A Man Called Destiny Read online

  “Before the law arrives.” Argyle nodded bitterly.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Forget it, it isn’t your fault.” Argyle relaxed into a moody silence that lasted uncomfortably until the desk clerk came in a few minutes later.

  “Lawman Sworder, sir,” he announced.

  Sworder was a short, thickset man in his early forties; a tough, professional crime chaser who would have stood out in any company as a man with both brain and muscle power. His wide, blue eyes were penetrating and his jaw line firm and uncompromising. Clearly, he was a man to be respected. He was quietly and soberly dressed, and the only mark of distinction was a gold star at his breast with the red letters L and M on it.

  “This is Mister Argyle, Lawman,” said Montresi by way of introduction.

  “Space Officer, eh?” Sworder’s hand clasp was brief and hard.

  Argyle nodded. “Second Engineer of the XQ342, Lady Dawn, in from Jones Planet today.”

  Sworder pulled a chair nearer to the desk and turned to the manager. “If you wouldn’t mind, Montresi … p” “Of course, Lawman, of course.” Montresi beat a hasty retreat, closing the door behind him as he went.

  “You knew Spiros,” stated Sworder flatly.

  “I met him for the first time a few weeks back.” “Where?”

  “On Jones.”

  “What was he doing there?”

  “He came to see me.”

  “I thought you’d never met before?”

  “Look,” said Argyle, “Let me tell you the story from the beginning. That way you might make sense out of it.” Sworder nodded. “All right. Go ahead.”

  Argyle kept it short. He told of the broken drive unit that had stranded the Lady Dawn, and he told of the delay because of the lack of a teepee on Jones. He detailed the unexpected interview he’d had with Spiros in the seamy saloon in Jonesville. He told how Spiros had managed to catch up with him because of the delay, and he brought a frown of surprise to Sworder’s brow as he told about the offer from Dellora.

  “And that’s all,” he ended. “I was to think about it and let him have an answer when I got here from Jones. That’s where you come in. You know as much as I do—probably more.”

  Sworder nodded, but made no reply. He was obviously disappointed at the lack of help he’d got from Argyle. “How did Spiros die?” asked Argyle. “Or is it a secret?” “No, it’s no secret.” Sworder pursed his lips. “He was shot with his own needle gun in a locked room.”

  “Suicide?”

  “No. The gun was lying fifteen feet away from the body on the other side of the room and it didn’t have any of Spiros’ finger prints on it.”

  Argyle digested the information in silence. At last he said, “If I didn’t know better, I’d say it was impossible.” Sworder’s eyes flickered with mocking humor. “Don’t I know it? To make matters worse Spiros had to be a teepee.” “What?” Argyle looked up quickly at the Lawman, surprise plain on his face.

  “You didn’t know?”

  “A telepath? No, he didn’t wear his badge when I saw him on Jones. He never let on.”

  “Odd, don’t you think?”

  More and more Argyle felt the tangled web of surprise and intrigue wind thicker round him. All telepaths were bound by law to wear a Teepee badge. They were too few and too valuable to be incognito in the community at large. A man wearing a Teepee badge was respected wherever he went. By the badge he wore he told of his gifts and his use to the human race. Teepees numbered only a few thousand throughout the Galaxy. It was to preserve their powers and to safeguard their future development that efforts to protect them took such stringent forms. A crime endangering the life of a teepee was a crime against the future of the whole human race, for on their shoulders rested the responsibility of interstellar communication. Only one teepee could talk with another across the vast oceans between the stars.

  “But why didn’t he let me know?” insisted Argyle. Sworder shrugged. “He had his motives no doubt. The question now is to find the murderer.”

  “And how do you do that?”

  Sworder sighed. “I wish I knew. I’ve had experts go over that room with a fine tooth comb, and they could draw only one conclusion. Whoever was in there with Spiros could not get out! It was an utter physical impossibility. There were people—four of them—in the corridor when Spiros screamed. They were outside his door within five seconds and they heard his body hit the floor. They heard the thud as the

  murderer dropped the gun. They heard half a dozen footsteps, and then—nothing. When the door was forced open two minutes later the suite was empty.”

  “Windows?”

  “Unopened and unopenable. Air conditioned rooms. Besides,” Sworder grinned, “it’s on the thirty-ninth floor.”

  “So?”

  “There was no physical way out of that suite, of that I’m quite certain.”

  “You said no physical way out?” He cocked a questioning eye at the Lawman, and Sworder pursed his lips in a wry smile.

  “What are you going to do now that Spiros is dead, Mister Argyle?”

  “You haven’t answered my question.”

  “You answer mine first.”

  “I think,” he said carefully, “I might look up Pietro Dellora and see if his offer of a job still stands.”

  “That the only reason?” asked Sworder softly.

  Argyle looked at the Lawman with slight surprise. The insight of the man was clear and surprising.

  “No,” he replied. “I think I’d like to know more about my wife and how she died.”

  “You think it will help to know?”

  Argyle shrugged. “I don’t know whether it will or not. But something doesn’t ring true.” He waved a hand vaguely. “Don’t ask me to name it. I just can’t see Angela as a leading light in the empire of a tycoon like Pietro Dellora. There’s another thing, too. People just don’t die these days at her age unless … unless—”

  “Unless something is very wrong.”

  Argyle nodded. “And now that Spiros is dead, too.” He realised with a shock that he was putting the two facts together, and the answer he got wasn’t pleasant to contemplate.

  He looked up at Sworder. “Okay? That’s your question answered. Now, how about mine?”

  Sworder looked at the floor between his feet. “There was

  one way out of the room … just one.”

  “But you said—”

  “I said no physical way.” Sworder smiled grimly and nodded, then he remarked conversationally, “We’ve never had a teleport in the Galaxy before.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  With the development of inter-Galactic trade a new class of tycoon was born. Terran laws became more fragile as distances from the home world increased. In the far spread outer reaches of the Galaxy—outside the grip of the law and the jurisdiction of the courts—there grew up empires of trade and commerce such as the race of man had never dreamed possible. Hard, strong men with quick brains and the ambition for power carved their own kingdoms on the tiny, unwanted planets that circled lonely stars. They made their own laws and lived by their own standards. They built up great fleets of cargo ships that plied the great trade routes between Earth and the stars. They controlled commodity markets, twisted prices to suit their own needs and created shortages and gluts alike.

  Before Earth realized the great strength of the trading barons; they had a stranglehold on Galactic trade which nothing, short of armed force, could break. In the beginning armed force had been tried—once. It was used against one, Vicente Dellora, and it wasn’t successful because everyone of Dellora’s fellow tycoons withdrew their ships, their money and their trade. In the end Earth had to give way and the Traders came back bigger and more powerful than ever.

  Argyle signed off the Lady Dawn and took ship for the Planet Dellora where Vicente’s descendants reigned. It was a long trip, five weeks in a pokey cargo vessel with a pirate crew and no facilities for passengers. It was as well for Argyle that he had come up the hard way, and was used to such conditions.

  Argyle learned more of the Traders and their worlds during his five weeks voyage than he had learned in his previous five years of space wandering. The black bearded captain and his crew were in constant touch with one or other of the Trader Companies. Their ship was an independent which gained a lucrative but precarious living by taking small or awkward cargoes on out of the way routes. The large Trader ships would have been quite uneconomical for such tasks. But the small, scrubby ship with its rough, tough crew, could and did make a living at it.

  “Be landing in two hours,” the ship’s captain told him from the autolog. “Guess you’ll not be sorry, eh?”

  Argyle stirred from his reverie and stretched his tall, heavy frame. “I’ve traveled worse,” he answered.

  The black bearded Terran laughed hoarsely. “It’ll be a worse one when we leave here, if I know Dellora. He’ll have a cargo for us as wide spread as the Milky Way.”

  “Then why take it?”

  “If we don’t we’ll never lift ship from Dellora,” was the grim reply. He cocked an eye at Argyle. “You’ll learn Trader ways on Dellora, Argyle. Take my tip and watch out.”

  Argyle nodded and said nothing.

  They came in to a landing on the giant spacefield outside Dellora City, the one large center of population on the planet. At once Argyle felt the power of Pietro Dellora. The field was wide and smooth, and around it he could make out the gleaming hulls of twenty or thirty great vessels as they lay in repair berths or stood by loading bays. Argyle knew that he had left Terran law a long, long way behind.

  Hard faced men in steel gray uniforms with red facings, littered the spaceport. Each of them carried side arms that were not merely ornamental. Like all the Traders,
Dellora had his own private army to see that things were done one way and one way only—Dellora’s way.

  Everyone on the ship from the captain down to the cook had to register at the Personnel Office, and everyone was issued an identity disc which was strapped tightly to the left wrist. The discs were tuned electronically to a central plotter and computer. By a quick check through the machine, Dellora’s Law Officers could tell exactly where anyone was at any given moment. It could not be abandoned because the pulse of the wearer kept it static. As the pulse beat ceased— either through removal or through death—the central computer registered the fact and gave the alarm.

  As a visitor, Argyle had to suffer an interrogation by a Public Security Officer before he was allowed to leave the spaceport. He was shown into a large, bare office, furnished with two chairs and a table, and there he was left to stew for half an hour before his interrogator appeared.

  The officer who came at last, was a plump, bored man with a bald head and wispy moustache. Argyle took an instant dislike to the cold, piggy eyes as he was waved carelessly to one of the chairs.

  The officer produced a file and a stylopen. “Name?” he asked.

  “Richard Argyle.”

  “Age?”

  “Thirty-four.”

  “Occupation?”

  “Second Engineer, Terran Space Commission.”

  The cold eyes flickered at him. “You’re a hell of a way from home, mister.”

  Argyle shifted angrily in his chair. “So?” he queried harshly.

  “So—why are you a long way from home?” the other rasped back.

  “It’s none of your business.”

  The officer eyed him bleakly, and then laid the pen precisely and slowly on the desk before him. He folded his hands and his gaze wandered ironically over Argyle’s seated figure.

  “You’re not on Earth now, Argyle. You’re on Dellora Planet. There is no Terran authority within twenty light- years. If you upset us too much we can make things very nasty for you. While you’re here you’ll do and act and live just as we tell you. Otherwise . . he shrugged expressively and picked up the pen. “Now, we’ll try it again. What are you doing here?”

  Argyle fought down a desire to punch the man’s chubby nose. He’d heard rumors of the demagogic way in which the Traders ran their own affairs, but he hadn’t believed them until now.

  “I want to see Pietro Dellora,” he stated bluntly.

  The man grunted in surprise. “Well, you don’t do things by halves, do you, Argyle? Maybe you’d like a million credits as well?”

  Argyle ignored the sarcasm.

  “Why do you want to see Mister Dellora?”

  “I don’t want to see him,” replied Argyle, changing his tack. “He wants to see me.”

  “Oh, sure. And of course, you’ve got a written invitation?” Argyle’s temper flared and he slammed his fist on to the top of the table before him.

  “Look, I didn’t ask to come to this pest hole of a planet. Dellora sent one of his men to find me … a man named Spiros … a teepee.”

  “Where is Spiros now? Why isn’t he with you?”

  Argyle grinned coldly and with unholy delight. “Because he’s dead.”

  The silence which followed could have been cut with a knife. It lasted several long seconds while the officer digested the news. Then he closed his file carefully and grimly.

  “You’ll go into town, Mister Argyle, and register at the Hotel Dellora. You’ll stay there until someone gets in touch with you. And remember, we’ll know every move you make as soon as you leave this office. Don’t try to go too far away. We hate having to bring people back.’’

  “What if I don’t like the hotel?”

  “Then you’ll register in our jail, and no one will get in touch with you for a long time. We’ve got long arms and short memories, mister, and our tempers are shorter than our memories.” He turned abruptly and left the office.

  Argyle sat for a long minute digesting the situation and regretting the impulse which had made him come to Dellora Planet in the first place. The one small consolation lay in the fact that the name of Spiros had been the key to open a very difficult door. Once it closed after him he wondered what key he would have to use on the way back—if there was a way back.

  The hotel, he had to admit, was more than comfortable. It was luxurious. It was the largest hotel in the city, and was used to accommodate visitors to the planet who were not important enough to be entertained by Pietro Dellora personally. Everyone who visited the planet without the official seal of Pietro Dellora had to make do with cheap rooms over the saloons and bars which littered the area around the spacefield.

  True to the warning he’d been given, Argyle didn’t stray far from the hotel. He visited a stereo show when things got boring; he watched the local tridivision until the banality of the shows drove him to his room; and he consumed large quantities of liquor in the hotel bar. He could do nothing but wait, and after three days the waiting became tedious.

  Late on the evening of the third day, just as he was preparing for bed, they came for him. There were two of them in the now familiar gray uniforms; one of them was tall and lean and strong, the other was shorter, just as wiry, and just as strong. As Argyle opened the door in answer to their knock they walked past him into the room as if they owned it, and the tall one remarked casually, “Mister Dellora has sent for you.”

  Argyle eyed him incredulously. “Now?” he queried. “Dammit, it’s after ten-thirty!”

  The shorter man grinned humorlessly. “Time doesn’t mean very much to Mister Dellora,” he replied softly. “Come on.”

  Argyle shrugged and slid into his uniform jerkin. Clearly, it wasn’t any good arguing with them—which only went to show, he thought wryly, how much his thinking had changed in just three short days.

  “Shall I need anything?” he asked.

  “I doubt it. If you do just ask for it when you get there.”

  They left the hotel in a low ground car which drove them the short distance to the spacefield, and as they drove under the high, arched entrance to the field Argyle felt his nerves tingle with apprehension and bewilderment.

  A small, fast vessel of an interplanetary class not known to him, was their destination. As they strapped themselves into their seats it was all that Argyle could do to stop himself asking at least one question. Dellora was a lone planet! In theory, at any rate, an interplanet ship was useless—there was nowhere for it to go. He settled himself back in the seat and felt the gentle surge of takeoff push him back into the plastic foam padding. He glanced sideways and met the sardonic gaze of the guard who sat beside him.

  He tried to sleep but it was no good; the minutes ticked by on leaden wings until the drive note changed down again and the thrust forward of deceleration pulled at his body. He opened his eyes. The small clock on the instrument panel beside the pilot showed that it was just half an hour since takeoff, and a glance through the viewport showed that they were in deep space. At least, he thought, the answers would not be long in coming.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  A faint muffled clang echoed through the cabin, and the tiny ship shuddered slightly. Both the sound and the motion were things which Argyle had experienced before, but under entirely different circumstances. He had never known an oxygen cycle planet to have a space station before. There was no need of it. A space station was only necessary when the environment of the world below was entirely hostile to mankind. Even an airless world like the Moon had no need of an artificial satellite; ships could land upon its surface and men could walk there, if they wore protective suiting. Space stations served as a base for operations against a world whose treacherous elements made ship landing entirely impracticable. That could not be said of Dellora Planet. The clang and shudder were the results of a magnetically coupled airlock joining the ship to the station.

  The two guards unfastened their belts, and Argyle did the same. The faint hiss of equalising pressures reached his ears as they crossed the cabin towards the airlock, and one of the guards pulled at his arm, halting his progress.

  “Watch yourself as you cross over, mister.”

  Argyle looked at him questioningly, but no further information was forthcoming. He stepped from the ship through the lock and into the entrance to the station. As he did so his stomach heaved and his head spun dizzily. He reached for a handhold to steady himself.