by Andre Norton
“Get it—quick!” Logan cried.
Hosteen pressed stunner firing button. An eye-searing burst of light came from the snake thing as the beam caught it full on.
“You did it!” The younger man’s voice held the ragged edge of hysteria.
“What?”
“A live machine—one of the crawlers—”
Logan loosed his grip on Hosteen and tottered to the metal ribbon. A thin tendril of smoke arose as it battered its length senselessly against the floor. Logan stamped once, grinding his boot heel into the thing.
“I’ve wanted to do that for hours,” he informed Hosteen. “There’s more of ’em, though—we’ll have to watch out. And”—his gaze shifted to the weapon in Hosteen’s fist—“where in the name of the Seven Suns did you get that?”
“We’ve reinforcements.” For the first time Hosteen wondered about that. Would Najar and Quade be able to follow him, or was this another time when one of the baffling spiral paths would deposit travelers at different destinations?
“Listen.” He pulled Logan away from the feebly quivering “snake.” “Back there in the valley—did you walk the spiral path the same way I did?”
“Sure. You just vanished into air—I had to follow.”
“Where did you land?”
“In a place I wouldn’t have believed existed—after seeing the rest of this demon-inspired hole. All the time we were muckin’ around there was a place in here with regular livin’ quarters. But I ran into someone there—an off-worlder who has the run of this whole holdin’. For days—seems like days anyway—he’s been runnin’ me!” Logan was grimly bitter. “Turned those clockwork snakes loose and left me to it. I slowed up one of ’em with rocks in another cavern like the pen one and pushed one into a river. You took out this one, but there’s a pack of ’em—”
“Thief!”
The word boomed out of the air right over their heads, freezing both.
“Hide if you wish.” There was condescension in that. “You cannot escape, you know. The crawlers will deliver you to me just as I order. Have you not had enough of running?”
Surra had given no warning. Did Dean have some form of video watching them?
“You waste time in skulking. And a rock—if you have one left—is a poor weapon against this which can deal with a mountain if I so will it.”
A bolt of fire flashed over their heads well above the level of the machines.
A rock for a weapon! Then Dean did not know Hosteen had joined Logan! He was not watching them; he was only sure Logan had been hunted into the hall and was hiding out there.
“You would be better advised not to keep me waiting. Either you will come to me now or my pets will be given a full charge and turned loose to use it. You will be given to the count of five to consider the disadvantages of being a dead hero, and then you will come to the platform in this hall. One—two—”
Logan’s fingers made sign talk. “I’ll go and keep him busy.”
“Right. Surra will take the left aisle, I the right. We’ll flank you in.”
“—three—four—”
Logan walked out into full view of the platform. Two fingers of the hand hanging by his side twitched. Dean was up there waiting.
Hosteen started forward at a pace slightly slower than Logan’s. All they had to fear for the present was a sudden appearance of another “snake.”
Dean stood with his back to the board, over which rainbow lights ran in tubes. He was plainly pleased with himself. And Hosteen did not doubt he was equipped with a stass bulb or some other alien weapon.
“So the thief does not escape.”
“As I told you before, I’m no thief!” Logan retorted with genuine heat. “I was lost here, and I don’t know how I got into that room where you found me—”
“Maybe not yet a thief in practice, but in intent, yes. Don’t you suppose that I know any man would give years of life to master these secrets. Few ever conceive of such power as this hall holds. I am Lord of Thunder, Master of Lightning in the eyes of the natives—and they are right! This world is mine. It took the combined forces of all twenty solar systems in the Confederacy ten years to put down the Xiks. I was one of the techs sent to study and dismantle their headquarters on Raybo. And we thought we had uncovered secrets then. But they had nothing to compare with the knowledge waiting here. I was chosen to use the teaching tapes stored here, the cramming machines—they were waiting for me, me alone, not for stupid little men, ignorant thieves. This is all mine—”
Hosteen quickened pace and checked with Surra by mind touch.
“Why didn’t you finish me off with your crawlers or your tame lightin’—if that’s the way you feel about it?” Logan was keeping Dean talking. The tech, alone so long, must relish an audience of one of his own race.
“There is plenty of time to finish you off, as you say. I wanted you occupied for a space, kept away from places where you might get into mischief. You could not be allowed to interfere with the plan.”
“This plan of yours”—Logan was only a few steps from the platform—“is to take over Arzor and then branch out. Beat the Xiks at their old game.”
“Those who built this place”—Dean was fingering a small ball, another stass broadcaster Hosteen believed; otherwise, the Terran could not see that the other was armed—“had an empire into which all the Xik worlds and the Confederacy could both have been fitted and forgotten. All their knowledge—it is here. They foresaw some blasting end—made this into a storehouse—” He flung out his hand.
Hosteen fired the stunner. That ray should have clipped Dean alongside the head, a tricky shot, and it failed. A breath of the beam must have cut close enough to confuse him momentarily but not enough to put him out. Logan launched himself at the man who was staggering, only to crash heavily, completely helpless in stass, as Dean thumbed his control globe.
The tech was standing directly before the board, and Hosteen dared not try a second shot. A ray touching those sensitive bulbs might create havoc. The Terran signaled Surra.
Out of hiding the cat made a great arching leap that brought her up on the platform, facing Dean. Then she struck some invisible barrier and screamed aloud in anger and fear, as she was flattened to the floor.
Pressed back against the board, Dean reached for a lever, and Hosteen made his own move. Surra, striving still to reach her quarry, was aiming forepaw blows at nothing, and her raging actions held the tech’s attention as Hosteen jumped to the platform in turn. But he did not advance on Dean.
Instead, his own hand went out to a bank of those small bulbs that studded the boards in bands.
“Try that”—his warning crackled as if his words held the voltage born in the installations about them—“and I move too!”
Dean’s head whipped about. He stared with feral eyes at the Amerindian. Hosteen knew that his threat could be an empty one; now he must depend upon what some men termed luck and his own breed knew as “medicine.”
“You fool! There’s death there!”
“I do not doubt it,” Hosteen assured him. “Better dead men here than raiders loosed on the plains and a dead world to follow.” Bold words—a part of him hoped he would not have to prove them.
“Release the stass!” Hosteen ordered. If he could only keep Dean alarmed for just a few seconds!
But the tech did not obey. Hosteen moved his hand closer to the row of bulbs. He thought he felt warmth there, perhaps a promise of fire to come. Then Dean hurled the ball out into the aisle.
“Fool! Get away from that—you’ll have the mountain down upon us!”
Hosteen dropped his hand to the butt of the stunner. Now he could ray the other into unconsciousness, and their job would be over.
A breath of air, a sound came from behind him. He jerked his head. Two figures appeared out of nowhere on the dais. Hosteen heard Logan call out and felt a lash of burning heat about his upper arms and chest so that the stunner dropped from helpless fingers.
&nb
sp; Dean was away, running, dodging behind one of the cased machines, Surra a tawny streak at his back. Hosteen swayed, then recovered his balance on the very edge of the platform. He saw Surra drop, roll helplessly—Dean must have picked up the stass.
Quade passed Hosteen, running toward the spot where the cat lay. But before him was Logan, scrambling on hands and knees. The younger man paused, and then he threw—with the practised wrist snap of a veteran knife man. There was a cry from beyond.
Hosteen was only half aware of the struggle there. The pain in his arm and shoulder was like a living thing eating his quivering flesh. He dropped down and watched Logan and his father drag a wildly struggling Dean into view. And in Logan’s hand was the weapon that had brought the tech down, the now blood-stained horn he had taken from the skull found in the pens.
As they returned, the tubing on the board came to life. The waving line of lavender, which had always showed steady color from the first time Hosteen had seen the hall, was deepening in hue, its added flow of energy clearly visible.
Dean stopped struggling abruptly. A new kind of concentration molded his features. In an instant he had dropped his frenzied fight for freedom and become an alert tech faced by a problem in his own field.
“What is it?” Brad Quade demanded.
Dean shrugged impatiently, as if to throw off both question and the hold that kept him from the platform. “I don’t know—”
Najar was beside Hosteen, giving the Amerindian a hand up. No, he had not been wrong, for Surra had caught it too—the warning that was a part of the brilliance in that band of light, as well as a part of man and beast who shared another kind of awareness.
“We must get out of here.” Hosteen lurched toward the dais.
Logan, Quade, Najar—three pairs of eyes were on him. Surra was already by his side.
“What is it?” This time Brad Quade asked his stepson and not the tech.
“I don’t know!” Hosteen made the same answer. “But we have to get out of here and fast.” His inner tension was swelling into panic—such as had dogged him in the valley of hunting shadows. Logan moved first.
“All right.”
“You call it,” Brad Quade added. He jerked Dean along and in a second again had a raving, fighting madman in his hold.
Najar struck, a Commando in-fighting blow, and the tech went limp. On the board that pulsing light was now an angry purple. And more bulbs glowed here and there, taking on a winking life. The yellow of the lightning tree was bubbling, frothing.
They crowded together on the dais, the unconscious Dean held upright between Quade and Najar. Hosteen strove to raise his hands to give the signal that would transport them out of there—and found his right arm stiff, pain holding it in a steel band to his side.
The hum of the running machines, which had always formed a purring undercurrent of sound in the hall, was a hum no longer. More of them must be coming alive.
“Your hands—hold them apart over that line of bulbs.” Hosteen croaked out instructions to Logan. “Then bring them together in a fast clap—”
Logan’s hands, tinted purple in that awesome light, came together. Then they were spinning out and out—
Before them once more was a patch of day. Hosteen was conscious of Logan’s arm about him, of stumbling into the light, of the shuffle of feet behind.
Sound—it was not the rising hum of the alien machines but drums, a steady beat—beat of them in chorus. And over all lay the terrible need to be in the open.
They came out on that ledge where Hosteen had lain to watch Dean harangue the Norbie tribesmen. Hosteen pulled ahead, following Surra, for in the cat as well as in him was that bursting need to be away from the cave entrance.
There was no sun, and Hosteen, coming more to himself as he led the way downslope, saw now the clouds gathering in purple-black lines around an irregular space of sky. Had it been five months earlier or later, he would have said one of the terrible cloudbursts of the Wet Time was about to break.
Logan came to a halt. Surra was just a pace or so in advance, crouched belly to earth, her tail swishing, her head pointing at the line of Drummers.
They were there, every one of those who had followed their clan and tribal chieftains into the Blue—strung out in a curving line facing upslope, equidistant from each other, and each pounding out that emphatic beat that was one in a queer way with the billowing clouds. Directly before the party from the cave was Ukurti. And drawn up several yards behind the medicine men were the warriors, serried ranks of them, with here and there a truce pole still showing.
Quade and Najar, with Dean held between them, then Hosteen and Logan—five off-world men facing a thousand or more Norbies. Had the natives come to rescue their Lord of Thunder from the impious? Logan, still propping up Hosteen, brought his other hand before him and moved fingers in the peace sign.
Not an eye blinked nor did a hand lose a fraction of the beat. Seconds became the longest minute Hosteen could remember, while that roll of sound deadened his thinking. Quade and Najar dropped their hold on Dean as if hypnotized. The tech took one stiff step forward, then another. With a set expression on his face, he was heading for Ukurti. Hosteen strove to make some move to stop the other and found that it was impossible.
But Dean had come to a halt once more. He spoke—but the sounds from his lips this time were not the trilling Norbie speech.
“Go—go—” One hand went to his throat, fingers rubbing skin, seeking the band he was not wearing now.
Ukurti’s hand on an upswing remained in the air, though his fellows continued to drum. He signed slowly, and Logan, Quade, and Hosteen read his message aloud, though why they did so was beyond their comprehension.
“We-Who-Can-Drum-Thunder under the power have drummed so—and thunder will answer, as will the fire from the sky. Stop this with your own power if you can, Lord of False Lightning.”
There was no mistaking the challenge delivered, not as a matter of defiance but as a pronouncement of a judge in court.
The purple-black of the clouds spread, eating up the sky, and now there were flashes of light along the circumference. Dean swayed back and forth, his fingers still rubbing frantically at his throat.
Magic—yes, this was magic of a sort, magic such as the Old Ones of Hosteen’s own people had believed in and sought to use. He shook free of Logan, a racing excitement filling him. He forgot the pain of his hurt and could have shouted aloud in a feeling of triumph.
Save for the flashes of true lightning, it was night-dark. And always the drums continued to summon the storm with their power. A weird blue glow crept along rocky outcrops and made candles at the tips of tree and bush branches.
Then—just as Dean had lashed his machine-born lightning about the mountain, using it as a warning and a weapon—so did the real storm-based fire strike square behind them on the very crest of the peak. The answering shock was that of an earthquake, part of the violence young worlds knew before man arose to walk their lands.
Hosteen raised himself from the ground. He was deaf, blind, aware that some giant blow had struck close. And about him was the smell of ozone, the crisp of vegetation changed in an instant into ash.
The black of the storm clouds faded to gray. How long had he lain there? Beside him Logan stirred and sat up. Quade moved toward them on hands and knees. Najar lay where he was, moaning softly.
Downslope lay a form that did not move, and over that loomed a cloaked Drummer—Ukurti. The Norbie’s head was lifted. He regarded the four men levelly, and then his hand was raised, his long forefinger pointed up and away behind them. Almost as one they shifted about to see.
Where the ledge of the cave had been was a mass of rock scored and fire-blackened. And the mountain top had an odd, crumpled appearance.
Ukurti’s fingers spoke. “The power has decided—Drum power against that of the hidden ancient ones. As the power has wrought, so let it be.”
He turned to walk down into the valley, and before
him the wave of Norbie clansmen receded. Najar got to his feet and stumbled down to view the body.
“Dean’s dead—looks like the lightning got him.”
“So be it,” Quade said slowly, and he spoke for them all. “As Ukurti says, some power has spoken. The Lord of Thunder is dead. And this is no place for us—”
The mountain was now sealed again. Would the off-world authorities seek to reopen it for its secrets, wondered Hosteen as Quade steered him down the valley. Somehow he thought it would be a long time, if ever, before any man would tempt the retribution of the lightning power again. The “brains” might have some fancy explanation for what had happened—such as that some process inherent in the alien machines had drawn the offseason storm. But he was one in belief with Ukurti—there were powers and powers, and sometimes such met in battle. The power he could understand best had won this time. And out of that victory could come more than one kind of good, perhaps a more permanent truce between warring tribes—even Kelson’s dream of the security force of Norbies and humans working together. At least there would be no Lord of Thunder to lay his lash on Arzor—and perhaps to the stars beyond.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ANDRE NORTON, named a Grand Master by the Science Fiction Writers of America and awarded a Life Achievement World Fantasy Award, is the author of more than one hundred novels of science fiction and fantasy adventure. Beloved by millions of readers the world over, she has thrilled generations with such series as Beast Master, the Time Traders, the Solar Queen, the Witch World, Central Control, Forerunner, and others. She has also written hundreds of short stories.
Miss Norton’s first novel was published in 1934; in the decades since, whether writing as “Andrew North” or Andre Norton, her writing and her gracious willingness to share her experience and knowledge with young writers have inspired countless authors active in the field today.
She lives in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. Visit her Web site at www.andre-norton.org.
