THE ETHIC OF THE ASSASSIN
By HAYDEN HOWARD
Incorruptible, The Assassin. The best you
could do was to buy the delicate Kri-Kri death.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories July 1953.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The monotonous cry of the kri-kri hushed with a clap of silence thatsnapped the young doctor upright in bed. Konrad had stolen his lovelywife. Was it a dream? His hand moved to find Kit's smooth, gentlyslumbering back. He smiled, already fuddled as to what had awakenedhim, and settled back comfortably again, stroking his hand along thecurve of her body with a certain sleepy pride.
Three months, he thought, and Kit would bear him their first child, apioneer five light-years from the ancestral home of his protoplasm. Iwonder if he will take as long to settle down as I did?
I wonder what's the matter with the kri-kri?
As his eyes widened to note the cluster of seventeen small moonswhirling past the window he heard the sputtering flight of the skar.
Quickly he faced the explosion of moonlight that silhouetted thekri-kri's cage against the window screen.
Taen said it isn't strong enough, he thought, fumbling for the lightswitch, then thinking better of it. The light might attract the skar.
Louder than the ventilators atop the transparent dome of the cityrose the staccato airblasting of the skar. With a haunting shriek, itcollided with its long, wingless shadow against the window screen. Atwang, the glint of a spear quivering in the wire. A hiss and a rustleand it was gone.
By the time it struck again, Jeff had lifted the amulet Taen gave himfrom the night table. As he squeezed the release button, he could feelthe angry vibration of the minute warrior within. A mosquito-like whinefaded after a red fleck of light no larger than the eye of an insect.Like a tiny meteor, the prisoner of the amulet flashed across themirror and quenched within the skar.
The long airsquid stuttered and blundered against the laughing maskwith a crackle of its exoskeleton. As it tumbled out of sight behindthe foot of the bed, Jeff slid his feet to the rug and fished for hisslipper. He was in time to catch the skar slithering weakly across therug, pumping air like a man with a crushed chest. It popped when he hitit with his slipper. Bending, white-muscled, across the moonlight, hesearched for his minute defender. But its light had gone out. What hedid see was the ugly gleam of man-made poison on the beak of the skar.
"Konrad, no, please," Kit's little-girl voice called from her sleep.Then she breathed regularly again.
The young doctor gritted his teeth as he closed the window andcautiously fished his pajamas from beneath the bed covers.
Tip-toeing down the cold tile hallway, buttoning up against the coldbreath of the dome ventilators with his left hand while he gripped theskar with the strong, surgeon's fingers of his right, he looked morelike a tousled-headed boy than a doctor, until a year ago chief surgeonon an intergalactic liner.
Quiet as he was, Taen's huge, fierce eyes met his around thevaricose-veined marble pillar in the vestibule.
"Poisoned, sire." Taen's harsh voice contained more statement thanquestion as he hopped forward, three-jointed legs still folded in hisservile stance, for erect he would have stood even taller than Jeff,and rising from one's customary place indoors, according to Taen, wasunthinkable. At Jeff's suggestions that he stand, he would wave hiswhite, prosthetic hands in horror. It was not in accord with "theunwritten laws."
"Sire, see the three-cir