"Cursed if I can see how anybody can tell night from day, here in the Belt," he complained. "The sky looked exactly the same at noon as it does now ..."
"Certainly a big change from night and day on Venus, I bet," said Star with a straight face. Phath flushed and bit his lip. As everyone knew, the sun and stars and open sky were completely hidden by the eternal clouds which veiled from view the face of his wet and swampy home world.
"Speakin’ of daylight," said Phath, adroitly changing the subject, "you beginnin' to see any yet, chief? This case sure looks mury as midnight to me!"
Star shook his head slowly. "Maybe a glimmer, here and there, but there are still plenty of unanswered questions."
"Like what?" pressed the Venusian as they sauntered along the deserted slum streets near the spaceport.
"Like the chance that neither Bill Borden nor the latest victim, Sam McCallister, actually saw what they both said they saw," retorted the redhead. Phath blinked pink eyes at him.
"Then why in the name of Yakdar did they say they—?"
"Both men were drinking shortly before they were killed," rapped Star Pirate briefly. "Suppose somebody slipped a drug into their last drink of the night. A hallucinogen, let's say?"
Phath rubbed his hairless jaw reflectively. "Hmm . . . hadn't thought of that trick, chief, I gotta admit!" They were just passing the Golden Horseshoe, from whose swinging doors came light and heat and sounds of loud music and louder jollity. The Venusian suggested they go in and ask the plump Uranian who served that last drink to the two murdered men. Star shook his head.
"They might still have the bar tab for McCallister, but the one for Borden would long ago have been tossed in the trash," he said. "No, that trail's a cold one—if trail it is."
The blaze and clamor of the bustling saloon faded behind them; the muddy path they trod was completely deserted and steeped in darkness. The two continued on their way, both deep in their thoughts. And then, without the slightest warning—
"Chief! Look out—!" yelled Phath hoarsely, his voice raw with shock and surprise, and something very close to terror.
Out of the black yawning maw of a filthy alley lurched into the dimness a monstrously tall, hulking figure. It was naked, its yellow hide glinting with thick scales. Eyes of scarlet fury burned through the murk above a cruel hooked beak; sleek, curved horns swayed against the wan glimmer of the distant stars—
And horrible four-fingered paws, sizzling and smoking with heat, reached out to clutch—and kill!
VIII. The Thing That Would Not Die
With the swiftness and agility of an acrobat, Star sprang backwards, thrusting Phath behind him with one arm while whipping his proton needle from its worn holster with the other hand. He aimed the powerful handgun directly at the center of the ungainly monster's broad chest and harshly commanded it to halt.
"Freeze in your tracks, or I'll fire!" he snapped.
The creature—a blurred and ghostly apparition in the murk—ignored the warning and shuffled forward, grisly paws still extended to sear and maim. The hackles rose at the nape of the tall redhead's neck—he could actually hear the crackle and sizzle of the shimmering waves of heat that arose from those four-fingered paws. They must have burned with white-hot temperatures ... in fact, he could feel the heat from them against his face, like desert sunshine.
He depressed the firing stud. The prong of the needier glowed with green lambent force. A blazing spear of emerald fire lanced from the energy weapon—to catch the Fire Troll full in the center of its shieldlike chest.
But the bolt, which could have burnt a hole through armor steel and would have slaughtered the largest beast that ever stalked the surface of this world or any other—rebounded harmlessly from the Troll's scaly hide!
Star could hardly believe his eyes, but he retreated a swift step or two, and fired again—this time smack in that scowling beaked face. The second bolt from his proton needle proved as ineffective as the first had been.
An icy tingle went crawling down the spine of the red-headed adventurer. He had done battle with men and monsters on many worlds before now, but always he had relied upon his energy weapons—which had never failed him before.
"Oh, Yakdar's iridium intestines—the cursed thing just won't die," moaned the Venusian at his side. Phath shared the primitive superstitions of his low swamp ancestors, Star Pirate knew, but it was heartening to see that, even though he was half-crazed with terror, the Venusian stubbornly stood his ground. He had his own guns in his hands and was loosing bolt after bolt of green fire at the oncoming monster.
His needlers, too, failed to so much as slow down the lurching, shuffling advance of the gigantic thing. Proton-fire exploded from the scaly chest in showers of crackling emerald sparks that sizzled when they fell to the wet mud underfoot.
Star whirled, grabbed Phath's shoulder—
"No good! Run for it—!" he rapped. The two pelted from the scene: much as it went against their grain to run from any adversary, when you can't kill the thing you're fighting, discretion certainly becomes the better part of valor.
Back at the Jolly Roger, the two relaxed and Phath poured himself a strong drink of fiery liquor. "First time I found anything a needier couldn't kill," muttered the Venusian. He seemed to take the Troll's failure to fall almost as a personal affront.
Star didn't reply: he was busy at the keyboard, tapping into the archives of Computer Central. Obtaining the answers to a few key questions that had occurred to him, the daredevil of the spaceways went to the viewscreen, tuned it to the view outside their trim little speedster, and stared thoughtfully out upon the night.
That next morning, Father Langston was somewhat surprised to find Commissioner Hardrock's runabout parked before the Temple of the Sun, and the commissioner himself desiring entrance, with two officers in two. The solar priest led them into an office where he kept his files and other papers, but before he could do more than exchange polite civilities with Hardrock, other uninvited guests began to arrive. Among these were the Governor himself, Star Pirate and his Venusian sidekick, Phath.
"I've called you all together here because a few things have come up that need clarification," said the redhead. "Father Langston, before you 'saw the light,' as you put it, you were a mineralogist in the employ of Mercury Metals—isn't that right?"
"Yes, certainly," murmured the tall priest, looking puzzled as to where this line of questioning was leading to.
"More specifically, you were asked to look into rumors that a large bed of precious heavy metals or some other rare mineral existed underneath the foundations of Belt City itself—am I still correct?"
"Yes, sir ..."
"You took core samples, and whatever else it is mineralogists do when they are searching for buried metals, but you found nothing of any particular value—is that correct?" The priest nodded.
Star handed the Governor a fax from the archives of Computer Central. Governor Kirkland studied it bewilderedly.
"It says here that the testing laboratories on Venus examined some core samples from a Dr. Langston on—" he read off the date "—and reported back to him that the samples consisted of almost entirely pure ... uranium!"
There was a stunned silence. Hardrock blinked slowly. The tall priest flushed but said nothing. The two officers Hardrock had brought with him at Star's request unobtrusively loosened their proton needlers in their holsters.