Chapter IV

Roal sent a work sheet down to Tim Atkins, but he started on the case independently. He would show Calvin something yet.

Harry Brooks was the nearest and most accessible lead, so Roal made a call at Brooks' office. Harry shifted his cigar as Roal entered. He lurched heavily to his feet. "Hi, there, Hawkshaw. It's been a long time since you've searched for crooks in my bailiwick. Who's done what, and when?"

"Hello, Harry." Roal sat down, refusing one of the black stogies. "I'm not sure what has been done or who has done it, but I want to know about a girl named Mariana Sebours."

"Mariana--" Brooks' eyes suddenly became starry. He blew a kiss to the winds, and stared far away. "Mariana. I'd give you ten thousand dollars if you could tell me where she is today. What a wonderful girl was Mariana. It was only that tiny fault in her voice that kept her from reaching the peaks that should have been hers, but it could be cured now. The doctors have told me--I think that must have been what discouraged her and caused her to abandon her career at its height. That and the ape she called her father."

"What was the matter with her throat?"

"Just some defect in her voice box. She had it worked on, but it didn't improve. It could be fixed now. Only an expert could detect the fault. She was a girl of exquisite beauty and talent. But, more than that, she was a great woman, was Mariana Sebours."

"Was she ever married?"

"No."

"Boy friends?"

"That's the one peculiar thing about her. After she became about eighteen and men really began to take an amorous interest in her she gave them all a cold shoulder. I asked her about it once, and she got in a terrible rage. She blurted out something about not being fit to think of men and marriage. I never found out what she meant by it. We never spoke of it again."

"Hereditary stain of some kind?"

"I don't know what it could have been. Her mother was a charming woman like herself. Her father was a healthy ape-like cuss. An anthropologist, but perfectly straightforward and normal. Mariana, however, developed a strange attachment for him that in itself was perhaps abnormal. She would never appear towards the last of her career unless he was present and many times she cancelled engagements because Sebours would not be in the same city. Finally, she gave up appearances altogether--in order to stay with him, perhaps. I don't know."

"Did it seem like a psychological abnormality?"

"I'm not qualified to say, but it seemed to me that she was afraid of something happening to him. Perhaps that was abnormal. I don't know."

"What was her father like?"

"I think I have an old snapshot of Mariana and him somewhere here."

Harry Brooks got up heavily and began rummaging through a file drawer. "Yeah, here it is."

Roal took the snapshot. It was small and not very good, but the identity of the man beside Mariana was unmistakable.

It was the giant who had appeared in the doorway of the room at Starhouse.

Roal took the picture back to the office with him and called in Ralph Bowen, a slender young artist who was head of the art department of Heliopolis SBI.

"Think you can do some front views and profiles of this gent from this snapshot," said Roal. "It's not much to go on, but I've seen him and can go along with you and give you descriptions of his features."

Bowen nodded, "I think so. If it doesn't come out the way you think it should look, I can touch it up to your specifications. The big boy done something?"

"I wish I knew," said Roal.

Roal found it necessary to spend the rest of the day with Bowen, coaching him from his memory of that fleeting glimpse of Sebours in the Starhouse. In the late afternoon the drawings were finished to Roal's satisfaction, however.

"I'll want them reproduced," he said. "Distribution is to be made to every operator in the system, but first to those on Mars. I'll issue the necessary orders tomorrow if you can have the reproductions by then."

"First thing in the morning," promised Bowen.

* * * * *

In the dimming Martian sunset Roal Hartford watched the city below. Somewhere in its depths was the phantom tavern Starhouse, and tonight there would be new spacemen lured to the drug _harmeena_ by the golden-haired Alayna, Queen of the Silver Stars. A queen whose heart revolted at the role she was forced to play--Roal was sure.

But who or what was forcing her into it? Her father? Roal felt that he must be, but it appeared as if Sebours was the master mind behind the whole dope gang. And, as yet, no explanation of the mysterious, elusive location of the Starhouse appeared.

Roal had presented all his findings to Commander Calvin but the head of the department was still not certain that Roal had not been drugged and had dreamed up the story of Starhouse and Alayna. It was easy, he had said, to think that Roal's drugged mind would quickly associate the mythical Alayna with the first picture of a beautiful girl that he encountered. The fingerprints he dismissed as having come from a visit to one of the dives. Probably Mariana Sebours was a waitress or dancer in one of them and had accidentally picked up the investigator's cape.

Lacking support of the Chief, then, Roal was forced entirely upon his own initiative. And that had about run out. He had the forces of the SBI working to bring in Mariana and her father, but he had little faith that they would be found.

Somehow he had to get back to Starhouse, the phantom tavern. He knew it was real, that it existed somewhere, but why he could not find it after having walked once directly to its doors was something he could not fathom. He knew he had not been drunk or drugged when he entered the place.

And through all the mystery there floated the husky, plaintive voice of Alayna with the golden hair. Should he never see her again, Roal knew that her song and her loveliness would haunt him for the rest of his life. But, somewhere, somehow, he would find her.

As the darkness grew and it became increasingly difficult to make out objects in the room the televise flashed its light and rang shrilly in the silence.

He flicked it on. "Hartford speaking."

"Roal Hartford! Please help me. Come to Starhouse tonight on Transite Street. I need your aid. Be careful. You are known."

"Who are you?" Roal burst out. The screen had remained blank.

"I am Alayna, I--"

The soft, golden voice was suddenly cut off with a shrill exclamation. And then there was no more. Cursing, Roal switched off. There was no way of telling now where the call came from.

He called three of his agents, Sims, Parkhurst, and Riley, ordering them to the address on Transite street. He donned his cape and checked his flame lance. No need for disguise now. Alayna had said that he was known.

But by whom? That was the question. Obviously a break must have come between Alayna and those who held power over her, and Roal had not a doubt that she was in danger of her life at this very moment. And there was nothing he could do except go to Transite Street and hope that by some magic the Starhouse would again be there.

* * * * *

He drove swiftly through the brightening streets. But it was fifteen minutes before he arrived. The agents were already there lounging carelessly across the street from the address he had directed them to.

"I hope we didn't muff it, Captain, but I can't see anything here," said Parkhurst.

Roal stared along the length of Transite Street. There was no Starhouse with the garish crimson sign he remembered. But the old abandoned warehouse was still where it had always been--where he would have sworn Starhouse should have been.

Roal began to question his own sanity. Surely he could not be so wrong about it as this indicated. He knew he had received the phone call, but he couldn't be too sure it was Alayna's voice because the narrow circuits stripped away most of the golden overtones that made her voice a sound of such exquisite beauty.

Or someone might be playing a colossal joke on him. He didn't know--except he knew that somehow he had failed.

He circled the block, directing the deputies to cover adjacent squares. When they finally met again in front of the old warehouse full blackness had settled over Heliopolis and all the blaze of its million lights boiled skyward into the blackness of space.

"It must have been a bum steer," said Roal, "There's nothing more that we can do tonight. I'll check up on my information and let you know."

"O.K., Captain," said Parkhurst dubiously. His manner made it evident that they wondered if Roal were off the track a bit. He had never appeared so fumblingly on an investigation before.

When they were gone, Roal circled the block once again and then walked up and down the length of Transite amid the glare of the signs and the roaring bedlam of the street of crime.

There was simply no Starhouse. It was maddening to know he had followed this very path right to its door. He knew it was no illusion or drug-inspired dream. But it did not lead to Starhouse now.

Alayna was in deadly danger, and he knew of no way to find her or help her.

He was about to turn about and return to his office for a futile check on the progress being made by the Identification Office, when a thought formed in his mind. There was yet one clue that he had not exploited--a clue that stuck out so close to his face that he hadn't seen it.

The Martians--the Martians who had stolen the pellet of _harmeena_ from him on the desert. They were in contact with the dope peddlers of Starhouse.

He raced to the nearest televise booth and called Commander Calvin's home. But as the signal rang at the other end of the line Roal slowly replaced the receiver.

He knew what Calvin's reaction would be. A hundred years of strict peace with the Martians could not be violated by forceful entry into one of the burrows. Calvin would never consent to that, especially since he believed that the whole mystery was only a pipe dream in Roal's mind anyway.

Roal abandoned the call and placed another one. In a moment he got an answer.

"Hello, Shorty," he said. "Do you feel like a job tonight?"

"Sure, if it's a shooting job. I haven't had any excitement for a long time."

"I'm serious, Shorty, and it may turn out to be a shooting job. Bring along your lance."

Shorty sobered. "Sure, Cap. When and where?"

"Right now. I want you to take me out to the desert to the same spot where you picked me up the other day. I want to visit again that Martian burrow located there."

"Waaait a minute. If this is a shooting job, are you visiting or invading?"

"I'm going in that hole again. Anyway I have to get there. We're on our own. Calvin knows nothing of it. If my hunch is wrong this will cost us our ranks, jobs, and probably land us in the pen. But I'm going and I need you badly. Are you with me?"

Shorty answered, "I'm with you, Roal. Your hunches have always been right with me."