He smiled. “At this very moment,” he said, “Hendrin is with our master Darrien. He has brought him the girl Elissa, and they are together now.”
“It’s a lie! Elissa’s in the dungeons!”
“Would you care to call your jailers, milady?”
She stared suspiciously at him and picked up the speaking-tube. After nearly a minute had passed, she looked back at Archman. “The line is dead, Earthman.”
“As is your jailer. Hendrin freed the girl and took her to Darrien. And one other fact might interest you: Darrien has tired of you. He has made out the order for your death.”
“Lies!”
Archman shrugged. “Lies, then. But within the hour the knife will be at your throat. He vastly prefers the younger girl. Believe me or not, at your peril. But if you choose to believe me, I can save your life.”
“How, schemer?”
He moved closer to her, until he was almost dizzied by her subtle perfume. “You hold the secret of Darrien’s robots. Reveal it to me, and I’ll destroy Darrien. Then, perhaps, another Earthman will claim your favors. Surely you would not object to ruling with me.”
She laughed, a harsh, indrawn laugh, and it seemed to Archman that the cat’s claws had left their furry sheath. “You? So that’s your motive—you ask me to yield Darrien’s secret in order to place yourself on the throne. Sorry, but I’m not that foolish. You’re an enterprising rascal, whoever you are, but—”
Suddenly the door burst open. Three Martians, their tusks gleaming, their thick lips drawn back in anticipation of murder, came running in.
“Darrien’s assassins!” Archman cried. He had his zam-gun drawn in an instant.
The first Martian died a second later, complete astonishment on his face. A bolt from Meryola’s gun did away with the second, while a third spurt finished the remaining one. Archman leaped nimbly over the bodies and fastened the bolt on the door.
Then he stooped and snatched a sheet of paper from the sash of one of the fallen Martians. He read it out loud: “To Grojrakh, Chief of the Guards: My displeasure has fallen upon the lady Meryola, and you are to despatch her at once by any means of execution that seems convenient. D.”
“Let me see that!”
He handed her the paper. She read it, then cursed and crumpled the sheet. “The pig! The pig!” To Archman she said, “You told the truth, then. Pardon me for mistrusting you—”
“It was only to be expected. But time grows short.”
“Right.” Her eyes flashed with the fury of vengeance. “Listen, then: none of the Darriens you have seen is the real one. There are three orthysynthetics which he uses in turn. Darrien himself spends nearly all his time in a secluded chamber on the Fifth Level.”
“Is the room guarded heavily?”
“It’s guarded not at all. Only I know how to reach it, and so he sees no reason to post a guard. Well, we’ll give him cause to regret that. Come!”
“Down this hallway and to the left,” Meryola said.
This was the moment, Archman thought. It was the culmination of his plan, and the ending of a phase of history that traced its roots to a politician’s pompous words years ago—“Let Venus be our penal colony—”
So they had planted the seeds of evil on Venus, and they had banished Darrien there to reap them. And with the destruction of Darrien’s empire on Venus, they had permitted Darrien to escape and found yet another den of evil.
The end was near, now. With Darrien dead the mightiest enemy of justice in the galaxy would have been blotted out. And Darrien would die—betrayed by his own mistress.
They reached the door.
It was a plain door, without the baroque ornamentation that characterized the rest of the palace. And behind that door—Darrien.
“Ready?” Meryola asked.
Archman nodded. He gripped the zam-gun tightly in one hand, pressed gently against the door with the other, and heaved.
The door opened.
“There’s Darrien!” Meryola cried. She raised her zam-gun—but Archman caught her arm.
Darrien was there, all right, crouching in a corner of the room, his wrinkled face pale with shock. He wore a strange headset, evidently the means with which he controlled the orthysynthetics. And he held as a shield before him—
Elissa.
This was one pleasure the tyrant had not been willing to exper-ience vicariously through his robots, evidently. Tears streaked the girl’s eyes; she struggled to escape Darrien’s grasp, without success. Her flesh was bloodless where his fingers held her. There was no sign of Hendrin.
“Let me shoot them,” Meryola said, striving to pull her arm free of Archman’s grip.
“The girl hasn’t done anything. She’s just a pawn.”
“Go ahead, Archman,” Darrien taunted. “Shoot us. Or let dear Meryola do it.”
Meryola wrenched violently; Archman performed the difficult maneuver of keeping his own gun trained on Darrien while yanking Meryola’s away from her. With two guns, now, he confronted the struggling pair at the far end of the little room.
“Shoot, Archman!” Elissa cried desperately. “I don’t matter! Kill Darrien while you have the chance.”
Sweat beaded Archman’s face. Meryola flailed at him, trying to recover her weapon and put an end to her lord and her rival at once.
The Earthman held his ground while indecision rocked him. His code up to now had been, the ends justify the means. But could he shoot Elissa in cold blood for the sake of blotting out Darrien?
His finger shook on the triggers. Kill them, the Intelligence agent in him urged. But he couldn’t.
“The Earthman has gone cowardly at the finish,” Darrien said mockingly. “He holds fire for the sake of this lovely wench.”
“Damn you, Darrien. I—”
Meryola screamed. The door burst open, and Hendrin rushed in. Right behind the Mercurian, coming from the opposite direction, came one of Darrien’s orthysynthetic duplicates—Darrien’s identical twin in all respects, probably summoned by Darrien by remote control.
And the orthysynthetic carried a drawn zam-gun.
What happened next took but a moment—a fraction of a moment, or even less.
Meryola took advantage of Archman’s astonishment to seize one of his two zam-guns. But instead of firing at Darrien, she gunned down Hendrin!
The Mercurian looked incredulous as the zam-gun’s full charge seared into his thick hide, crashing through vital organs with unstoppable fury.
Meryola laughed as the blue Mercurian fell. “Traitor! Double-dealer! How—”
The sentence was never finished. The zam-gum in the hand of Darrien’s double spoke, and Meryola pitched forward atop Hendrin, her beauty replaced by charred black crust.
Archman snapped from his moment of shock, and his gun concluded the fast-action exchange. He put a bolt of force squarely between the orthysynthetic’s eyes, and a third body dropped to the floor.
From behind him came a cry. “Archman! Now! Now!”
He whirled and saw, to his astonishment, that Elissa had succeeded in breaking partially loose from Darrien. Archman’s thoughts went back to that moment in Blake Wentworth’s office when, in a drug-induced illusion, he had won the right to participate in this mission by gunning down a Martian across the vast distances of the red desert. His marksmanship now would count in reality.
His finger tightened on the zam-gun.
“You wouldn’t dare shoot, Earthman!” Darrien said sneeringly. “You’ll kill the girl!”