Highwayman Of The Void By DIRK WYLIE Ironic destiny had brought outlaw Steve Nolan across the star lanes to icy Pluto and tangled his life again with the man he had sworn to kill. Once more he was trapped in a maze of Galactic intrigue that reached far back into his past--and forward to his death. [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Fall 1944. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Steve Nolan was three years dead, pyro-burned in the black space off Luna when a prison break failed. But Nolan had a job to do. Nolan came back. Where the Avalon Trail bends across Annihilation Range, a thousand icy miles from Pluto's northern stem, Nolan stopped and closed the intake valve of his helmet. Count five seconds, and he unhooked the exhausted tank of oxygen; count ten more and it was spinning away, end over end over Pluto's frozen surface, and a new tank was already in place. He slipped the pressure valve and inhaled deeply of the new air. He'd come ten miles by the phosphorescent figures on the nightstone markers beside the trail. Fifteen more miles to go. His cold black eyes stared absently at the east, where the pseudo-life of the great Plutonian crystals rolled in a shifting, tinkling sea. He noted the water-avid crystals, and noted the three crablike crawlers that munched a solitary clump of metallic grass. You don't walk, talk and breathe after a Tri-planet Lawman has declared you dead unless you note everything around you and react to what may be dangerous. But he was looking beyond the familiar Plutonian drear, to the eastern horizon where faint lights gleamed in the dark. That was Port Avalon. That was where Steve Nolan was bound. Woller was in Avalon. The Alan Woller who had made him an outlaw, roaming the star trails from Pluto to the Satellites, never daring to return to the inner worlds where Tri-planet kept order. There was a slow pulse mounting in Nolan's throat as he walked on, savagely kicking a crab-shelled crawler from his path. He'd seen the newssheet, months old, in a rickety old port on one of the Satellites--Io? Ganymede?--when he was down to forty credits and a friendly bartender. It hadn't been much of an item. The kind a country editor throws into his finance column when he unexpectedly loses an ad and has to fill space. "The new shipping company, which expects to do much for improving commercial relations with the outer planets, is headed by Alan Woller, formerly with the Interplanetary Telenews Company. Woller is remembered as the prosecution's star witness in the trial of Steve Nolan, the Junta agent indicted for treason three years ago. Nolan, sentenced to life imprisonment in Luna Cave, was killed while attempting to escape.