He heard her gasp as he sprang for the keys that brought the needle gun
into play.
It was a precision weapon, a fine, invisible ray of disruptive force.
As the first of the web-birds dropped arrow-like into range, the ray
touched it. The creature exploded like a fountain of spray. He got two
more before the startled birds sheered off.
Snapping on the outside amplifiers, he yelled: "Lete!" His voice boomed
through the loudspeaker--a giant's voice that stopped the cave girl
dead in her tracks. "Lete! What's wrong?"
She stared upward in fright at the gleaming bullet-shaped monster.
"Quick, girl, speak up!"
"The Anolyn," she said in a small voice.
"What about them?"
"The Anolyn have sent a great army of Nehogans. Our men have seen them,
less than a day's march from here."
"Get in the ship!" Jupiter commanded.
Lete began to tremble, but she was too frightened to disobey. She
climbed meekly through the port. With a hollow "clang!" it shut behind
her.
* * * * *
Jupiter blasted the starship off the ground with the jets. He couldn't
use the inertialess stellar drive inside Yogol's gravitational field
and the Mizar rocked sickeningly as it hurtled above the surface under
rocket propulsion.
Lete cowered in the shock absorber where Jupiter had buckled her down
against her will. Her yellow eyes were glazed. She was like a wild
animal in a trap.
Tabak was pale, but she stared eagerly through the transparent rind of
the blister. Jupiter shot her an approving glance. He'd never realized
how blue the Caligan girl's eyes were--cerulean blue, alive, dancing
like a little girl's with a new doll.
"Take the scanner," he said gruffly. "You should know how it operates."
"May I? I'll be ever so careful."
She found it unhesitatingly, turned it on. The surface of Yogol sprang
on the screen in three dimensional reality. Tabak gasped.
"I'm almost afraid I might fall into it!" Then she stiffened. "There
they are! There! Look, Jupiter!"
He glanced into the screen. The valley widened out below, and he could
see a great army of men camped on the level ground. Thousands of the
copper-skinned Nehogan warriors! They stood in excited clusters,
staring upward, pointing at the Mizar with its comet tail of flame.
Jupiter could make out the striped tents of the Anolyn in the center of
the encampment. He could see pink-skinned Caligans and stolid porters.
He turned to the terrified cave girl.
"What happened to Reiloc?"
Lete only moaned.
"Answer me!" he snapped. "Where's Reiloc?"
"He--he stayed at the cliffs to organize my people into an army. The
tribes have been coming in for days. Ever since the word spread that
the Wanderer has appeared. Reiloc said to tell you that he was going to
split his forces, attack from both ends of the valley."
Jupiter swore under his breath. "We're going down," he told Tabak.
"Going down fast. Hang onto your hair."
He put the Mizar into a tight spiral, drove her down like a blazing
meteor. The star ship must have presented an awe-inspiring sight, jets
shooting streamers of flame, her nose pointed directly at the cluster
of striped tents in the center of the army.
[Illustration: _He drove her down like a blazing meteor._]
Below him, the Nehogans scattered panic-stricken. The surface was
rushing up at him like a gigantic expanding cannon ball. He cut in
"George", buckled himself down frantically.
The Mizar seemed to explode as every available jet burst into life. A
thunderous booming roar deafened him. Then the ship struck with a jar
that almost shook loose his teeth.
He threw off the straps, dived for the control panel.
* * * * *
Ash covered the ground where the tents had been. At least half of the
purple-shelled octopods had been consumed instantly by the jets. The
Anolyn who remained alive were scuttling for the protection of the
jungle. Jupiter swung the needle gun into action.
The Nehogans had outstripped their slow-moving masters, who crawled
like a cluster of frightened tortoises across the bare, flat land. The
sides of the valley were alive with humans; they had fled that far and
had turned to watch in frightened silence.
Jupiter concentrated on the Anolyn, picking them off one by one. Only a
few seconds actually had elapsed since the Mizar had appeared over the
horizon, and already less than a dozen of the terrified creatures were
left, crawling desperately for the hills.
A sudden whisper of wings sounded overhead. Something like the shadow
of a cloud raced across the flat land toward the cluster of fleeing
octopods.
"The web-birds!" Tabak cried.
Jupiter lifted his eyes, saw a flock of the ungainly creatures. There
must have been nearly a hundred of them. They swooped down on their
Anolyn masters, plucked the octopods from the ground with a furious
beating of wings.
Jupiter's eyes widened in disbelief as the remaining Anolyn were borne
to safety above the tree tops.
The Mizar was left all alone in the center of the valley.
Then to a man the frightened mob on the hillsides fell down on their
faces, arms extended before them toward the ship below, and a great
babbling cry arose:
"The Wanderer! The Wanderer-from-Beyond!"
Tabak whirled away from the plastic rind.
"Jupiter! There comes Reiloc now! He must be warned, Jupiter! He
doesn't know that the Anolyn have fled. He'll attack!"
At the head of the valley a mass of half-naked cavemen were streaming
from the trees. They were a wild, undisciplined lot like an army of
soldier ants on the march. Even from this distance, Jupiter recognized
the giant figure of Reiloc striding at their head.
He swore in Lingua Galactica. "I can't afford to leave the ship just
yet. Not until we know how that crazy Anolyn army's going to behave.
The ship's our ace in the hole."
"I'll go," Tabak said, and darted for the well.
Jupiter watched her disappear down the ladder with a vague feeling of
uneasiness. Then he turned back to the transparent rind. He caught
sight of her again, running across the level ground toward Reiloc,
waving her arms--a slim, blonde figure in the sarong, barefooted and
barelegged. He swallowed disconsolately.
So, he thought, it must be Reiloc that she's crazy about. Reiloc!
He could see the giant Nehogan leave the cavemen, hurry toward the
girl. They met on the level valley floor between the ship and the wild
Kagans who were still debouching from among the trees.
Jupiter's blood ran suddenly cold. A flock of web-birds had appeared
over the crest of the hill.
He leaped for the keys of the needle gun.
"Reiloc!" he yelled through the P. A. "Tabak! Watch out! The birds!"
He got three of the ungainly flying webs with the needle ray. Then he
couldn't shoot any more.
"Oh, hell," he said.
The web-birds had dropped onto the pair in the open. Jupiter could
see neither Reiloc nor Tabak. Only the monstrous fluttering of the
creature's wings. Then the flock lifted slowly into the air bearing
the Nehogan and the Caligan girl aloft. Jupiter didn't dare fire for
fear of hitting either the one or the other.
They rose higher, higher, then straight as wild bees they lined out for
the distant city by the _Dra Dur_.
Jupiter was beside himself with helpless rage and consternation. He
couldn't chase them in the starship. It would be like attempting to
follow a school of fish in an ocean liner.
He was stunned. He sank into an acceleration chair, while the web-birds
with their human freight, became smaller and smaller in the distance.
* * * * *
During the days following the capture of Tabak and Reiloc, Jupiter
was frantic. He couldn't rid his mind of the horrors that the fragile
Caligan girl might be undergoing. The breeding stations, the biological
laboratories, the inhuman orgies that took place in the city by the
_Dra Dur_. Reiloc would be no better off, except that they might kill
him outright instead of by degrees. Every hour's delay multiplied their
danger.
Jupiter drove himself unmercifully, but there weren't enough hours for
him to cram in all the things that had to be done.
He allowed the Kagans to retain their loose tribal organization.
More tribes joined the march on the city by the _Dra Dur_ every day.
They were more like a migrating people than an army. They were bound
together by only one common impulse--a desire to annihilate the Anolyn.
Lete was some help to Jupiter there. The cave girl acted as liaison
officer between him and the Kagan chiefs. He was aware that she
had risen to a position of eminence among her people--an Amazon
chieftainess, a cave girl Joan of Arc.
Her rise to power suited him because it left him free to organize the
Nehogan army.
They were his only trained body of men and they were useless so long
as the parasites were fastened to their necks. The Anolyn could regain
control of them, turn his own army against him.
Jupiter set himself to the impossible task of administering the
exsrocain to the Nehogan soldiers, the Caligan advisers, even the
green-skinned porters.
He made short hops in the star ship, setting up his camp ahead of
the slow-moving army. As soon as they began to stream in, he set to
administering the drug. He trained a staff of Caligans, who were more
adept at such things. He synthesized gallons of the stuff and taught
them how to synthesize it.
And all the time he lived in perpetual dread of the Anolyn's next move.
Overhead the web-birds wheeled and dipped, at first hundreds, then
thousands of the creatures as they drew closer to the city. They were
the eyes of the Anolyn, he sensed. They followed the army like gulls
following a ship.
On the seventeenth day they reached the broad plains surrounding
the city by the _Dra Dur_, deployed before the towering walls and
battlements.
The Nehogan general and Lete were closeted with Jupiter in the Mizar,
laying their final plans, when a postern gate opened and a man left the
city, made his way alone toward the lines of the invading army.
* * * * *
He was a Caligan in a living, yellow furred boj and sandals. His eyes
were peculiar--a glazed blue like enamelware. He made no move to escape
or defend himself when the pickets grabbed him.
He said that he had a message for the Wanderer-from-Beyond from the
Anolyn.
He was turned over to a Nehogan officer and brought before Jupiter in
the Mizar.
One look at the man told Jupiter that he was possessed--that he was
merely a vehicle through which some Anolyn inside the city was seeing,
hearing, speaking, acting--
In an undertone he cautioned Lete and the Nehogan general not to
mention their plans, turned to the Caligan envoy.
"What message do the Anolyn send?"
The Caligan stood like a man in a cataleptic trance, regarded Jupiter
with fixed, unwinking attention.
"I am to inform you that the girl, Tabak, and the man, Reiloc, are
unharmed."
Jupiter realized suddenly that his forehead was covered with sweat. He
didn't interrupt.
The Caligan continued in that flat, unemotional voice:
"Unless you disband your army and send them away, the girl will be
turned over to the long-tailed Begans to play with. If she survives
the animal-men, which is doubtful, she will be sent to the biological
laboratories for vivisection. Reiloc, of course, will be operated on
immediately."
The Caligan paused. The control blister was still.
"In the event you agree to the Anolyn terms," the emissary went on,
"both Tabak and Reiloc will be set free outside the city gates. You are
to take them aboard your ship and leave Yogol forever.
"Post-hypnotic commands have been implanted in both their minds. If you
return or attempt treachery, of any kind, they will kill you.
"You have until sunup to give us your decision."
The Caligan stopped talking.
Jupiter let his breath run out between his teeth. The orange sun was
sinking into the _Dra Dur_. Lete's yellow eyes glittered. The Nehogan
general opened his mouth to speak. But Jupiter silenced him with an
imperative gesture.
"This is not something to be decided without thought," he told the
unwinking emissary. "We'll give you our answer before daybreak." He
turned to the guards. "Lock him in my cabin."
No sooner had the door closed on the Caligan envoy, than Lete sprang
to her feet. She was clad in the fur of some jungle beast. A sword and
dagger hung at her waist. She made Jupiter think of a savage Joan of
Arc more than ever and he could feel his heart sink.
"There is but one answer," she flashed, "and that's to attack! Attack
tonight before they can bring up reinforcements.
"This is the first time the Kagans have been united. Do they think
we're foolish enough to throw away everything for the life of a man and
a girl!"
Jupiter didn't say anything.
The Nehogan general shook his head. He looked somewhat like Reiloc
except that he was older, heavier.
"After all," he said, "many men will die during the battle. Is that any
reason to abandon the fight? What's the life of two people against the
whole world? I don't understand it. The Anolyn must be very desperate
to offer such terms. It is a trick, maybe."
"No," said Jupiter. "No, I don't think it's a trick." But he knew that
it would be impossible to explain his feelings either to the cave
girl or the Nehogan general. Such sentimentality was foreign to their
natures. If he attempted to dissuade them from their purpose, they
would go ahead in spite of him. And he couldn't blame them.