The space they now entered must be the core of the building, Raf
thought a little dazedly. For there, towering over them was the round
bulb of the globe. And about its open hatch were piles of the material
which he had last seen in the warehouse on the other continent. The
unloading of the alien ship had been hastily interrupted.
Since neither the merman nor Dalgard took cover, Raf judged that they
did not fear attack now. But when he turned his attention away from
the ship, he found not only the colony scout but most of the sea
people gathered about him as if waiting for some action on his part.
"What is it?" He could feel it, that strong pressure, that band
united, in willing him into some move. His stubborn streak of
independence made his reaction contrary. He was not going to be pushed
into anything.
"In this hour," Dalgard spoke aloud, avoiding the mind touch which
might stiffen Raf's rebellion. He wished that some older, wiser Elder
from Homeport were there. So little time--Yet this stranger with
practically no effort might accomplish all they had come to do, if he
could only be persuaded into action. "In this hour, here is the heart
of what civilization remains to Those Others. Destroy it, and it will
not matter whether they kill us. For in the days to come they will
have nothing left."
Raf understood. This was why he had been brought here. They wanted
him to use the blast bombs. And one part of him _was_ calculating the
best places to set his two remaining bombs for the wildest possible
destruction. That part of him could accept the logic of Dalgard's
reasoning. He doubted if the aliens could repair the globe if it were
damaged, and he was sure that much which they had brought back from
the eastern continent was irreplaceable. The bombs had not been
intended for such a use. They were defensive, anti-personal weapons to
be employed as he had done against the lizard in the arena. But placed
properly--Without thinking his hands went to the sealed pocket in the
breast of his tunic.
Dalgard saw that gesture and inside him some taut cord began to
unwind. Then the stranger's hands dropped, and he swung around to face
the colony scout squarely, a scowl twisting his black brows almost
together.
"This isn't my fight," he stated flatly. "I've got to get back to the
flitter, to my spacer--"
What was the matter? Dalgard tried to understand. If the aliens won
now, this stranger was in as great a danger as were the rest of them.
Did he believe that Those Others would allow any colony to be
established on a world they ruled?
"There will be no future for you here," he spoke slowly, trying with
all his power to get through to the other. "They will not allow you to
found another Homeport. You will have no colony--"
"Will you get it into your thick head," burst out the pilot, "that I'm
not here to start a colony! We can take off from this blasted planet
whenever we want to. We didn't come here to stay!"
Beneath the suntan, Dalgard's face whitened. The other had come from
no outlaw ship, seeking a refuge across space, as his own people had
fled to a new life from tyranny. His first fears had been correct!
This was a representative of Pax, doubtless sent to hunt down the
descendants of those who had escaped its throttling dictatorship. The
slender strangely garbed Terran might be of the same blood as his own,
but he was as great an enemy as Those Others!
"Pax!" He did not know that he had said that word aloud.
The other laughed. "You are living back in history. Pax has been dead
and gone almost two centuries. I'm of the Federation of Free Men--"
"Will the stranger use his fire now?" The question formed in Dalgard's
mind. The mermen were growing impatient, as well they might. This was
no time for talk, but for action. Could Raf be persuaded to aid them?
A Federation of Free Men--Free Men! That was what they were fighting
for here and now.
"You are free," he said. "The sea people won their freedom when Those
Others fought among themselves. My people came across the star void in
search of freedom, paying in blood to win it. But these, these are not
the weapons of the free." He pointed to the supplies about the globe,
to the globe itself.
The mermen were waiting no longer. With the butts of their spears they
smashed anything breakable. But the damage one could do by hand in the
short space of time granted them--Raf was surprised that a guard was
not already down upon them--was sharply limited. The piled-up secrets
of an old race, a race which had once ruled a planet. He thought
fleetingly of Lablet's preoccupation with this spoil, of Hobart's hope
of gaining knowledge they could take back with them. But would the
aliens keep their part of the bargain? He no longer believed that.
Why not give these barbarians a chance, and the colonists. Sure, he
was breaking the stiffest rule of the Service. But, perhaps by now the
flitter was gone, he might never reach the _RS 10_. It was not his
war, right enough. But he'd give the weaker side a fighting chance.
Dalgard followed him into the globe ship, climbing the ladders to the
engine level, watching with curious eyes as Raf inspected the driving
power of the ship and made the best disposition possible of one of the
bombs.
Then they were on the ladder once more as the ship shook under them,
plates buckling as a great wound tore three decks apart. Raf laughed
recklessly. Now that he was committed to this course, he had a
small-boy delight in the destruction.
"They won't raise her again in a hurry," he confided to Dalgard. But
the other did not share his triumph.
"They come--we must move fast," the scout urged.
When they jumped from the hatch, they discovered that the mermen had
been busy in their turn. As many of the supplies as they could move
had been pushed and piled into one great mass. Broken crystal littered
the floor in shards and puddles of strange chemicals mingled smells to
become a throat-rasping fog. Raf eyed those doubtfully. Some of those
fumes might combine in the blast--
Once again Dalgard read his mind and waved the mermen back, sending
them through the door to the ramp and the lower engine room. Raf stood
in the doorway, the bomb in his hand, knowing that it was time for him
to make the most accurate cast of his life.
The sphere left his fingers, was a gleam in the murky air. It struck
the pile of material. Then the whole world was hidden by a blinding
glare.
It was dark--black dark. And he was swinging back and forth through
this total darkness. He was a ball, a blast bomb being tossed from
hand to hand through the dark by painted warriors who laughed shrilly
at his pain, tossed through the dark. Fear such as he had never known,
even under the last acceleration pressure of the take-off from Terra,
beat through Raf's veins away from his laboring heart. He was helpless
in the dark!
"Not alone--" the words came out of somewhere, he didn't know whether
he heard them, or, in some queer way, felt them. "You are safe--not
alone."
That brought a measure of comfort. But he was still in the dark, and
he was moving--he could not will his hands to move--yet he was moving.
He was being carried!
The flitter--he was back on the flitter! They were air-borne. But who
was piloting?
"Captain! Soriki!" he appealed for reassurance. And then was aware
that there was no familiar motor hum, none of that pressure of rushing
air to which he had been so long accustomed that he missed it only
now.
"You are safe--" Again that would-be comfort. But Raf tried to move
his arms, twist his body, be sure that he rested in the flitter. Then
another thought, only vaguely alarming at first, but which grew
swiftly to panic proportions--He was in the alien globe--He was a
prisoner!
"You are safe!" the words beat in his mind.
"But where--where?" he felt as if he were screaming that at the full
power of his lungs. He must get out of this dark envelope, be free.
Free! Free Men--He was Raf Kurbi of the Federation of Free Men, member
of the crew of the Spacer _RS 10_. But there had been something else
about free men--
Painfully he pulled fragments of pictures out of the past, assembled a
jigsaw of wild action. And all of it ended in a blinding flash,
blinding!
Raf cowered mentally if not physically, as his mind seized upon that
last word. The blinding flash, then this depth of darkness. Had he
been--?
"You are safe."
Maybe he was safe, he thought, with an anger born of honest fear, but
was he--blind? And where was he? What had happened to him since that
moment when the blast bomb had exploded?
"I am blind," he spat out, wanting to be told that his fears were only
fears and not the truth.
"Your eyes are covered," the answer came quickly enough, and for a
short space he was comforted until he realized that the reply was not
a flat denial of his statement.
"Soriki?" he tried again. "Captain? Lablet?"
"Your companions"--there was a moment of hesitation, and then came
what he was sure was the truth--"have escaped. Their ship took to the
air when the Center was invaded."
So, he wasn't on the flitter. That was Raf's first reaction. Then, he
must still be with the mermen, with the young stranger who claimed to
be one of a lost Terran colony. But they couldn't leave him behind!
Raf struggled against the power which held him motionless.
"Be quiet!" That was not soothing; it had the snap of a command, so
sharp and with such authority in it that he obeyed. "You have been
hurt; the gel must do its work. Sleep now. It is good to sleep--"
Dalgard walked by the hammock, using all the quieting power he
possessed to ease the stranger, who now bore little resemblance to the
lithe, swiftly moving, other-worldly figure of the day before.
Stripped of his burned rags of clothing, coated with the healing stuff
of the merpeople--that thick jelly substance which was their bulwark
against illness and hurt--lashed into a hammock of sea fibers, he had
the outward appearance of a thick bundle of supplies. The scout had
seen miracles of healing performed by the gel, he could only hope for
one now. "Sleep--" he made the soothing suggestion over and over and
felt the other begin to relax, to sink into the semicoma in which he
must rest for at least another day.
It was true that they had watched the strange flying machine take off
from a roof top. And none of the mermen who had survived the battle
which had raged through the city had seen any of the off-worlder's
kind among the living or the dead of the alien forces. Perhaps,
thinking Raf dead, they had returned to their space ship.
Now there were other, more immediate, problems to be met. They had
done everything that they could to insure the well-being of the
stranger, without whom they could not have delivered that one
necessary blow which meant a new future for Astra.
The aliens were not all dead. Some had gone down under the spears of
the mermen, but more of the sea people had died by the superior
weapons of their foes. To the aliens, until they discovered what had
happened to the globe and its cargo, it would seem an overwhelming
triumph, for less than a quarter of the invading force fought its way
back to safety in the underground ways. Yes, it would appear to be a
victory for Those Others. But--now time was on the other side of the
scales.
Dalgard doubted if the globe would ever fly again. And the loss of the
storehouse plunder could never be repaired. By its destruction they
had insured the future for their people, the mermen, the slowly
growing settlement at Homeport.
They were well out of the city, in the open country, traveling along a
rocky gorge, through which a river provided a highway to the sea.
Dalgard had no idea as yet how he could win back across the waste of
water to his own people. While the mermen with whom he had stormed the
city were friendly, they were not of the tribes he knew, and their own
connection with the eastern continent was through messages passed
between islands and the depths.
Then there was the stranger--Dalgard knew that the ship which had
brought him to this planet was somewhere in the north. Perhaps when he
recovered, they could travel in that direction. But for the moment it
was good just to be free, to feel the soft winds of summer lick his
skin, to walk slowly under the sun, carrying the little bundle of
things which belonged to the stranger, with a knife once more at his
belt and friends about him.
But within the quarter-hour their peace was broken. Dalgard heard it
first, his landsman's ears serving him where the complicated sense
which gave the sea people warning did not operate. That shrill
keening--he knew it of old. And at his warning the majority of the
mermen plunged into the stream, becoming drifting shadows below the
surface of the water. Only the four who were carrying the hammock
stood their ground. But the scout, having told them to deposit their
burden under the shelter of an overhanging ledge of rock, waved them
to join their fellows. Until that menace in the sky was beaten, they
dare not travel overland.
Was it still after him alone, hunting him by some mysterious built-in
sense as it had overseas? He could see it now, moving in circles back
and forth across the gorge, probably ready to dive on any prey
venturing into the open.
Had it not been for the stranger, Dalgard could have taken to the
water almost as quickly and easily as his companions. But they could
not float the pilot down the stream, thus dissolving the thick coating
of gel which was healing his terrible flash burns. And Those Others,
were they following the trail of their mechanical hound as they had
before?
Dalgard sent out questing tendrils of thought. Nowhere did he
encounter the flashes which announced the proximity of Those Others.
No, it would appear that they had unleashed the hound to do what
damage it could, perhaps to serve them as a marker for a future
counterattack. At present it was alone. And he relayed that
information to the mermen.
If they could knock out the hound--his hand went to the tender scrape
on his own scalp where that box had left its glancing mark--if they
could knock out the hound--But how? As accurate marksmen as the mermen
were with their spears, he was not sure they could bring down the box.
Its sudden darts and dips were too erratic. Then what? Because as long
as it bobbed there, he and the stranger were imprisoned in this
pocket of the gorge wall.
Dalgard sat down, the bundle of the stranger's belongings beside him.
Then, he carefully unfastened the scorched cloth which formed that bag
and examined its contents. There was the belt with its pouches,
sheaths, and tool case. And the weapon which the stranger had used to
such good effect during their escape from the arena. Dalgard took up
the gun. It was light in weight, and it fitted into his hand almost as
if it had been molded to his measure.
He aimed at the hovering box, pressed the button as he had seen the
other do, with no results. The stun ray, which had acted upon living
creatures, could not govern the delicate mechanism in the hound's
interior. Dalgard laid it aside. There were no more of the bombs, nor
would they have been effective against such a target. As far as he
could see, there was nothing among Raf's possessions which could help
them now.
One of the black shadows in the water moved to shore. The box swooped,
death striking at the merman who ran to shelter. A second followed
him, eluding the attack of the hound by a matter of inches. Now the
box buzzed angrily.
Dalgard, catching their thoughts, hurried to aid them. They undid the
knots of the hammock about the helpless stranger, leaving about him
only the necessary bandage ties. Now they had a crude net, woven, as
Dalgard knew, of undersea fibers strong enough to hold captive
plunging monsters a dozen times the size of the box. If they could net
it!
He had seen the exploits of the mermen hunters, knew their skill with
net and spear. But to scoop a flying thing out of the air was a new
problem.
"Not so!" the thought cut across his. "They have used such as this to
hunt us before, long ago. We had believed they were all lost. It must
be caught and broken, or it will hunt and kill and hunt again, for it
does not tire nor can it be beaten from any trail it is set upon.
Now--"
"I will do that, for you have the knowledge--" the scout cut in
quickly. After his other meeting with the hound he had no liking for
the task he had taken on, but there must be bait to draw the box
within striking distance.
"Stand upright and move toward those rocks." The mermen changed
position, the net, now with stones in certain loops to weigh it,
caught in their three-fingered hands.
Dalgard moved, fighting against hunching his shoulders, against
hurrying the pace. He saw the shadow of the flitting death, and flung
himself down beside the boulder the mermen had pointed out. Then he
rolled over, half surprised not to be struck.
The hound was still in the air but over it now was draped the net, the
rocks in its fringes weighing it down in spite of its jerky attempts
to rise. In its struggles to be free, it might almost have led the
watcher to believe that it had intelligence of a sort. Now the mermen
were coming out of the stream, picking up rocks as they advanced. And
a hail of stones flew through the air, while others of the sea people
sprang to catch the dangling ends of the net and drag the captive to
earth.
In the end they smashed it completely, burying the remains under a
pile of rocks. Then, retrieving their net, they once more fastened Raf
into it and turned downstream, as intent as ever upon reaching the
sea. Dalgard wondered whether Those Others would ever discover what
had become of their hound. Or had it in some way communicated with its
masters, so that now they were aware that it had been destroyed. But
he was sure they had nothing more to fear, that the way to the sea was
open.
In mid-morning of the second day they came out upon shelving sand and
saw before them the waves which promised safety and escape to the
mermen. Dalgard sat down in the blue-gray sand beside Raf. The sea
people had assured him that the stranger was making a good recovery,
that within a matter of hours he could be freed from his cocoon of
healing.
Dalgard squinted at the sun sparkling on the waves. Where now? To the
north where the space ship waited? If what he read in Raf's mind was
true the other wanted to leave Astra, to voyage back to that other
world which was only a legend to Dalgard, and a black, unhappy legend
at that. If the Elders were here, had a chance to contact these men
from Terra--Dalgard's eyes narrowed, would they choose to? Another
chain of thought had been slowly developing in his mind during these
past hours when he had been so closely companioned with the stranger.
And almost he had come to a decision which would have seemed very odd
even days before.
No, there was no way of suddenly bringing the Elders here, of
transferring his burden of decision to them. Dalgard cupped his chin
in his hand and tried to imagine what it would be like to shut oneself
up in a small metal-walled spacer and set out blindly to leave one
world for another. His ancestors had done that, and they had traveled
in cold sleep, ignorant of whether they would ever reach their goal.
They had been very brave, or very desperate, men.
But--Dalgard measured sand, sun, and sky, watching the mermen sporting
in the waves--but for him Astra was enough. He wanted nothing but this
land, this world. There was nothing which drew him back. He would try
to locate the spacer for the sake of the stranger; Astra owed Raf all
they could manage to give him. But the ship was as alien to Homeport
as it now existed as the city's globe might have been.
18