“You don’t know who,” Chan agreed.
He left the workmen, and a little door let him out upon the vast, noisy open space beneath the docks, thronged with incoming passengers from the space liners above.
He closed the door, and sighed with relief.
For he had passed the fleet, and the New Moon’s walls, and the alert inspectors scrutinizing every man that came down the gangplanks above.
He was safe—
“Your reservation check, sir?”
It was an attentive, dark-skinned Martian porter.
The grimy paper sticking from the pocket of his yellow uniform, Chan saw, was another copy of that notice of reward.
With a worried frown, Chan patted his borrowed pockets.
“Oh, I remember!”
He squinted and blinked.
“Left it hi my baggage.
Can you get me a duplicate?”
Were the dark eyes studying his scar?
He eased the crippled foot.
“Yes, sir. A temporary check.
Your name, sir?”
“Dr. Charles Derrel.
Marine biologist.
From Venus, en route to Earth.
Two days here.”
He squinted again.
“Can you get me some dark glasses?
Not used to the light. The clouds on Venus, you know—”
The check, evidently a necessary passport to the New Moon’s wonders, was presently procured.
Chan dispatched the porter to look for non-existent baggage, and hurried on alone.
The transit bands— a series of gliding belts whose moving coffee-tables and bars were crowded with bright-clad vacationists—carried him through endless enormous halls, past glittering shops and the tall black portals of the Hall of Euthanasia.
But Chan had eyes for nothing until he saw the Casino—for it was there that he might hope to meet the Basilisk at midnight.
Transparent and illuminated from within, the pillars at the entrance looked like columns hewn from living gems.
Ruby and emerald, they were covered with a delicate rime of gold.
Tiny beneath their unbelievable glitter, a woman stood waiting. He swung off the belt.
The girl was tall, with a proud grace of poise that he had rarely seen.
The wealth of her hair was platinum white; her fine skin was white; she wore a fortune hi white Callistonian furs.
And her eyes, he saw, were a rare true violet.
He hurried on, to pass her.
She was utterly beautiful.
Her loveliness set a painful throb to going in his throat.
He could not help a twinge of bitterness at thought of the double barrier between them—her obvious wealth and reserve, and his own more than desperate situation.
If he had been some idle billionaire, he was thinking bleakly, perhaps returning from his colonial mines and plantations, she might have been waiting for him—
His heart came up in his mouth.
For the girl was coming swiftly toward him, across the vast gold-veined emerald that floored the entrance.
The white perfection of her face lit with a welcoming smile.
Her eyes were warm with recognition.
In a joyous voice—but one too low for any other to hear—she greeted him by name:
“Why, Chan!
You’re Chan Derron!”
Rooted with wonder, Chan shuddered to those syllables that made his body worth a quarter of a million dollars, living or dead.
The smile of admiration congealed on his face.
Moving with the weightless rife of a flame, the girl came up to him, and eagerly seized his nerveless hand hi hers.
7 The Luck of Giles Habibula