The Chalice of Death Read online

  Mantell dragged in the cards that lay scattered on the table and shuffled them mechanically, paying little attention to his actions.

  He was staring at the electronically induced blur sitting across the table from him. He was realizing that he hardly knew the girl concealed behind it. She of the ice-blue eyes, Ben Thurdan’s secretary and fiancee, who casually proposed to assassinate Starhaven’s overlord tonight in his own home!

  And yet Mantell knew he loved her.

  “We’re all prepared for the attack,” she said. “Key men are ready to take over the moment he’s dead. There won’t be any lapse in the possession of power. Dr. Harmon will issue the public proclamation. The head of Ben’s private bodyguard corps, McDermott, is one of us too, and he’ll see to it that there’s no public disturbance. There’ll be a force on hand to capture the control tower. By morning the provisional government will be in complete control of Starhaven—we hope without a shot being fired.”

  “Very neat,” Mantell said. “And who’s going to head this provisional government that’s taking over? You? Harmon? McDermott?”

  “No,” said Myra tranquilly. “You are.”

  Mantell sat very quietly, absorbing the implications of that, filtering out the noise of the casino and letting Myra’s calm words fill his mind.

  “You are.”

  Provisional Ruler of Starhaven. Johnny-on-the-spot. You are.

  “Why me?” he asked finally. “There must be others around more—”

  “No. There aren’t. You’re new here, Johnny. You haven’t involved yourself in any feuds or made any enemies. People who would object to one leader or another will settle on you as being least objectionable, since you’ve had no contact with them, and so haven’t aroused any anger. You—”

  “How do you know I want the job?”

  “You said you’d do whatever you could to help us. This will help us.”

  “I’m not cut out to be a dictator.”

  “You won’t be. You’ll simply be acting head of the provisional government, until constitutional law can be established on Starhaven.”

  He considered that. The time was nine forty-five. In two hours and fifteen minutes, Ben Thurdan would be dead. And Johnny Martell, late of Mulciber, former defense-screen technician, general drifter and man-about-the-beach, would rule the iron world of Starhaven.

  It was a fast rise, he thought.

  The revolution would be quick too. By morning it would be over.

  “Let’s get out of here,” he said. He started to rise from the table. She caught his arm and tugged him back into his seat.

  “Not yet,” she said. “We haven’t finished pur game.” She dealt out the cards.

  Some twenty minutes later they decided it was safe to leave the Casino, and they repaired to the entrance, shed their masks. They met outside the Casino in the onyx corridor. Myra was wearing a clinging blue spray-on tunic that outlined her soft figure revealingly.

  Tonight, Mantell thought, she would see Ben Thurdan for the last time. Tomorrow she’ll be mine.

  They stepped out into the cool Starhaven night, strolling the broad plaza that fronted the Pleasure Dome. Overhead the sky was black, except for the mirror-bright moon and the sharp-focused stars. Ben Thurdan had put the moon and the stars up there deliberately, to cloak the artificiality of Starhaven. Mantell knew that they were simply a lens projection that crossed the metal sky each night on a carefully computed schedule, and vanished by “morning.” It was like a giant planetarium—a planetarium the size of a world.

  A faintly chill rain-laden wind was blowing down on them out of the east as they stood together in the darkness, thinking of tomorrow and the tomorrows yet to come. Thurdan’s weather engineers were shrewd planners. There was nothing synthetic seeming about Starhaven’s weather. When it rained, it rained wet.

  “Ben’s a great man,” Myra said softly, apropos of nothing, after a while. “That’s why we have to kill him. He’s big—too big for Starhaven. As Caesar was too big for Rome.”

  “You loved him, didn’t you?”

  “I loved Ben, yes. For all his cruelty and his ruthlessness, he was something special, something unique. Something a little more than a man.”

  “Do we have to talk about him?” Mantell asked.

  “If it hurts you, I won’t. But I’m trying to square things with my own conscience, Johnny. Ben has to die—now. Or else there’ll be hell on Starhaven when he dies naturally, and that day will have to come someday too. But still—”

  It was strange, hearing her talk of conscience on this planet where conscience seemed to be a forgotten myth. Mantell turned to face her.

  “Can I pry, Myra?”

  “Into what?”

  “You never told me why you came to Starhaven. Is it going to be a secret from me forever?”

  She glanced sharply up at him. “Do you really want to know?” she asked.

  He was silent for a moment, thinking. How terrible could her secret be, he wondered? Would it be some crime so ghastly it would drive a wedge between them forever, something that was better left untold?

  He made up his mind. Nothing should be left untold. “Yes,” he said. “I want to know.”

  “It wasn’t because I committed any crime, Johnny. I’m one of the few people on Starhaven who isn’t a fugitive from the law in some way.”

  His eyes widened. “You’re not—”

  “No. I’m no fugitive.”

  “Then how did you come here?” he asked, bewildered. “And why?”

  She was silent a moment. “Eight years ago,” she said finally, speaking as if from a great distance away. “Ben Thurdan left Starhaven for the first time since he had built it. He took a vacation. He travelled incognito to the planet of Luribar IX, and he spent a week at a hotel there. He met me there.”

  “You’re from Luribar?”

  She nodded. “My family helped to colonize it a century and a half ago. Ben took me dancing—once. He was so terribly clumsy I laughed at him. Then I saw I had hurt him. Imagine, hurting a powerful giant of a man like that! He was next to tears. I felt I had to apologize. He’s never gone on a dance floor again, with me or with anybody else. But he left Luribar the next night, to return to Starhaven. He told me who he was and what he was, and asked me to come with him to Starhaven.”

  “And you did.”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh,” Mantell said, after a while.

  He glanced up at the star-speckled bowl of the night, thinking of Ben Thurdan who had put those stars up there and who had built an iron shell around this planet, and who was soon going to be dead.

  Then he turned to Myra.

  She seemed to flow into his arms.

  Chapter Sixteen

  At 10:45 he left her. Thurdan was expecting her to arrive at his place in less than an hour, and she had to pick up her briefcase and then go to central headquarters for the papers he wanted. In seventy-five minutes Thurdan would be dead, Mantell thought. The seconds dragged by interminably.

  Myra had asked him to arrive at Thurdan’s apartment at about ten minutes past midnight, to help her with the body. Until then, he was simply to stay out of trouble. He passed half an hour in a bar not far from the Pleasure Dome, a small place with poor lighting and worse liquor. A girl was dancing in the back, accompanying herself by singing in a nasal drone. When she finished her song a thin pockmarked man circulated and passed the hat among the patrons of the bar.

  Mantell tossed in a single-chip note. The pockmarked man thanked him effusively and moved on. Mantell ordered a beer and sipped it reflectively. The minutes were crawling.

  After a while he got tired of the bar, and left. He paced the Starhaven streets for nearly another half hour. He had already consumed the greater part of the seventy-five minutes he had to waste.

  Now it was eleven thirty-five.

  He found another bar, stopped in long enough to buy himself a second beer, drank half of it and left. He was feeling less calm with each pas
sing minute. She was so slim and small, he thought, and Thurdan so powerful—

  Eleven forty.

  Eleven forty-five. She would be just about arriving at his apartment by now. Mantell flagged down an aircab and in a tension-tightened voice gave the robodriver a street not far from the address of Thurdan’s private dwelling.

  Eleven fifty.

  He stood alone beneath a flickering street lamp, waiting for the minutes to pass.

  Eleven fifty-two.

  Eight minutes to go. Then seven. Mantell started to walk toward the building. He was thinking: A month ago I was just a bum, wandering around the beaches, and now I’m on my way to help out in the assassination of the ruler of a world! It was almost like moving in a dream, except that this was real.

  He reached the building at eleven fifty-seven. Three minutes. Of course, there was no positive assurance that Myra would act precisely on the dot of twelve. They had not bothered to synchronize watches too precisely, and in any event there might be unforeseen delays of a moment or two before she would strike. He prayed the blade would be sharp, her aim true.

  A robot sat behind a desk in the lobby of Thurdan’s building and surveyed him owlishly as he passed through the main doors.

  “Yes, please?”

  “I’m visiting Mr. Thurdan,” Mantell said.

  “Sorry, please. Mr. Thurdan is very busy on important government matters, and cannot be interrupted.”

  Mantell glanced at his watch. Eleven fifty-nine.

  The tension was mounting. “This is most urgent,” he said.

  At this very moment Myra might be unsheathing the weapon. The robot grinned obstinately, blocking his path.

  “Mr. Thurdan is not to be disturbed,” the robot said.

  Mantell shrugged and drew the blaster he carried inside his jacket. He fired once, aiming for the robot’s neural channel. The smile remained fixed idiotically on the metal face and the voice continued, locked now in an endless monotone.

  “Mr. Thurdan is not to be disturbed Mr. Thurdan is not to be disturbed Mr. Thurdan is not to be disturbed Mr. Thurdan is not to be—”

  Mantell fired again. The robot sagged and toppled to the deep wine-red carpet, quivered once, subsided, and lay there in a useless chrome-plated heap. It was just scrap, now, its delicate cryotronic brain hopelessly shorted out.

  Midnight.

  The elevator seemed to take little short of forever to climb the forty-eight stories to Thurdan’s penthouse. Mantell counted seconds, waiting, watching the clock hands moving.

  Twelve-of-one. He had plenty of time. Myra had told him to be there at ten past twelve.

  He stepped through the lift tube door on the forty-eighth level and found himself in an endless brightly lighted corridor. Unsurprisingly, there was a robot patrolling the area; Thurdan was not a man to take many chances. His apartment, like Starhaven itself, was well guarded—but always subject to attack from within.

  The robot turned and shouted a quick “Halt” at him.

  Mantell knew that this one had its response channels set for guard duty; it wouldn’t be as slow on the draw as the defunct lobby attendant had been.

  He slid into an alcove, hoping the robot wasn’t equipped with range perceptors keen enough to smell him out where he crouched. Or with a portable force screen, as the one who killed Marchin had been.

  Metal feet clattered down the hallway.

  “Halt! You are ordered to appear from hiding! Mr. Thurdan does not wish to be disturbed!”

  The robot steamed on past Mantell without seeing him. He emerged from the alcove and fired once, blasting through its spinal column, paralyzing it and blocking its motor responses. Then, ducking in front of it, he shorted out its brain and put a stop to its impotent whirrings.

  The time was twelve-oh-five. Mantell sprinted down the corridor toward Thurdan’s suite.

  And stopped outside. And listened.

  And heard the sound of sobbing. It was Myra. In an agony of remorse, he wondered?

  Twelve-oh-six.

  Thurdan lay six minutes dead now. Mantell knew what his job was now: to go inside, to snap Myra out of the state of shock she probably had gone into after the killing. He pushed against the door, and to his surprise it gave readily. She had left it open for him.

  He flung the door open and burst into Thurdan’s apartment. The suite seemed to stretch in every direction. Rare and costly draperies cloaked the oval windows; rich thick rugs brocaded the floor. This was the suite of a czar, of a possession-hungry potentate. Paintings filled the wall space.

  The sound of sobbing grew louder. Mantell ran toward it.

  He heard Myra shouting to him—“Johnny! Johnny! No!”

  But by then it was too late.

  He blundered into the room and in virtually the same instant two hundred forty pounds of irresistible force crashed into him. The drawn blaster he had been clutching went clattering across the room; he reeled back, struggling for balance.

  Ben Thurdan was still alive.

  The living room was brightly lighted. With terrible clarity Mantell saw the huge disordered desk, the crumpled papers on its top stained with blood. Myra entered.

  Her face was tear-streaked and blotchy; her upper lip was split, and a dab of blood oozed from it. One whole side of her face was livid and swollen where she had received a ferocious blow. She was sobbing hysterically, her whole body quaking with each outcry.

  A jagged red line ran some six inches across the front of his shirt at the chest, beginning below the left clavicle and ending just above his left breast. Mantell saw it was only a flesh wound.

  He understood what had happened. Somehow Myra had failed in her attempt, scratching Thurdan where she should have torn.

  “Are you in this thing too, Mantell?” Thurdan bellowed in monumental rage. Even coatless, and in his ripped shirt, he was a figure of terrifying authority. Sweat poured down his hairless scalp. “You’re all against me, then? Harmon and Polderson and Ledru and McDermott and Myra—and even you, Mantell. Even you.”

  He advanced slowly toward Mantell. They were both unarmed. Myra’s knife, that was to have finished Thurdan, was nowhere in sight, and the blaster Mantell had carried now lay out of reach. Mantell knew that Thurdan needed no weapon. He could tear him to pieces barehanded.

  He backed up, moving warily to keep from stumbling. As he stared at Thurdan’s grim face he was astonished to see tears starting to form in the fierce eyes—tears of rage, probably. Learning that your closest associates had banded together to betray you is something that even the strongest of men cannot take without a sharp emotional pang.

  “All of you wanted to kill me, didn’t you?” Thurdan said slowly. “I didn’t do enough for you. I didn’t build Starhaven practically with my own two hands, and take you all in when you came running. That wasn’t enough, so you decided to try to kill me. But you won’t kill Ben Thurdan! You won’t!”

  Mantell tried desperately to signal to Myra to scramble across the room and seize the blaster where it lay. But she was too dumb and dazed with shock to understand the meaning of his gestures. She lay on a sofa, arms wrapped over her eyes, shaking violently, a pale huddled figure.

  Thurdan reached out for him. He ducked, swept it under his mighty fumbling paws, and landed a solid punch on the jutting jaw. It was like hitting a boulder. Thurdan didn’t seem to feel the blow, though Mantell’s arm rippled with pain at the contact.

  Thurdan’s hands clutched at his shoulder; he twisted and slipped away.

  “The blaster, Myra—get the blaster!” he called harshly. “Pick it up!”

  That was a mistake.

  Thurdan flicked a hasty glance over his shoulder, saw the blaster where it lay not more than three feet behind him, and scooped it up in one huge paw. In the same motion he hurled it through the open window, far out into the night.

  Now it was bare hands against bare hands, and that sort of conflict could have only one conceivable finish.

  Mantell edged back as f
ar from Thurdan’s reach as he possibly could. His breath was coming hard and thick.

  “Kill me, will you?” he demanded. “I’ll show you! I’ll show all of you!”

  Thurdan charged forward, caught Mantell around the middle with one great hand, and hurled him like a toy across the room. He crashed numbingly into a table laden with fine pottery. Mantell rolled over, trying to get up and failing, and waited for Thurdan to pounce and finish him off.

  But he didn’t pounce. He stood over him, rocking unsteadily, face contorted by some deep inner stress. He made no attempt to touch the fallen Mantell, who lay looking up.

  Finally Thurdan said, “I built Starhaven and I can destroy it too!”

  Wildly he laughed and swung away, running down the hall and out into the darkness.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Mantell slowly pulled himself to his feet and stood frozen a moment, shaking away the pain. His back felt numb. Thurdan’s sudden flight left him utterly bewildered. He turned to Myra.

  “Did you see that? He just ran out!”

  She nodded faintly. Her left eye was nearly puffed closed, he saw. She drew a tattered robe around herself. She was making a visible effort to regain control over her nerves.

  “Come on,” she said. “There’s a private landing port out on the balcony. That’s probably where he went.”

  “What—?”

  She didn’t wait to explain. She headed off in the direction Thurdan had gone, and Mantell had no choice but to follow.

  They passed through a darkened hallway into a large sitting room whose balcony doors hung open, swaying back and forth in the night breeze. Myra pointed to something just beyond the balcony.

  “There he goes!”

  An aircar had just taken off, using the balcony as a landing stage; a fiery streak against the blackness indicated its direction. Two more cars were parked on the balcony landing strip. Evidently Thurdan kept them there for emergency use.

  “He’s heading for the control tower,” Mantell said. “Like Samson bringing down the temple—he’s going to lift the screens and bring all Starhaven down to ruin around him!”