A shrill scream woke him with a start of horror. His captors had taken
him from his saddle and propped him against a mound of rocks, along
with the other prisoners. His muscles were numb and dead, so limp it
was almost impossible for him to turn his head. Faintly the whirring
terror whispered in his mind.
Dirrul's eyes focused slowly on the clearing. One of the prisoners had
been carried there, close to the fire. It was Glenna. Two of her
captors held her while the third bent over her head, probing her ear
with a sharp instrument. His arm moved. Glenna screamed and fainted.
For a moment Dirrul saw the side of her face smeared with a spreading
stain of blood. Then nausea swept over him. When he opened his eyes
again the three men were working over another prisoner at the fire.
Vaguely Dirrul knew he had to escape. He forgot the Movement--he
thought of nothing any loftier than his own personal survival. The
idea was elemental, built upon the simplest sort of observation and
hypothesis.
Yet it came slowly and painfully, as if he had just tried to
understand after one reading the Cranmor-Frasher Theory of Diminishing
Corelatives. As he verbalized the conclusion two things happened--the
drug-like languor in his muscles began to disperse and the shrilling
note of terror burst up loud in his mind once more.
Two of the men brought their last victim back from the fire and laid
his body on the stones close to Dirrul. Dirrul feigned sleep when they
stood over him. One of them prodded him with the tip of a dusty
boot--then they both laughed.
They went back to the fire and talked soundlessly to their companions,
holding up the identification disk which had been ripped from Dirrul's
neck hours before. That amused them briefly, until one of the three
snatched the disk and hurled it toward the mouth of the ravine in
violent anger.
The three men pulled thick white skins together near the fire and
crept into them. Dirrul waited until he was sure they slept. It was
the only chance he would have to escape, but when he tried to creep
away his hands collapsed from sheer terror. The crying fear in his
mind was so loud his head seemed to vibrate physically with the
sound.
Thought was impossible. Judgment and decision were impossible. If he
tried to consider even a problem as simple as the safest means of
passing the dying fire--reason failed him. He could weigh nothing
critically--he could not consider probable courses of rational action.
Nonetheless he inched forward. It took all the courage and stamina he
possessed. Gradually a strange and foggy understanding formed in his
brain. The terror seemed to die if he planned nothing, merely
responding without thought to the instinctive urge to escape. Let
instinct do the trick then.
Detached from the control panel of his cerebral cortex his body
mechanism functioned perfectly. It was like a space-ship smoothly
piloted by its automatic navigators. Dirrul gave himself over to his
own built-in stimulus-response relays and the screeching fear
shriveled and died.
Calm and unhurried he walked past the fire and the sleeping men. As
calmly he searched the mouth of the ravine for Sorgel's disk. When he
found it he stuffed it into the pocket of his tunic and strode
confidently along the trail that led down from the hills.
It was dawn. In the pink morning light he could see the Vininese city
at his feet, neat, clean, well-blocked streets and towering buildings
of black stone. On the outskirts were the circular space-fields and
the long low flat-roofed interplanetary freight depots. Farther away,
dotting the countryside at regular intervals, were curious
block-shaped windowless structures surrounded by double walls.
Dirrul had never seen anything like them before but, through a process
of judicial elimination, he decided they must be the Vininese Beam
Transmitters. The defense of Vinin was remarkably thorough, far
surpassing anything of a similar nature on Agron.
It came to him with something of a shock that he was thinking
rationally once more. His mind was completely clear. He felt ashamed
of the foolish, groundless terror that had unnerved him in the ravine.
He tried to understand what had happened to him but it was beyond
analysis. In retrospect he realized that the danger had been less than
what he faced on any normal day in the Air-Command emergency
maintenance service.
The only logical explanation was the food they had given him. It must
have been heavily drugged with a new poison known to the Vininese.
Dirrul was tempted to go back and rescue Glenna, if she were still
alive after the torture to which she had been subjected. But he knew
it was more important for him to contact Vininese Headquarters first.
He had a message to deliver. Glenna herself would have wanted that.
In two hours Dirrul was on the plain again. All the suffering of the
past few hours was gone. The plentiful purple grass had quenched his
thirst and surprisingly eased his hunger as well. He felt keenly alert
and alive. The sun was warm, the air was balmy. He was on Vinin.
Spiritually he had come home, to the thing he believed in. Not many
men had such opportunity to realize their dreams of perfection. To cap
the triumph Dirrul knew it might still be possible to make his report
and save the Movement on Agron.
From the top of a purple-swathed knoll he looked down across a
twisting red stream toward the suburbs of the city. Magnificent
black-stone villas, surrounded by stylized gardens, were on both sides
of the green highway.
Further on, close to the city, were the crowded workers' quarters,
behind them, hidden in a faint mist, the rectangular masses of public
buildings reaching up toward the stars. This was as Paul Sorgel had so
often described it. Such grandeur could only belong to the capital
city of the Vininese Confederacy.
Under the brow of the knoll Dirrul saw one of the stone block
buildings within its protective double walls. A huge trumpet-like
transmitter was exposed at the top of the structure. In some ways it
resembled the Beam Transmitters on Agron but the differences were so
striking Dirrul knew it was a totally new device--possibly a more
efficient variation invented by the Vininese. The faint hum of
machinery and the regular movement of the sending tube indicated that
the machine was running--but for what purpose Dirrul could only guess.
The yard between the two walls was patrolled by a smartly disciplined
score of Vininese. Dirrul considered going to them to ask for
transportation to the city but changed his mind. It was very possible
that the installation was secret. The guards might have had
instructions to dispose immediately of any intruder. On the whole it
seemed wiser to go a little farther to one of the walled villas.
Dirrul walked half a thousand feet along the green highway and turned
up the drive leading toward one of the sprawling mansions. As he
passed the portals of the open gate an alarm bell clanged--seconds
later five Vininese infantry surrounded him, prodding him into the
house with their gleaming weapons. In precise Vininese, carefully
enunciated, Dirrul tried to explain what he wanted--but the guards
made no reply, merely staring at him with cold glazed eyes,
comprehending nothing.
They threw him roughly into a dark room, where a slim Vininese waited
in a lounge chair. As Dirrul's eyes grew accustomed to the faint light
he saw that the Vininese held a snub-nosed rocket-pistol.
"Your permit?" the Vininese asked languidly.
"Yesterday I came here from--"
"Then you have no permit. I must shoot you, of course."
"Sir, I have a message from Agron! You must take me to Headquarters!"
"Oh, you're a tourist. But this is a prohibited area. From the dust
on your tunic, I take it you have done a great deal of walking. A
pity, my friend--naturally you've seen the transmitters."
"We have them on Agron but it is of no importance."
The Vininese threw back his head and laughed, "Oh, no--of no
importance--you have seen nothing!"
"I do not understand you," Dirrul said desperately. "My Vininese is
very poor. But you must help me. I bring news of the Movement on Agron
and time is short." Anxiously Dirrul plunged into his story, tripping
repeatedly over the involved syntax of Vinin to his host's obvious
amusement.
Eventually, however, he made his point, for the tall Vininese said,
"Then you must be the agent who sent the teleray report. We've been
looking for you, sir. We feared, after you crashed, that you might
have been taken by the vagabonds." Still holding Dirrul centered in
the gunsight the Vininese picked up a portable teleray and asked for
Headquarters.
While he waited he added, "You must forgive this reception, my friend
from Agron. We have been having so much trouble with the vagabonds
lately we must all go armed. Here in the transmission area we must be
particularly alert."
His tone was warm but the gun never wavered. When he made his
connection he spoke rapidly into the mouthpiece, too rapidly for
Dirrul to work out an accurate translation. It seemed, however, that
the conversation was centered around the transmitters rather than the
report Dirrul had to make. The Vininese finished the dialogue and
smiled engagingly at Dirrul.
"I am to take you to the capital, my friend," he said. "They are
preparing a reception for you. You are a hero of Vinin, to have braved
so much for the cause."
The Vininese came forward suddenly and pulled aside the torn cloth at
the throat of Dirrul's tunic.
"But you--you must have a disk!" The Vininese was suddenly frightened.
"There is no tourist stamp on your arm. I don't understand."
"Paul Sorgel loaned me his when I left Agron." Dirrul felt in his
tunic pocket. "He said I was to give it to the Chief when I made my
report but if you must see it now--"
"No, no--by all means, keep it." The tall man's voice was pleasant
again. "I was simply afraid that someone might have come who--but it
is nothing. I am weary from all this vigilance against the vagabonds.
It is hard to think realistically."
"I was surprised to see so much lawlessness on Vinin."
"Then you're very naive, my friend. There's an element like that among
all people, although I must admit ours here have suddenly become
excessively active. Their attacks are so systematic and so
well-organized! Hardly a night passes without trouble at a work camp
or a transmitter station.
"Your transmitters are different from ours. Have you developed an
improvement in technique?"
"They are, curious, aren't they? You must ask the Chief to tell you
all about them." The Vininese chuckled with delight. "I wouldn't want
to spoil his surprise by letting you in on the secret first."