Page:Amazing Stories Volume 16 Number 06.djvu/145

Rh fight. He failed miserably. The robots closed around him. Their lobster-claw appendages seized and subdued him. Conniston, now sitting well up, played other notes on his whistle, a mocking little trill of minor music. Responding, the metal creatures held Harpe's arms fast, and bound them with tight windings of steel wire—elbows to sides, wrists in front. Then they seated him in a corner. Conniston rose, pocketed the whistle. The robots relaxed, like three statues:

"Vannie!" called Conniston. "Vannie! Come—I have a surprise for you!"

She came running from some inner chamber, and through the door that had admitted the robots—light-footed and light-hearted, with a merry face that faded to utter perplexity. She looked at the robots, at the bound stranger, and her father's swollen and marked face. Conniston smiled, and took her slender hand in his big one.

"Here he is, daughter," he said. "Promised to come for you. Tried to change his mind, but he'll marry you, all right."

Harpe met her wide stare. Strange, in such a jam, to waste time and thought on what a pretty girl she was. A little thing, barely big enough to interest a man of Harpe's size—and trim, alive, a thing of joy. Buckskin hair, eyes as gray as her father's, and sweeter by whole planets. Her mouth was short, upper lip cleft and lower full. Even in mannish slacks and tunic, her figure was dainty and feminine.

"Who's this man?" she was asking her father. "Why is he tied?"

"Come, Vannie," sighed Conniston, as though impatient of opposition. "You know Mr. Manfred Plessner very well indeed. And he knows you. I know that you know each other. Don't waste time in denying—"

"Oh, break it up!" roared Zack Harpe, struggling against the wire bonds. "I'm not Plessner, I'm Zack Harpe. Look on the collar of my space-overall—it's stenciled there—and the buckle of this belt I'm wearing. Z. H., my initials. My papers must be in the pocket of my tunic. Have a look, you big flannel-head, and then cast me loose!"

Conniston picked up the overall and read the stenciling. He walked back to Harpe, studied the belt-buckle, then fumbled in Harpe's inner pocket for the papers. They bore photographs, thumb-prints, endorsements. Conniston gazed at the papers, then at Harpe, back to the papers again. He cleared his throat.

"You're Zachary Harpe, all right."

"Then get this wiring off of me!"

"All the more shame to you for making up to Vannie under an assumed name," continued Conniston stonily. "Well, you'll marry her as Zack Harpe. No mistake about that."

"Father," put in Vannie Conniston, "you must listen. This isn't Manfred Plessner. He—"

"You deceived me once, daughter. You can't work it again." Conniston turned doorward. "Talk it out, you two. I'll give you ten minutes to see reason. Otherwise, Harpe, I'll pipe my robots to fling you back into space, with only that chopped-up overall. And Vannie, I'll never trust you to meet and speak to any stranger again."

E WAS gone. The wire-wound skipper and the slim, lovely girl gazed at each other woefully. All around them the robots stood, like an expectant audience of statues.

"Miss Conniston," said Harpe, "will you please start at the beginning—use easy words—and set me right on all this mess? I've been a war-pilot, a