24
As I started to come to my senses, it seemed to me that I was being rocked gently in a vast cradle, which swayed side to side with a motion at once slow and incredibly gentle. This sensation continued for some time, and there was added to it the sound of a quiet, muffled hum. I remained in a delicious calm. I wondered if my mother was kneeling by my side, whispering some lullaby in my childish ears. Strange colors swam before my eyes, my eyelids wavered, and at last I awoke.
For a few moments, my gaze travelled to and fro in a vain search for some clue to my surroundings. I was aware of nothing except sense of repose and a feeling of relief that some mighty and fatal struggle was over. I did not care whether I had conquered or suffered defeat in the struggle. It was finished, done with, and the consciousness of its conclusion satisfied and contented me.
Gradually my brain, recovering from its obsession, began to grasp the phenomena of my surroundings, and I saw that I was on a shuttle and that the shuttle was moving. The motion was smooth; the hum was the hum of its engine; the strange colors were the cloud tints thrown by the sun as it crested around the planet; my mother’s lullaby was the crooned song of the man steering the ship.
Throughout my life, I had many experiences in space. I loved space, and now it seemed deliciously right and proper that I should be in space again. I raised my head to look round, and let it sink back. I was fatigued and enervated. I desired only solitude and calm. I had no care, no anxiety, no responsibility. A hundred years might have passed since my meeting with Miss Surcer, and the memory of that meeting appeared to have faded into the remotest background of my mind.
It was a small ship, and my practiced eye at once told me that it belonged to the highest aristocracy of pleasure craft. Few own them and are allowed to pilot them to the moons. As I reclined in the lounge chair, I examined all visible details of the vessel. The ship’s bridge was as silver and smooth as the antimony my father mined. All the brassy areas shone in contrasting golden hues.
No one was to be seen on the bridge except the man piloting the ship. This man wore a blue jersey, but there was neither name nor initial on it. I called to him in my feeble voice, but the steerer took no notice of me and continued his quiet song as though nothing else existed in the universe save the ship, space, the sun, and himself.
I knew I was leaving Ventstot, but I could not discern which moon I was headed toward. I tried to sit up in the lounge chair, but I found myself unable to do so. I tried to throw off the blanket that covered me, but I discovered that I had been tied to the chair by means of a piece of broad webbing.
Instantly, I was alert, awake, and angry. I knew that my perils were not over, and I felt that possibly they had scarcely yet begun. My lazy contentment, my dreamy sense of peace and repose vanished utterly, and I steeled myself to meet the dangers of a grave and difficult situation.
Just at that moment a man came up behind me.
“Good morning,” he said. “Beautiful day, isn’t it?” The clever and calculated insolence of his tone cut me like a lash as I lay bound in the chair. Like all people who have lived easy and joyous lives, I found it hard to realize that there were places where law was without power. Before my father bought the Ritzavoy XI, I would have talked airily about civilization and progress and the police. But my experience was teaching me that human nature remains always the same. Beneath the thin crust of security on which good citizens exist the dark and secret forces of crime continue to move, just as they did in the days of old.
“Good morning,” the man repeated, and I glanced at him with a sullen, angry gaze.
“You!” I exclaimed, “You, Julbo—or rather Mr. Tulbo Toggins if that is your name! Loose me from this chair.” My eyes flashed with contempt as I spoke.
“With pleasure,” he replied. “I had forgotten that to prevent you from falling I had secured you to it.” With a quick movement he unfastened me, and I stood up, quivering with fiery annoyance and scorn.
“Now,” I said, confronting him face first, “what is the meaning of this?”
“You fainted,” he replied imperturbably. “Perhaps you don’t remember.”
I was obliged to acknowledge, in spite of myself, that he had distinction, an air of breeding. No one would have guessed that for twenty years he had worked on a cruiseshuttle. His long, lithe figure and easy, careless carriage seemed to be the figure and carriage of an aristocrat. His voice was quiet, restrained, and authoritative. However, I knew my head did not hurt because I had “fainted.”
“Why have you carried me off on this ship of yours?”
“It is not my ship,” he said, “but that is a minor detail. As to the more important matter, may I remind you that yesterday you were threatening a lady in my house with a sonicpistol.”
“Then it was your house?”
“Why not? May I not possess a house?” He smiled.
“I must request you to put the ship about at once and take me back,” I said as firmly as I could.
“Ah!” he said, “I am afraid that’s impossible. I didn’t put out to space with the intention of returning at once,” he imitated my tone as he spoke the last words.
“When I do get back,” I said, “when my father learns of this, it will be an exceedingly bad day for you, Mr. Toggins.”
“But supposing your father doesn’t hear of it—”
“What?”
“Supposing you never get back?”
“Do you mean to have my murder on your conscience?”
“Talking of murder,” he said, glancing at his well-manicured fingernails, “you came very near to murdering my friend, Miss Surcer. At least, so she tells me.”
“Is Miss Surcer on board?” I asked, seeing perhaps a faint ray of hope in the presence of a woman.
“Miss Surcer is not on board. There is no one on board except you and myself and a small crew—a very discreet crew, I might add.”
“I have nothing more to say to you, then. You must take your own course.”
“Thanks for the permission,” he said. “I will send you up some breakfast.”
He went to the stairs and whistled, and a man in uniform appeared with a tray of food. I took it, and without the slightest hesitation, threw it at my captor. Mr. Toggins dodged.
“You have spirit,” he said, “and I admire spirit. It is a rare quality.”
I made no reply.
“Why did you mix yourself up in my affairs at all?” he continued.
Again, I made no reply, but the question set me thinking: Why had I mixed myself up in this mysterious business? It was quite at variance with the usual methods of my existence. Had I acted merely from a desire to see justice done and wickedness punished? Or was it the desire of adventure?
“It is no fault of mine that you are in this fix,” Julbo continued. “I didn’t bring you into it. You brought yourself into it. You and your father—you have been moving along at a pace which is rather too rapid.”
“That remains to be seen,” I put in coldly.
“It does,” he admitted. “And I repeat that I can’t help admiring you—that is, when you aren’t interfering with my private affairs. That is something which I have never tolerated from anyone—not from a sextillionaire nor even from a beautiful woman.” He bowed.
“I will tell you what I propose to do,” he continued after a moment. “I propose to escort you to a place of safety on one of the moons and to keep you there until my operations are concluded and the possibility of your interference with them entirely removed. You spoke just now of murder. What a crude notion that was of yours! It is only the amateur who practices murder—”
“What about Cagginald Lodimmick?” I interjected quickly.
He paused gravely.
“Cagginald Lodimmick,” he repeated. “I had imagined his was a case of heart disease. Let me order you some more food. I’m sure you’re hungry.”
“I will starve before I touch your food,” I said.
“Gallant creature!” he murmured, and his eyes roved over my face. “Ah!” he said, “what a wife you would make!” He approached nearer to me, and I stepped back. “Think of you and I, Major Thomatian, your beauty and wealth and my brains—we could conquer the world. Few men are worthy of you, but I am one of the few. Listen! You might do worse. Marry me. I am a great man, but I’ll soon be greater. I adore you. Marry me, and I will save your life. I will begin again. The past will be as though there had been no past.”
“This is somewhat sudden—Julbo,” I said with biting contempt.
“Did you expect me to be conventional?” he retorted. “I love you.”
“Granted,” I said, for the sake of the argument. “Then what will happen to your present wife?”
“My present wife?”
“Yes, Miss Surcer, as I believe she is called.”
“She told you I was her husband?”
“Incidentally, she did.”
“She isn’t.”
“Perhaps she isn’t. But, nevertheless, I think I won’t marry you.” I had nothing but contempt in my look.
He came nearer to me, and I again tried to step back, but hit the wall. “Give me a kiss, then—one kiss. I won’t ask for more. For one kiss from those lips, you will go free. Other men have ruined themselves for a kiss. Why not me?”
“Coward!” I ejaculated. “Trap me on your ship and then make advances, you should be ashamed!”
“Coward!” he repeated. “Coward, am I? Then I’ll be a coward, and you’ll kiss me whether you want or not.”
He put a hand on my shoulder. I shrank back from his eyes with an involuntary scream.
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