CHAPTER III
SQUEEZE PLAY
Prenzz was very dead.
That was self-evident, without examination. No stench such as permeated this room ever could have come from living tissue.
The odor grew worse by the moment. While Ross stared, his face a mask of numb, horrified disbelief, the corpse took on a strangely oozy look. Inside its clothes, the body began to lose its contours. Flesh sloughed from one cheek, then the other, as if putrefaction were somehow here motivated to race to destroy the evidence of crime.
Shuddering, Ross flicked his light off, stumbled back to the door, and retched. He was still shaking his head as if to clear his nostrils of the cramped room's stench as he plunged into the shadows of the nearest alley.
For a moment, there, he paused and stood frowning. Then, narrow-eyed, he fumbled through his tunic's pocket and came out with a now-familiar note-sheet ... unfolded it ... stared down at the name and address it bore: Veta Hall, 417D Esrach Unit.
Folding the note-sheet again, Ross strode on through the alley to the next street, climbed into the first vacant transor, and punched the Esrach Unit button on the selector panel.
The transor surged forward, gears whining as it picked up speed. Three minutes and a bewildering series of turns later, it ground to a halt once more, automatic door already lifting.
Ross got out. But instead of going on into the unit, he left-faced, walked briskly down the street to the first corner, turned right, and so continued until, after another right turn, he stood directly behind the Esrach building.
In front, the structure had made some show of keeping up appearances, for all its obvious age and deterioration. The entrance was neat if not new, and imitation veldrene drapes and occasional lengths of doloid stripping had been added to put a bold front to drabness.
Back here, in the rear, all such was recognized as sham. Thick grime and even streaks of rust took the place of decoration. Litter cluttered the base-line, and the nearest door sagged half-open on its hinges.
Inside, old odors of grease and filth added to the air of decay.
There was a stairway of sorts beside an ancient fire-tube. Climbing to the fourth level, Ross moved silently down the dank central corridor.
Veta Hall's number, 417D, was located close to the middle of the first wing. Instead of a tab-lock, the door had a primitive chain affair, anchored on the inside.
Getting out his writer, Ross maneuvered for a moment. The chain clinked, then fell away.
Easing the door open the rest of the way, Ross stepped inside.
Small noises drifted from a room beyond the one in which he stood. Crossing to it, he reached for the doorknob.
Before he could touch it, the door whipped open. Veta crossed the threshold, her eyes not even focussing on him.
Ross caught her wrists as she looked up. When she started to cry out, he twisted sharply, so that the sound died on an indrawn breath.
Now she stared at him, face pain-strained. "Thigpen, what's the matter—?" It was the faintest of whispers.
"Nothing. Nothing but a corpse, that's all." Ross said it through clenched teeth. "Not that you'd know anything about that, would you, Veta?—About a man they called Zoltan Prenzz, the man I told you I was going to see on Japetus first chance I got—"
He broke off; twisted the girl's wrists again.
It brought her forward on tiptoe, tiny anguished sounds bubbling in her throat.
Ross' face stayed a cold, relentless mask. He said tightly, "It's my own fault, Veta. All mine, for trusting you even a little—you, working for Pike Mawson, and with a brother on starak. Only now you're going to make it up by telling me the things I need to know. And this time there'll be no holding out or stalling."
"Please, Thigpen...." The effort of speaking brought a small cluster of saliva bubbles to one corner of Veta's mouth. "I don't know what you're talking about. There must be some mistake—"
"Your mistake," Ross corrected harshly. He backed Veta into the room from which she'd come. "We'll have some answers now: who killed Zoltan Prenzz?"
"I don't know!"
"Who'd you tell about him?"
"I didn't—"
"Who, I said! Mawson? Your brother?"
"Thigpen, I didn't tell anyone! I couldn't! You only mentioned the man once. I didn't even remember his name till just now, when you reminded me."
"We'll try it again, then—"
A knock sounded on the outer door.
Veta opened her mouth to scream.
Like lightning, Ross hammered a blow to her jaw, then caught her limp body before she could spill to the floor.
The knock sounded again. A man's voice called, "All right, you, in there! Open up."
Ross' eyes fanned the room, then fixed on the old-fashioned fire-tube hatch set into the wall in one corner. Dragging Veta across to it bodily, he wrenched it open, stuffed her in, and let her drop, then hastily followed suit himself as the voice in the hall rose even more belligerently.
The tube discharged them into a narrow, litter-choked court between the building's wings. Veta slung over his shoulder like a sack of meal, Ross ducked into the nearest entryway.
The niche sheltered the doors to two apartments. The sound of a man and woman arguing violently pulsed from one; from the other, silence.
Now a shout rose on one of the building's upper levels: a man's angry bellow, echoing and reechoing as it bounced back and forth across the narrow court. Veta moaned and moved her head groggily.
A trickle of sweat rilled from Ross' hairline. Stepping close to the door of the silent apartment, he tried the knob.
The door was locked.
Overhead, another shout. Then, from the court's ground level, a harsh rattle of answer.
Ross stepped back fast, eyes distending. Lifting a foot, he smashed a battering-ram kick at the door's lock.
The door burst open. Dodging past it as it swung back, Ross heeled it shut behind him. He was breathing hard, and another rill of sweat had joined the first.
Prowling through the empty apartment now, Veta still slung limp over his shoulder, Ross jerked back storage area sealers until, after half-a-dozen tries, he came upon and dragged out a heavy, shapeless space-sack of the type used by cruiser crewmen.
Another moan from Veta. She shifted, clutching at Ross' tunic.
Unceremoniously, he dumped her on a bed, then returned to the space-sack. Spreading its mouth wide, he lifted the girl's legs and set her feet down inside the bag.
Veta's eyes flicked open, panic-shadowed. "What are you doing?"
"Getting you ready for a little trip." He heaved her up from the bed and lowered her into the sack, pulling the heavy synthetic casing up to cover her. "If you know what's good for you, you'll keep quiet."
He pulled the sealer-tab shut as he spoke, disregarding her sudden frantic flurry of movement. Then, turning, he stepped back to the storage shelves, selected and donned one of several spaceman's leave caps, swung the bag to his shoulder, and boldly strode out of the apartment and the court to the nearest transor-rank.
The trip across the city was uneventful. Hardly a hint of movement showed through the stiffness of the space-sack's heavy casing.
Ross left the transor two streets from his own quarters, walking the rest of the way through two linked alleys. He was half-panting by the time he reached the entrance; and his fingers shook as he shoved the card into the tab-lock.
Then, at last, he stepped into the dim, silent living room and dumped the space-sack to the floor. Tossing the leave cap into a corner, he swabbed the sweat from his forehead, shoved shut the door and bolted it, and slid a lamp-switch to the first notch.
The room brightened.
A voice came through the silence also: "You frightened me, Thigpen. I was beginning to be afraid you weren't coming."
A woman's voice, low and husky and seductive.
Ross spun round, eyes distending.
Astrell reclined on the divan across the room in studied grace. The soft light smoothed her features so that when her lips curved in a slow smile she might have been younger by twenty years.
"Didn't you expect me, Thigpen?" she murmured. "I told you I'd come, you know."
Ross shrugged, not speaking. His face now had taken on a wooden look. Picking up the space-sack, he carried it to the bedroom, closing the door after him as he returned.
Still smiling, Astrell patted the seat beside her with a somewhat pudgy hand. "Come sit down, Thigpen."
Ross met her gaze coldly. "I don't think that's necessary, Astrell."
"Oh, but it is!" The woman rose from the couch as she spoke, and came to him. "It's not just the catalyst, my dear. I want to get to know you better."
"Do you?"
"Of course I do!" Astrell traced fluttery designs on the front of Ross' tunic with a long-nailed forefinger. Close up, her knuckles showed deep wrinkles. The skin along the backs of her hands was creping, too, and the flesh along her throat, beneath her eyes, and at the corners of her mouth was sagging visibly.
But still she preened, and fluffed her halo of determinedly auburn hair, and threw Ross the coy, flirtatious, low-lashed glances of a woman two decades younger. "You know, darling, you'll be glad, too."
"Oh?" Ross stood unbending. "Just what is it I'll be glad of?"
"Why, that you helped me, of course." Astrell laughed, just a bit too shrilly. "It's not as if I were asking you to give it to me, you know. I'm more than willing to pay for it, and I've the money, too—more money than you can even dream of, all my savings from those years when no one from here to the Belt even thought of giving a social affair top rating, if Astrell didn't attend."
The woman seemed to grow taller as she spoke. Head high, she moved to and fro with slow, graceful steps—a queen in bearing, however caricatured, living for the moment in her dreams of glory-radiant days gone by.
Then, once more, she paused close to Ross. "Besides, my dear, once I've the catalyst, I'll be young again—and very, very grateful to you." An insinuating laugh. "Darling, have you any idea how delightful it can be to hold the gratitude of a girl whose talents were such that she was able to marry the seven richest men in all the outer planets, one after the other?"
Again, the woman reached out a pudgy hand to caress Ross. His teeth clicked together, as if with a sudden involuntary shiver. Catching the hand in his own, not too gently, he pushed it away.
"There's something you need to understand, Astrell," he said in a tight, controlled voice. "I can't think of anything I'd rather do than milk you of all that money you've piled up. But I haven't got the catalyst, or the formula either. So you're wasting your time, mooning around me."
"Don't worry, Thigpen. I understand." Astrell gave vent to a knowing, conspiratorial giggle. "You've got to be careful. Killing Tornelescu—that was dangerous; you can't afford to admit it, even to me. The same way with the catalyst: you've no intention of confessing you've so much as heard of it. But if a case of it were to turn up in my rooms, somehow, and a money-case were to vanish—"
Ross said, "Get out."
"'Get out'—?" The woman's head jerked back. She searched his eyes for a long, unsteady moment.
Then a pallor came to her withered cheeks, for all their show of artificial color. Her breathing speeded. "Thigpen, you mean it! The catalyst—you're not going to sell it to me—"
And then, in a rush, face thrust close: "Don't say it, Thigpen! Don't say it if you want to live! I can give you beauty. I can give you money. But if you won't take them, then I'll get the catalyst without you! They'll find you in an alley with your throat cut, Thigpen—the same way you left Tornelescu! And Thigpen—you'll call it a favor when they finish you, because first they'll make you tell the secret—"
The woman's voice rose higher with every sentence, till she was half-screaming. Her face contorted into a wrinkled mask of hate. Her back bent, too, and her body seemed to pull together, till when she shook her fist at Ross she was hag, incarnate; the embodiment of every creaking crone.
"Out!" Ross clipped. "Out!" Grimly, he pressed her back towards the door.
For an instant it seemed she was going to resist, force him to back his commands with violence. Then, abruptly, she whirled and without another word fled the apartment.
Gustily, Ross let out pent-up breath and, pivoting, turned once more to the other room.
But now, on the threshold, he stopped short. For where the space-sack had lain brief minutes before, now there was only crumpled bedding.
Momentarily, Ross stood as if paralyzed. Then, with a curse, he sprang forward—flinging aside furniture; clawing open the storage areas.
No Veta.
Ross whirled to the barred window.
The bars weren't there any more.
Stiff-faced, stumbling, Ross sank down onto the bed.
Only then, seemingly out of nowhere, Cheng spoke to him: Cheng, the smuggler; Cheng, the slaver; Cheng, the black-browed, scar-faced killer from the Belt:
"All right, Thigpen. Listen to me. This is the way we're going to play, and I don't mean to tell you more than once."
Ross came up from his seat as if on springs. Wildly, he looked this way and that.
To no avail. There was no sign of anyone in either room.
"Get this, now, Thigpen. Get it the first time."
Slowly, Ross turned, searching.
The thing lay on a table close at hand—one of those silvery spheres known as memory balls, a tiny, self-contained speaker unit only slightly larger than a marble yet still capable of repeating once any brief statement made in its immediate vicinity.
Cheng's voice again: "A man runs a woman into his place in a space-sack, he likes her some, Thigpen. That's the way I see it."
Ross dug his nails into the table.
"Call her a hostage if you want to, Thigpen. Because she don't come back till I get the formula for that life catalyst stuff you took off old Tornelescu."
Ross' eyes seemed to draw deeper into his skull, his head to sink farther down between his shoulders.
"Of course, if you're the kind of chitza don't give a filan how long it takes the wench to die, that won't mean nothing to you."
Ross stood as if carved in granite.
"Maybe you do like her, though." Cheng chuckled maliciously. "Well, then, that makes it simple: you just hang around awhile at a place they call Naraki's. It's down in the old port quarter." A fragmentary pause. "You got that, Thigpen? You just stick at Naraki's kabat-dive till somebody comes and gets you.
"Otherwise—no more Veta Hall!"
The memory ball clicked off.