Highwayman Of The Void
By DIRK WYLIE
Ironic destiny had brought outlaw Steve Nolan
across the star lanes to icy Pinto and tangled
his life again with the man he had sworn to
kill. Once more he was trapped in a maze of
Galactic intrigue that reached far back into
his past—and forward to his death.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Fall 1944.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Steve Nolan was three years dead, pyro-burned in the black space offLuna when a prison break failed. But Nolan had a job to do. Nolan cameback.
Where the Avalon Trail bends across Annihilation Range, a thousand icymiles from Pluto's northern stem, Nolan stopped and closed the intakevalve of his helmet. Count five seconds, and he unhooked the exhaustedtank of oxygen; count ten more and it was spinning away, end over endover Pluto's frozen surface, and a new tank was already in place. Heslipped the pressure valve and inhaled deeply of the new air.
He'd come ten miles by the phosphorescent figures on the nightstonemarkers beside the trail. Fifteen more miles to go.
His cold black eyes stared absently at the east, where the pseudo-lifeof the great Plutonian crystals rolled in a shifting, tinkling sea. Henoted the water-avid crystals, and noted the three crablike crawlersthat munched a solitary clump of metallic grass. You don't walk, talkand breathe after a Tri-planet Lawman has declared you dead unless younote everything around you and react to what may be dangerous.
But he was looking beyond the familiar Plutonian drear, to the easternhorizon where faint lights gleamed in the dark. That was Port Avalon.That was where Steve Nolan was bound.
Woller was in Avalon. The Alan Woller who had made him an outlaw,roaming the star trails from Pluto to the Satellites, never daring toreturn to the inner worlds where Tri-planet kept order.
There was a slow pulse mounting in Nolan's throat as he walked on,savagely kicking a crab-shelled crawler from his path. He'd seenthe newssheet, months old, in a rickety old port on one of theSatellites—Io? Ganymede?—when he was down to forty credits and afriendly bartender. It hadn't been much of an item. The kind a countryeditor throws into his finance column when he unexpectedly loses an adand has to fill space.
"The new shipping company, which expects to do much for improvingcommercial relations with the outer planets, is headed by AlanWoller, formerly with the Interplanetary Telenews Company. Wolleris remembered as the prosecution's star witness in the trial ofSteve Nolan, the Junta agent indicted for treason three years ago.Nolan, sentenced to life imprisonment in Luna Cave, was killed whileattempting to escape.
"The new company is capitalized at over a billion dollars, and hasalready taken options on bases in...."
The drink had drained out of Steve Nolan when he saw that. And thebartender had been too friendly for his own good. He'd been a softtouch for five hundred credits.
That had been rocket fare to Pluto for Nolan.
He felt the drumming with the soles of his feet, a hard, grindingsensation against his metal boots. He jumped off the trail quickly andwhirled to watch for the approaching skid.
It was moving slowly, chugging along on a single jet.
Clogged feeders, Nolan thought as he felt the uneven vibrations. Ifhe doesn't watch out he'll have a backblast.
The skid faltered past him, no faster than he could run. He looked awayfrom the incandescent flare of the one tail jet, then that stopped too.Tall as a man, a dozen feet long, the skid lay wa