He saw the huge ball that
was Neptune circle below,
like a weak green light bulb.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Comet May 41.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
"If it's going to happen," thought Bill Ricker, "it's got to bequick." Lounging deep in his red-leather chair, he peered out of theport as the sleek space ship streamed through the darkness. He couldsee nothing outside but a big, humorous-eyed young man who was his ownreflection and the pale green globe that was Neptune. The great planethung like a ghostly emerald in the void, sinister in its loneliness.But bleak, desolate, a snowball of frozen gases, it was hardly theplace for an ambush....
"Pretty, ain't she?" said the whiskery old fellow across the aisle.
"Neptune?" Ricker glanced at the sourdough, then followed his gaze downthe narrow aisle. "Oh—her!"
There were twelve seats but only five passengers. Further down was atubercular-looking Martian and near the pilot room sat a fat man with awoman. The fat man chewed sleepily on a dead cigar and the woman staredout of the window. They were handcuffed together.
"Ever seen the orchids on Amor?" said Ricker. "Well, she's just asbeautiful—and just as dangerous...." She was obviously Venusian buther skin wasn't exactly yellow, he decided. It was golden brown, littledifferent from a deeply-tanned Earth girl.
"They say she shot his head plumb off," said the old codger.
"Yep, she certainly mowed him down."
The sourdough lifted a bony finger toward Ricker's brief case. "Inoticed th' tag on yer kit there," he ventured. "Says th' PlanetaryTimes. Be you one o' them telenews fellows?"
Ricker grinned. "Shore am, podner," he said.
"Gonna write about this here murderess arriving on Pluto?"
Ricker nodded good-humoredly. "That's my job."
Slowly a faint siren hum penetrated the cabin, not unlike the soundof a power plant. A power plant it was too, the ship digging in fullblast as it skirted the pull of Neptune. Ricker turned away from hisgarrulous neighbor, saw the sea-tinted planet had doubled in size. Itwas a perfect sphere, without a mark on its surface, a ring of solidhydrogen and helium. A worthless world, thought Ricker; worthless aswas half the universe—because the woman in the seat up front hadkilled a man!
"Molly Borden—Benjamin Adison ..." the sourdough mused, apparentlystill awed by such infamous company.
"Yep," said Ricker, remembering a line from his last story: "In theflash of a pistol those names became linked forever...." It was odd, hereflected. One was a woman nobody at the trial had ever seen before,the other was a man whose name echoed throughout the spaceways.Benjamin Adison was to stellar travel what Wright had been toterrestrial aviation and in his sixtieth year when, at the completionof his work on planet-warming, he had suddenly become corpus delictiin the perfect telenews story. A stolen secret, a mysterious woman,a person high in the government—it had all the angles. Then SenatorTrexel was acquitted, Molly Borden confessed. Now she was journeying toa life sentence on the penal planet.
"Too bad she burned Adison's plans when they trapped her." It wasRicker's self-appointed traveling companion again.
"We lost the resources of four worlds by that little trick," Billagreed. "The police found enough in the ashes to convince them it wasthe plans." He smiled to himself slightly, like someone who expectedsomething but wasn't quite sure he could count on it. He was probablythe only one in the universe who wondered i