Gold Star

tage shot out, lightninglike, from the eyes he'd noticed on the partitions which housed the gold. King bucked and danced, already dead, his body supported in its lifeless state by the force of the voltage which fried him, left a stench of burning flesh in the air as the beams cut off and what was left of Buck King fell wetly to the floor. «I tried to warn him,» Pete said. «Jesus, I tried to warn him.» Tom Asher, his mouth open in surprise, had taken a couple of steps forward. «God, if he'd only listened,» Pete said, his fingers toying with the dent in his skull. Jan went to his side. «You tried, Pete,» she said soothingly. «We'd better find the computer and turn all this stuff off,» Fuller said. «We can at least get him out of there,» Asher said. «If you wanta reach in there, you go right ahead,» Fuller said. «He ain't going nowhere.» Jan stood chewing on one knuckle, her face white. The ventilation system was slowly taking the smell of charred flesh from the air. The war room was on the lower level. The door would not open to the tab Pete had taken from the pile of human dust. Once again the cutting torch sizzled, and then they were inside. This was a much more complex place than the war room in the desert fort. «You're the expert,» Fuller said to Pete. Pete nodded. He prowled, taking a quick glance at three walls of meters, instruments, controls. Dead lights and red trouble lights told him that parts of the system were decayed. «There'll be a bunch of manuals somewhere,» he said. «I don't want to start experimenting in here without knowing what I'm doing.» Jan found a closed shelf. The manuals were old, brittle, yellowed, but readable. «This is going to take a while, if you fellows want to go exploring,» Pete said. «You guys go ahead,» Fuller said. Jarvis and Asher left the room. Pete sat on a steel cabinet and began to read. «This one links all the positions,» he said. «We were right in that.» Jan looked at Brad Fuller's expressionless face. She did not like the way he kept looking at Pete when Pete wasn't watching. There was something about the man which set her teeth on edge. «Don't want him to push the wrong button,» Fuller said, grinning at her. «There's still a lot of nuke warheads outside, and maybe some stored inside.» «No,» she said. «We don't, and he won't.» «All right,» Pete said, after an hour's examination of the various manuals. «Here's one thing I can do right now.» He walked to a control bank, checked and double-checked, then began to flip switches. «This puts the other three forts in a stand-by, or deactivated, stage.» What he didn't say was that there in the manual in the master war room were instructions for destroying all of the facilities. Built into each fort were explosive charges which had a series of fail-safes. They could be set off only from this room. The self-destruct stage in the headquarters fort had a delay which could be programmed up to two hours. That one was the biggie. Down underneath the fort, put there by desperate, determined men a thousand years ago, was the most terrible weapon ever invented by man. They were all walking atop, sitting right on top of, a planet buster which would, upon detonation, turn a beautiful planet into molten stone and metal and asteroid-sized chunks. He spent a few minutes on the section which detailed how to deactivate and dismember the planet buster. That, however, could be done later. There was a possibility, in that climate, that the wiring belowground had long since corroded away, but sooner or later someone, Pete hoped under his own direction, would have to bring that thing up and break it down into harmless components and destroy it piece by piece. Next he found the bank which shut off all of the central fort's weaponry, and the few remaining laser cannon which were operational went dead as their charges slowly seeped away, power cut off. It was amazing to Pete to think that so much of the fort's weaponry was still in an operational mode. He went to work on finding the source of power and control for the guard beams in the gold storeroom. It took half an hour. He was ready to deactivate when a frantic shout came in through the hole burned in the war-room door. It was Jarvis. «Brad, Jaynes, you guys better get out here, and I mean on the double.» Turning off the beam could wait. Pete leaped to his feet. Jan followed him out the hole in the door. As she stuck her head through she saw Tom Asher strike Pete on the skull with a piece of pipe. She heard a sickening thud, realized in an agonized instant that the blow had fallen directly on the weak spot in Pete's head. She started to scream, and was seized by Jarvis Smith. Asher jerked the saffer from Pete's belt as he fell, crouched, the weapon pointed at Brad Fuller. «Fuller,» Asher said, «you've got about fifteen seconds to decide if you're in or out.» «Tom, you know the two of you together aren't smart enough to bring this off,» Brad said. «Now point that weapon some other way before I take it away from you and jam it down your throat.» «He's with us,» Jarvis Smith said. «I told you he would be.» «You jerks jumped the gun,» Fuller said. «You didn't give Jaynes enough time to deactivate the guard beams on the gold.» Asher looked uncertain. He lowered the saffer. Jan pulled away from Smith and fell to her knees beside Pete. He was breathing deeply and evenly. When she lifted an eyelid his eye was rolled back, showing white. She was surprised at her reaction. Pete could be hurt badly, having been struck on that area of his skull where the old injury had left a depression, but she was no longer concerned about whether or not the blow had done permanent damage. She was angry. There was a deep faith in her that Pete would survive the blow, but atop that faith was a seething rage at the men who were responsible. «The way we figure it,» Jarvis said, «they can have an accident, Brad.» «That's the way you figured it, huh?» Fuller said. He'd been thinking of some way to tie the death of the Jaynes couple into the destruction of their ship. It had been hit by laser fire. The problem was that a laser burns a human body in a way that no other heat does. If they tried to fake it and a fleet ship investigated, that would be too risky. The dry desert air where the 47 was wrecked would preserve the bodies well. The guard beams. The high voltage had gotten Buck King. «Okay,» he said, «pick Jaynes up and bring him along, Jarvis. Tom, you bring the woman.» Smith bent over Pete. «He's coming around,» he said. «Okay,» Brad said, changing plans. «Bring him back into the war room.» Pete had caught a flicker of movement as he walked out the door. He had seen the upraised arm, the dark object in the hand. From the time of his accident he'd had a deathly fear of being hit on the head. The depressed spot on his skull wasn't actually weaker than the surrounding areas of bone. The doctors had done a fine job of grafting in bone, but there were times when he had nightmares of feeling things impacting on his skull, and he always carried a vivid memory of the months of totally debilitating headaches. It was that fear of being struck on the head which, in all probability, had saved his life. Just a flicker of movement, an awareness, and he was throwing his feet out from under him to begin to fall flat on his face as the piece of pipe came down and made a thudding impact. The blow was still severe enough to cause him to fall endlessly into blackness. He became aware of movement. His head was as large as the world, and there was pain which cut through the blackness and jerked his eyes open. He groaned. He allowed someone to steer him to a metal chair. He tried to see. Jan's face, taut, pale, swam before his eyes. «Jan?» Jan took his hands in hers, squeezed. «Can you hear me, Pete?» He moaned with the pain of the sound. «Yes,» he said. «Jaynes,» Brad Fuller said, «what we want you to do is turn off the voltage of those guard beams. Do you hear me?» «I hear you,» Pete said, with great effort. «Move him over to the console,» Fuller said. Pete tried to struggle against the hands on his arms, but a part of him was far away, unable to come back. He slumped into the dust of a decayed cushion. In front of his eyes lights glowed on a tall panel. «They're going to kill us, Pete,» Jan said. «Shut her up,» Fuller ordered. Pete heard a meaty, slapping sound. He turned. Smith had struck Jan across the mouth. The sound and the look of pained surprise on her face drove the pain far back in his mind and left his head reasonably clear. «Turn off the power to the beams, Jaynes,» Fuller said. He had his saffer pointed at Pete's head. It didn't take deductive reasoning to understand. A planet, a planet of gold, was the prize. To men like Fuller and the others, two lives would not stand in the way. He felt a wave of overwhelming sadness. The time aboard the poor old 47 had been the happiest time of his life. Before Rimfire went missing and put dreams of wealth into his head he'd been blissfully content just to look forward to years and years of life on a tug with Jan. And now it was all going to end. No wealth. That didn't matter. No Jan. That's what mattered. Thinking of being dead was not as painful to him as thinking of being deprived of that girl he'd found in a spacer's whorehouse on Tigian. «Show me which switches to push,» Fuller said. Why should he cooperate? They were going to kill him and kill Jan. He felt a wave of dizziness, almost fell from the chair. «Quit faking it, Jaynes. Either you show me how to turn off the beam or your wife gets it now,» Fuller said. «All right,» he said, holding onto the edge of the console with both hands to steady himself. Pete Jaynes had never been a fatalist. It was the pain in his head, the dizziness. He couldn't think. He could only grieve over the loss of the woman he loved. And a slow anger fought with the pain in his head, grew into a devastating force. He saw in his mind a sinister thing buried far underground, down into the planet's bedrock. The killer. The planet destroyer. He was too weak. He hurt too much. There were three of them and there was nothing he could do to save Jan. She was going to be killed and he was going to be killed and that was something he couldn't accept without protest. «Jaynes, you've got five seconds,» Fuller said, in a tone of voice which convinced Pete. «Okay,» he said. He took a deep breath. The step he was about to take was a final, irrevocable step. Once activated, there was no stopping the process which would result in Jan's beautiful planet being reduced to space rubble. The makers had obviously reasoned that if the situation was desperate enough to activate the planet buster there would be no need to make a change in plans. The device was set for a two-hour delay. That was adjustable. Pete decided, first, to shorten the time, then felt that wave of sadness. He left the timer at two hours. He looked at Jan. Silent tears had streaked her cheek. Her lip was starting to swell. His fingers shook as he lifted the cover of the first protected switch. He pushed it with a solid flick, began to go through the sequence he'd read only once in the manual. He had that kind of mind. He was low on deductive reasoning, so he'd compensated for it by developing his memory. He had been so impressed by the mere fact that men had been so desperate that they could coldly provide for the destruction of a planet that the sequence was burned into his brain. It took six steps. He had gone through five of them. Lights were blinking. He took a deep breath, took one last look at Jan, and pushed the final button. There was a sizzling sound from the tall panel. Smoke burst out. There was crackling and popping and then a small explosion which buckled the metal front of the panel. He didn't know if that had been programmed by the builders of the fort, but it had happened. The entire panel which contained the instrumentation for activating the planet buster was dead. Fuller let out a curse as the panel burned and destroyed itself. He would have to change his plans again. He'd intended only to have Jaynes show him how to turn off the guard beams which protected the gold, then turn them back on. Mr. and Mrs. Pete Jaynes would then have joined Buck King in a charred heap. «Is the damned thing off?» Jarvis asked. «Yes,» Pete said, praying that it was not. The ventilation system still worked. Other panels in the war room showed ready lights. Fuller needed time to think, but the gold was blinding him. He could picture it in his mind. He could see it, solid banks of it, stacked over head-high, tons and tons of it. There had to be a safe way of getting rid of the Jayneses, but he could think of that later. Maybe he could simply take them back to the Stranden 47 and make them start walking. The desert would do the job. «Let's go see that gold,» Tom Asher said. He pushed Jan ahead of him out the door. Pete tried to leap to his feet. The sudden movement sent blackness into his skull, and he slumped. «Hold it, Tom,» Fuller said. Asher seized Jan's arm and pulled her to a stop. «Let's just finish him off,» Jarvis said. «Not here, you dumb bastard,» Fuller yelled. «I don't know about you two,» Asher said, «But I'm having a look at that gold.» Fuller rolled his eyes. They had a planet and those idiots were able to think only of a few tons of gold. «Bring Jaynes,» he told Jarvis. Pete felt himself being lifted. His legs were wobbly, but after a few steps he could walk with Smith's support. He made it as far as the main room where the gleaming gold was stored. The lights still functioned, blazing into glare as they entered the area. «Man,» Jarvis said, letting Pete slump weakly to the floor, «I'm gonna buy me a space yacht and hit every high-class whorehouse in the galaxy.» Tom Asher was moving toward the gold. Pete forced his eyes to focus. Smith, too, was mesmerized by the golden gleam. He took two or three running steps and was side by side with Asher when they walked into the beam and the force of the killing voltage flared, causing the muscles of their bodies to spasm in a wild dance of death. Brad Fuller let out a surprised yell. And at that moment Jan shoved him with all her might. He'd leaned forward involuntarily as his two companions began to jerk and crackle, as the stench of burning flesh came, once again, to his nostrils. The shove sent him to his knees, and Jan was running for the dark entrance of a corridor as he turned. Pete used all his reserve strength to throw himself at the bigger man, to put his arm over Fuller's weapon arm. The saffer's charge sparkled against the cement floor. Pete was unconscious again even before Fuller's fist slammed into his chin. Jan had gained the dimness of the corridor and was running knees high, arms pumping. She felt a surge of hope. Pete, bless him, had tricked them, had taken two more of them, leaving only one. She reached the ladder shaft and climbed with all her strength, had put one landing behind her when Smith pounded down the corridor. She could hear the clatter of his boots on the rungs of the metal ladder as she climbed. She'd had no plan when she made her move. She had acted instinctively, taking advantage of the surprise of the death of the two men. Now she had a picture in her mind. The big room where the dust of several men lay amid the rotted ruins of beds. She reached the door. It had been, thank God, left open. She skidded as she turned in and ran to the nearest pile of molded, rotting rubble. What she wanted wasn't there. She heard running footsteps in the corridor outside as she scurried from molding pile to molding pile. Then, at last, she saw what she was looking for. One of those ancient projectile weapons lay amid the fragmented bones of a human hand. She seized it. She knew little about weapons, nothing about antique weapons. She did not know that the pistol was an automatic, that a round was in the chamber, moved there by the automatic action when its owner had, a thousand years past, ended his suffering. Fuller spotted the door, wheeled into it, came to a skidding stop. The woman stood a few feet away by a moldering pile of bed and human bones, pointing one of the old handguns at him. He had to laugh. It was a brief, throaty chuckle. «What the hell good do you think that thing is going to do you?» he asked, moving slowly toward Jan. «We won't know until I pull the trigger, will we?» Jan asked. She was surprised by the calmness in her voice. «It might blow up in your face,» Fuller said, still walking. «We'll see,» Jan said. He was about five paces away. She had the muzzle of the old weapon pointed directly at his face. She pulled. The trigger did not move. Fuller, seeing the movement of her hand, seeing her