Star Pirate battles the murder monsters of Mercury!

The richest and most powerful Earth colony on Mercury is called Belt City. Once a lawless, rip-roaring frontier town, filled with saloons and bawdy houses and dope-dens, where a man's life wasn�t worth a plugged credit unless he was handy with his power guns, Belt City is now staid, quiet and respectable, and the center of the Colonial Government, with jurisdiction over all citizens, colonists and the queer, gold-eyed, mahogany-skinned natives themselves.

Tiny, heat-baked Mercury, smallest of the Nine Worlds, circles perilously close to the mighty sun itself, and so slowly that it always presents the same side to that cosmic furnace of intolerable blazing heat. The Sunside, as it is called, is of course uninhabitable, hotter than the interior of a blast furnace ... a strange and awesome desert of parched and crumbling rocks, savage gorges and rivers of lava, where lakes of liquid silver and pools of molten copper make inhospitable this region, where men can venture but briefly, and then only under heavy heatproof energy shields, to mine and prospect the pure metals needed to feed the insatiable maw of Earth's industries.

A weird contrast is the second hemisphere of this diminutive world� the Darkside, whose face is ever turned to the cold, uncaring stars ... a frozen tundra region of crawling glaciers, whose soil is eternally locked under a thick sheath of mile-deep ice. The only hospitable region on Mercury is that thin zone of temperate climate which exists between the two extremes: the Twilight Belt, it is called, and it is there in the Belt that the first explorers and colonists and prospectors from Earth reared Belt City.

While, as already stated, most of Belt City has long outlived its scarlet past and its reputation for murder, iniquity and greed, the last lingering remnants of the old days cluster in the rotting slums down near the spaceport, where decaying sheds and hovels of sheet-plastic and corrugated tin slump into ruin from decades of neglect. There, narrow, garbage-choked alleys of raw muddy dirt meander between rows of gambling dens, flophouses, wineshops, cheat hotels, and even less reputable establishments.

It was from one of these, the Golden Horseshoe, that the first recorded victim of the Fire Troll emerged into the fresh evening breeze. His name was Wild Bill Borden, and he was pure Texan American, all six feet and five inches of him�beefy, crafty, strong as a bull, and dangerous as a rattler who has just been stepped on.

Wild Bill was never more dangerous than when he had taken aboard a bellyful of his favorite beverage, a potent brew of what purported to be genuine Kentucky sourmash bourbon, and went under the label of "01� Space Ranger" ... although it was greatly to be doubted if the powerful liquor had ever seen Kentucky, or, for that matter, Earth itself.

He was a rare metals prospector, was Wild Bill, and one of the best. With his iron strength and granite endurance, he could toil under the blistering blaze of the gigantic Sun�which filled nearly the entire sky of the Sunside, from horizon to horizon�longer than most Earthling miners could manage, even with triple-strength heat-shields.

Slipping a little in a puddle of rancid mud as he came off the porch of the saloon and stepped down to the crooked alley of beaten earth that served as a "street," Wild Bill cursed and regained his balance with some little difficulty. He leaned against the porch rail for a few moments, until the scenery stopped revolving around and around him like a merry-go-round run out of control, then went lurching up the street towards The Nine Worlds, where he had booked a room for the night.

Along the way he paused to aim a kick and a cringing cur gnawing some semi-edible snack from amidst a heap of rotting garbage. The creature hissed and snapped at him, but scuttled aside and darted into an inky-black walk-through between the buildings on its six scaly legs. What he had mistaken for an Earthly mutt thus proved to be one of the large lizard-things which the native Mercurians tamed as house-pets.

Wild Bill cursed again, damning all the slinking, crafty, vindictive natives, with their teakwood hides, eyes like gold coins, and dour, humorless ways. The Earthlings and the native Mercurians lived together under an uneasy, ramshackle truce, and old suspicions and distrusts�deep-rooted and of long standing�still caused a lot of tension between the races. However, the Earthside colonists needed servants to tidy their bungalows over in the more fashionable quarter of Belt City, the cafes and hotel kitchens needed busboys, dish-washers, and cheap help to carry out the garbage, scrub the floors, and perform such menial tasks as most Earthlings would not care to soil their hands with ... so the Mercurians swallowed their ancient pride, concealed their cold contempt for these outworlders, and accepted their money.

These thoughts were perhaps drifting hazily through Wild Bill's whiskey-soaked brain as he turned around a corner into the black mouth of a side-alley which led to the sleazy little hotel which he had honored that night with his patronage, when he stepped out of the waking world and directly into nightmare�

Something taller than a man, with a huge, bulging bald pate crowned with lyre-covered horns, its snarling face all blazing red eyes and curved beak like a parrot's, stepped into his path and lifted hideous, smoking, white-hot four-clawed paws to clutch him by neck and shoulder. As the awful heat of those burning paws seared Bill's dingy, faded coveralls black and smouldering, the hapless Earthling screamed like a stallion under the gelding wire.

But such was his superhuman strength and endurance, that Wild Bill clung to consciousness just long enough to whisper an enigmatic phrase to the ear of the first medic to reach his side ... a weird, uncanny phrase which soon adorned the headlines of the front page of every newsfax in the Nine Worlds:

"... A Fire Troll got me! ... Gawd in heaven, it was a Fire Troll ..."

On Haven, that tiny worldlet lost among a whirling meteor-swarm in the uncharted regions of the Asteroid Zone, rugged cliffs and scarps of naked stone lifted to the distant stars. Their slopes and the vales that stretched between them were thickly grown with an odd forest of queer-looking trees which closely resembled titanic ferns.

Few of the asteroids retain enough super-heavy metals at their core to sustain sufficient gravity to hold moisture and any kind of an atmosphere to their breast, but Haven was one of these, and that was the reason why Star Pirate had chosen Haven, back in the wild, lawless days when he was a buccaneer of the spaceways, for his secret hideout. Even today, a free man, his past record wiped clean with a blanket pardon from a grateful System government, now when he devoted his keen wits and space-honed skills to fighting crimes, not committing them, Star still dwelt on Haven.

It was a late afternoon. In one part of the huge dome-room, Star sat at a desk of polished mineral, poring over sheafs of computer printouts and depth-photos of the puzzling petroglyphs left behind ages ago by the mysterious inhabitants of the lost planet, Aster, whose breakup in the gravitic tug-of-war between Jupiter and Saturn on the one hand and the mighty sun on the other had created the zone of huge rock-fragments which circle ever between the orbits of Mars and the giant, Jupiter. The attempt to decipher the enigmatic records the lost race had left, here and there, carven on the stony surface of a handful of asteroids, was Star's consuming hobby�no: his passion.

At the opposite side of the shallow curved dome, through whose lucent plasteel surface the stars blazed and flashed and sparkled like diamonds strewn on black velvet, Star's sidekick and buddy, Phath, reclined on a rattan lounger, plucking moodily on an eleven-stringed pittipak from his native Venus. The plaintive, moaning tune he played was one of the poignant, atonal love-songs from the Low Swamp country, his homeland. From time to time, when no adventure beckoned, no tantalizing mystery taunted with its allure of the Unknown, the slim, albino-pale Venusian lapsed into a melancholy of homesickness .

And this was just such a time. It had been weeks since last they had been summoned to the aid of beleaguered justice, to do battle against a mystery-mastermind of supercrime, and the languid, moody Venusian was suffering from acute boredom.

Then the flashing of a sharp green light over the ground-glass screen of the huge televisor roused him from his lethargy. Phath tossed the musical instrument on the couch and bounded lithely to his feet, excitement sparkling in his strange pink eyes. Star Pirate looked up from his work, frowning.

"That will be Carew," he guessed. "And about this nasty 'Fire Troll' business out on Mercury, I�ll bet," said the Ace of Space distractedly. Phath looked exultant, because he knew his chief had to be right: only Commander Jason Carew, senior Space Patrol officer on Pallas, was entrusted with a few trusted others with the secret combination of wavelengths used to contact Star Pirate�s hideout on his special multiwave televisor.

Light and color swirled in the ground-glass screen, and tightened into focus. Now a lean, hawk-faced man with a space-tan of deep bronze and keen, steady gray eyes under a trim head of hair the same precise shade peered out at them. He wore the high-necked tunic and slacks, space-black, of the Patrol.

"Glad you were in, Star," said the officer in clipped tones. Despite his calm, his self-control, he looked worried and tense.

"What�s up, Commander? This Mercury business?" inquired the younger man. Jason Carew relaxed his stiff features, permitting himself a reluctant half-smile.

"Can�t catch you napping, lad! Never could when you were on the wrong side of the law, and still can�t, even now that you�re fighting the good fight on our side. Yes ... seven murders, each in the same manner, the most recent at nine o�clock this morning, Solar Standard time. All the victims men of no particular consequence�"

"And all killed the same way, burnt to death, apparently by the searing heat of white-hot paws," rapped Star harshly.

Carew nodded slowly. "Yes, the throat or torso of each victim bore the same horrible burn-marks left by four-clawed paws. I understand Fire Trolls are supposed, in Mercurian myths, to have four-clawed hands and feet."

"What�s the story on these Fire Trolls, anyway, Commander?" burst in Phath the Venusian. "Anything to the notion, or is it just pure legend ...?"

"Insofar as we know, they fall into the same class with vampires, werewolves and goblins," said Carew, with the ghost of a smile. "However, the System�s a big place, and lots of strange mysteries and curious creatures may lurk just beyond the edges of discovery . . . will you see to it for us, Star? The colonists on Mercury are panicky, on the verge of open revolt and wholesale flight, unless something is done soon�"

"On our way, Carew," said Star, rising to his feet and buckling on his gunbelt. The screen went dark.

"Ready the Jolly Roger for flight within the hour, Phath; I want to be on our way to Mercury before the Universe is an hour older!"

"By Yakdar�s iridium intestines�some action at last!" grinned Phath. And whether his ejaculation was in the nature of a curse or a prayer, none could say. Perhaps it was both.

Riding its arch of atom-fire, the Jolly Roger hurtled through the void, passing "beneath" the asteroids and approaching the orbit of Mars. Ere long the Red Planet could be seen dead ahead, and in his mind's eye Star Pirate could see the vast plains of ochre dust, the half-ruined cities of ancient amber marble, the broad belts of rubbery blue vegetation which were the famous "canals"

"Phath, keep trying to get Zoar on the 'visor," he directed. "I'm going back to consult the library computer. We need all the dope we can get on these Fire Trolls, legendary or not!"

"Right, chief," nodded the Venusian.

A little while later, finding nothing of use in the computer memory, Star returned to the control cabin and discovered that Phath had just managed to get through to Dr. Zoar. Indeed, the dwarfish Martian was glaring out of the screen at the grinning Venusian. "What is it now, you moss-eared swamp-lizard?" snapped the savant impatiently, bending a malignant scowl on the albino. "Don't you realize that I am on the verge of a momentous discovery�?"

Phath flushed a little and his pink eyes went hard and venomous. "Izzat so, you knee-high green toad? Why, you wouldn't know a momentous discovery if you fell over one� which, considering your height, so called, wouldn't be hard to do!" he returned with vigor in his hissing tones.

Zoar's scowl, if possible, grew even more malignant than before. "Now listen, you web-footed, mudwallowing, fungus-eating�!"

"Why, you dust-swallowing midget! I'd step on you, if I didn't know that with your bloated ego, you'd explode like a pricked balloon, you�!"

"Children�children!" sighed Star Pirate in long-suffering tones, stepping between the Venusian and the Martian mirrored in the 'visor screen. Grumbling a curse to his low swamp devil-god, the lithe Venusian relinquished the chair and Star took a seat before the machine. At the sight of him, Zoar relaxed his ferocious scowl and his age-seamed and time-wrinkled features assumed an expression almost mild.

"Oh, it�s you, lad! You'll be interested to hear the results of my latest observations�I have detected the most interesting slight perturbations in the orbit of Pluto! If they recur on a periodic basis, I may have found proof of the existence of a trans-Plutonian planet�the one astronomers have inferred and alleged may well exist on the uttermost verge of the Solar System�the long-rumored �Persephone,� Pluto�s ancient companion on the long voyage through the blackness of space ..."

"Interesting, Doc, but some other time," rapped Star. "I�m on a case that seems to have the Patrol baffled, and I need some information on the Mercurian legends of so-called Fire Trolls. Can you give me a hand?"

Zoar�s froglike face became thoughtful. "Extra-planetary anthropology and folklore is a little out of my range, lad," he admitted slowly , "but, of course, I have glanced at the material a time or two, over the decades. Precisely what do you need to know?"

"That�s the trouble," Star said ruefully. "At this stage in the game, I haven' t a wisp of an idea what might or might not be of help to me, in the way of data. First, what are they supposed to look like?"

"Crudely humanoid; broad-shouldered, deep-chested, hump-backed; flat, hairless heads crowned with immense cow-horns; glaring red eyes; parrot-like beak; yellow, rugose hide�"

Phath, at Star�s shoulder, wrinkled up his slim nose. " 'Rugose'?" he murmured. "What�s 'rugose'�?"

"Scaly," Star snapped, with an impatient shrug of burly well-muscled shoulders. "Don�t interrupt! Go on, Doc, anything else?"

"They supposedly dwell on the Sunside, since their own bodies are as hot as molten lead," said the scientist. "When strangers from the Twilight Belt invade their parched and burning wastes, they kill ruthlessly and without compassion ... searing the flesh of ordinary mortals to the bone with a touch of their super-heated four-clawed paws. And that�s about all I can tell you, lad: just dusty old Mercurian legends, dating from the old days long before the arrival of the first Earthling explorers."

Star asked: "Any possibility such creatures might actually exist?"

Dr. Zoar puffed out his sunken cheeks. "Absolutely not, boy! Nothing that lives, not even the hardiest bacteria, could survive for an instant in temperatures that turn solid iridium, cadmium, silver and lead to pure liquids ."

After a few more words, Star signed off and the televisor screen went blank and lifeless. He turned away from the machine, a slight frown on his space-tanned features.

"Find out what you were lookin� for, chief?" inquired Phath hopefully.

Slowly, reluctantly, Star shook his red head.

"The only thing I found out I already had a hunch I knew," he muttered. "That the monsters we�re looking for don�t even exist�and can't!"

It was obvious that Belt City was haunted by a nameless fear. You could read it in the drawn and haggard features of the folk who hurried down the narrow streets, searching the shadows and probing the dark leering mouths of gloom-drenched alleys with wary, suspicious, fearful eyes. Star and Phath had hardly left the spaceport before they noticed the difference between the Mercurian capital and other towns.

"Yakdar!" swore the slender Venusian. "Chief, you notice how the people scurry from shop to shop ... like something, some unseen horror, was snappin� at their heels?"

Star�s handsome, bronzed face was grim, his green eyes�usually sparkling with deviltry and mischief�were brooding and somber. He nodded curtly.

"I also notice they do their shopping in little groups�twos and threes�I don�t see anyone who�s walking all alone," he retorted in a low voice to his partner.

Many of the shops and stores they passed were closed, boarded up, darkened and empty. More than a few sported hastily painted "For Sale" signs. For a thriving young metropolis, the rich capital of a metals-wealthy world, this seemed more than odd ...

It seemed ... sinister!

When they reached System House near the square where stood the traditional First Landing monument, so similar to those on many other worlds, they were hustled into the Governor�s study. He was a lean, harried-looking man, with fine aristocratic features in a worn, tired face, under a trim head of silver hair. He greeted the two adventurers with relief and optimism almost visible in his manner.

"Welcome to Mercury, sir! Thank heaven you�ve come," he said in tones that shook, just a little, with tension . "The Patrol seems helpless to do combat with this mystery-menace�this shadowy terror that stalks our streets, and is driving our citizens away from Belt City in droves�!"

"Which explains the abnormal number of closed and shuttered shops we noticed on the way here," commented Star. The Governor nodded sadly.

"I�ve tried to put heart into my people, to remind them of their hardy forebears, those staunch and fearless men and women who pioneered a rugged, lawless, unexplored frontier world teeming with unknown perils ... but civilization has softened their fibre, I�m afraid. Not a ship leaves for Earth, or Luna, or Venus, but dozens and dozens of our citizens are on it, fleeing from the horror that hovers over our heads and strikes seemingly where and when it will ..."

"Your law-enforcement agencies are certainly policing the streets�?"

The Governor nodded, silvery hair glistening in the muted light of tooled lamps of native Mercurian craftsmanship. "Of course! I�ve recalled every member of the Civic Guard from vacation or sick leave, drafted government clerks to free other officers from desk jobs, so they can patrol the streets. But nothing serves to halt the spread of these horrible crimes ...�

"The Fire Troll," murmured Star Pirate thoughtfully, and was startled to see the effect his unthinking words had on the older man, who paled to the lips, and swayed as if about to collapse.

"Steady there, sir!" snapped Star, bracing the Governor with a strong arm about his shoulders. He eased the other into a nearby chair and pressed a hip-flask of potent Jovian brandy to the older man�s lips. After a grateful sip or two, the Governor was breathing more easily, the color returning to his worn and weary face. He drew a deep breath and attempted a rather shaky smile.

"You must forgive me, sir; I�ll admit I have been under considerable strain these last two weeks ... these ghastly murders, the inability of the police to capture this fiend�"

As if on cue, a burly, heavy-set man in a dark uniform came brusquely into the room, stopping short when he saw the visitors. He had a square, red face and eyes as cold and hard and gray as fractured steel.

"Sorry, Grayson! Didn�t know you were in conference," he said shortly. The Governor beckoned him near and made the introductions. The newcomer was Commissioner Hardrock, commander of the local law-enforcement agencies. He eyed Star and the slim Vunusian distrustfully�even truculently. But at the same time something very much like relief glimmered in his cold gray eyes.

"Star Pirate, eh?" he barked. "Heard of you, of course. Patrol says you've reformed; work for the law these days, not against it. Hope so!" Then, abruptly, Hardrock turned to the Governor and crisply reported that there had been another murder.

Governor Kirkland blanched, his fine, aristocratic features wincing with pain. "A-another, you say? Where, man?"

"Alley behind the Golden Horseshoe ," rapped the Commissioner. "Miner called Sam McCallister ... been with Mercury Metals & Minerals for eighteen years. Lean and leathery little fellow, all steel wire and whipcord. Didn't die until after the medics got to him. Dragged himself a block or so, following the Troll�"

"Great heavens! ... Even with the kind of burns he must have had?" cried Grayson Kirkland in amazement.

Reluctant admiration showed in Hardrock's blunt features. "Cursed tough and gutsy little fellow," he nodded. "Don't think I could have done it myself, and I'm no weakling!"

"Did McCallister say in which direction the Fire Troll went?" inquired Star Pirate, keen interest lighting his green eyes. Hardrock nodded.

"Eastaway, down Settlers' Street," he said. But he said the words to Star Pirate's back, for already the tall space-adventurer was halfway out of the door.

"Where we goin', chief?" demanded Phath, panting as he struggled to keep up with his partner' s long, rangy stride. "Settlers' Street, I'll bet!"

"Later," said Star Pirate briefly. "First I want to check out this Golden Horseshoe saloon ... did you notice that this was the second time the near vicinity of this establishment has been the scene of one of the Fire Troll's murders?"

Phath blinked in thought. "The first was that big miner, Bill Borden, right? Wild Bill, they used to call him ..."

Star nodded curtly. "Right. Borden had just left the saloon. He hadn't gone more than a block before the Troll stepped out of the shadows to slay him with his burning touch ... and now another is killed in the same way, and within a stone's throw of the first."

"Think it means something, chief?" Star shrugged. "We'll see."

The site where McCallister collapsed after dragging himself on the Fire Troll's trail nearly two blocks from the narrow alley behind the saloon where he had encountered the fiery monster, was depressingly ordinary. A mere rectangle of muddy soil, of rank and sour dirt pounded by innumerable feet. The site was still marked off by the four spikes and red ribbons the Patrol cops had left. Star scrutinized the immediate vicinity with a variety of miniaturized but surprisingly powerful and sensitive detecting instruments, finding nothing of interest.

He rose to his feet, dusted his knees, and looked around keenly. A dilapidated row of ramshackle sheet-plastic huts with tarpaper or rust-red corrugated iron sheeting roofs were all that was to be seen. The narrow street seemed deserted at this hour. Some of the rundown structures were residences, others were shops. There was a native openfront wineshop which offered the heavy, syrupy mead made from Northlands moss which the natives fancied, and one or two Mercurians lounged within at small tables, tossing dice or snoozing over their bottles. A slovenly native woman polishing mugs watched the two of them with unreadable golden eyes as they went by.

A small grocery store purveyed hydroponic vegetables from the colony farms: turnips, red beans, a paltry selection of wilted greens and overripe fruit, parsnips, potatoes. Another shop, scarcely bigger than a mere booth, sold tobacco-derivatives, licorice, magazines.

At the far end of the block, however, rose a more imposing edifice of glazed mustard-yellow brick set in step-back tiers like a pyramid or ziggurat. Its roof tapered to a blunt spire topped by a revolving jag-edged disc of gold-colored plastic.

"That must be the temple the Uranian mentioned, chief," observed the Venusian. Star nodded.

"The Patrol cops will already have questioned everybody on the street as to whether they saw or heard anything interesting, but let's talk to the temple staff," he suggested. They entered the tall doors of imitation bronze, which stood open as if to welcome devotees and would-be converts. Inside the two found rows of pews with a long aisle between, leading to an altar of the same bright-glazed bricks of the facade, blazing brilliantly under the beams of track-lighting in the ceiling overhead. Behind the altar a huge jag-edged mirror caught and reflected blindingly the rays of light from above.

"This joint would seem to be a temple of the sun, eh, chief?" grinned Phath sarcastically.

"Your Venusian compatriot is completely accurate in his guess, sir," spoke a deep, resonant voice from behind them. They turned to see a tall imposing Earthling with iron-gray hair, attired in yellow robes blazoned on breast and back with the omnipresent solar emblem. He had a weathered, long-jawed face, with blue eyes which bore within their depths a humorous twinkle.

"This is, indeed, the First Temple of Our Lord the Sun, friends, and you are more than welcome! I am Father Langston ... and if you are wondering that my little flock and I worship anything so simple and obvious as the sun, recall that so did the wise Egyptians and Babylonians and Incas of ancient times, back Earthside. Not only do the beneficent rays of the sun warm our worlds, drive away cold and bitter darkness, bring health and sustain nourishment and life itself, but the sun is the source of all life and the author of our being."

The tall priest made a self-deprecating gesture that was somehow modest and even endearing. "Oh, don't misunderstand me, friends! It is not the actual sundisc itself, the sphere of super-heated gases, that we worship, but That which the sun symbolizes and stands for: light, warmth, goodness�the antithesis of darkness, depravity and evil."

The tall priest grinned suddenly.

"In the days before I�ah�I have to say 'saw the light,' although I deplore the play on words as bordering on irreverence!"�and here he chuckled a little�"I was a mineralogist in the pay of Mercury Metals & Minerals, and as a scientist I knew that the sun was the very source and origin of those precious minerals I was paid to discover. Of course, this was long before I came to realize that Our Lord the Sun was so very much more than merely a great light in the sky, that it was the source of spiritual illumination and the visible symbol of the creative and paternal force in the universe ... but I suspect my fervor has run away with my tongue, and that you men are here about quite another business�?"

"True enough," nodded Star, and asked a few questions. Father Langston told him that not only had Borden and McCallister not been communicants of his Temple, but that his little flock consisted only of native Mercurians, and, while outworlders were welcome, none had yet converted to the solar faith.

"They are a poor, downtrodden folk," murmured Langston. "Few of them aspire to a good education in the free schools the Colonial Government has established, and fewer yet rise beyond the lowly rank of clerk or computer programmer ... although some do become jurists, physicians, even spaceship officers. The sun was the object of their ancient faith, and in bringing them before His altars again I am but bringing them home to the most ancient and sacred of their ancestral traditions ..."

Star queried the friendly priest about the myth of the Fire Trolls, and as to whether Langston believed such creatures might actually exist, hidden away in some, remote fastness of the hostile and all-but-impenetrable Sunside. The priest pursed his lips judiciously and would not give an opinion on this.

"In Mercurian myth, they represent the deadly side of the solar force ... for the sun can warm and bless living things, but it can also kill them swiftly and mercilessly, like any other great natural force ... beyond that, I would not care to venture an opinion."

They thanked the gray-haired man and left the Sun Temple, heading back to their ship. Star carried with him the beginnings of a liking for the older man, who might well prove a friend in need.

Back at the Jolly Roger, Star Pirate and Phath made a few calls to Patrol headquarters for the Mercury/Venus jurisdiction, and checked on a few things with the vast archives of Computer Central, where exhaustive records of every description were stored for instant access.

They dined that evening at Governor Kirkland's executive mansion, where the cuisine was an interesting mixture of traditional Earthling dishes, such as sirloin of beef, asparatus in mustard sauce and chef's salad, and certain exotic native Mercurian dishes, including deliciously crunchy fried moss-cakes, a simmering stew of spicy tubers swimming in fungus-broth, and tasty, tender lichen-balls with Sunside pepper.

The only other guest at the Governor's table was Hardrock, the police commissioner. He was a grim, taciturn fellow, and said little outside of an occasional grunt and nod of the head during the meal. Afterwards, in the Governor's library over a superb Martian brandy and aromatic cigars of golden-ripe Venusian tobacco, the commissioner waxed a little more eloquent.

"Understand you've been questioning that crazed charlatan, who calls himself the 'High Priest of the Sun,' " he said gruffly.

"We have," Star nodded quietly. "But while he may prove to be a charlatan of sorts, I didn't find him 'crazed' in particular.*'

Hardrock gave vent to a harsh bark of laughter. "Fellow has high degrees in his field from Earth's finest universities," he growled. "Had an excellent job here with Mercury Metals, checking sites in the Belt for unsuspected deposits of rare radioactives. Threw the whole thing over�job, career, everything!�to go bump his forehead on the ground, grovelling before the cursed sun. Mad�and dangerous!"

Star cocked one eyebrow quizzically. "How��dangerous�?" he inquired in lazy tones. The heavy-faced man scowled at him with eyes like cold steel.

"A fanatic, isn't he? All fanatics are dangerous ... or can be!"'

"Maybe ... but he seemed sane and normal when I talked to him, and he answered my questions openly and frankly enough," commented Star.

Hardrock showed him a nasty, thin-lipped grin.

"Probably didn�t know who you were," the bigger man grunted. "May find it kinda hard to get folks to answer your questions from here on in, Mr. Star Pirate�now that everybody in town knows you're here on Mercury, hoping to bust these Fire Troll murders wide open!"

"What do you mean?" asked Star with a slight frown.

The commissioner chuckled, put down his cigar, and drew a crumpled sheet of flimsy paper from the inner pocket of his uniform tunic. He rapped it with a blunt forefinger.

"That fat fool who runs the Horseshoe must have blabbed his head off," growled Hardrock. "�Cause the afternoon newsfax has your picture smeared all over the front page, under big scare headlines."

And he showed Star the afternoon edition of the Belt City Sentinel. Just as he had said, an excellent likeness of the redheaded adventurer and his Venusian sidekick occupied most of the front page, under roaring headlines that announced�

With the swiftness and agility of an acrobat, Star sprang backwards, thrusting Phath behind him with one arm while whipping his proton needle from its worn holster with the other hand. He aimed the powerful handgun directly at the center of the ungainly monster's broad chest and harshly commanded it to halt.

"Freeze in your tracks, or I'll fire!" he snapped.

The creature�a blurred and ghostly apparition in the murk�ignored the warning and shuffled forward, grisly paws still extended to sear and maim. The hackles rose at the nape of the tall redhead's neck�he could actually hear the crackle and sizzle of the shimmering waves of heat that arose from those four-fingered paws. They must have burned with white-hot temperatures ... in fact, he could feel the heat from them against his face, like desert sunshine.

He depressed the firing stud. The prong of the needier glowed with green lambent force. A blazing spear of emerald fire lanced from the energy weapon�to catch the Fire Troll full in the center of its shieldlike chest.

But the bolt, which could have burnt a hole through armor steel and would have slaughtered the largest beast that ever stalked the surface of this world or any other�rebounded harmlessly from the Troll's scaly hide!

Star could hardly believe his eyes, but he retreated a swift step or two, and fired again�this time smack in that scowling beaked face. The second bolt from his proton needle proved as ineffective as the first had been.

An icy tingle went crawling down the spine of the red-headed adventurer. He had done battle with men and monsters on many worlds before now, but always he had relied upon his energy weapons�which had never failed him before.

"Oh, Yakdar's iridium intestines�the cursed thing just won't die," moaned the Venusian at his side. Phath shared the primitive superstitions of his low swamp ancestors, Star Pirate knew, but it was heartening to see that, even though he was half-crazed with terror, the Venusian stubbornly stood his ground. He had his own guns in his hands and was loosing bolt after bolt of green fire at the oncoming monster.

His needlers, too, failed to so much as slow down the lurching, shuffling advance of the gigantic thing. Proton-fire exploded from the scaly chest in showers of crackling emerald sparks that sizzled when they fell to the wet mud underfoot.

Star whirled, grabbed Phath's shoulder�

"No good! Run for it�!" he rapped. The two pelted from the scene: much as it went against their grain to run from any adversary, when you can't kill the thing you're fighting, discretion certainly becomes the better part of valor.

Back at the Jolly Roger, the two relaxed and Phath poured himself a strong drink of fiery liquor. "First time I found anything a needier couldn't kill," muttered the Venusian. He seemed to take the Troll's failure to fall almost as a personal affront.

Star didn't reply: he was busy at the keyboard, tapping into the archives of Computer Central. Obtaining the answers to a few key questions that had occurred to him, the daredevil of the spaceways went to the viewscreen, tuned it to the view outside their trim little speedster, and stared thoughtfully out upon the night.