CHAPTER VI
_Port o' Porno_
The pirate port of Porno is of course dead now, replaced by the cleanlawfulness of Port Midway, but a hundred years ago, in the days beforethe patrol-ships came, she roared her bawdy song through the farthestreaches of the solar system. For crack merchant ships and dingy spacetrading tramps alike, she was haven; drink and drugs, women anddiversions unspeakable lured to her space ports the cream and scum,adventures and riffraff of half a dozen worlds. Sailors and pirates paidoff at her and stayed as long as their wages lasted in the Street of theSailors; not a few remained permanently, their bodies flung to thebeasts of the savage jungle that rimmed the port. There only the cunningand strong could live. Ray-guns were the surest law. Modern scientificprogress stood side by side with murderous lawlessness as old as manhimself.
The hell town had grown with the strides of a giant, rising rapidly froma muddy street of _tio_ shacks to a small cosmetropolis. She wasessentially a place of contrasts. Two of the big Earth companies hadmodern space-ship hangars there, well-lighted, well-equipped, but undertheir very noses was a festering welter of dark, rutted byways extendingall the way to the comparative orderliness of the short, narrow Streetof the Merchants, itself flanked by the drunken bedlam of the Street ofthe Sailors. It can be understood why these men who flew, who needed awhole solar system for elbow room, disdained setting to order the measlyfew acres of dirt they stopped at, but it is a mystery why, when used toliving through vast leagues of space, they endured such narrow streetsand cluttered houses. Probably, tired from their long cramped cruises,impatient for their fling, they just didn't care a whoop.
The whole jumble that was this famous space port rested in the heart ofSatellite III's primeval jungle.
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Tall electric-wired fences girdled Port o' Porno to keep the jungleback. It was equivalent to a death sentence to pass unarmed outsidethem; the monstrous shapes that lived and fought in the jungle's swampygloom saw to that. Hideous nightmare shapes they were, some reptilianand comparable only to the giants that roamed Earth in her prehistoricages. Eating, fighting, breeding in the humid gloominess of thevegetation shrouded swamps, their bellows and roars sometimes at nightthundered right through Porno, a reminder of Nature yet untamed.Occasionally, in the berserk ecstasy of the mating season, they hurledtheir house-high bodies at the guarding fences; and then there was panicin the town, and many lives ripped out before a barrage of rays drovethe monsters back.
They were not the only inhabitants native to Satellite III. Deepunderground, seldom seen by men, lived a race of man-mole creatures,half human in intelligence, blind from their unlit habitat, but largerthan a man and stronger; fiercer, too, when cornered. Their numbers noone knew, but their bored tunnels, it had been found, constituted alower layer of life over the whole satellite.
Probably more vicious than these native "Three's" of Porno were thevisiting bipeds, man himself, who thronged the _kantrans_--which may bedefined as dives for the purveying of all entertainments. In them were ascore of snares for the buccaneer with money in his pocket and dope inhis blood. The open doors on the Street of the Sailors were allloud-speakers of drunken oaths and laughter, pierced now and then by ascream or cry as someone in the sweating press of bodies inside knewrage or fear.
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One interplanetarily notorious kantran made a feature of swinging itsattractions aloft in gilded cages, where all of them, young and old,pale and painted, giant and dwarf, ogled the arrested passers-by andinvited sampling of their wares.
Of all kinds and conditions of men were these passers-by. Earthlingsailors, white, negro, Chinese and Eurasian, most of them in the drabblue of space-ship crews, but each with a ray-gun strapped to his waist;short, thin-faced Venusians, shifty-eyed, cunning, with the planet'suniversal weapon, the skewer-blade, sheathed at their sides; tall,sweaty Martians, powerful brutes, wearing the air-rarifying mask thatwas necessary for them in Satellite III's Earthlike atmosphere. Businessmen and sight-seers, except the most bold, were apt to stay in theirhouses after their first visit to the Street of the Sailors. Each faceon the street or in the kantrans that lined it bore the mark of drink,or the contemptuous, insolent expression bred by Porno's favorite drug,isuan.
Around Porno was the constant threat of savage life; below it werehalf-human savagery and mystery; above, in the very shadow of theirmighty engines of space, were the most vicious animals of all--degradedmen.
This was the Port o' Porno of a hundred years ago.
This was the Port o' Porno where Master Scientist Eliot Leithgow forvery good reasons had told Hawk Carse he would meet him. 574. The houseof his friend.
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Night descended suddenly on the outlaw space-port that day the elderlyexile waited in vain for his comrade in arms Hawk Carse to show up.
There were six hours when the blasting heat received by Satellite IIIfrom near-lying Jupiter would be gone, and in its place a warm, cloyingtropical darkness, heavy with the odors of town and exotic products andthe damp, lush vegetation of the impinging jungle. The night would begiven over to carousing; for these six hours the Street of the Sailorscame to life. It was a time to keep strictly in hiding.
In the middle of that night, when the pleasures of Porno were in fullstride, there emerged suddenly, from one of the dark, crooked bywaysthat angled off the Street of the Sailors, a squad of five men whosedisciplined pace and regular formation were in marked contrast to theconfusion around them. They were slant-eyed men, with smooth saffronfaces, and strongly built, and they were armed, each one, with both aray-gun and a two-foot black, pointed tube. But it was not theirnumbers, formation or weapons that caused the carousing crowd to fallsilent and hastily get out of their path. It was, rather, the insigniaembroidered on the breasts of the gray smocks they wore. The insigniarepresented an asteroid in a circle of the ten planets, and the Streetof Sailors knew that sign and dreaded it.
The squad pressed along rapidly. A still-comely woman, new to Porno,plucked smirking at the leader's sleeve; but his pace did not slacken,and she fell back, puzzled and afraid because of her feeling ofsomething lifeless, dumb, machinelike in the man. Ahead, anisuan-maddened Earthling fell foul of a Venusian; a circle cleared inthe mob, a ray-gun spat and missed, and the Venusian closed, the gleamof a skewer-blade playing around him. This was combat; this wasinteresting; but none of the squad's five men gave the fight a glance,or even turned his head when, as they passed, the butchered Earthlingcoughed out his life.
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So they passed, and soon they were gone down another black-throatedbyway.
They padded noiselessly along in the darkness to turn again presently,pausing finally before a low, steel-walled house, typical of thestrongholds of prudent merchants of the port. No lights were visiblewithin it; all seemed asleep.
Silence filled the narrow street, and unrelieved darkness. Occasionallya desultory breeze brought sounds of a burst of revelry from the Streetof the Sailors; once the ports of an outbound space-ship flashedoverhead for an instant. But there was mainly silence and darkness, andin it the five men, parleying close together in toneless whispers.
After a little they separated. On cat's feet four of them stole aroundthe sides of the house. The fifth, drawing the black, pointed tube fromhis slash, crept up to the front entrance-port and held the tip to it.Blue light sparkled fantastically, revealing his impassive face,outlining his crouching body. Then, quite suddenly, the port appeared tomelt inward, and he disappeared into the blackness of the interior.
Presently there came a stir of movement, a whisper, a rustle frominside. A challenge, shouts volleying forth, a scream, another, and thepeculiar rattling sound that comes from a dying man's throat. Then againsilence.
Five shadows melted from the front entrance-port. They were carryingsomething black and still and h
eavy between them.
The errand was done....