Planet in Peril

V. The Golden Horseshoe

"Where we goin', chief?" demanded Phath, panting as he struggled to keep up with his partner' s long, rangy stride. "Settlers' Street, I'll bet!"

"Later," said Star Pirate briefly. "First I want to check out this Golden Horseshoe saloon ... did you notice that this was the second time the near vicinity of this establishment has been the scene of one of the Fire Troll's murders?"

Phath blinked in thought. "The first was that big miner, Bill Borden, right? Wild Bill, they used to call him ..."

Star nodded curtly. "Right. Borden had just left the saloon. He hadn't gone more than a block before the Troll stepped out of the shadows to slay him with his burning touch ... and now another is killed in the same way, and within a stone's throw of the first."

"Think it means something, chief?" Star shrugged. "We'll see."

The manager of The Golden Horseshoe was a fat, good-humored, moonfaced Uranian, with the butter-yellow skin and liquid black eyes of his kind. His name was Aardh. He was totaling up the receipts of the previous night when they entered the saloon, which was a huge, cavernous structure of prefabricated plastex panelling braced with struts of synthe-steel. The central feature of the big room was a deeply curved stage which thrust out from the wings and glowed with rich carvings of the rare Mercurian marble called goldstone. The horseshoe-shaped stage and its hue explained the establishment's name.

The fat Uranian gave them a jolly glance as they approached. He saw two ordinary-looking spacemen in drab gray zipper-suits, the kind of one-piece coveralls spacemen usually wore under their space gear.

"Ain't open yet, gents," he boomed in hearty tones. "Place don't open for business till noon, y'know—local ordinance. Come back then, boys, and it'll be my pleasure to stand the two of you to a mug of your favorite tipple—"

He broke off, words trailing away, eyes bulging with disbelief, when the tall, bronzed Earthling of the duo held out flat in his palm a queer five-sided token of strange black metal. Although the stuff wherefrom it was made seemed solid and opaque, a thousand minute stars twinkled and flickered within its murky depths. It was like a fragment cut from the night sky, and it was the rarest of all the rare artifacts in the entire System—a monetary plaque left behind by the mysterious Asterians, the dwellers on the lost planet Aster.

No other mate to this fabulous black coin had ever been discovered ... and it was the unique means by which Star Pirate chose to identify himself to strangers.

"S-Star Pirate!" gasped the goggle-eyed Uranian. Abruptly his air of careless, glad-handed jollity turned into one of respectful obsequiousness. "Yessir, Mr. Star!

While it's against the law for me to sell you a drink this early in the day, there's no law on Mercury says I can't give you and your aide, here, a drink on the house! Name your poison, as the fellow says!"

Phath, licking his lips, ran his eye judiciously down the rows of bottles behind the bar, searching for his favorite Venusian cordial. But Star made a brusque negative gesture with one hand.

"It's too early in the day for a drink," he said, "and besides, we're working on these Fire Troll murders. I understand the first of the Troll's victims had been in your saloon just before his fatal meeting with the monster, or whatever it is. But what about the most recent murder—miner called McCallister?"

The fat Uranian shuddered, rolled his black liquid eyes, and made an expansive gesture with one hand, waving pudgy fingers on which far too many gems twinkled and flashed.

"Can I help it if half the spaceport trade prefers my establishment to those of my competitors, Mr. Pirate?" whined Aardh plaintively. "True, McCallister was in here last night ... drank a couple stiff brandies at the bar, played a hand or two of cards with some of his mates, then ambled off to seek his lodgings."

A few quick questions elicited the simple facts that neither victim, Borden nor McCallister, had behaved in any way peculiar on the nights of their murders, or had spoken mysteriously or done anything else to attract special attention. They had, in fact, behaved as they normally did. Star and Phath then turned to leave The Golden Horseshoe. On sudden impulse, Star turned back at the door.

"Do you know in which direction Borden went that night?" he queried. The Uranian shrugged.

"Sure! Down Settlers' Street towards the Temple ..."

"And McCallister?"

"Believe he went a ways further— but in the same direction, towards the Temple.—You sure, Mr. Star Pirate, I can't offer you boys a quick one before you leave—just a bit of a pick-me-up, as people say?"

Star declined, politely but firmly, and left the saloon with Phath at his heels. "Where to now, chief?"

"We'll take a look-see at the place where McCallister was found by the medics. The boys from the Patrol will have been over it inch by inch, of course. Still and all ..."

Star shrugged whimsically, and, briefly, his old, mischievous grin lightened his space-tanned features. As the crime-fighters of an earlier era might put it, The game' s afoot ... and already he was feeling that heady exultation he knew so well, the excitement of knowing that he was on the murderer's trail.