The Chalice of Death (28 page)

“I see the logic there. Ben himself is all right as a ruler, but the chances are that the next boss of Starhaven won't be so enlightened. So you get rid of the boss and the boss system now, and prevent the terrible destructive struggle for the throne before it can begin.”

“You've got the idea. Well? Are you with us?”

Mantell hesitated. He was thinking of the giant named Ben Thurdan, who feared dying, and he was thinking also of Myra, and of many possibilities.

There was no longer any doubt in his mind.

“Of course I'm with you!” he said.

She sighed. “Thank God you said that, Johnny. I would have hated to kill you, Darling!”

Chapter Twelve

Knowing of the existence of a plot against Ben Thurdan's life didn't keep Mantell from working hard and long on his defense-screen project, even though he was conscious of the irony that success in his research would spell the end of all hopes for an assassination. He was definitely on the track of something, and he didn't necessarily have to turn it over to Thurdan when he had worked it out. And there would be some use for his personal defense screen, whether it was Thurdan or someone else—himself, perhaps—who benefited from it.

He withdrew almost completely into his laboratory. Myra had warned him not to see her again until everything was settled, and the promise of seeking her later took away most of the pain of not seeing her now.

They met briefly, twice more, in the Casino of Masks during the following week. They identified each other by a prearranged sign and spent a few hours at the tables. But it was a short and unsatisfying contact.

The second time he met her there, Mantell asked her again what was delaying them. His feeling was that they should strike at the first available opportunity. Ben had feed lines of data extending almost everywhere in Starhaven, and the longer they held back and polished their plans, the greater was Thurdan's chance of discovering their identities and killing both the conspiracy and themselves.

“It'll come soon, Johnny,” she told him. “It's like a jigsaw puzzle. All the pieces have to be where they belong, to fit exactly and make the picture complete before the game is over.”

Mantell slumped down in his seat, shoulders hunched. “I guess you know what you're doing,” he said, frowning. “But I don't like this waiting. I'm getting impatient, and Ben's bound to find out before long.”

She laughed, and the effect of the mask flattened the laugh into something strange. “
You're
impatient? Johnny, we've been living with this thing for years. You've only been on Starhaven a few
weeks
!”

After that, he stopped asking questions. Instead he plunged into his laboratory work with furious energy—the energy of seven years of idleness, dammed up and now rushing down the spillway.

He designed cumbersome defense screens that would be too massive for an elephant, and built them, and then refined and reduced them down, down—until, on one model that might be almost the proper size, the field winked out altogether, lacking sufficient strength. And he had to start all over again. He didn't mind that. Failure at this stage was only to be expected; success was not immediately to be hoped for. And he was working again, doing something, and that was enough.

Hardly a day went by without a call from Thurdan. Mantell learned that Starhaven was going through a period of peace, untroubled by the universe outside, and so Thurdan rarely visited the lab tower in person except when making routine checks.

Until the day of the Space Patrol raid. In a sudden instant, the peace and security of Starhaven was faced with abrupt destruction.

Yet the raid had been going on for almost a full hour before Mantell knew anything about it. His first hint that something was wrong came when the door of his laboratory opened as he bent low over his workbench squinting over microminiaturized positronic disperser and trying to coax them into their proper positions in the template he was building.

Startled, he glanced back over his shoulder and saw Ben Thurdan striding heavily into the, room.

“Hello, Ben. Why the big rush?”

Thurdan's craggy face was tense. “Bombardment. A fleet of Patrol ships chased some fugitive here, and they're blasting us. Come with me and I'll show you something, Mantell. Come on!”

Mantell had to half-run after him down the hall to the central control room.

“What about the fugitive?” he asked, remembering his own arrival. “Did he get in okay?”

“He's here. An assassin.”

Despite himself Mantell flinched. “What?”

“Killed the President of the Dryelleran Confederation then lit out for here.”

“Did you take him in?”

“Of course. We take everyone in. Harmon's psychprobing him now. But he brought a Patrol armada behind him. They've got some new kind of heavy-cycle gun that I've never heard of before. If you listen you can pick up the sound.”

Mantell listened. He heard a dull boom, and it seemed to him that the floor shook just a little. A moment later the boom was repeated.

“That's it,” Thurdan said. “They're blasting at our screens.”

He sat at the control console, in the big chair specially constructed to hold his weight, and switched on the visiscreens. Mantell saw the image take shape almost at once: a thick cloud of Patrol ships orbiting beyond Starhaven's metal skin, wheeling like stallions and discharging incredible bolts of radiant energy.

But now Thurdan was grinning. He emanated all the confidence and joy of an invincible warrior about to enter battle. His thick strong fingers rattled over the controls.

“Our defensive screens can soak all that stuff up, can't they?” Mantell asked uneasily.

“Most of it. Theoretically, they have unlimited capacity—but those boys up there are really pouring it on!” Thurdan pointed to a bank of meters whose quivering indicators swung dizzily up into the red area that meant overload and dropped back as Starhaven's enormous power piles drained away the dangerous excess. And again the Patrol ships slammed down their fierce bolts of force, and still the Starhaven defenses negated them.

“We've got to stay on the defensive for a few minutes, still,” said Thurdan. “The load on our screens is too great to give us time to throw out a return blast. But we'll fix 'em! Watch this.”

Mantell watched.

With strong staccato thrusts of his fingertips over the control boards, Thurdan brought the defense-screens of Starhaven out of synchronized equilibrium, establishing instead a shifting cycle-phase relationship.

“The screens are alternating now,” he grunted. “Give me the differential.”

Mantell squinted up at the dials, found the columns he wanted, and fed the figures rapidly to Thurdan. The big man made delicate adjustments, making mental computations that astonished Mantell.

Finally he sat back, grinning satanically. Sweat was pouring from every pore of his skin.

A chime sounded outside the room. Thurdan muttered, “See what they want, Johnny.”

Mantell darted to the door and opened it. A handful of the defense-screen technicians stood there, pale, puzzled-looking.

Harrell said, “What's going on in here? The screens are phasing like crazy!”

“Close to overload,” Bryson said.

Mantell smiled. “Ben's in charge,” he said simply. “Come on in and watch.”

He led them to where Thurdan sat staring broodingly into his vision plates, watching the cloud of orbiting Patrol Ships. There must have been hundreds of them out there, each one smashing every megawatt it could muster into the tough metal hide of Starhaven.

“They've been planning this attack for a year,” Thurdan said half to himself, as he made compensating adjustments to absorb the ferocious onslaught. “Waiting for a chance to get this fleet out there and break Starhaven open, once and for all. And they're so sure they're going to do it, too—the poor fools!” Then he laughed. “Mantell, are you watching?”

Mantell nodded tensely, too absorbed to speak. He heard the other technicians murmur behind him.

“Here we go, then,” Thurdan said grimly.

His right index finger jabbed sharply down on a projecting green stud of the control panel. The building shook. A violet flare of energy leaped into sight on the vision screen.

And where, a second ago, eleven Space Patrol ships had been arrayed in fighting formation, now there were none.

Thurdan chuckled. “They didn't expect that, I'd bet! They thought it was impossible to take this heavy an attack and still return fire! But I'm giving them their own juice back twice as hard!”

His finger came down again.

A flank of the Patrol attackers melted into nothingness.

Mantell saw what the strategy was: Thurdan was firing in the millionth-of-a-second pauses between each phase of the synchronized screens, squirting out a burst of energy in the micromoment when Starhaven was left unguarded. But the force of the beam coming up from the planet served as a screen itself, keeping the metal-shielded world from harm.

Again and again Thurdan's finger came down heavily on the firing stud, until the sky was cleared of ships. The angry cloud of buzzing, energy-spitting gnats that had been plaguing Starhaven was wiped out.

All except one, Mantell saw. One Space Patrol ship remained. He waited for Thurdan to spear it with a burst.

Instead he spoke into a microphone: “Get our ships up there, and grapple that one on. I want that ship. I want to study those guns.”

He flicked away a stream of sweat from his forehead, rose, yawned and stretched. Again Starhaven had triumphed.

An hour later, Mantell was in Thurdan's office in central Starhaven when four of his private corpsmen brought in the crew of the captured SP ship. At the moment Thurdan was expounding to him the virtues of his screen setup, with what Mantell considered was excusable pride. The big man had just given an awesome demonstration of skill, and Mantell had told him so. He felt sincerely impressed; and there was no reason why Thurdan shouldn't know it.

“A hundred and eighty-one ships they lost,” Thurdan said. “Over five hundred Patrolmen dead, and at a cost of billions of credits to the Galactic Federation.”

“And without a single Starhaven casualty,” Mantell pointed out.

“That's only part of it!” Thurdan exclaimed. “We soaked up enough power in that raid to run Starhaven for a year. I've ordered the three auxiliary generators shut down indefinitely, until we're able to use up the trapped power surplus. We—”

The door chimed.

Myra appeared from the inner office and crossed to the door smoothly, saying, “I'll see who it is, Mr. Thurdan.”

A moment later she reappeared.

“Well?” Thurdan growled.

“The captive SP men are here, under guard.”

A scowl of surprise and annoyance darkened Thurdan's face. “Captive SP men?” he repeated. “
Captives
? Who said anything about prisoners? Myra, tell me—who brought in the SP ship?”

“Bentley and his crew.”

“Get Bentley on the phone, fast.”

Myra nodded and punched out the number. Mantell, at one side of Thurdan's desk, was trying to stare away from her, trying not to admire her liquid grace of movement. He knew Thurdan was still keeping close check on him.

The screen swirled colorfully and a face that Mantell recognized appeared. It belonged to the man who had brought him to Starhaven long ago.

Thurdan said, “Who issued orders authorizing you to take prisoners, Bentley?”

“Why, nobody, sir. I thought—”

“You
thought
! In the future, just don't attempt to think, Bentley. Leave that to me. It doesn't look good on you. Starhaven isn't a jail. We don't want prisoners here. You understand that?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. Next time you happen to capture a ship, jettison any SP man you find aboard.”

“Yes, sir.”

Thurdan broke contact, whirled, and stared at Mantell. “Johnny, there's a bunch of SP men outside the office. Have them killed. Then report back to me.”

He said it in a cool, even tone of voice. There was none of the anger in it that he had displayed when talking to the unfortunate Bentley.

“Have them killed.” Just like that.

“What are you waiting for, Mantell?”

The room was very silent. “Killing's a little out of my line, Ben. I'm a research man. I can't murder a group of innocent SP men, just because you don't—”

Thurdan's fist came up faster than Mantell's eyes could flicker. Fireworks exploded in his head, then he crashed hard into the wall. He heard Myra gasp. He realized Thurdan had opened the fist at the last second and had merely slapped him. But even so, he felt as if he had been poleaxed.

His head rocked. He wobbled unsteadily away from the wall, making sure he was keeping well out of firing range of those fists.

Thurdan said, “I thought you were loyal, Johnny. I gave you an order. You stopped to argue. That doesn't go on Starhaven. I told you about that. See that you remember it from now on.”

Mantell nodded. His jaw throbbed fiercely where Thurdan had slapped him.

“Yes, Ben.”

“
Make sure you mean it
! Now get out of here and dispose of those SP men. Come back here when you've done the job. That's an order!”

His voice had regained the cool, level quality of his normal conversation by the time he finished speaking. There was nothing insane or paranoiac about Ben Thurdan, Mantell saw. Thurdan was simply the boss, and aimed to keep things that way.

Behind him, Myra was looking expressionlessly out the window.

“Okay, Ben,” Mantell said hoarsely. “I'll take care of it right away.”

Chapter Thirteen

Mantell stepped out into the anteroom where four pale SP men waited, standing stiffly at attention, guarded by Thurdan's private corps-men. The corpsmen recognized him and nodded curtly.