CORSAIRS OF THE COSMOS
by Lin Carter
Can the Daredevil of the Spaceways solve the secret of the invisible mastermind of crime?
1. Villainy in the Void
The Interplanet Lines freighter Saturn Maid had just entered its parking orbit about Callisto, the jungle moon of Jupiter. Present on the bridge was Captain Nargo, a fat, dark-skinned, moon-faced Mercurian with the bright gold eyes of his race. He was there to make certain that his pilot entered orbit properly. Satisfied, he turned to his communications officer and was about to tell him to signal up the fleet of tugs which would unload the Saturn Maid of her valuable cargo, when he suddenly froze.
Someone was pressing the business end of a proton needle in the small of his back—
"This is The Blur speaking," a soft voice whispered in his ear. "Kindly instruct your officers to disarm themselves, and I assure you that no one will be harmed."
"Devils of the Darkside—!" the plump Mercurian choked furiously. Then he fell silent. Whoever the mystery mastermind known only as "The Blur" might be, he was the most cunning and successful corsair of the spaceways since the legendary days of Star Pirate himself. Although, unlike Star Pirate, The Blur did not hesitate to stain his hands with the blood of those foolish enough to get in his way.
"Mr. Urgon," the Captain said in strangled tones to the pilot, a red-faced Jovian giant, "you will remove your sidearm and lay it on the control console. You other gentlemen will do the same."
The burly Jovian stared in surprise. "But, Captain—!"
"Do as I say, Mr. Urgon," growled the Mercurian officer in tones that would accept of no demur. Baffled, his officers disarmed themselves. The pressure of the proton needle left the small of Nargo's back. With furious eyes he watched as The Blur crossed the bridge to scoop up the weapons. As expected, he saw nothing but the slightest mist or haze where the figure of a man should have been fully visible—The Blur was aptly named, he thought bitterly to himself.
"Captain, we are being approached by an unmarked cruiser!" yelped a young ensign. The Captain turned to stare at the forward televisor screen and saw a lean, rakish craft. It was painted dead black, and something about its slim, wolfish lines sent a cold shudder up the Mercurian's spine.
"That is my ship," The Blur whispered in his ear. "Instruct your men that the forward airlock doors be opened."
"Open the forward airlock doors," Nargo growled, fat cheeks quivering with frustrate fury.
The young ensign gave him a startled glance. "But, Captain—?"
"Do as you're told, boy!" snapped the Captain. "It may have escaped your notice, lad, but we are being pirated, curse the luck! There's a gun at my back even as I speak. Open those airlock doors, and be quick about it!" And with bitterness in his golden eyes, the Mercurian watched as a dozen unknown men with opaqued space helmets began transferring crate after heavy and ponderous crate to the nameless corsair craft. Those crates, he knew, held costly ingots of pure iridium, vanadium, chromium and ylemium from the metal refineries on Titan. The refined ore, almost one hundred percent pure, was worth an immense fortune.
"You have been very cooperative, Captain," hissed that hated voice in his ear. "Therefore, neither you nor any of your officers or crew have suffered injury. Be cooperative a brief while longer, and we will no longer interfere with your voyage ..."
"Go to the Devil, sir!" growled the Mercurian.
A soft chuckle was his only answer.
Moments later, the black cruiser drifted away from its linkage with the Saturn Maid, and vanished—becoming as invisible to the human eye as had been its mysterious master.
Within the hour, System-wide news services alerted a startled citizenry that The Blur had struck again!
2. Calling Star Pirate!
The chairman of Interplanet Lines was a large, red-faced man named Pendleton whose hair was growing thin on top and whose temper was usually belligerent. As at the moment, for instance.
He glared accusingly across the gleaming expanse of his huge desk, carved from a heavy slab of costly Venusian goldenwood, at the Space Patrol officer who had just entered the executive suite. This was a granite-jawed veteran with thin lips and eyes like twin gimlets. His name was Brannigan. At the moment he was perspiring freely and striving to hold on to his own temper.
"—I assure you, Mr. Pendleton, that the Patrol is doing everything in its power to catch this crook who calls himself The Blur and to bring him to justice! That's why we have called upon persons such as yourself to cooperate with us—"
"Cooperate!" said Pendleton, with a rude snort. "Brannigan, everybody at Interplanet has cooperated fully with requests from the Patrol since first this madman ran amok and began raiding our freighters! You requested that we keep our ore shipments secret, and we kept them secret. You requested that we permit no passengers aboard our freighters, and passengers were forbidden, save for our own employees. You requested that all officers go armed in space, and we armed them all. And none of these measures did any good! Do you know how many credits that shipment of rare metals The Blur pirated from the Saturn Maid was worth, man? More credits than you'll earn in your entire career! And this is the sixth of these outrages this maniac has perpetrated against Interplanet!"
"I know, sir, but—!"
"But nothing!" growled Pendleton. "I've had enough of you and your cautious half-measures. The time has come to bring into play extraordinary resources—the extraordinary abilities and skills of a truly extraordinary man. I refer to none other than—Star Pirate!"
Brannigan flushed and bit his lip. That mischievous, devil-may-care rogue of the spaceways had long been a thorn in the Patrol officer's side. In the days when he had been an outlaw, a thief and a living legend, he had outsmarted, outwitted and outflown Brannigan with merciless ease; then, when he grew bored with such easy victories and was offered an official pardon from the System Council, following his heroic endeavors in the affair of the Solar Queen, and turned his brilliant intelligence, his matchless skills as a space pilot and his intrepid bravery to the service of justice, he proved better at crime-fighting than Brannigan, and had solved more than one mystery crime that had left the Patrol officer helplessly baffled.
"You mustn't do that, sir!" Brannigan protested. "Whatever people think, the boy's nothing less than a cunning criminal—pardon or no pardon! Oh, he's got everybody fooled by pretending to work on the side of the law—but I know better! And someday that clever young devil will trip himself up, and I'll have him at last! You know the old saying, sir—a leopard cannot change his spots. Once a crook, always a crook!"
The executive looked unconvinced. "And I'll remind you of another old saying," he said tartly. "Set a thief to catch a thief."
"But he's a common criminal—!"
"Rather an uncommon one, I'd say," snapped Pendleton sharply. "For seven years he ran you and the Patrol ragged. Ship after ship fell to him; he always showed you his heels and got away with the loot, and never once did he so much as spill a drop of blood in accomplishing this thievery. True?"
Brannigan dug out his handkerchief and swabbed his streaming brow. "True enough, sir, but—"
"The entire resources of the Patrol were hurled against him, and you couldn't even locate his secret base ... what does he call it, 'Haven'? As a matter of fact, even now that he works on the side of the law, it's my understanding that you of the Patrol still don't know where Haven is!"