Her laughter was like silver droplets. She mocked, "What do you know
about women? Have you ever seen the water-girls on Tasselas, or the
bubble-women that float in the Magellanic cluster? I could show you
ways of--"
She broke off and shook herself. She said dryly, "I'm letting my
emotions run away with me. I can't do that with the werwile. And,
speaking of him--you ask proof, do you?"
Nuala shrugged. "I really can't prove him to you except by showing him.
Trust me for three--four days. Then you will have your proof." The
fear was back in her eyes as she whispered, "You will have it then. By
Grock, you will have it!"
* * * * *
They hit the Break a thousand light-years from Van Maanen's star.
Travis could see it through the thick, curved window: an oval of
darkness somehow shades deeper than the black of space. The pointed
prow of the spacer steadied, then sped on. The slit grew larger.
"Pray Grock that Rudra is amusing himself with some new form of life,"
Nuala whispered, white hand gripping the lever of the speed control.
"If he suspects we're entering his little world, he'll scatter our
remains across the cluster."
Travis prowled restlessly around the small room. He felt useless
beside Nuala. He glanced at the dials and levers she had improved, at
the racked disintegrators that the girl, with a hellish cunning, had
out-moded by making them into larger replicas of the pencil-guns. His
hard palms slid down his leather jacket, restless, eager to come to
grips with something.
The Break was on them, and they were in it. Darkness shrouded the ship,
but the rockets thundered through the insulation-sheets. Travis upped
the lights with a flip of his hand. Even at full brilliance, he saw
Nuala through a pale haze.
"The Break is a barrier that Rudra threw up around his worlds after he
smashed Flormaseron. He has three planets all to himself. One is his
laboratory, one his armory, one his palace. We'd have no chance at all
by attacking the first two. Only on his palace-planet--where he retires
to his kinds of pleasure--can we surprise him."
The darkness went away and they were back in space again. Far ahead of
them a star glittered with blue shimmerings. Faint and distant from the
star, tiny gray balls in space, were three planets.
Nuala touched a stud on the steel wall. "A force-sheath," she smiled.
"We'd never get close enough to the planet to land if we didn't have
it." A whiteness swept up before the windows, hiding the star and the
three planets. Nuala moved forward, past Travis. With a touch of her
finger, she slipped on the automatic pilot.
"There. Now we can do nothing else but--wait."
They did not wait long. The humming alarm of the warning buzzer drove
Nuala to the controls. With speeding hands, she upped the force sheath
stud, depressed the landing lever. Travis was at her side, staring down
at rolling grasslands, at the distant peak of a snow-topped mountain.
He muttered, "It looks like Earth!"
The space-ship rode on its belly across the grass. Travis went to the
curved door and flung it open. Sweet cool air drove inside the room on
the wings of a breeze.
Something clanged against the metal doorlock. Hooves drummed on the
grass. Another pellet dented the hull of the ship, blew into a thousand
splinters. Travis got his face out of the way just in time. His hand
dropped to his holster, came up with the ringed _stil_-gun that had
been changed over by Nuala. Horsemen were approaching, fast.
He slammed a finger down on the trigger. Green flame blasted from the
muzzle, swept like a cloud across the grasses.
The horsemen came up the side of a hill, heading for the ship.
Before the green light reached them, Travis had a quick look at the
heavyset, white-skinned men who kneed their mounts, long tubes at their
shoulders. They looked like barbarians, but they held those queer tubes
in their hands.