Chapter III

Kurland opened his eyes dizzily, then shut them again. The thick voice of Gion purred through the spinning darkness.

"You might as well, Kurland. It's real."

He opened them again, fixing his unsteady regard upon the heavy, impassive countenance of the Jovian Marward. Gion sat across the table, his hands folded upon the polished surface. The leaden boxes were stacked neatly beside his arm. A thinly wavering smile touched Kurland's lips as he glanced back at Gion.

"Your arm is longer than I thought, Gion."

"You had your warning," shrugged the Marward.

"How did she do it?"

Gion smiled, a gross caricature of mirth. "It would be amusing to let you go in that misapprehension, I suppose. Perhaps profitable. But you've earned the right to know. The girl wasn't my agent. So much the worse for her. While you were reviling her, the man who wrecked the _Plutonian_ walked up behind you. Heywood isn't one to take chances, as your head probably indicates."

"Heywood?"

Gion waved a casual hand at a slight, elegant figure seated at his right, and the evil little jackal permitted himself a tight-lipped grin at Kurland, the chained lion. The outlaw studied him without affection.

"And what do you have on _him_?"

"Nothing in particular," shrugged Gion. "Heywood is devoted to my interests, seeing they're his own. I have no more loyal follower, no better friend."

Allen Heywood fidgeted under the unusual expansiveness of his patron, allowing a tinge of color to stain his cold pallor. The look he gave the Marward was an amazing blend of adulation and open suspicion, and Kurland smiled thinly. He did not anticipate leaving this little rocky underground room alive, and had no objection to sowing dissention as a parting legacy. His dark eyes sought the Marward's.

"Our gentlemen's agreement, I take it, is off?"

Gion nodded indifferently. "But naturally. It was not you who fetched me the Orion jewels, Kurland. Your intentions may have been honorable, and in all honesty I admit so much, but it was Allen Heywood who brought me the stones. The reward I meant for you shall be his."

Kurland glanced at Heywood with some pleasure. The little man might not care for that.

The burly Marward rose, pulling his gun. The outlaw noted that the alert Heywood was on his feet as promptly, his own gun opening in his hand. But Gion meditated nothing at the moment, apparently, save ridding himself of evidence even one of his eminence could not brook revealing. He motioned Kurland to rise.

The outlaw got up, noting his feet were hobbled by a short rope. His wrists were lashed behind his back, his holster empty. From the aching dizziness in his limbs and head he realized that Heywood must have drugged him after striking him down back upon the asteroid where the _Plutonian_ had crashed, taking no chances whatsoever on the long voyage back to Jupiter in Kurland's ship, bearing captive and loot. The feral little man slipped behind him, prodding him with his blaster.

"Move, wolf's-head." He shuffled silently after Gion, moving ahead down rocky, dim-lit corridors. There was no sound but the rasp of their boots and the growing rumble of underground water not far ahead.

* * * * *

The massive stronghold of Montalven where Gion squatted, playing at power behind the scenes, was far more fortress than palace, relic of an earlier day when Earthmen maintained their sway by the strength of their ships and spreading armies rather than by the gentler rule of law. The taste of power was sweeter in the Marward's mouth than the empty display indulged in by the appointed viceroys whose strength he had sapped by gold and treachery, rudely expanding beyond the borders of the northern province legitimately his own until all the Earth colonies and many of the native kingdoms trembled at his slightest word. Kurland was being afforded a further glimpse of the reason. He had been outlawed and hunted across Jupiter for his defiance of that lawless sway. He was to die for it now.

They came out upon a rough stone platform where a swift underground river glanced roughly by in rude channels, spitting foam and spray as it dashed against the stone. A flimsily built raft made from an old door and several planks tied together with rope was moored at the quay's edge, a foot or so below the floor level, and lying bound upon it, gagged, lay the girl Kurland had found in the wreckage of the _Plutonian_, Irene Francinet. Her white dress was already soaked as the wretched craft bobbed and swayed in the swift current.

Kurland halted, swung angrily on Gion. "What is this, Marward? You disclaimed the woman."

"So I did," placidly agreed Gion. "I told you Allen was thorough. He brought back _everything_."

"And ... we know too much?"

"Too much to hang," replied Gion, frankly. "Not with your friends. You're going down the river. It doesn't come out."

"She's a woman, Gion. What's her word against yours?"

"She's a Recorder, a trained Government official of the highest rank. Their word against kings and princes, my friend. I don't take chances, my friend. Step down. Allen, see that he does."

Under the sudden pressure of Heywood's weapon, there was nothing for Kurland to do but obey. He stepped down upon the raft, tipping it dangerously and soaking the Francinet woman to the hips. He squatted down, obediently.

Gion nodded. "Tie him to those hinges, Allen. They'll drift for miles before the roof slopes down and sinks the raft." There was a sudden gleam in his bulging eyes as the lighter man swung down upon the raft, but Kurland said nothing. He owed the wrecker-vulture nothing.

Roped to the worn hinges, he sat quietly watching the bulky Jovian ruler and his dapper lackey. Gion smiled.

"Tight enough, Allen. Get back and cast them off." And he gave Heywood his hand to assist him. Dazzled by the condescension of his noble confederate, Heywood failed to notice that it was the left hand of the Marward he grasped. The powerful muscles contracted to heave him to safety on the rough-hewn quay, and, as he came, the right arm of the Marward swung abruptly to drive a heavy dagger to the hilt in the startled little fiend's unprotected throat. Allen Heywood had for once neglected his caution.

Contemptuously, Gion released the suddenly slack fingers of his devoted henchman, the dying man falling heavily back upon the raft, choking in his bubbling blood. He rolled to one side, staining Irene's white dress a horrid crimson as he clutched her body, his eyes a glaring horror as he stared at the faintly smiling Marward watching him, then fell back limply. His head dropped, his clawed hands relaxed, and he sagged into the water. A booted leg, caught between two broken planks, held him precariously, half-submerged. The green waters rushing past darkened thinly as he fled along the death-trail upon which he had been so cheerfully embarking Kurland and the hapless Irene Francinet.

Kurland looked up stonily at the Marward.

"It doesn't pay to work for you, does it, Gion?" he asked, quietly.

"I promised him your reward," Gion smiled, bending to cut the rope holding the raft. "You may share it with him. Bon voyage, my friends."

The rope parted, the flimsy contraption darting away into the current. Their last view of the Marward was of a jocular farewell waved after them as they dashed wildly into the round tunnel below the cavern where the landing crouched. Shadows engulfed them as the raft swayed drunkenly through the sibilant darkness.