"Were you there behind the panel while your sister and I talked?" I
asked.
"Of course. To make sure nothing went amiss. If some curious Jivro had
come to the door, she would have joined me in the passage."
The Prince sat down across from me on a low stool.
"I will lead this group she will send to bring the Croen. You will
naturally accompany us, as I am to keep an eye on you. Wananda will give
you the fluid to inject into her veins. You must not be seen making the
injection. Somewhere along the way she will revive. She is an extremely
strong creature, and will immediately make her escape. I will order none
to shoot at her with vibro guns, as we do not wish her harmed. We will
hurry back to get ships to pursue and capture her. But we will be unable
to capture her.
"If you can manage to keep up with her in her flight, do so. You should
be able to outrun a Jivro; they are not very fast. But whether you can
keep up with the Croen, that I doubt. However, make the attempt, and
when you are alone with her, explain why we want her to escape, who her
friends are. If you do not do that, she may elect to make her way
through the wilderness, which would be fatal for her. Knowing she has
allies among us, she will find a way to attack us."
I grunted. I did not see how they expected one lone woman, however
fantastically gifted with wits and know-how, to overcome the ships,
armament and organization of the Jivros, even with Wananda working to
neutralize their power.
"She must be a wizard; you expect such wonders of her!"
"There will be a ship waiting to pick her up as soon as she is out of
sight of the Jivros who will accompany us. I have sent it already. It
waits in the hills by the barrier. With you along, you can contact the
remaining Zervs. They will augment your power. I can send more ships
manned with my men, later. We have been preparing for this a long time."
"Aren't you doing a lot of talking? Walls have ears, you know, and those
Jivros of yours look pretty shifty to me."
"It is the hour of their sleep. They are creatures of regularity, like
ants, you know. They live by routine. There are only guards awake. I
know exactly where every one of them stands at this moment, where every
one of them sleeps. I have not been inactive."
* * *
We filed out of the city gate, a party of nearly fifty, a score of them
bearers of a big palanquin-like vehicle in which they proposed to carry
the Croen's inert body.
I was remembering the brief examination of her that I had made when I
entered the cavern of the golden statue.
A four-armed female of near-human aspect, but with a single horn on her
forehead. A member of a race from distant space, alien even to these
visitors to earth. She had been utterly different from anything I had
even imagined as human--yet somewhere, somehow the origin of that race
had been similar to our own. I wondered if space was peopled with such
near-human races, all descendant from some ancient space-traveling race
who had colonized--then passed on into forgotten time?
The party wound on, taking that same trail by which I had entered the
cavern with Hank and Jake and Frans. Silently I blessed the fate that
had spared me the things that had been done to them. Their only
release, I imagined, could be death.
Overhead the rocky walls began to close, the light grew dim, ahead came
that eerie glow from the magnetic statue. The prince's eyes caught mine
in a swift, silent order to be ready, and the two of us drew ahead of
the column. In my jacket pocket I held the hypodermic, one of Schree
design, different from a modern medical hypodermic only in that it was
decorated with incut figures of glorified Jivros, carved in the
crystalline cylinder, and the metal was of gold.
There were only two of the repellent insect-men with us. I surmised they
were there only as observers, but that was not the case. They were there
because they had to be. I could see an unusual agitation on their blank,
bulge-eyed faces, if those insect masks could be called faces. They were
afraid of this Croen female, even in her inert condition.
The tall, graceful Schree warriors followed us into the cavern, and last
of all came the two hopping Jivros. The intense attraction of the statue
drew me, but I remembered how I had avoided it before, and kept my eyes
averted. Like light on a moth's eyes, the power of it seemed to strike
into the will only when the eyes were upon it.
We gathered around the column of crystal. The Schrees attached a loop of
rope to the top, pulled it carefully from the base. When it was
stretched out horizontal upon the floor, the two Jivros set to work with
little spinning metal disk-saws, cutting a line entirely around it
lengthwise. Then they tapped it with small hammers, and the cut cracked
through. Lifting off the top section like the lid of a sarcophagus, the
Croen lay exposed to the light of day.
I stood entranced by the exquisite beauty and majesty of the naked
creature until Prince Genner nudged me with an elbow. Even as he did so,
he whirled, pointed, cried out:
"There, through that doorway, one of the traitorous Zervs spies upon us.
Catch him, my warriors, before they bring the others down upon us!"
As if drilled or awaiting this order, the tall Schrees set off as one
man, running through the same doorway by which I had followed the angry
Nokomee.
The prince and I were left alone with the two Jivros, who stood beside
the nude figure of the alien Croen. They eyed us, their eyes jerking
nervously from our faces to the body of the Croen. Quite calmly the
Prince tugged a vibro-gun, very like the weapon Holaf had worn at his
waist, from his belt and trained it upon the two horrors.
"This day will come for all the Jivros," cried the prince in a
triumphant voice, and shot a terrible blue bolt of force into the body
of each of them. The second had snapped a little weapon from his breast,
hidden in the folds of his white robe, and as he fell, the beam of it
cut a long smoking channel in the floor rock. The prince calmly picked
it up, pressed the trigger lever, handed the thing to me. I pocketed it,
then stepped over to the nude body of the Croen. I inserted the needle
carefully in the artery at her inner elbow, pushed the plunger slowly
home, my eyes on her face with a deep awe.
The prince bent beside me, watching her face intently, and both of us
stood rapt, waiting for I knew not what except that it would be more
marvelous to meet such a god-like creature as this face to face than
anything else that had ever happened to me.
But a sound of feet up the corridor made Prince Genner spring to his
feet.
"Quick, man, help me get these dead horrors out of sight! I do not trust
all those warriors, though most of them are in sympathy with us."
We sprang to the dead things. I bent and picked one up by the shoulders.
Surprisingly, frighteningly light they were, as if filled with cotton.
Their limbs were truly skeletal, and curiously I tugged the white robe
from the strange insect body as I followed the prince. The thorax, the
wasp-waist, the long pendulous abdomen, the atrophied center limbs
folded across the wasp-waist--the whole thing was like a great white
wasp without wings. As we flung them into an empty chamber, I turned the
burden face down, and on the back were two thin wisps of residual wings.
Once these things had been winged!
We sped back to the side of the sleeping Croen.
I stopped ten feet from the giant figure, surprise, awe, a thrill of
admiration filling me! She was sitting up, her hands at her temples,
peering about with her great eyes distracted. On her face, even in this
condition of tension, still unaware of her surroundings, was the
greatest evidence of intelligence I had ever sensed. This Croen race, I
realized, was something truly beyond an earthman's understanding.
But the prince had no time for the awed, stupefied condition into which
sight of her had struck me.
"Come, Cyane, great one, we have released you, but you must flee at
once. I know how weak you must be, but if you can, please rise and flee.
This man will accompany you. He is alien to us, and it is better that he
be out of the hands of the Jivros as quickly as possible. Go, dear one,
swiftly, swiftly--we will find you later!"
The great body moved, gathered itself, stood tottering, gazing wildly
about. The prince pointed at the cavern entrance where our footprints
still showed in the dust. To me he cried: "Go up the rocky side as far
as you can when you reach the slopes. The north side, earthman. Keep
going, and conceal yourselves in the bush. I will guide the search away
from you."
I ran ahead of the tottering figure and she followed, her steps
gathering strength. Faster she followed until we raced along the dim
cavern way. The rocky roof opened out and the blue sky showed overhead.
The prince had gestured to me when we had entered to a ledge that angled
upward from the gully, and I knew now what he had meant.
I could not keep up with the great strides of the now fully aroused
Croen goddess. She turned back, picked me up like a child, and in great
leaps bounded up the side of the canyon along the ledge. Up and up and
over, and still she ran, untiring. I was not rescuing, I was being
rescued!
As we ran beneath the shadow of the trees, a figure rose suddenly up
before us. I was astounded to see it was Holaf, whom I had thought the
Jivros had already dealt with.
"I await you, Cyane, great one, to guide you to safety. The prince has
sent me," he cried.
The great striding creature slowed, spoke to me with a voice full of a
deep music.
"Do you trust this man?"
"He may be trusted in this case. He has already risked his life to set
you free."
She set me down. I looked at Holaf, who was too excited to be amused.
"Hasten, we must get under cover at once. A place awaits, and many men,
arms, tools. We have long fought for this day, Cyane!" Holaf was wholly
ecstatic to see the success of his plans. I realized the prince had made
an ally of him with the same kind of interview the queen had granted me.
Holaf led us around the side of the mountain, keeping in the shelter of
the trees, and by a back route to the same hideaway in the mountainside
where I had first met him.
I greeted Nokomee with a glad smile, but her smile was not so glad and
my heart was hurt to find she was angry with me. But the great Croen
creature left us no time for argument.
The caves where the two hundred or so Zervs had hidden for so long were
quite numerous and confusingly branched. There was room there to hide an
army if needed.
I went at once to the small chamber where Nokomee had placed the packs
and camping equipment from the horses, and took out one of Hank's big
old forty-fives, belted it on. The old-fashioned belt was filled with
cartridges. I also took my own Winchester Model .70. I had a plentiful
supply of 130-grain Spitzer-point bullets, a high-velocity, long-range
killer that I might get a chance to use. I filled my pockets with
cartridges, took a knapsack and filled that. So, burdened down with
lethal equipment, I hurried back to Cyane's side. I didn't want to miss
a move of that visitor from far space. I wanted to learn, and I had an
idea she would show plenty of science if she got into action. The prince
wasn't gambling on her for nothing, not with that glorious sister of his
in jeopardy.
She had seated herself on that same big bench where I had first met the
Zoorph, Carna, and the Zervs were coming and going to her rapidly-given
orders. A dozen of the older Zervs were assembling apparatus under her
direction, and if I expected to learn something, I saw I was going to be
disappointed, for the stuff was inexplicable to me.
I went on outside to the ledge from which the city could be seen. I was
worried about how Genner had explained to the Jivros the death of the
two who had accompanied him. I had taken a pair of small binoculars from
my packs, and seeing activity near the gates of the wall, I trained the
lenses upon the wall.
I gave a cry which brought the Zervs speeding to me. I handed the
focused glasses to Holaf, pointed at the gates. He put them to his eyes,
then he too gave a cry of warning, and raced back to the Croen.
For, filing out of the gates and spreading out across the valley was the
vanguard of an army. The glass had shown the streets filled with
marching men.
For a few minutes I could not understand exactly what had happened, then
I guessed. The prince had asked for permission to use the entire forces
of the city in a search for the Croen! The strategy of the man was
exquisite. He was playing on the Jivro fear of the Croen to get the
military power fully in his hands!
Even as the great limbs of the Croen woman brought her to my side, as I
handed her the glasses, round disk ships began to rise from the center
of the city one after the other until at least five score of the smaller
type were in the sky. After them came two of the larger craft that I
knew were really space ships with huge inner chambers in the bottom
where the small craft nested.
An all-out search for the Croen was on in earnest!
But now quite suddenly an astonishing thing happened. One of the great
mother ships swung in a circle, came alongside the other, and from the
great center bulge of the upper surface a blue beam lashed out, struck
the other in a slicing flare and sheared off the entire upper bulge in
one blow. The great ship faltered for an instant, then began to fall. It
struck the ground near the wall with a blinding explosion. As the great
mushroom of white smoke began to lift up, the stem of the mushroom blew
away, and where the ship had fallen was only a hole, surrounded by bits
of shattered metal. The wall near the explosion was breached in a
fifty-foot-wide break, and the bodies of men could be seen through the
breach, killed by concussion.
From the city a blazing yellow beam lanced here and there in pursuit of
the traitor disk, but it darted like a dragonfly, up, down, and zig-zag.
The pursuing beam came nowhere near it. Somehow I knew the prince, and
perhaps Wananda too, were in that ship, and my heart was in my throat as
I thought of the queen in that ship, being shot at by the repulsive
insect men.
The army deploying on the plain kept right on marching, columns slanting
outward from the center, forming three columns that spread out like the
extending prongs of a trident. I could make nothing of it.
Several dogfights had broken out among the smaller disk ships since the
fall of the mother disk, but these were quickly over, and the flight
came on, swift as arrows.
The remaining mother disk settled to earth on the level land directly
below our hiding place, and the smaller disk settled now around it. The
army marched on, nearer and nearer.