by Douglas Hill
And for another thing, his loneliness had ended. On the asteroid he had met an alien visitor - an intelligent being from another galaxy, for there were no intelligent life-forms other than man within the Inhabited Worlds.
Glr was the name of the alien, a female of a race called the Ehrlil - a race of long-lived explorers of the unfathomable intergalactic spaces, a race of small, winged beings who communicated telepathically. Glr herself, Keill soon found, had special qualities of her own - among them a boundless curiosity and an unquenchable sense of humour.
Glr became Keill's friend and companion when he left the Overseers" asteroid.
Now she was at the controls of his ship, immensely distant, yet in contact with his mind through her telepathic power, which had no limits in space. She was also his only link with the Overseers - for they had kept the position of the asteroid a secret even from Keill, for fear that he might fall into the hands of their enemy, the Warlord, and be forced to betray them.
Keill and Glr had already had one encounter with forces of the Warlord, and had defeated them. And in doing so Keill had learned a valuable fact. The Warlord's most important agents were organized into a special elite force, whose leader was known only as "The One'. Many of its members came from the Altered Worlds, planets where mutations had taken place among the human inhabitants. But all of the members of that force, mutants or not, were skilled and powerful, and as malignantly evil as their Master. The nature of that force was revealed by its name - the Deathwing.
Beneath him, the ground-car's rumble altered, jolting Keill out of his memories. The big man called Groll, at the controls, had been guiding it through a winding series of gullies and low ravines. Now he had aimed it towards a low, fiat slope, increasing its power. The wheels skidded slightly on the smeared blue substance, and Keill glanced down at it.
It was, he knew, a simple lichenous form of vegetation. It was also why he was there.
Because of that harmless lichen, war was brewing in this cold, rocky place. A war that showed all the signs of the insidious, poisonous influence of the Warlord.
Which meant that somewhere, sometime - perhaps very soon - Keill Randor would once again come face to face with the Deathwing.
The ground-car roared up to the top of the low ridge, and had begun its plunge down the far slope when Groll urgently brought it to a jerking, sliding halt.
Beyond the foot of the slope, from a broad, low area like a vast shallow basin widun the rocks, rose a massive structure. It was cylindrical and flat-topped, resembling an enormous drum - some eight storeys high, with a frontage at least three hundred metres wide. Windows gleamed at regular intervals in its sturdy plasticrete walls, and at its base, between huge supporting buttresses, were wide openings that were more like loading bays than doorways.
On top of the building was a landing pad for spacecraft, on which was resting the bulbous oval shape of a cargo shuttle ship. Around the edge of the roof was a series of unsightly humps that Keill recognized as reinforced gun emplacements.
The weapons within them were heavy-duty laser cannon. And they were firing.
The building was under attack.
High in the yellow sky a silvery dart-shape veered and plunged. A one- or two-person fighter, Keill saw, with what seemed to be a skilled hand at the controls - and with more advanced weaponry than the out-dated lasers of the defenders. It was the crackling blast of an ion-energy gun that spat from the slender ship's nose as it dived towards the huge building.
Gobs of molten plasticrete exploded from the flat roof, within dangerous metres of the exposed shuttle ship. The silvery shape flashed over, curving and zig-zagging, while the laser cannon hissed and flared, the bright beams slashing in vain through the sky around the attacker.
Then the pilot of the gleaming ship pulled it around in a tight loop, on to a different course. Something had attracted his eye. Something like ... a ground-cat in full view on a nearby rocky slope.
"Get out of here!" Keill shouted, as the slim, menacing shape arrowed towards them.
Groll dragged brutally at the car's controls, to force it back over the protecting lip of the ridge. But the elderly drive sputtered and hiccoughed, and the wheels slid beneath it.
Above them, the attacking ship swooped for the kill.
Groll yelled with fear, trying to scramble free of the car, ignoring Joss, who seemed frozen, unable to move.
But Keill Randor was a legionary of Moros - his reflexes, his muscles, his entire physique honed by a lifetime's training to a degree beyond most men's imagining.
In the fractional instant before flame blossomed from the ship's forward gun, he had grasped the back of Joss's coverall, braced himself, and flung her one-handed out of the open car, sprawling and tumbling down the slope, And in a follow-through to the same motion, he dived headlong after her.
Behind them, the entire slope seemed to erupt in a volcanic explosion of fire and shattered rock.
CHAPTER TWO
The tumbling slide of Joss and Keill, over the greasy blue lichen, had ended in a shallow deft in the rock - where they crouched while rock fragments, molten or splintered, hurtled around them. So they arose unharmed when the attacking ship had swept upwards after its pass at them and vanished.
Above them, the ground-car lay tilted crazily, the front end tearing up, crushed and smoking. The energy blast had struck just in front of it, but close enough to wreck it beyond repair -and to have killed any occupants.
Joss rubbed a grazed elbow, showing through a rent in her coverall's sleeve, and looked at Keill with new interest. "Thanks for that. You're stronger than you look."
Keill shrugged. "It's more balance and leverage."
"Perhaps. But I don't know many who could have done that." She pointed up the slope. "Not even him."
Beyond the shattered car, the huge figure of Groll lay, stirring slightly. The force of the blast had flung him up the 6lope - but he had been far enough to one side to escape the full impact. As they watched, he struggled slowly to hands and knees, shaking his head dazedly.
Motioning to Keill, Joss started up the slope towards Groll - while in the distance, from the openings at the base of the mighty building, a crowd of people were surging out on to the rock.
In no time another ground-car had thundered up on to the slope and gathered them up. As they roared back down, Keill glanced over at Joss, seated beside him. Her hood had been pushed back, and her thick dark hair flowed free in the wind.
She seemed more excited than distressed by the narrow escape from danger - her eyes were sparkling, her fine-featured face glowing, and her smile as she turned towards Keill was radiant.
She leaned forward and put her lips to his ear. That's Home," she shouted above the car's roar, pointing to the building that was looming ever closer.
"Where the Clusterfolk live."
Keill blinked. "AH of them?"
"All." She nodded, her smile widening. Keill grinned back in return - but the grin faded slightly when he caught the edge of a look from Groll, in the front seat. It was a look filled with a sullen, brooding dislike.
The big man had suffered no serious harm - but now he was clearly feeling that he had been shown up somehow, out on the slope. Keill sighed inwardly. Not an ideal start Out of two people, he had made one friend, one enemy.
But, glancing at the lovely woman beside him, he was just as glad it hadn't worked out the other way round.
He settled back for the rest of the ride. As he did so, another thought formed within him. But it was not one of his own. It was the silent, inner voice of Glr, reaching into his mind.
I take it you are still alive, said the alien voice with an edge of sarcasm, despite all the alarms I sensed in jour mind just now.
Keill began forming a silent reply, sorting through the events since his landing. He had no telepathic ability, but Glr could reach into bis mind and pick up some of his thoughts.
More clarity, mudhead scolded the inner voice.
Keill's mouth quirked in a private smile. For Glr, most human minds were too alien to read, too much a clutter of swirling, overlapping, jumbled thoughts and images - thick mud, Glr called it. She could read only surface thoughts and in only a few minds - those that could form their thoughts cleatly and precisely, like unspoken words.
So Keill gathered his concentration, and related to Glr what had happened since his landing.
Then the war down there, seems well under way, Glr commented when he was done.
'So it seems," Keill agreed.
And you are still going to reveal yourself as a legionary?
"It's the best way, as I said before," Keill replied."It should help to ease some suspicion."
But if there is a Deathwing agent there, Glr said worriedly, you will be in grave danger from the outset.
"I've already been in danger? Keill said. "I didn't come here to avoid danger."
He felt the ground-car slowing, and looked up to see that they were approaching one of the doorways at the base of the huge building. "Enough for now - we've arrived."
Be wary, said Glr. Then her voice withdrew, as the cat stopped.
The crowd surged forward round the vehicle, in a clamour of shouted concern and questions. As they climbed out of the car, Joss held up a hand, and the babble quietened.
"You'll hear all about it later," she called. "Right now the Council has to meet."
"They're already gathered, Joss," shouted a voice from among the throng. "In the meetin" room."
She waved her thanks with a smile, and Keill noted again the calm air of authority that she wore, and the admiring deference in the faces of the crowd around her - as obvious as the open curiosity with which they stared at him.
Then she was taking his arm and leading him through the crowd into the building, with Groll lumbering stolidly in their wake.
They entered a broad, low-ceilinged area where a number of other ground-cars were parked, with a few people and some of the six-armed work-robots moving among them. Beyond this area they passed through a doorway into a long, low brightly lit corridor, with more doorways and intersecting passages along its length.
The interior of the Home seemed cheerful but almost entirely functional, the bright plastic of its walls only rarely interrupted by metal or ceramic designs. And the people that Keill glimpsed through the doorways, or passed in the corridor, seemed equally functional in their shiny coveralls -though all had time to call a friendly greeting to Joss, and to peer curiously at Keill.
"How many are there ?" Keill asked.
"The Clusterfolk ? Six hundred and forty-one."
"Make it forty-two," Keill said, and was pleased when her smile glinted.
But it seemed a laughably small number of people, he thought, to go to war against a world.
At the corridor's end they stepped on to a moving walkway, rising upwards, twining round a descending walkway to make a double spiral. It took them rapidly up to the topmost level, where they followed another broad corridor to its end. Gleaming metal double doors stood closed before them.
Joss let her hand rest lightly on Keill's arm. "Will you wait here while I speak with the Council? Just a few moments. And Groll—" she glanced at the big man "—you too."
"Are you a Councillor ?" Keill asked her.
"One of several. You'll meet them." Her smile flashed, and she turned away.
When the double doors had closed behind her Keill leaned back against the wall of the corridor, patient, relaxed. He knew that Groll was glowering in his direction, and had no doubt that the big man had something to say. He did not have to wait long.
"Reckon you're a spy, that's what," Groll rumbled aggressively. "Dirty Veynaan spy."
Keill said nothing. Veynaa, he knew, was the large neighbouring planet on which the Ouster's six hundred folk had declared war. It was not surprising that a Clusterman might be wary of spies. Or perhaps Groll merely had an ignorant man's aversion to strangers.
Then again, there might be something more to the big man's hostility.
Something deeper and more deadly. It might be worthwhile, Keill thought, to stir him up a little and see what emerged.
"Got nothin" to say?" Groll sneered, stepping closer.
Keill looked at him without expression. "I'll say this," he replied flatly.
"You've managed something I didn't think possible."
A puzzled frown wrinkled doll's brow. "Whassat?" he demanded suspiciously.
'To be even stupider than you look."
Groll was fairly fast for a man of his bulk. His knotted fist swung without warning in a savage, clubbing punch.
It was a grave mistake - but Groll did not have time to realize it. He did not even have time to register that the punch had missed, that Keill had swayed aside just far enough.
Then Keill struck him, twice, his hands blurring past any eye's ability to follow their speed. He struck with fingertips . only, not wishing to kill, the fingers of one hand jabbing deep into Groll's bulging belly, those of the other hand driving into the small of Groll's back as the first blow doubled him over. The second impact and Groll's own impetus sent the big man lurching forward, his head meeting the hard plastic wall with a meaty thud.
As the unconscious bulk of Groll slid to the floor, a sound behind Keill brought his head round. Joss was standing framed in the open double doors, staring wide-eyed.
'Sorry," Keill said. "He got a little... aggressive."
"He usually does." For all her surprise, she did not seem perturbed, Keill saw, and she hardly spared a glance for the fallen Groll. "You are a very unusual man. I could barely see you move."
Keill waited, saying nothing.
She smiled quickly, stepping aside. "You'd better come and meet the others."
The room beyond the doors was sizeable, but no less functional than the other parts of the building Keill had seen. It was dominated by a long, low table, behind which stood a few metal cabinets and some standard equipment including a computer outlet and a holo-tape viewer. But Keill's attention was on the four people at the table.
Two were older men, grey-haired and stringy. A third was an equally grey-haired woman, but heavy-bodied, with a cheerful ruddy face and bright eyes. The fourth was a younger man, tall, dark-haired, with a narrow intense face. They all wore variants of the shiny coverall favoured by the Cluster-folk; there were no signs of rank or authority.
'The Council of the Cluster," Joss said formally as they approached the table.
"This is Shalet, Council leader," she went on, indicating the big grey-haired woman. "This is Fillon." The young, thin-faced man. "And this is Bennen, and Eint." The two older men.
Keill nodded to them all agreeably, but had not missed the subtle ordering of the introductions. It was the leader, Shalet, and Fillon who - besides Joss herself - were the important members of this Council.
There was a brief silence while the five inspected Keill and he studied them.
Keill broke it first. "I'm Keill Randor. Joss will have told you how I came here, and why I was coming in the first place."
'She did," Shalet replied in a resonant baritone. "Says you're a professional soldier."
Keill smiled wryly. "Mercenary was Groil's word."
Shalet shrugged beefy shoulders. "Don't matter. Joss says you're pretty good.
Saved her life - we got to thank you for that"
"And Gfoil just found out," Joss put in, Tiow good he is."
One of the old men leaned forward." Y" mean big Groll got nasty, and you're still standin" ?" He shook his head wonder-ingly. "You're more'n pretty good, boy."
"Where'd you learn soldierin" ?" Shalet asked.
Keill had been expecting the question. "On the planet Moros," he said levelly.
Above the mutters of surprise, Fillon's snort of derision tang out. "The Legions?" There was an edge of a sneer on the narrow face. "They died out, not so long ago. Everybody knows that'
Terhaps some survived," Joss said softly.
&n
bsp; "One did, anyway," Keill said. He slipped a hand into his tunic, and took out a disc fastened to a thin chain. Around the edge of the disc was the same blue circlet as on bis uniform, and within the ring of blue was a tiny, colour holo-pic of Keill's face, with details of his name and rank, embedded deep in the plastic "This is a Legion ID, if it means anything to you."
"Does to me, boy," said the older man named Rint. "Seen "em before, on the vid. Uniform too, now I recollect."
Fillon snorted again. "So you're a legionary turned mercenary?"
'My people are dead, and I have to earn my keep," Keill said quietly. "It's the only work I know."
"And how do we know," Fillon snapped, "that you didn't hire out to Veynaa, first ?"
Keill allowed a puzzled expression to form on his face, and Shalet saw it.
"Veynaa's the planet we're at war with," she explained. Then she turned impatiently to Fillon. "And you know better'n that about the Legions. Never fought in an unjust war. If they was around, they'd likely fight for us, if we could afford "em. Spyin" wasn't their trade, neither."
"It still isn't," Keill said firmly.
"You need more than words," Fillon sneered, "to convince". Shalct slapped a broad hand on the table. "Not me! I get a good feeling from you, Randor. Reckon the Cluster could do with a fighting man like you."
"Don't be naive," Fillon objected. "He could be dangerous !'
"Course he could !" Shalet boomed. If he's the only legionary left, maybe he's the most dangerous man around! So let him join us, an" be dangerous to Veynaal We can tell "em we got two weapons..."
'Shalet !" Joss broke in sharply.
"Oh, right - sorry." Shalet subsided. "Anyway, what's the decision?"
Fillon stood up abruptly, eyes burning. i tell you this man should be kept under guard, till we're sure of him !'
"And how're we gonna be sure ?" Shalet asked.
"Wait till Quern gets backl" Fillon snapped. "Quern will know."
The others all began talking at once, but Joss's clear voice sliced through the hubbub. "If Keill Randor had been locked up earlier today," she said, "I would be dead."
'True enough," Shalet agreed. "But maybe Fillon's got a point. Wouldn't hurt to wait till Quern can have a talk with him." She glanced around, the two old men nodding in agreement. "Right - let's be fair. Randor, I don't think myself you got anythin" t" do with Veynaa, but we can't take chances. You can be free to come and go as you like around the Home, but there's gotta be someone with you all the time. And we'll talk about it again when Quern's back. All right ?"
