It was more like floating than dancing. Feet glided, skimming over the floor.
Mantell felt Myra lightly against him, clinging: the bobbing swirls of living light in the air circled playfully around them, giving Myra’s face sharply accented multicolored highlights of curious effect. The music beat beneath them, swelling and surging deeply. Mantell found himself moving with a grace he had never known he possessed.
It was half due to the antigrav shield, he thought, and half to Myra, feather-light in his arms.
One thing struck him as incongruous. Around him in the crowded pavilion danced the people of Starhaven, each one carrying locked within his mind the burden of some crime, each a hunted man now safe forever from the hunters.
They laughed, joked, clung to each other, just like ordinary people. Just like those who lived everyday lives within the law. Men and women having a good time, but outlaws all.
Mantell and Myra danced on. An hour, two hours perhaps, slipped by. Under the low gravity, time seemed to speed imperceptibly. Mantell hardly cared. He let the hours move past.
Finally, as the music died for the hundredth time and the couples left the floor for a short breather between numbers, Myra said, “Had enough?”
Mantell grinned at her. “Hardly.”
“But I think we’d better leave now, Johnny. It’s getting late.”
He looked at his watch. It was nearly midnight. He realized for the first time how tired he was. All in this same day he had run a race with the SP ships, undergone a painful psychprobing, and now spent hours with Myra. It had been a full schedule.
“Where do we go now?” he asked. “The gambling den? The bar?”
She shook her head lightly. “We go home,” she said. “It’s close to my bedtime.”
The music began again, a lilting fast dance, and the crowds of pleasure-seekers coasted back onto the dance floor. Mantell made way through the throng, holding tightly to Myra’s hand. He was able to get back to the liftshaft without too much trouble; they rode down and out into the brightly floodlit plaza outside the Pleasure Dome.
As if from nowhere the slinky teardrop car that had conveyed them to the Dome appeared. They got in.
“Take us to my place,” Myra instructed the driver.
The trip was over almost before it had begun. They pulled up in front of a handsome apartment building. Myra got out; Mantell followed.
The doors of the building swung back at their approach. He escorted her up the liftshaft and as far as the door of her apartment.
She touched her thumb lightly to the doorplate and the door started to roll back. She said, “I won’t ask you in, Johnny. It’s late, and—well, I can’t. Please understand, won’t you?”
He smiled. “Okay. It’s been a swell night, and I won’t press my luck further. Good night, Myra. And thanks for everything.”
“I’ll be seeing you, Johnny. Don’t worry about that.”
He frowned and started to object, “But Ben—”
“Ben may not be with us too much longer,” she whispered in a strange tone. “A lot depends on you. We’re counting on you more than you can imagine.”
“What? You—”
“Remember what I said about asking too many questions too soon,” she warned. “Good night, Johnny.”
“Good night,” he said, bewildered. She smiled enigmatically and then he found himself staring at the outside of her door, alone, well-fed and feeling warm inside.
The car was waiting downstairs when he emerged. It was after midnight, and the sky was dotted with convincing stars. Thurdan had not spared expense in making Starhaven a wonderland world come true.
He climbed into the car. The driver looked human, but from the rigid forward set of his head he might just as well have been a robot.
“She’s a remarkable woman, isn’t she?” Mantell said to the man. “Miss Butler, I mean.”
“Yes, sir.”
Mantell smiled. The driver wasn’t much of a conversationalist, obviously. He said, “Take me home, to Number Thirteen.”
“Yes, sir.”
Relaxing, Mantell watched the buildings slip by on either side. He was tired now, and anxious to reach his room. He was more than tired: he was exhausted. It had been a fantastic day.
Chapter VII
Mantell saw a man die, his second day on Starhaven. It taught him not to judge by first impressions. Starhaven wasn’t entirely a pleasure-planet, a happy Utopia. There was violent death here, and evil.
He had slept late that day, ridding himself of his fatigue and weariness. At 1100 in the morning the room-phone buzzed loudly, waking him from a tortuously involved dream of Space Patrol men, fugitives, and ancient, fumbling scientists operating psychprobes.
He pulled himself out of bed, crossed the austere, simple room that had been assigned to him, and switched on the phone, rubbing sleep from his face. Slowly the pattern of colors that appeared on the visiscreen shaped itself into a meaningful configuration.
It was the face of Ben Thurdan.
Even on a visiscreen a foot square his face had a terrible brooding intensity, a dark-visaged strength. He smiled and said, “I hope I didn’t wake you, Mantell. You must be pretty tired.”
Mantell forced out a chuckle. “I guess I overslept. It’s a bad habit of mine.”
“What did you think of the Pleasure Dome?” Thurdan asked easily. Mantell’s sleep-fogged mind started to frame an answer, but before he could speak Thurdan had added the words, “. . . and Myra.”
That threw him off base. He said, “It’s a fabulous place, Mr. Thurdan. I’ve never seen anything like it anywhere. And—and Miss Butler was very helpful in explaining Starhaven to me.”
“Glad to hear that,” Thurdan said slowly. There was a long, uncomfortable moment of silence. Mantell fidgeted before the screen, acutely conscious of the great reservoir of power that lay in the man. At length Thurdan said, “Mantell, I liked you the second I saw you. You’ve got character. I like a man with character.”
Mantell wondered what the Starhaven boss was driving at. Keeping back his surprise, he said gravely, “Thank you, Mr. Thurdan.”
“Call me Ben.” The deep piercing eyes studied Mantell until his flesh began to crawl. “I trust you, Mantell. And let me tell you I don’t trust very many people on Starhaven. Suppose you do me a little favor, Mantell. Yes. A little favor.”
“If I can—Ben. What sort of favor do you mean?”
“I want you to keep your eyes open. Miss Butler— Myra—will be keeping company with you again today. Listen to things carefully, Mantell. And feel free to get in touch with me if you think there’s anything I ought to know.”
Mantell frowned and said, “I’m not sure I understand what you’re getting at. But I think I grasp the general picture.”
“Good. Stick with me, Mantell. Life can be very very good for a man on Starhaven, if Ben Thurdan is backing him.”
Thurdan grimaced in what was probably supposed to be a friendly smile, and rang off. Mantell stared at the shining surface of the blank screen for a second, trying to figure things out.
The call from Thurdan, he thought, was linked in some manner with Myra’s enigmatic words at her door just before he had left her last night. Obviously Ben Thurdan was afraid of something; an assassination plot, more likely than not—and had chosen Mantell to serve as an extra pair of eyes and ears for him.
Maybe—Mantell caught his breath—maybe he suspected that Myra herself was involved in some conspiracy against him, and had arranged for Mantell to keep company with her so he could gain her confidence and report back information.
Mantell shook his head. A tangled web was beginning to form. Too soon, he thought. He hadn’t come here to Starhaven to play power politics and get enmeshed in palace intrigues. He had just wanted a place to hide; a place where he could rebuild his battered personality and forget the Mulciber years.