A hard excitement began to stir in Trevor, too big to be hidden in that
secret corner of his mind. He didn't try. He let it loose, and Shannach
murmured.
"You are pleased. The ship will fly, and you are thinking that when you
reach that other valley and are among your own people again, you will
find means to destroy me. Perhaps, but we shall see."
In the smoky torchlight, looking down from a sagging catwalk above
the firing chambers and the rusty sealed-in tubes, Trevor smiled. A
lie could be thought as well as spoken. And Shannach, in a manner of
speaking, was only human.
"I'll need help. All the help there is."
"You'll have it."
"It'll take time. Don't hurry me and don't distract me. Remember, I
want to get over the mountains as bad as you do."
Shannach laughed.
Trevor got more torches and went to work in the generator room. He felt
that Shannach had withdrawn from him, occupied now with rounding up
the Korins and the slaves. But he did not relax his caution. The open
areas of his mind were filled with thoughts of vengeance to come when
he reached that other valley.
Gradually the exigencies of wrestling with antiquated and partly ruined
machinery drove everything else away. That day passed, and a night, a
half another day before all the leads were hooked the way he wanted
them, before one creaky generator was operating on one-quarter normal
output, and the best of the spare batteries were charging.
He emerged from the torchlit obscurity into the bridge, blinking
mole-like in the light, and found Galt sitting there.
"He trusts you," the Korin said, "but not too far."
Trevor scowled at him. Exhaustion, excitement, and a feeling of fate
had combined to put him into an unreal state where his mind operated
more or less independently. A hard protective shell had formed around
that last little inner fortress so that it was hidden even from
himself, and he had come almost to believe that he was going to fly
this ship to another valley and battle Shannach there. So he was not
surprised to hear Shannach say softly in his mind,
"You might try to go away alone. I wouldn't want that, Trevor."
Trevor grunted. "I thought you controlled me so well I couldn't spit if
you forbade it."
"I am dealing with much here that I don't comprehend. We were never a
mechanical people. Therefore some of your thoughts, while I read them
clearly, have no real meaning for me. I can handle you, Trevor, but
I'm taking no chances with the ship."
"Don't worry," Trevor told him. "I can't possibly take the ship up
before the hull's repaired. It would fall apart on me." That was true,
and he spoke it honestly.
"Nevertheless," said Shannach, "Galt will be there, as my hands and
feet, an extra guard over that object which you call a control-bank,
and which your mind tells me is the key to the ship. You are forbidden
to touch it until it is time to go."
Trevor heard Shannach's silent laughter.
"Treachery is implicit in your mind, Trevor. But I'll have time.
Impulses come swiftly and cannot be read beforehand. But there is an
interval between the impulse and the realization of it. Only a fraction
of a second, perhaps, but I'll have time to stop you."
Trevor did not argue. He was shaking a little with the effort of not
giving up his last pitiful individuality, of fixing his thoughts firmly
on the next step toward what Shannach wanted and looking neither to
the right nor to the left of it. He ran a grimy hand over his face,
shrinking from the touch of the alien disfigurement in his forehead,
and said sullenly,
"The holds have to be cleared. The ship won't lift that weight any
more, and we need the metal for repairs." He thought again strongly of
weapons. "Send the slaves."
"No," said Shannach firmly. "The Korins will do that. We won't put any
potential weapons in the hands of the slaves."
Trevor allowed a wave of disappointment to cross his mind, and then he
shrugged. "All right. But get them at it."
He went and stood by the wide ports looking out over the plain toward
the city. The slaves were gathered at a safe distance from the ship,
waiting like a herd of cattle until they should be needed. Some mounted
Korins guarded them while the hawks wheeled overhead.
Coming toward the ship, moving with a resentful slowness, was a little
army of Korins. Trevor could sense the group thought quite clearly. In
all their lives they had never soiled their hands with labor, and they
were angry that they had now to do the work of slaves.
Digging his nails into his palms, Trevor went aft to show them what to
do. He couldn't keep it hidden much longer, this thing that he had so
painfully concealed under layers of half-truths and deceptions. It had
to come out soon, and Shannach would know.
In the smoky glare of many torches the Korins began to struggle with
the rusting masses of machinery in the after holds.
"Send more down here," Trevor said to Shannach. "These things are
heavy."
"They're all there now except those that guard the slaves. They cannot
leave."
"All right," said Trevor. "Make them work."
He went back up along the canting decks, along the tilted passages,
moving slowly at first, then swifter, swifter, his bare feet scraping
on the flakes of rust, his face, with the third uncanny eye, gone white
and strangely set. His mind was throwing off muddy streams of thought,
confused and meaningless, desperate camouflage to hide until the last
second what was underneath.
"Trevor!"
That was Shannach, alert, alarmed.
It was coming now, the purpose, out into the light. It had to come, it
could not be hidden any longer. It burst up from its secret place, one
strong red flare against the darkness, and Shannach saw it, and sent
the full cold power of his mind to drown it out.
Trevor came into the bridge room, running.
* * * * *
The first black wave of power hit him, crushed him. The bridge room
lengthened out into some weird dimension of delirium, with Galt waiting
at the far end. Behind Galt the one small, little key that needed to be
touched just once.
The towering might of Shannach beat him back, forbidding him to think,
to move, to be. But down in that beleaguered part of Trevor's mind the
walls still held, with the bright brand of determination burning in
them.
This was the moment, the time to fight. And he dug up that armament of
fury he had buried there. He let it free, shouting at the alien force,
"I beat you once! I beat you!"
The deck swam under his feet. The peeling bulkheads wavered past like
veils of mist. He didn't know whether he was moving or not, but he
kept on while the enormous weight bore down on his quivering brain, a
mountain tilting, falling, seeking to smother out the fury that was all
he had to fight with.
Fury for himself, defiled and outraged. Fury for Jen, with the red
scars on her shoulders. Fury for Hugh lying dead under an obscene
killer, fury for all the generations of decent people who had lived and
died in slavery so that Shannach's time of waiting might be lightened.
He saw Galt's face, curiously huge, close to his own. It was stricken
and amazed. Trevor's bared teeth glistened.
"I beat him once," he said to the Korin.
Galt's hands were raised. There was a knife in his girdle, but he had
been bidden not to use it, not to kill. Only Trevor could make the ship
to fly. Galt reached out and took him but there was an unsureness in
his grip, and his mind was crying out to Shannach, "You could not make
him stop! You could not!"
Trevor, who was partly merged with Shannach now, heard that cry and
laughed. Something in him had burst wide open at Galt's physical touch.
He had no control now, no sane thought left, but only a wild intense
desire to do two things, one of which was to destroy this monster that
had hold of him.
"Kill him," said Shannach suddenly. "He's mad, and no one can control
an insane human."
Galt did his best to obey. But Trevor's hands were already around the
Korin's throat, the fingers sinking deep into the flesh. There was a
sharp snapping of bone.
He dropped the body. He could see nothing now except one tiny point of
light in a reeling darkness. That single point of light had a red key
in the center of it. Trevor reached out and pushed it down. That was
the other thing.
For a short second nothing happened. Trevor sagged down across Galt's
body. Shannach was somewhere else, crying warnings that came too late.
Trevor had time to draw one harsh triumphant breath and brace himself.
The ship leaped under him. There was a dull roar, and then another, as
the last fuel bunkers let go. The whole bridge room rolled and came to
rest with a jarring shock that split the ports wide open, and the world
was full of the shriek and crash of metal being torn and twisted and
rent apart. Then it quieted. The ground stopped shaking and the deck
settled under Trevor. There was silence.
Trevor crawled up the new slope of the bridge room floor, to the
shattered lock and through it, into the pitiless sunlight. He could see
now exactly what he had done. And it was good. It had worked. That last
small measure of fuel had been enough.
The whole after part of the hulk was gone, and with it had gone all but
a few of Shannach's Korins, trapped in the lower holds.
And then, in pure surprise, Shannach spoke inside Trevor's mind. "I
grow old indeed! I misjudged the toughness and the secrecy of a fresh,
strong mind. I was too used to my obedient Korins."
"Do you see what's happening to the last of them?" Trevor asked
savagely. "Can you see?"
The last of the Korins who had been outside with the slaves seemed to
have been stunned and bewildered by the collapse of their world. And
with the spontaneity of a whirlwind, the slaves had risen against this
last remnant of their hated masters. They had waited for a long, long
time, and now the Korins and the hawks were being done to death.
"Can you see it, Shannach?"
"I can see, Trevor. And--they're coming now for you!"
They were. They were coming, blood-mad against all who wore the
sun-stone, and Jen was in the forefront of them, and Saul, whose hands
were red.
Trevor knew that he had less than a half-minute to speak for his life.
And he was aware that Shannach, still withdrawn, watched now with an
edged amusement.
Trevor said harshly to Saul and all of them, "So I give you your
freedom, and you want to kill me for it?"