The Planet Killers

Chapter VIII

That day and the next, Gardner saw a good deal of Lori—too much, he admitted bitterly. He was a deeply troubled man. The smiling, gentle faces of Kinrad and Damiroj haunted him, carrying along the damning knowledge that Lurion was not wholly black, that there were those sincerely determined to help the world outgrow its ruthless past. And the involvement with Lori left him equally worried.

They spent most of their time in the hotel casino or in the lobby, since Gardner steadfastly refused to try to lure her to his room, and carefully avoided any opportunity of entering hers.

As they sat together at the casino table, Gardner wondered just what she thought of him. That he was a queer one, certainly; either that or a man of an unbreakably puritan frame of mind, someone who simply didn’t care for the joys of the flesh. What other reason could there be for his failure to attempt the establishment of an intimate liaison with her?

She was wrong on both counts, Gardner thought, but he didn’t dare let her find that out. There was no way of avoiding her company, but he was aware of the mortal dangers of letting their relationship get any more intense than mere friendship.

On the last night of the week, Gardner suggested that she let him take her on a field trip. “You probably haven’t been to this place,” he said, “and you ought to take it in before you leave Lurion. It’s way out in North City, but it’s worth the trip.”

“You’ve got my curiosity aroused.”

“Does that mean you’ll go?”

It did. After dinner that night, Gardner summoned a cab, and they traveled into North City, to the bar on One Thousand Six and the Lane of Lights, the place where he had met Smee.

Gardner uneasily half-expected to meet Smee there again, despite the definite instruction Smee had received to leave the city and go to his action post. But, to Gardner’s relief, Smee did not seem to be in the bar. He hoped Smee had actually moved on without a hitch to his permanent locale.

“You’ll see cruelty at its most refined tonight,” he promised her, as they entered.

Inwardly, Gardner hoped that there would again be a raid, with all the ruthless violence of the last one. He hoped the knife-dancers would be out in full glory. He wanted another reassuring demonstration of the foulness of this world.

They took a table at the back, where he had sat with Smee. Gardner looked around, checking on the location of that door through which he and Smee had made their escape the last time.

“What time does the show start?” Lori asked. “About an hour after midnight, I guess. We’ve got lots of time yet.”

They ordered khall from the scornfully obsequious waiter. In the past few days Gardner and Lori had sampled a few of the other Lurioni drinks, but had found them all equally unpalatable.

As they sipped their drinks, Lori said, “Can I have a preview of what I’m going to see? It always helps when I’m prepared to evaluate what’s taking place.”

Gardner told her, in detail. She listened in silence, her eyes wide and startled. When he had finished, she coughed a little and said sarcastically, “That sounds very lovely. I’m going to have the most lurid doctoral thesis ever written when I get back to Earth. I guess I could fill a whole book with the sins of Lurion.”

When I get back to Earth, she had said. Gardner felt a pang, but shrugged it off. “It ought to make for exciting reading,” he said. “Provided your examiners like exciting reading, that is.”

“They don’t. It’s not the number of instances of cruelty I cite that measures how thorough a job I’ve done; it’s my evaluation that matters.”

“Quality, not quantity, of observation.”

“Exactly.”

The evening passed slowly. Gardner fought a rousing inner battle to keep sober. He won, but it was far from easy. It was so simple to bathe the brain in khall and cease to think, cease to brood. But the thought of Davis kept him temperate—Davis, the sober Security man who had turned into a shambling rummy in less than two weeks on Lurion.

Shortly after midnight the familiar hush fell over the place. The tables were cleared away, the front windows opaqued. The wall sphinctered open.

“It’s beginning,” Gardner murmured.

The dancers appeared. They were different from last time’s, and this time there were three of them instead of a pair: two men and a woman. Sharp, harshly dissonant music began to grind in the background, piped in from the hidden rooms elsewhere in the building, and the dance started.

Gardner took a quick glance at Lori. She was watching, fascinated, leaning forward on the edge of her seat, as the dancers began their stylized motions.

Back and forth, up and down,- now rapidly, now slowly, with a slash of the knife at each pass, until blood trickled down oiled skins, the dance went on. Fifteen minutes passed, twenty, thirty. Gardner split his attention between the dancers and Lori and the front door, knowing that he would have to move fast in the event of another raid.

But there was no raid. The dance, this time, was permitted to wind through to its conclusion. Feeling a curious chill, Gardner watched detachedly as the two male dancers advanced stiffly on the female, swung round her in a grotesque goose step, raised their knife-hands at the same time and, suddenly, simultaneously, transfixed her with both their blades.

Lori was taking notes at a fantastic rate. “Sexual symbolism?” he heard her mutter, as she scribbled.

Gardner gasped. The female was crumpling daintily to the floor, and the hypnotized audience was drumming its heels in lusty applause, yet Lori had not lost her composure. Gardner was astonished. It was a remarkable display of scientific zeal, not to mention sheer toughness of mind.

A riot of light bathed the floor as attendants dragged off the corpse of the female dancer. Suddenly, a new light struck Gardner’s eyes, a sharp, insistent flash of green.

He glanced down at the indicator band on his wrist. The green panel was pulsating brightly.

Deever Weegan had just arrived on Lurion.

“Is there something wrong, Roy?” Lori asked. “You look so pale all of a sudden.”

“I’m not used to public bloodshed, that’s all,” he said in a hoarse voice. “After all, I’m not an anthropologist, you know.”

His fingers were quivering. He looked at the firm green light again.

Three fifths of the chain that would destroy Lurion had been forged.