VI

Mayta was a huddle of thatch-roofed wooden buildings at the foot of a

fantastically spired gray castle, sitting amid the broad fields and

forests and rivers of Kathantuma with the mountains shining in the far

distance. Dyann set the ship down just outside the town, stood up, and

stretched her tigress body with an exultant laugh.

"Home!" she cried. "Gravity!"

"Uh--yeah." Ray tried to lift his feet. It went slowly, with some

strain--half again the pull of Earth. Urushkidan groaned and wheezed

his painful way to a chair and collapsed all over it.

"Let's go!" Dyann snatched up her sword, set the helmet rakishly on her

bronze curls, and opened the airlock. When Ray hesitated she reached

and yanked him out.

The air was cool and windy, pungent with a million scents of earth and

growing things, tall clouds sailing over a high blue heaven, and even

the engineer was grateful for it after the stuffiness of the boat. He

looked around him. Not far off was a charming rustic cottage. It was

like a scene from some forgotten idyll of Earth's old past.

"Looks good," he said.

A four-foot arrow hummed past his ear and rang like a gong on the

ship's hull.

"Yowp!" Ray dove for shelter. Another arrow zipped in front of him. He

whirled at a storm of contralto curses.

There were half a dozen women pouring from the charming rustic cottage,

a battle-scarred older one and five tall young daughters, waving swords

and axes and spears. A couple of men peered nervously from the door.

"Ha, Ormun!" yelled Dyann. She lifted her sword and dashed to meet the

onslaught. The oldest woman caught the amazon's blow on a raised shield

and her ax clanged off Dyann's helmet. Dyann staggered, shook her head,

and struck out afresh. The others closed in, yelling and jabbing.

Dyann's sword met the nearest ax halfway and broke across. She stooped,

picked the woman off her feet, and whirled her over her head. With

a shout, she threw the old she-warrior into two of her nearest

daughters, and the trio went down in a roar of metal.

Centaurian hospitality, thought Ray.

A backhanded blow sent him reeling. He looked up to see a yellow-haired

girl looming over him. Before he could do more than mutter she had

slugged him again and thrown him over one brawny shoulder.

Hoofs clattered down the narrow dirt road. A squad of armored women

riding animals reminiscent of Percherons, but horned and red of hide,

were charging from the town. They swept into the fight, wielding

clubbed lances with fine impartiality, and it broke up in a sullen

wave of red-splashed femininity. Nobody, Ray saw from his upside-down

position, had been killed, but there were plenty of slashes and the

intent had certainly been there.

The harsh barking language of Kathantuma rose on either side. Finally

an understanding seemed to be reached. One of the riders pointed a

mailed hand at Ray's captor and snapped an order. The girl protested,

was overruled, and tossed him pettishly to the ground. He recovered

consciousness in a minute or two.

Dyann picked him up, tenderly. "Poor Ray," she murmured. "Ve play too

rough for you here, huh?"

"What was it all about?" he mumbled.

"Oh, these people vere mad because ve landed in their field, but the

qveen's riders stopped the fight in time. It is only lawful to kill

people on the regular duellin grounds, inside the city limits. Ve must

have law and order, you know."

"I see," said Ray faintly.

* * * * *

It was a large and turbulent crowd which gathered at sunset to hear

Dyann speak. She and her companions were on a raised stand in the

market square, together with the scarred, arrogant queen and her troop

of pikewomen and cavalry. In the guttering red flare of torches,

Ray looked down on a surging lake of women, the soldier-peasants of

Kathantuma gathered from all the hinterland, brandishing their weapons

and beating clangorous shields in lieu of applause. Here and there

public entertainers circulated, thinly clad men with flowers twined

into their hair and beards, strumming harps and watching with great

liquid eyes.

Ray was still not quite sure what the girl's plan was, and by now

didn't much care. A combination of the dragging Varannian gravity and

the potent Varannian wine made him so sleepy that he could barely focus

on the milling crowd. Urushkidan slept the sleep of the just, snoring

hideously.

Dyann ended her harangue and the racket of metal and voices shook the

surrounding walls. After that there were long-winded arguments which

sometimes degenerated into fist fights, until Ray himself dropped off

to sleep.

He was shaken awake by Dyann and looked blearily around him. Dawn was

streaking the horizon with cold colorless light, and the mob was slowly

and noisily dispersing. He groaned as he stretched his stiffened body

and tried to brush the dew off his clothes.

"The natural life--Hah!" he said miserably, and sneezed.

"It has been decided," cried the girl. She was still as fresh as the

morning, her cheeks were flushed and her eyes ablaze. "They agreed at

last, and now the var-vord goes over the land and envoys are bound for

Almarro and Kurin to get allies. How soon can ve leave, Ray?"

"Leave?" he asked stupidly. "Leave for where?"

"Vy, for Yupiter, of course!"

"Huh?"

"You are tired, my little bird. Come vith me, and ve shall rest in the

castle."

Ray groaned again.

* * * * *

How do you equip an army of barbarians still in the early Iron Age to

cross four and a third light-years of space?

A preliminary question, perhaps is, Do you want to?

Ray emphatically didn't, but he had very little choice in the matter.

He was soon given forcibly to understand that men kept their place and

did as they were commanded.

He went to Urushkidan and poured out his sorrows. The Martian, after an

abortive attempt to steal the spaceship and sneak home, had been given

a room in one of the castle towers and was covering large sheets of

local parchment with equations. This place, thought Ray, has octopuses

in the belfry.

"They want to go to Jupiter and fight the Jovians," he said.

"What of it?" asked Urushkidan, lighting his pipe. He had found that

dried bark could be smoked. "Tey may eben succeed. Primitibes habe

often obercome more adbanced and better armed hosts. Read te history of

Eart sometime."

"But they'll take us along."

"Oh. Oh-oh! Tat is different." The Martian riffled through his papers.

"Let me see, I tink Equations 549 trough 627 indicate--yes, here we

are. It is possible to project te same type of dribing beam as we

use in te faster-tan-light engine so as to impart a desired belocity

bector to external objects. Toward or away from you. Or--look here,

differentiation of tis equation shows it would be equally simple to

break intranuclear bonds by trowing only a certain type of particle

into te pseudo-condition. Te atom would ten feed on its own energy."

Ray looked at him in awe. "You," he whispered, "have just invented the

tractor beam, the pressor beam, the disintegrator, and the all-purpose,

all-fuel atomic motor."

"I habe? Is tere money in tem?"

Ray went to work.

The three expeditions from Sol had left a good deal of assorted

supplies and equipment behind for the use of later arrivals. Most of

this had been stored in a local temple, and sacrifices were made yearly

to the digital computer. It took an involved theological argument to

obtain the stuff--the point that Ormun had to be rescued was conceded

to be a good one, but it wasn't till the high priestess suddenly

disappeared that the material was forthcoming.

The Ballantyne-Urushkidan circuits were simple things, once you knew

how to make them. With the help of a few tolerably skilled smiths, Ray

hammered out enough of the new-type atomic generators to lift the fleet

off Varann and across to Sol. He built the drive-circuits carefully,

designing them to burn out after landing again on Varann. The prospect

of the amazon planet's people flitting whither they pleased in the

Galaxy was not one any sane man could cheerfully contemplate.

The spaceships were mere hulks of varnished and greased hardwood,

equipped with airlocks and slapped together by the carpenters of Mayta

in a few weeks. The crossing would be made so rapidly that heating

and air plants wouldn't be needed. Once the haywired star drives were

installed, a pilot sketchily trained for each vessel, and every hull

crammed with a couple of hundred yelling warriors, the fleet was ready

to go.

They poured in, ten times as many as the thirty ships could hold,

riding and hiking from the farthest of the continent's little kingdoms

to be in on the most glorious piracy of their dreams. Only Dyann cared

much about Ormun, who was after all merely her personal joss, and

only Ray gave a good damn about the menace of Jupiter. The rest came

to fight and steal and see new countries. They were especially eager

to kidnap husbands--the polyandrous system of Varann worked undue

hardships on many women, and Dyann shrewdly gave preference to the

unmarried in choosing her followers.

As to the practicability of the whole insane idea--Ray didn't dare

think about it.

Three hectic months after his arrival at Centauri, the barbarian fleet

left for Sol.

* * * * *

Jupiter swam enormously in the forward ports, diademed with the bitter

glory of open space, growing and growing as the ship rushed closer. Ray

pushed his way through the restless crowd of armed women that jammed

the boat. "Dyann," he pleaded, "couldn't I at least call up Earth and

find out what's happened?"

"Vy, I suppose so," she said, not taking her eyes off the swelling

giant before them. "But be qvick, please."

The human fiddled with the telescreen. Three months ago the notion of

calling over nearly half a billion miles with that undersized thing

would have been merely ridiculous. But that was another byproduct of

Urushkidan's theory. You used an electron wave with unlimited velocity

as a carrier beam for your radio photons. It induced a similar effect

in the other transmitter. No distance diminution. No time lag. Anyway,

not within the limits of anything so small as the Solar System. Ray

got the standard wavelength of the U.N. public relations office, the

only one which he could call freely without going through a lot of red

tape.

A blurred face looked out at him. He hadn't refined his circuits to

the point of eliminating distortion, and the U.N. official resembled

something seen through ten feet of rippled water--at least, his image

did. But the voice was clear enough. "Who is this, please?"

"Ray Ballantyne, returning from Alpha Centauri on the first

faster-than-light spaceship. Calling from the vicinity of Jupiter."

"This is no time for joking. Who the devil are you and what do you

want? Please report."

"I want to give the U.N. Patrol the secret of faster-than-light travel.

Stand by to record."

"Hey!" screamed Urushkidan. "I neber said I'd gibe--"

* * * * *

Dyann put her foot on his head and pushed him against the floor.

"Oh, well," he said. "Trough te incredible generosity of myself, ten,

te secret is made freely abailable--"

"Ready to record?" asked Ray tightly.

"I said your humor is in very bad taste," said the official, and

switched off with an ugly scowl.

Ray blinked weakly at the set for a while. Then he tuned in on Earth

broadcasts until he caught a news program. Jupiter had declared war a

month ago, defeated the U.N. navy in a running battle off Mars, seized

bases on Luna, and was threatening atomic bombardment of Earth unless

terms were met. "Oh, gosh," said Ray.

"Such an inbasion could only be launched, on a shoestring," said

Urushkidan. "Te U.N. still has bases closer to home, it can cut Jobian

supply lines--"

"And meanwhile poor old Earth is reduced to radioactive rubbish," said

Ray gloomily. "And those gruntbrains in charge won't believe I've got

the decisive weapon to save them."

"Would you beliebe such a claim?"

"No, but this is different, damn it."

"Ganymede dead ahead," shouted Dyann. "Stand by for action! Get ready

to make a landing."