Strange
Adventures # 155
August, 1963
The Case of the Red Diamond Smugglers
Writer: John Broome
Penciller: Mike Sekowsky
Inker: Bernard Sachs
Synopsis: Star Hawkins tells his client, Mister Huntley, that he had been unable to find any clues to who has been creating counterfeit red diamonds and smuggling them onto Earth, hurting the prices of the client's real red diamonds. Mister Huntley pays him for his work despite the fact that he resigned the case without solving it, and Ilda urges Star to use the money for a vacation. He invites Ilda to accompany him (something she had anticipated) and they go to the planet Xophia, where the gravity is light and where Star must wear an oxygen tank in order to breathe. Star and Ilda part when Ilda takes up archaeology as a hobby and Star prefers to indulge in the local drink, called hot loga. When Star enters the loga bar, two beings change his oxygen tank for him, and speak to each other about how they actually gave him a tank of dimol instead, in order to knock him out. To their surprise, the Dimol fails to render Star unconscious, and Star remains unaware of the matter, writing off his lightheaded feeling as a result of the low gravity. When Star, in a semi-stupor trips over someone, that person reacts angrily, and Star, slurring his words and not hearing others clearly, takes that person's statement as an insult toward Earth. Star hits the man, beginning a brawl in which he defeats all comers. As he walks out of the bar, the two people who gave him the Dimol tank call the police to have him arrested. When Ilda returns to the loga bar where she last saw Star going, she sees the wreckage and overhears the two consirators talking about how easy it will be to shoot Star while he's in prison. Ilda goes to the prison and learns why Star is incarcerated, and when she goes to visit him, she realizes that he must be drugged. She gets him a new oxygen bottle, and once Star's head has cleared, he goes after the two. After roughing them up, Star discovers that the two are the red diamond smugglers he had been after before his vacation, and that they had assumed he had come to Xophia in pursuit of them, so they tried to get him out of their way. Later, Star and Ilda remark on the peculiarities of the case while Star drinks more of his new favorite drink, hot loga.
Detective rating: Even Star and Ilda didn't try to pretend this case was anything but luck. 1 on a scale of 1 to 10.
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