Deathworld

Harry Harrison

For JOAN

1

1

With a gentle sigh the service tube dropped a message capsule into the receiving cup. The attention bell chimed once and was silent. Jason dinAlt stared at the harmless capsule as though it were a ticking bomb.

Something was going wrong. He felt a hard knot of tension form inside of him. This was no routine service memo or hotel communication, but a sealed personal message. Yet he knew no one on this planet, having arrived by spacer less than eight hours earlier. Since even his name was new-dating back to the last time he had changed ships- there could be no personal messages. Yet here one was.

Stripping the seal with his thumbnail, he took the top off. The recorder in the pencil-sized capsule gave the taped voice a tinny sound, with no clues as to the speaker.

“Kerk Pyrrus would like to see Jason dinAlt. I’m waiting in the lobby.”

It was wrong, yet it couldn’t be avoided. Chances were that the man was harmless. A salesman perhaps, or a case of mistaken identity. Nevertheless Jason carefully positioned his gun behind a pillow on the couch, with the safety off. There was no way to predict how these things would turn out. He signaled the desk to send the visitor up. When the door opened, Jason was slumped down on a corner of the couch, sipping from a tall glass.

A retired wrestler. That was Jason’s first thought when the man came through the door. Kerk Pyrrus was a gray-haired rock of a man, his body apparently chiseled out of flat slabs of muscle. His gray clothes were so conservative they were almost a uniform.

Strapped to his forearm was a rugged and much-worn holster, a gun muzzle peering blankly from it.

“You’re dinAlt the gambler,” the stranger said bluntly. “I have a proposition for you.”

Jason looked across the top of his glass, letting his mind play with the probabilities. This was either the police or the competition - and he wanted nothing to do with either. He had to know a lot more before he became involved in any deals.

“Sorry, friend,” Jason smiled. “But you have the wrong party. Like to oblige, but my gambling always seems to help the casinos more than myself. So you see…”

“Let’s not play games with each other,” Kerk broke in with a chesty rumble. “You’re dinAlt and you’re Bohel as well. If you want more names, I’ll mention Mahaut’s Planet, the Nebula Casino and plenty more. I have a proposition that will benefit both of us, and you had better listen to it.”

None of the names caused the slightest change in Jason’s half-smile. But his body was tensely alert. This muscle-bound stranger knew things he had no right to know. It was time to change the subject.