"It is something completely beyond my understanding," the Ihelian was
saying. The two men stood, each flanked by two guards, at the
threshold of a great ramp which led from the main air lock of the
Thrayxite ship to the reddish surface of the spaceport upon which it
had landed but minutes before. Mason felt a chill of awed amazement,
not because of the unexpected beauty of the verdant hills that rolled
in a delicate blend of kaleidoscopic pastels on every side of the
'port and as far as the eye could see, nor was it even from the sight
of the exquisite towers that rose as though from the heart of some
fabled fairyland scant miles to the south.
"They're all--all _women_!" Mason breathed. "Not a single man!" And he
looked quickly to Kriijorl. "You mean you did not know this?"
"Know? By the teeth of Jhavuul, we never so much as suspected,
Lieutenant! We have not looked upon a Thrayxite face for five thousand
years."
The guards spoke to them tersely in the common tongue of Ihelos and
Thrayx, although peculiarly accented to Ihelian ears, and Kriijorl
gestured with a slight movement of his head to Mason. At a quick pace
they started down the ramp.
"We're sunk, kid," Mason said. And he saw the heaviness in the great
Viking's face. "We'll never make it out of here in a million years.
Even if we made a break for it; even if we had our hands free, where
could we hide? Couldn't make a move. Two men among an entire female
populace--"
He let the sentence trail off as he realized that Kriijorl wasn't
hearing him. And as their brief view of Thrayx was terminated by their
entrance into a smaller shuttle-ship, he saw the hint of a smile
flicker at the corners of the Ihelian's lips.
Their captors strapped them into hammocks, and when they had gone to
assist others in herding a portion of the Earthwomen aboard the same
craft, Kriijorl finally spoke.
"I think for the moment their probes may be off us," he said quickly.
"I was relieved of my own during my unconsciousness, so we're no
longer screened. And the fact that we speak in your tongue does us
little good. But hear me. If we are being taken where I hope we are,
then they are playing into our hands almost as well as we could have
asked. There will be a limited freedom there, and a chance, if we are
clever enough, to get to a mentacom installation. A planetary unit of
unlimited range."
"But among women?" Mason asked, and his throat was dry.
"That is the point," Kriijorl replied tersely. "We shall be among
males almost exclusively, save for the Earthwomen and those Thrayxites
who periodically will be sent to breed."
"You mean the planetoid that you talked of before...? But I--"
"Think a moment! Thrayxite is a matriarchy, something we of Ihelos
never suspected. And therefore we erred further--what we believed to
be a labor planetoid is not, of course!"
"Breeders!"
"Exactly. And if we can make it to one of their mentacoms, perhaps our
problem will be solved. Except that--" His voice hesitated, and Mason
saw doubt in the sudden frown. "I--I have no right to sacrifice your
life nor those of your women. If we were to get to a mentacom it would
be to contact my people, to inform them of the planetoid's true
nature, so that we may even the score for what was done to our own
breeders, and perhaps even form a plan to take prisoners to replace
them. But such a message would be intercepted, of course."
"Hell, we could dodge 'em long enough--"
"Perhaps we could, Lieutenant. But the ships I summon will be fighting
their way through a trebled Thrayxite guard--and once within range of
our enemy's breeder satellite, they will have little time to seek us
out and effect our rescue. Destruction will have to be immediate. Now
do you understand?"
Mason wet his lips. He understood. Death for the breeders. For the
Earthwomen. And for themselves.
"Nuts!" he clipped out. "That means that as far as you're going to be
concerned, I'm just another Ihelian private first class for awhile,
not a space-neurotic Earthman! And our girls ... well, I think--I
think they'd prefer anything to the living death in store for
them--the rotting away of their lives in some infested alien jungle.
Anyway, somebody's got to be judge. So let's get this damned thing
doped out!"
The Ihelian began a reply, but the words were stopped in his throat by
the sudden pressure of acceleration as powerful engines fumbled
suddenly to throbbing life and lifted the Thrayxite craft quickly
toward the eye of a great white sun.
* * * * *
For the second time in her life, Judith Kent watched the warp
configurations of the Large Magellanic Cloud from the far side of the
Rim; somehow it frightened her, as though some awful deadliness must
lie within it.
Helplessly, she carried out Cain's orders, and as hopelessly, wondered
of the fate of Lance and Kriijorl. Captives, with the Earthwomen, in
the Thrayxite ship with which Cain was so rapidly closing? Or lying
dead somewhere, as she more than half believed, in the chill wilds of
northern Canada? The odds had been so great. She knew that to hope
without reason was folly, and yet not to hope was no longer to care.
She twisted away quickly from Cain's muscular arm.
"What's eating you, duchess? Your conscience giving you trouble, or
are you just plain scared?" When she didn't reply, he laughed shortly,
and gestured toward the scanner. In it, the slender Thrayxite craft
was growing steadily larger as Cain's swift pursuit gradually folded
the gap of curved Space between them. "In a couple of minutes, we'll
be ready to talk turkey, sweetheart. They ought to be aware of us
right this minute. I think they'll listen to what we have to offer."
"To what _you_ have to offer!"
He laughed again. "It's more than Mason ever had! You know, sometimes
I think you were torching for that space-happy has-been!"
She felt the burn of rising color in her cheeks and turned quickly
away from him.
"You don't get it yet, do you duchess?" his heavy voice was saying
behind her. "It's never occurred to you that there are other places to
be beside with your own flock; that there are other men among whom to
seek your fortune if the ones you were born among didn't offer the
opportunities you expected. What are we among the stars at all for if
it's not to find our destinies anywhere we think they might lie?
What's this Big Freedom for, if not to use to some kind of advantage?
And me, I'm sick of being a Warrant under worn out space-neurotics
like Mason! And I don't want to end up being one, either!"
Judith held her lips tight against the thing that surged hotly inside
her. There would have to be a way to stop this man. And if there
weren't--How the pampered friends whom she'd left so proudly to choose
this calling would laugh at her, would say "_that was what the
hot-headed little rebel deserved ... she had it coming if she couldn't
act like a lady_." And they _were_ wrong!
But this man was hideously twisting all the things she had thought
were good and right, worth hoping and striving for. All the priceless
things that had stood for more than the soft, idle and pointlessly
shallow existence to which she'd been born.
"But I guess you wouldn't get it," Cain was saying. "Born with a
silver shovel in your mouth, you don't have to worry about sweating
out your pile! Quit any time and there it all is after your little
adventure, still waiting for you to come home to! Maybe they'll even
want you to write a book! But me--my father wasn't a lucky
g-prospector."
A proximity alarm clanged, and Cain quickly turned his attention to
the control banks. He jacked out the auto control and took over
manually. And within seconds the pursuit was hovering over the great
whale-like back of the Thrayxite craft, and then was drawn slowly to
it as its powerful magnetics reached out, ensnared it. Then Cain cut
the pursuit's drive, and they both waited.
The airlock opened, and the two women stepped through. There were
weapons in their hands.
"I want to see your commander," Cain barked.
"I am the commander of this complement," the taller of the two said in
an almost unaccented English. "You will consider yourselves my
captives. Daleb...."
"What? Not all _women_." There was a curious look on Cain's face;
thoughts were racing behind the thin blades of his eyes.
"You are prisoners of the matriarchy of Thrayx," the officer called
Daleb said. "If you do not resist, you shall be unharmed."
"All right, come off that alien-meets-alien stuff," Cain said as
though the two briefly-uniformed women before him held toys rather
than weapons in their hands. "I didn't just tag after you at a billion
times the speed of light to get thrown into one of your dungeons! I've
got some information I think you can use. And--" and the curious look
was again on his face, "--there are some--shall we say--services, I
think I can profitably perform for you."
"Profitably, Earthman? Profitable to whom?"
"To both of us. To me--that's why I'm here--and to you."
Judith's face was white. Perhaps this was some clever trick of Cain's.
She could have been wrong.
"Tell me this information you have, Earthman."
"Let's dicker about price, first, Goldylocks!" He stood there,
confident, defiant, great muscles bunched beneath the fabric of his
tunic.
"You, Earthman, are hardly in bargaining position!" Only the woman's
mouth moved; her eyes bored straight into Cain's like fine diamond
drills.
"Chuck me," Cain said with a grin, "and you chuck the best chance
you've ever had to take your Ihelian friends to the cleaners. What
information I have concerning Ihelian plans is one thing." Judith
caught her breath. She knew Cain was lying now. Even Lance had learned
little of the Ihelian strategy, above Kriijorl's attempt to enlist
Earthwomen for Ihelian breeding colonies. It was all, she realized
suddenly, a colossal bluff, from which Cain planned to play his cards
as he went along! And now he had found a wedge of some sort, some new
bargaining point. There was still that curious look on his face, that
careless grin at his lips. "But what service I can render you," he was
continuing, "is quite another! Ladies, how good are your teleprobe
gadgets against an Ihelian screen? A big blank, aren't they? But I
still think you'd give those cute shirts of yours to find out what's
going on inside the thick skulls of our Ihelian friends."
A puzzled look flickered across the Thrayxite commander's face, yet
she remained immobile, and her weapon held steady.
"First of all, bright eyes," Cain said swiftly, "may you be the first
to know that they're all men! _All men_, get it?" There was a soft
gasp from Daleb, and the commander's eyes flickered, widened almost
imperceptibly. "And better yet, I'm a pal of Kriijorl, their commander
who picked us up just inside the Rim that time you followed us into
Earth. So think it over. It ought to be worth a fancy little pile to
you, ladies, since women agents would be kind of conspicuous in an
all-male civilization!"
"You expect us to believe this fantasy? Do you expect us to accept
your proposal on the basis of nothing more than words? And the
technique you describe. It has never been used, never even considered
as a legitimate method of battle!"
Cain laughed easily. "Then maybe you better consider it if you want to
come out on top! And as to the rest of it, if I was part of some
counter-plot against you do you think I'd've gone to the trouble of
bringing along some security?" And Judith felt something freeze inside
her as he threw a careless glance in her direction. "There she
is--Sergeant Judith Kent. Your hostage for this little operation! If I
misbehave, she should make a pretty good bargaining point with Ihelos.
From all I gather, they've got Earth sore enough at them as it is!"
There was an instant's silence, and then the commander said, "You have
not proven your statement that our enemy is a male enemy."
"What do you think they wanted women for on Earth after you blasted
that planetoid of theirs? A quilting party or something? Add it up."
The quiet in the small control bubble was electric. Judith watched the
Thrayxites' faces as they weighed the incredible thing that Cain had
said.
"I haven't got all eternity!" Cain snapped. "You think you can afford
not to believe me?"
"Very well. Our Book has never mentioned this technique of spying, and
therefore there can be no rule against it. As for the rest--that could
be immaterial. You could be of value to us. Outline your plan."
"That's better, girls. Only take it just a little slower. We both know
what we are, but let's haggle for awhile about the price, shall we?"
V
Judith shivered, partly from an uncontrollable terror and partly from
the pre-dawn dampness creeping from the thick jungle surrounding the
small clearing which held one of the breeder planetoid's many secluded
colonies. The camp and the tangled growth which bounded it was her
prison; a place in which there was freedom, yet where none were free.
To walk or to run or to hide--but where? And so it was with the
rest--the hard-muscled, obviously drug-clouded males who had never
known any other world than this; who never questioned from whence came
the periodic groups of Thrayxite women for them to fertilize; who only
glared dully at her, dimly understanding that she was to be, although
captive here, left to herself and unmolested. Yet despite her status
as hostage and Earthwoman, she was afraid.
The brute of a camp leader, Bruhlla.... Not drugged like the rest.
There was more to his sidelong glances than curiosity and vague
resentment. Too often, she could sense his eyes upon her. And she
wondered at the increasing frequency of his visits to the camp's well
guarded mentacom installation.
She had lost count of night and days under the white sun of Thrayx and
its ringed host. There had been two, perhaps, or three. Three days in
which Roger Cain had been doing what? Was he with Kriijorl and Lance
posing as their friend, their fellow captive, listening to their plans
against their Thrayxite captors ... remembering? Or would they be
freed, if indeed they still lived, in order that Cain could, with
them, learn even more of Ihelian stratagems on a far greater scale?
And the Earth girls--she had heard the cries of some, the desperate
curses of others.
Bruhlla, entitled to use of the mentacom for daily contact reports
with Thrayx as he was, was the only other alien being on the planetoid
who could converse with her. He had lost little time in probing her to
learn her tongue. And he had already hinted at the fate of the women
from her planet. In other camps on the planetoid, held in small
isolated groups, unmolested, Bruhlla had said. But prisoners, as was
she.
Somehow, the Ihelians would have to know.
For there was no Earth to which to turn now.
The shiver again shook her slender body, and her tattered uniform did
little to shield her from the damp cold.
"Still one apart from the rest of us, are you?" The growl of Bruhlla's
voice behind her startled her, and she turned quickly to face the
loose grimace of derision on his thick lips.
"I am to be left to myself," she said with what assurance she could
muster. "That is your order."
"I know my order, little one! No need to tell Bruhlla his orders! But
perhaps you will grow colder; perhaps you will grow hungry."
"You couldn't--"
"I have no order about feeding you, little one!"
Somehow she found the strength to voice her defiance. For she could
still think. And thought, Lance had once told her, was the ultimate
strength....
"You lie! There was such an order! But if you wish to bring the wrath
of your masters down upon your ugly head." She watched his unkempt
face, fanned the sudden puzzlement she saw growing in his red,
sadistic eyes. If his intelligence were blurred enough by the
self-made drug of his lust. "I myself heard such an order; and if you
can prove me mistaken you may do with me what you will!" _God, would
he stop to realize that she understood not a word of the Thrayxite
tongue?_
"Quickly proven, my little one! Quickly enough proven! And then if
what you say is untrue...." He left the sentence mercifully
unfinished, and turned toward the sturdily-built cubicle that housed
the colony's mentacom.
"Wait! I'll only believe your proof if I can hear it for myself!"
"Come along then and you shall hear it!" The thick lips slackened into
a lascivious grin that sickened her, but she hastened to follow him.
And he did not see her as she scooped the jagged stone from the
ground, thrust it into a tattered tool-pocket of her uniform.
Past the quiescent, sweat reeking bodies of the bull-muscled guards,
into the dimly lit chamber beyond, Bruhlla half walking, half
shambling before her.
She watched him as he switched the device into life; waited until its
dull orange glow assured that it was ready for use. So much like the
communications room of an ordinary ship of Earth, she thought. So like
the familiar things of her life, yet so alien.
He had barely slipped the mentacom's headpiece on his skull and
adjusted a simply calibrated control dial when she struck him at the
base of his thick neck with the stone, all the force of her supple
young body behind it.
Blood spurted as its ragged edges tore through flesh, bone and nerves,
and slowly, Bruhlla crumpled from the rude chair that held his dying
bulk.
Thought images as well as words, Kriijorl had explained during their
flight so long ago in the helio. Language would be no barrier. Over
the head, like this ... and this switch--
She twirled the large dial from its setting, watched a slender thread
of light within a transparent sphere above it fluctuate in breadth as
the dial twisted. And when it was at its widest, she gambled that it
indicated the broadest transmitting beam of which the mentacom was
capable.
And then she marshalled her thoughts, carefully chose the simplest
words.
_Warning, Ihelos! There is an Earthman among you at work as a spy for
Thrayx! I am a captive._
Over and over, the same words, the same thought images which they
formed; of Cain, of this hell-planetoid itself.
The orange glow pulsated as though itself alive with the desperation
of her signal. And she heard the guard barely in time.
A howl of rage bellowed from him as she turned, twisted frantically
just outside his grasp, darted headlong through the door.
And she was quicker than those outside; she was beyond them, running,
the breath sobbing in her throat.
Away from the blood-soaked thing she'd left crumpled in death behind
her, and toward the jungle's edge. Toward some new horror, perhaps,
and toward a freedom that would be short-lived at best. For she had
killed Bruhlla, and she knew they would not stop now until she had
been run to earth.
* * * * *
The three men watched as the six ships landed in the jungle clearing;
emptied of the selected Thrayxite women who would in little more than
a day's time re-enter them, the breeders' seed within their bodies,
for the journey back to the mother planet.
It had been the same the day before, and the day before that, and in
the distance, they had watched similar craft descend toward other of
the many colonies with which the lush planetoid was dotted.
"Nuts!" Cain said. He turned to Mason. "What the hell else is there to
do? Sit here and rot? They won't kill us. They'll just let Nature take
its course--"
"There's more to be done than simply make a run for it to one of their
ships," Mason snapped. "The mentacoms on them, Kriijorl's said a dozen
times, haven't the necessary range."
"So what's your plan? Or don't I get to hear any of the details?"
Mason studied the big man's face. Captured in his attempt to rescue
the Earthwomen, he had said. His explanation had been that simple.
New-UN hadn't believed Judith, but she had convinced him, and so he'd
tried on his own responsibility, and simply hadn't made it. And then
they'd brought him here, scarcely hours after Mason and Kriijorl had
themselves been delivered to the teeming colony.
Logical enough, yes. Cain was the kind who would try such a crazy
stunt, alone, with such supreme overconfidence in his own muscle
power. Yet--
"We must not be impatient," Kriijorl interrupted his thought. He stood
up, his blond head nearly touching the top of the plastifabric tent.
"We must be certain and wait for the best time, Mister Cain. For if we
fail in our first attempt, there will not be a second. And it has only
been three days. As yet, we have been left quite to ourselves; even my
life has not been threatened."
Mason noticed the puzzled frown that was across the Ihelian's
forehead. "Do you think--"
"I cannot even guess the reason for that," Kriijorl murmured, as
though more to himself than in answer to Mason's question. "By all the
rules of our conflict, I should be stretched naked for the jungle
beasts by now."
"Forget it!" Cain broke in quickly. "You're alive now, and if we can
have a little action around here maybe you'll stay that way. We've
watched long enough. They don't guard those ships at all. These
breeders they keep drugged to the eyes, so why should they? I say we
just grab one and blast off! Unless somebody's got a better plan, and
I still haven't heard one--"
"Awfully anxious, aren't you, Mister Cain?" Mason asked.
"I'm not afraid of 'em if that's what you mean!"
Lance turned to Kriijorl. "Maybe he's right. We've watched for three
days. What do you think?"
The Ihelian looked out across the colony of low, square-shaped
enclosures and to its far side where the twisted jungle began; to the
spot where the mentacom was housed in a squat, guarded dome of
crudely-shaped steel. Then he turned back to the Earthman, and Mason
saw the uncertainty in his eyes.
"We have gained far less than I had hoped by watching," he said
slowly. "We have learned the number of their guards, and the period of
their change, but perhaps that is all we shall learn. If you think
that as soon as there is darkness--"
"About time!" Cain said sourly. "And it'll be straight for the--"
"To the mentacom first," Mason said quietly. "And after that, to the
ships if we can, Mister Cain." He felt strangely calm as his eyes met
Cain's squarely. Somewhere within him, there was something changing.
"Take it from an ex-has-been, big man! That's how it's going to be!"
* * * * *
The camp was dark and silent as the three men left the tent. They
walked as if from boredom, changing direction often as though at
random; yet they moved with a deceiving swiftness, and each step
brought them closer to the crude dome. The sound of their movements
was as a whisper that lost itself with the quiet murmur of the night
wind through the web of the jungle, and when they were close enough,
they halted, to wait; to watch.
There was the soft clink of metal on metal and the mutter of
dead-toned voices as the guard changed. Four hulking shapes walked at
last in a tired shamble from the structure housing the mentacom. Four
others prepared to take their posts.
And there was little to disturb the silence after that.
A muffled grunt, a choked off curse lost in a brief rustle of
undergrowth as though a sudden breeze had momentarily ruffled its
languid calm. And that was all.
Four breeders lay dead outside the dome.
Mason felt the warm stickiness of blood on his face, and the sting of
a deep cut somewhere upon it. He saw that Cain was straightening over
a mangled form; that Kriijorl had overcome odds of two to one. The
breeder at his own feet had died swiftly of a deftly broken neck, a
reddened dirk still clutched in his stiffening fingers.
Then they were inside the dome, and Kriijorl was placing the head-unit
of the mentacom over his matted yellow hair.
Mason watched in the half-light of the pulsing orange glow, listened
to the heaviness of Cain's breathing.
And he saw Kriijorl's face stiffen suddenly. With a swift movement the
Ihelian had handed him the head-unit, and with slippery fingers he
fumbled the device into place over his own head.
Before he could think he had given Cain all the warning that he had
needed.
"My God, it's Judith! Somehow she's--"
Kriijorl lunged too late. The man whom Judith's mentacom message had
branded as a spy was already through the dome's door, running.
Mason moved more quickly than the Ihelian then. Ahead in the jungle
there was a crashing sound, and Mason tripped suddenly himself as he
ran, fell. Kriijorl leapt past him in the darkness, as though he could
somehow see through it, and then Mason had regained his feet and was
following blindly.
And suddenly he thought of the empty ships behind them, and Cain's
abrupt uselessness to his Thrayxite employers. Then--
But the gamble was too great. Cain might not double back, but instead
plunge headlong further and further into the concealing morass before
him. No, Cain would not double back. Not now. For in Kriijorl he had
met an even match, and now he was afraid!
Fully an hour had passed when, his tunic torn and the exposed flesh
bleeding, Mason caught up with Kriijorl.
"He was nearly within my hands for a moment--" the giant whispered
hoarsely. He breathed with difficulty, and there were long slashes
gleaming redly in the darkness across his great muscles.
Mason stood silently for moments, toying with a thought that nagged
insistently at the edge of his brain. He knew Cain. He knew the man.
Then suddenly his thoughts were interrupted by the muffled sound of a
rocket blast, and within moments there was a vertical trail of fire
above them as a Thrayxite ship hurtled skyward.
"By Jhavuul--"
"No!" Mason exclaimed. "The blast was from in front of us, he didn't
double back! Must be another colony near our own, and he stumbled out
of this overgrown mess and right into it. There was simply an empty
ship--"
"Then the traitor has won!" Kriijorl's face was tilted upward, and in
the faint glow of the planetesimal belt that girdled Thrayx, it seemed
more than ever that of an heroic Viking king of ages gone.
"There's a chance he hasn't!" Mason breathed. He had the thought now,
pinned down, clear in his head. "If there has been no alarm back at
our own camp we may still have the mentacom to ourselves. We'll signal
Ihelos as you planned and then--then there is something else you will
say. Something else that I think will, as the saying goes on Earth,
kill two birds with a single blast."
Mason had lost track of time; perhaps it was as many as two hours
before they had fought their way through the clutching undergrowth
back to the mentacom at the fringe of their own camp. Several times
they had had to stop, for there had been sounds in the jungle other
than those they had made themselves. Animals, Kriijorl had said, who
had got the scent of their blood. But the noises had not been fast and
crashing--more those of stealth, as were those of their own steps. A
single animal, perhaps, with the scent of their blood; or that of the
breeder guard they had slain. And stalking.
The dome was still silent, and the stiff corpses outside it lay
undisturbed in the thick undergrowth. In the clearing the six empty
Thrayxite ships towered in the sleeping quiet, star-shine glinting
faintly from their polished hulls.
Wordlessly, they entered the dome, and it was as they had left it.
Kriijorl again adjusted the headset, and the orange glow pulsed and
waned as Mason watched.
And then at length, "If they are to know, they know now," Kriijorl
said. "And the Thrayxite host as well. What was there you wished to
add, Lieutenant?"
Mason spoke quickly. "Say that you have discovered that the
priceless--and you must say _priceless_--Book of the Saints is in the
Forest of Saarl on Thrayx. Say that we have discovered it to be less
well protected than is generally believed. Then give the location of
the subterranean vault as precisely as you can!"
"But my people are well aware--"
"I realize that, but our friend Cain doesn't!"
The Ihelian's face was still puzzled, but he projected the
thought-message Mason had dictated.
And then in seconds the Ihelian had hastily but thoroughly wrecked the
mentacom, and the two men left its silent dome for the empty ships
that beckoned so tantalizingly a scant quarter-mile distant.
They had run perhaps a dozen steps when the undergrowth behind them
ripped and tore, and Mason spun.
There was a muffled cry, and he had barely time to catch Judith's
bleeding body as she fell in exhaustion into his arms.