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  Several times a day men came to ask questions and listen, while Shannon repeated his story. Search ships were still combing Morgreb Gap for the wreckage and the bodies of fifty-eight passengers they felt sure must have died in the crash. The search was hopeless. Fog prevented visual observation, the swamp was impenetrable on foot, and mineral deposits underneath blocked the use of detectors sensitive to metallic ores.

  Day after day they came to Shannon, asking the same question but wording it differently, so that for some time he did not suspect what they were really doing.

  Finally he understood.

  “Confound you!” Shannon shouted furiously. “Are you trying to imply that I know where the wreck is and won’t tell? Do you believe I’m responsible for the crash, that I’m afraid to let you find it and discover proof of something I did wrong? Do you think—”

  The questioners rose to leave. One was Jacobson, inspector for the Department of Interplanetary Commerce. The other was Ivan Morse, one of Titus Conway’s technical stooges.

  “What we think doesn’t matter, Shannon,” Morse said stiffly. “The Board of Inquiry, meeting tomorrow, will hear the evidence and decide where the blame lies. Our only interest was in saving—in trying to save—fifty-eight human lives. But if you won’t help—”

  * * * *

  The official inquiry was a farce and a mockery. The board, with Jacobson, the IC man, as chairman, consisted of six pliable little puppets, who danced and bowed and nodded whenever Titus Conway pulled the strings.

  Conway himself flew up for the trial. He sat with his stooges behind an ornate Venusian kao-nut table, a gaunt and gray-haired giant with mean lips and hard, shrewd eyes. A predatory vulture, Conway. An uncrowned king, who ran the inquiry as he had always run everything money could buy.

  Morse, Conway’s spokesman at the inquiry, summed it all up very neatly.

  “Gentlemen, you have heard the evidence presented. You have heard medical experts testify that Lane Shannon showed no trace of brain injury in either shock or damaged cortex—which would account for a form of amnesia absolutely unknown to medical science.

  “You heard, and Shannon has admitted, that he took a drink of powerful liquor just prior to the ill-fated blastoff. How big a drink, or how many, we do not know. We do know that the alibi of Venus fever, like the old-fashioned snakebite, is too often merely an excuse for drunkenness.

  Shannon glared at him in futile protest.

  “You have heard the insinuation that Trans-Venus was responsible for the crash, because of alleged beam failure and inferior fuel. Gentlemen, as to the beam failure, you have just heard testimony proving that the beam was off exactly four and one-half minutes—not long enough to endanger a ship in the hands of a competent pilot.

  “As to the fuel, the charge is ridiculous! Standard-X mush, while admittedly second to the newly-developed Super-X, was nevertheless good enough to power the ships that discovered and colonized these worlds. It was, for five years, the only fuel used by the major spacelines of the System.”

  “Standard-X has been amply safe in the shells of Trans-Venus ferries—until Lane Shannon came along. Need I say any more regarding this insult to your intelligence?”

  The verdict was no surprise to anyone, least of all to Lane Shannon when he faced Inspector Jacobson at the end.

  “Shannon,” the IC man said, speaking slowly so the newsbeams could pick up every word, “there is not one iota of concrete evidence to prove that you were intoxicated when you blasted off the CC-4 with a load of passengers and freight.

  “There is no evidence that you, through criminal negligence, caused the loss of that ship and its entrusted lives; no evidence that you deliberately affected your own escape at the expense of the passengers you left behind—or that you let them die rather than reveal the location of the wreck.”

  He paused, glancing toward Titus Conway for approval. Shannon was too stunned to protest.

  “Because there is no concrete evidence,” Jacobson continued, “you are facing a private inquiry instead of criminal prosecution, Lane Shannon. Later you will face something infinitely worse—the finger of hatred and scorn leveled at you by the peoples of the Solar System.

  “We, here, have no power to administer fitting punishment. We can only act within our sphere, in the best interests of space travel and the public we serve. It is with that goal and those limitations in mind that we render our decision,” Jacobson purred hypocritically.

  “You, Lane Shannon, will hand over to this board your pilot’s license and rocket emblem. Unfortunately, you will leave this room in a moment, a free man. But never again, as long as you shall live, will you be permitted to pilot a flying vehicle of any kind—either for yourself or others, through space or through atmosphere.

  “That is the verdict of this board. Have you anything to say, Lane Shannon, before the inquiry is adjourned?”

  Lane Shannon shook his head slowly. Then he laughed. It was not the laugh of a young fellow of twenty-five. He laughed and it was Titus Conway’s red-veined eyes that shifted away.

  Still laughing softly, Shannon slapped his license tab down on the table. He unpinned the tiny moon-metal rocket emblem, a miniature stern-tube assembly, from his lapel and laid it beside the license.

  Then, head erect, shoulders back and laughter still bubbling mockingly from his thinned lips, Lane Shannon walked out into the thick eternal Venus fog.

  CHAPTER III

  Gift of Trouble

  It was an old building and not too well sound-proofed. Standing in the small, barren reception room, Lane Shannon could hear all the multitudinous noises of the great Earth terminal, muffled but not deadened by the ageing walls.

  Subconsciously, his ears caught and sifted the familiar sounds. The rhythmic slup-wheeze, slup-wheeze of hydraulic pistons lifting a blast-off cradle. The dreary, endless drone of multiple jet-grinders chewing at the encrustations on the inside of a tube assembly: stern tubes as indicated by the deep, hollow whoo-oo-oom of the diamond wheels.

  Somewhere across the blast-pitted cup of the spaceport, a Marek training rocket roared monotonously up and down its cable with a rookie pilot in the bucket seat. The sound pervaded everything, even the filtered air of the office and the acrid incense of mush as it was pumped into fuel shells by a crew of “jet-monkeys,” or maintenance men.

  From the nearby dispatcher’s tower, a whistle shrilled the “stand-away.” A moment later a rocket blasted off with a thunder that shook the very foundations of the building. Shannon threw back his head, staring blindly at the cracked ceiling, his ears following the thin scream of the projectile’s flight until it dwindled to nothingness. For a moment his face was twisted, bitter, a sneering mask around the pain in his eyes.

  When he looked down again, the girl was there.

  She had come out of an inner office to stand quietly by the chrome railing, slim and cool and unbelievably graceful, completely feminine yet calmly capable. Shannon blinked at the vision of chestnut hair framing a slender, vital face. Unaccountably, he felt his cheeks burn at the impact of level gray eyes that took him apart, weighed him, analyzed his motives.

  He steeled himself and bowed curtly.

  “How do you do. I am—”

  “I know,” she said quietly. “You’re Mr. Shannon, the new owner of Venus Freight Line. Come in. I’m Marla Wylie. I was private secretary to Mr. Leverance, the former owner here, until he—until his death.”

  “Oh!” Shannon looked at her with renewed interest. “The agents who handled the sale told me to listen to you. They said you really ran the business. Knew more about interplanetary freighting problems than anyone else here.”

  “I’ll help all I can.” Something in her tone made Shannon feel like a spanked child. “Mr. Leverance was ill so much these last two years that a great deal of the management fell to me.”

  Shannon followed h
er through the gate in the railing and stopped, staring around the barren room. A few files, a table loaded with dusty records, three desks standing empty and unused—that was the equipment. Only the reception desk and visiphone switchboard by the railing showed signs of recent occupancy. Probably, Shannon thought, that was Marla Wylie’s post.

  Four private offices opened off this larger room. Two of them had solid walls and ground-glass doors. One was unmarked. The other bore the single word “President” under a smear where the name of the former owner had been inexpertly scraped away.

  The other two offices were visible through open glassite partitions. In one, Shannon saw a small, dark-faced man peering out at him from a maze of etherad, communibeam and telewire equipment. Gold leaf on the door read: “Communications—Allen Spaine.”

  Adjoining this was a larger office with two solid walls covered by blueprints, rocket diagrams and typed lists. According to the door legend, the thin, bald, space-bronzed man behind the littered desk was “M. Killmer, Operations Manager.”

  Marla Wylie interrupted Shannon’s inspection.

  “Venus Line,” she said, “was neither large nor prosperous. I guess you knew that when you bought it from the estate at such a ridiculous figure. Dad—I mean, Mr. Leverance, tried to keep what equipment he did have as up-to-date as possible.”

  “Dad?” Shannon arched his brows in surprise. “Was he your—your father?”

  “No. John Leverance was simply ‘Dad’ to everyone who knew him. He”—there was an almost imperceptible catch in her voice—“he was a fine, fierce, lovable old man. He had a dream, but this was as far as it ever got. He wanted to see Venus Lines the nucleus of a whole interplanetary freighting service—a second Spaceways Express. He—”

  She broke off suddenly and the fire died out of her eyes.

  “You’ll want to meet the other employees,” she suggested listlessly.

  “Later.” Shannon waved his hand. “I want to know more about the setup first. Tell me about them.”

  “Mr. Spaine, there, handles communications, maintains contact with our ships, coordinates our schedules with those of the field dispatcher and relays interplanetary conditions to our customers. It’s a two-man job anywhere else.”

  “Sounds like it,” Shannon admitted, conscious of the sneering hostility on Spaine’s thin face beyond the glassite partition. “Who else?”

  “Mike Killmer is chief pilot and operations manager. His responsibility is to maintain schedules and keep ships flying. Of late, he’s handled traffic management, too.”

  “How many pilots?”

  “Three—now. Marquard has the G-two at Venusport this week, picking up a load of benrusite. Anderson was to blast off from Lunopolis this morning with a load of farm implements for the Venus Highland farmers. He’ll bring Vro leaves back on the return trip. He’s flying a new ‘Heavy Six’, our newest and best ship.

  “Ohrbeck is on the schedule board, to blast off with a load of Farnham beryl drills for the Moon mines as soon as his G-three is overhauled. He’s around somewhere now. Probably down in the cradle house, fighting with Tubby Martin, our maintenance man.”

  “Martin?” Shannon barked, wheeling around with a new flame in his eyes. “Tubby Martin, did you say?”

  “Why, yes. He’s anxious to see you, I believe.”

  “Tubby Martin.” Shannon whispered again to himself and his eyes clouded. “I wonder—” He dismissed the problem. “I’ll dig him out later. About Venus Freight, were those you mentioned all the ships the outfit owned?”

  “All the company operated. There’s another old G-ship racked behind the cradle house for emergencies, but it’s so old the meteor screen won’t stay on. All except the big G-six are old and slow, but they were all Venus could afford and—”

  “Never mind,” Shannon cut her off, his eyes glittering. “They’re exactly what I need. Exactly.” He nodded briskly at the former owner’s office. “Let’s go in there. I’d like to see the operating statements and ask some more questions.”

  He followed the girl through the ground-glass door into a small, bare private office. The carpet on the floor was old and faded, the littered desk scuffed and worn. The only new thing in the office was a large three-dimensional portrait of a grizzled, square-jawed old man. Shannon scowled at the portrait.

  “Who’s that?”

  “Dad—Mr. Leverance. When he died, the employees had that portrait made. It—was like having him around. We didn’t know what would become of Venus Freight Line then. I’ll have it taken down immediately, Mr. Shannon.”

  Shannon had been about to order the uncomfortably lifelike picture removed. Suddenly, for no accountable reason, he changed his mind.

  “Don’t. Let it stay where it is.”

  He turned away, stamped to the daylight window, pressing the stud that turned the polarized panes to transparency. Warm sunlight flooded in and he could see the whole west end of the rocket field spread below.

  A quarter of a mile away, around the curve of the railed walk that circled the blast-off cup, spectators were watching a Lunar ferry load. Beyond that, a great silver dome glistened under the sunlight, the conditioning chamber where incoming passengers on the Martian liners were slowly accustomed to terrestrial atmosphere and gravity. A red-checkered flag, hanging limply over the dispatcher’s tower, warned of meteor swarms drifting inside the Lunar orbit.

  Everywhere Shannon looked, men were busy making reality out of mankind’s oldest dream. He’d shared that dream once, had been on the way toward contributing his part to the saga of far worlds. Now that was gone, ruined, smashed forever by one man’s unconscionable greed.

  The old bitterness came back into Shannon’s eyes, twisted the natural good humor off his lips. He snapped the stud again, blotting out the aching scene. He had what he had wanted, now-—what he had worked and slaved and dared death for, after three bitter years. But something was wrong, something that spoiled the first thrill of triumph.

  Something he could not put a finger on.

  He turned sharply. The operating statement and audit figures lay on the desk, ready for his inspection. But Marla Wylie stood there, her back to the desk, fingers white against the scuffed rim. There was an expression in her eyes that Shannon could not fathom. Suddenly he thought he had it, thought he knew why she seemed upset.

  “I’m sorry,” he said briskly. “I guess I forgot to mention an obvious fact. You’re staying on, of course. All the staff. And effective at once, you’ll all draw a twenty-five percent increase in salary. Later, when things are—”

  “Mr. Shannon,” Marla said very quietly, “why did you buy Venus Freight Line?”

  “Because I wanted a line and this was for sale at a price I could afford.” Shannon hesitated, studying her through narrowed eyes.

  “You don’t like me very well, do you?” he said suddenly. “You don’t like the idea of working for Lane Shannon, the rat who was grounded for life because he—”

  “Please answer my question,” Marla insisted quietly.

  “All right,” Shannon snapped. He dropped into the worn chair, leaned knotted fists on the desk. “I’ll tell you why I bought it. Three years ago, Titus Conway smashed the only dreams I ever had, cut me off from the only future I ever wanted.

  “All my life I’d dreamed of space travel. Nights I’d go out and watch the stars and tell myself that some day I’d be flying up to them, helping establish spacelines to them, fitting into the biggest and grandest adventure mankind ever knew. That was my own personal goal.”

  He got up and stood with his back to the window.

  “I lost that goal. A new one took its place. These past three years I’ve lived for just one thing—to hand back to Titus Conway just one small measure of what he handed me,” Shannon’s fists clenched angrily.

  “Oh, I thought for awhile that I could beat fate and clear myse
lf, somehow. I saved money and tried to hire a pilot to fly me back through Morgreb Gap. I thought maybe I could find the wreck of the CC-4 and prove that I wasn’t to blame. Besides, I was haunted by my own lost five weeks, always wondering where I’d been and what I’d done during that time.”

  * * * *

  Shannon’s eyes were bitter. “But that failed. Conway and Trans-Venus couldn’t afford to have anyone find the wreck and see what really happened. They bought the Morgreb Gap area and closed it to outside ships—under ‘government’ order. Got it condemned as dangerous to flying. They rerouted their own run to cross Moulin Range a hundred miles farther west.

  “Then I tried to go through on foot. Well, I nearly died in the swamp and the wind. I knew then I was bucking fate. So I gave up and concentrated on the one thing left to me—hitting back!”

  Shannon whirled, driving a clenched fist into his palm.

  “I can’t smash Titus Conway. He owns half the Solar System. What he can’t buy, he gets by intimidation and outright theft. His legal staff sits up nights to twist the law so he can get by with murder. I can’t smash him—but I can hurt him so he’ll never forget it!

  “I’ve made my plans, but that took money. There was only one way for an outcast to get money fast—the Vedalian deposits on Pluto. One man in a thousand who tries to find them comes back alive. One in ten thousand strikes it rich.

  “I was that one, Miss Wylie. I nearly died, but hate wouldn’t let me. I came back with a small fortune, enough to buy a line that competed with Titus Conway.”

  “You—you can’t match Venus Freight Line against Conway Cargoes,” Marla Wylie whispered, white-faced. “These old ships against a fleet of modern freighters—impossible! He only let Venus exist because we were too small to hurt him.”

  Shannon whirled to face her. He grinned and the expression was a humorless grimace.

  “It is a laugh, isn’t it?” he said harshly. “Four old tubs against Titus Conway—the Titus Conway. Oh, he’ll smash me and he’ll smash Venus Line eventually—but he’ll carry the scars of that fight to his grave.”