The Thief of Thoth

1

HAUTLEY QUICKSILVER, who was among the most celebrated and certainly the most distinguished of all the Licensed Legal Criminals and Confidential Agents in the Near Stars, lived with all the luxurious refinements and civilized comforts available to those who have achieved the ultimate peak of their profession.

He had a castle of organic pink quartz on the planetoid Carvel in that asteroid belt known as The Chain of Astarte. It had been designed to his specifications by none other than Smingoth Whibberley, the most noted, controversial, and widely imitated architectural philosopher of the 36th century A.C. There Hautley lived alone with his quaint hobbies, his curious pets, and his truly extraordinary collection of hand weapons culled from 1,376 different planetary cultures. No less than sixteen hundred varieties of weapon were represented in his arsenal—among them devices designed to stab, slice, puncture, detonate, envenom, stun, paralyze, render immobile, implode, decapitate, unlimb, eviscerate or otherwise render hors de combat an unwary opponent With each of these, Quicksilver had made certain he acquired a thorough professional competency upon which depended (and not infrequently) the adroit performance of his occupational duties, if not indeed continuance of life itself.

Quicksilver's castle clung to a sheer crag of dark green coral which rose from a sea of heavy opal smoke. This vaporous ocean entirely mantled the surface of the planetoid and the pinkly alabastrine hue of his castle formed a delicate aesthetic contrast against the melting and changing hues of the heavy vapor, the rough emeraldine coral, and the tea-rose sky, with the sullen disc of Astarte a smouldering ruby on the dim horizon.

This horizon looked to be far more distant than it actually was. Carvel was a terraformed planetoid with a diameter of only forty-nine kilometers. A permanent and artificial magnetic field, generated by certain ingenious devices situated at the core of the worldlet, continuously distorted the gaseous molecules of which the atmosphere was composed, lending the optical effect of a stupendous lens. This created the illusion of vast distances, pleasing to the eye.

The coral peak to which clung the pink quartz buildings was but one among a scattered forest of similar monoliths which rose from the opal sea at irregular intervals over the entire surface of Carvel. Carvel itself was one of several thousand similar worldlets that encircled the otherwise planetless star—a dying red Supergiant with an M1 spectrum, comparable to Antares but somewhat less in magnitude. This chain of tiny planetoids, in which Carvel was but a minor gem, encircled the russet star like a necklace of jewels around the throat of some dusky queen; and among the whirling myriads, Carvel was lost and hidden.

The very nature of Hautley's profession was such that extreme privacy was eminently desirable. And he had many enemies. His versicle upon this topic was pointedly clear:

Hardest of all: to find

One needle in a mountain of its kind.