the Renegade!" The dart gun trembled in her small blue fist. "Oh my God! I didn't guess. You're the Renegade!"

Without affirming or denying the statement, he asked, "What do you want from the safe?" and took a third step.

"Don't come any closer! I'm a very good shot. See!"

The little gun went spat. The hooded man heard the dart whisper past his ear, thunk into the paneling behind him. His stomach felt suddenly hollow.

"My dear girl," he said dryly; "if you do that again, I won't be able to open a book, let alone that safe. I'm a mass of jelly now."

"Then you will open it for me?"

"What is it you want?"

"Evidence!" Impulsively she took a step toward him, allowed the dart gun to waver out of line. "Evidence to send Bemmelman to the disintegration chamber!"

The hooded man felt appalled at the sheer animal hate in her violet eyes. Her skin was too light for her to be a full blooded Jovian primitive. She must be a cross. He mentally snapped his fingers. That was it, of course. The Blue Venus! The slave for whom Hal Bemmelman was asking five thousand monad on the Venusian Slave Mart. He said:

"You aren't overly fond of Bemmelman?"

"I loathe him!" With a savage jerk, she yanked her white negligee down from her left shoulder. "See that?"

He saw a scar on the pale-blue skin above her breast. It was the shape of a fern leaf and he could have covered it with his thumb.

"Branded!" she spat. "My father was a Jovian Dawn Man--an animal! But my mother was an Earth woman. Hal Bemmelman kidnapped her!"

The hooded man regarded her pityingly. She was only a kid, he realized. He said:

"You can't get Bemmelman like that. He runs the government at Venusport. He'd never come to trial." He stopped, realizing that she wasn't listening.

Nostrils flaring, head erect, the girl was looking through him blankly. A glimmer of fright flitted across her mobile features. Then she raised the dart gun, pointed it full at his chest.

"Put your hands on top of your head, please!"

His green eyes contracted angrily. He didn't move.

"I mean it! Put your hands on top of your head, please."

With a shrug, he obeyed. He saw the door to the corridor slide back. A heavy red-faced man in his late forties and a wrinkled snuff brown suit stared in at them. The red-faced man's sparse sandy hair was plastered to his skull, and he had little mobile brown eyes like a pig.

"Is that you, Hal?" The blue girl didn't turn around, didn't take her eyes off the hooded man. "I've caught the Renegade!"

The red-faced man's jaw dropped. "Yes sir," he said. "Yes sir, it's me, Sofi." A shrewd gleam flickered in his pig-like eyes.

"I caught him trying to open the safe."

"So I see! So I see!" Bemmelman rubbed his hands together, came into the room. He pulled a dart gun from the belly band of his trousers and leveled it at the Renegade. "Stand aside, Sofi."

The hooded man felt his stomach turn slowly upside down. He considered hurling himself behind the glassite desk, snatching out his slug gun.

Bemmelman said: "Did you get his gun, Sofi?"

She shook her yellow head.

Alarm stiffened the planter's features. "Get it, girl! No! No! Don't get between us! Get behind him!"

The hooded man felt the girl's hands pat his chest, draw forth the heavy slug gun.

The florid color crept back into Bemmelman's gross features. "You may go, Sofi. I want a word with the Renegade."

* * * * *

Sofi shot him a child-like pouting glance, but retreated obediently from the room, drawing the door shut behind her.

The lean young man in the hood watched, weighing his chances. He didn't say anything.

"You're surprised, eh, that I don't turn you in to the Security Patrol?" Bemmelman began. "They'd like to get their hands on the Renegade, they would. But the fact is I want you more than they do. Yes sir, this is a piece of luck for me. I've been trying to contact you for months."

The hooded man said dryly: "I'm listening," and allowed his hands to sink to his side.

"Put your hands back on your head!" Bemmelman's voice registered alarm. "No tricks. I can use you, lad, but no tricks." He glared speculatively at the Renegade, added: "Yes sir, that I can. And now, if you'll take off that hood we'll get down to business."

"If it's business, I'll keep the hood on."

"No sir," the planter blustered. "Off with the hood or I shoot. When I do business with a man, I like to know who he is."

The hooded man's green eyes were reckless. The law on Venus was harsh, implacable. There were no pardons. The disintegration chamber at Venusport yawned for him inexorably.

"You know, Bemmelman, I'd be completely at your mercy if I unmasked?"

"You are right now. Yes sir. You can take it off alive, or I'll take it off of you dead."

The hooded man was half crouched against the glassite desk. He said softly: "You don't leave me much choice," and dived beneath the dart gun.

His head struck the slave breeder's paunch like a cannon ball. Bemmelman went, "Ooof!" and sat down with a thud. The dart gun spat a needle into the ceiling where it quivered viciously.

The hooded man was on him like a cat. One swipe of his hand knocked the dart gun clattering under the sofa. Purple faced, gasping Bemmelman scrambled to his feet. A look of fright swept his gross features, and he began stabbing a button on the glassite desk.

The hooded man could hear the shrill clamor of alarm bells pealing through the rambling building. He leaped for the door, threw it back.

"Ahhh!" he said.

Sofi stood in the entrance, her dart gun almost against his chest.

Like a whip, the hooded man twisted sideways, snatched the gun from the startled girl. He saw Bemmelman charging across the room. He grinned, shoved the girl into the planter's arms, slammed the door.

The sound of shouts drifted up to him. He saw a Venusian serf, armed with a bell muzzled ray rifle, dash into the corridor. The serf caught sight of him. A yellow ray streamed from the gun, splashed off the wall; but the hooded man already had vanished up the stairs.

Bemmelman burst from the office. "Which way did he go? The force screens are up! He can't escape!"

"He got in," Sofi pointed out coolly.

Half a dozen armed serfs dashed into the hall. The alarm bells were still ringing.

"Which way?" Bemmelman roared.

The serf said: "Up."

"We've got him. That leads to the roof. He can't get off!" He charged the steps followed by the pack of Venusians.

At the roof Bemmelman paused, shoved up the trap. With considerable respect for his own skin, he ordered one of the serfs through first.

"Careful," he advised. "The man's desperate."

The serf climbed fatalistically onto the roof, turned around and around.

"He's not here."

"Impossible!" The planter roared and squeezed his bulk through the opening.

The green phosphorescent glow of the vegetation lit the flat roof eerily. A raucous screech from some night flying bird floated down from the cloud mass overhead. There was no plane, no sign of a plane; but the man with the hood was gone.