"We could attack him, before he suspects. He does not know that we
know. A little surprise might turn the trick."
The pain of his wounds made him dizzy, but it seemed to Travis that
Nuala opened her eyes in surprise. She gloomed at him long moments,
a white-fingered hand toying with the golden hemp of her girdle. She
murmured softly, "Surprise? Yes, a sudden attack might work. If we
could get past the barbarians who guard him, there is something we
might do."
Her face grew blurred in his eyes. He saw her as through a mist. He was
falling away from her, dropping. She cried out in alarm, ran toward
him. Her soft hands caught him, but could not hold his big body. He hit
the floor and lay still.
* * * * *
There was perfume in his nostrils, and a faint murmur of sound. Travis
opened his eyes, lay staring up at the white ceiling of the crystal
crypt. He turned his neck, saw Nuala with oddly-shaped jars set before
her on a long, flat tabletop.
She was murmuring, "If only I were sure of the cell formation, it would
be easy. Not like ours, yet different from that of the _arklings_.
This ... yes, this might be the right one."
She came toward him a blue jar grooved and opaque in her hand. Smiling
at him, she unscrewed the top and dipped her fingers inside. She
brought out a reddish jelly that she smoothed gently into the bite in
his thigh, then into the torn flesh of his arm. There was faint pain, a
tingle of nausea.
"It will pass," said Nuala. "The red jelly is _celluvalin_. It is--you
might call it plastic flesh. It has the cell formation of blood and
sinew, and will knit and unite with the torn sections of your body."
Travis lay still. The pain was going swiftly. Tentatively he flexed his
leg. It moved easily. He grinned, "You could make a fortune with that
on Earth or Mars. What the Fleet wouldn't give for plastic flesh. Whew!"
Nuala sighed and replaced the jars. "If we defeat Rudra, I will return
to the calyx. There is no place in the world for me."
Travis saw the blue eyes and the tiredness, the wisdom and knowledge
behind them, and bit at his lip. She was right. Earth and Mars,
even Cyngi and Lalande-80 would be boring to her. She knew too much
to be happy with anyone less intelligent than she. And that meant
everyone--except the Werwile.
Travis swung his long legs in their torn spaceslacks off the table. He
ran his hands over the broad leathern belt that held his _stil_-gun and
holster, over the leather-and-cloth jerkin with the ripped sleeves.
"Guess I'm ready to go. I feel good again. But I'd like to stay that
way. Do you have another of those pencil-things?"
He pointed at her girdle. She drew out the weapon and smiled, "You mean
the displacer. It forces the electrons of an object out of their orbit.
Turns them into other orbits, and makes them dust."
She went to a drawer, drew out three of the pencil-guns, and handed
them to him. "You will be safe with these."
Nuala went to the pink barrier and beckoned to him. "Hurry. The sooner
we surprise Rudra, the better."
The _arklings_ left them strictly alone. They went up through the
tunnels, past the carven walls to the ruins of the Nekkalad temples.
Sprawled across acres of the barren, pitted surface of the planet, the
white towers and jagged walls of the once-massive buildings were like
huge play-things scattered by a child-giant in petulant anger.
Nuala breathed, "Before Rudra came and smashed them, they were the
loveliest things in all the universe."
The silvered hull of Travis's spacer lay a hundred yards from the
crumbled wall, on a bed of powdered black rock. Nuala walked around
it, frowning. She shook her head, her long yellow hair fluttering about
her shoulders.
"It will never make the trip. There are things to be done to it."
She looked at him, troubled. She asked, "Do you know what a Calakin
curvature-annihilator is? Or a Wilwal warping-beam?"
Travis shook his head.
Nuala said, "I will have to make them, then. You do have a workshop,
I know. I read your thoughts as you came toward Nekkalad. Even before
that, in Mars Port with Martin Kent."
She went up the metal ladder into the ship. She walked with calm
assurance toward the repair room. Travis came after her, wondering, a
little rattled. It was odd to see a woman so familiar with his life,
with his own inner thoughts. He thought of Jonquilon, the red-headed
dancer at Mars Port. Cheeks red, he settled himself on a bench, and
watched her.
* * * * *
Nuala was murmuring, "We'll need a speed-up job on your rockets to
get them through the Break. And a super-blaster to add to your own
space-warper. Hmm ... wires all right. Sheet metal not too strong, but
it'll do...."
Her voice droned on. Travis found himself lost in contemplation of her.
She looked like any girl you might see in the Chez Saturn or Planetary
Park. She might be fussing over a jalanadon steak instead of a
space-warper. If it weren't for her eyes ... so blue ... but so filled
with that frightening knowledge, with wisdom, she'd make a guy a swell
wife. He wondered how she kissed.
"Now you must help me," she said, turning to him. She saw his abrupt
change of expression and brooded at him. She shook her head suddenly
and held out a small engine rigged with wheels and wires, with
armatures and generator. "Attach it to the drive shaft, ahead of the
combustion chambers."
She showed him how, and explained its working. Travis didn't get the
whole thing, but he understood enough to know that even the Chalmers
rockets would be improved with this contraption. It smoothed the
blastings of the jets, built them up on their own power. The ship
would be like a bullet that, once shot from the gun, would receive
another firing every ten feet. It was speed added to speed.
Nuala smiled at his blank look, "Don't bother about whys and wherefors.
Just let me handle things."
* * * * *
Travis grumbled under his breath, cramped under the jets and installing
the super-blaster. It fretted his male pride to feel that a woman--even
such a woman as Nuala--knew more about the workings of his own
space-ship than he knew himself.
He hit a Litson wrench against a fitting in anger. "All this talk of
Rudra. The eternal werwile! Blah! How do I know there _is_ any such
person?"
The thought stopped him. He lay there in the cramped space between
jet-sheathing and baffles and grinned at his own stupidity. "How do I
know she's the one I came out here to find, even? I never saw her in
the calyx!" Deep in the heart of him, he knew that Nuala was--Nuala.
Her eyes told him that. He muttered, "Just the same, I don't have any
proof about this werwile!"
He crawled out of the rocket-room and stood up in the narrow corridor,
wiping sweat from his eyes. Under his feet the floor quivered as
the rockets thundered into life. Travis put a calloused hand on a
wall-rail. The rockets blasted faster, turning the corridor into a
maelstrom of sound.
The ship was lifting, leaving the blackened planet and the ruined
temples far below it. There was a sudden weightlessness to his body
that told him they were out in space, now, slipping along with
vertiginous speed.
He clanked the lock on the rocket-chamber door and went to find Nuala.
She was bent over the control panel, moving her white fingers across
the dials. She did not look up when he came to a stop beside her. She
merely said, "I'll have to take this all apart. Your wiring system is
only 87 per cent efficient."
"That's pretty good," Travis rasped, "On the first trampers that went
to the moon, 35 per cent was hot stuff."
Nuala sniffed and reached for a kit of tools. Travis put out a hand and
closed it on her wrist. She looked up at him from under long yellow
eyelashes.
"How do I know there _is_ a Rudra?" he said harshly. "How do I know you
aren't just using me for ... for...."
"For what?" she asked serenely, not moving to draw her wrist away.
"Where in all your worlds would I want to go? I know everything there
is to know about them--and you."
"Even--Jonquilon?"
She let amusement reach up through the blue of her eyes. She mocked him
gravely, "I know about that weekend you spent with her, when you let
the museum get scooped on the canal-men bones on Mars."