Rescue from the Planet of the Amartos

by Dale Olausen

  "Good heavens!" Coryn burst out as he studied the dirty, skinny figure. "Can that be the Mackenzie girl? It can't possibly be anyone else!"

  Keeping a suspicious eye on the big green animal he crept closer to the net. The cat lay perfectly still; only its strange green eyes followed the man's motions. Coryn stretched out an experimental hand and when there was no reaction from the animal he lay it gently on the inert person's head, watching intently for some sign of hostility from the cat. When none came, he turned the head so that he could see the face.

  He stared at the emaciated, dirty features for several minutes, then nodded silently to himself.

  "Well," Steph demanded, "is it her?"

  "Yeah, it's Sarah Mackenzie all right. She's alive, but only just." Coryn shook his head. "Can you fetch me the snipper-sealer and I'll see if I can't get her loose without releasing that cat-thing at the same time?"

  The cat's behaviour did not seem hostile. Nevertheless, it was wise to err on the side of caution. The animal was large enough that it could cause plenty of trouble if it so chose.

  Steph brought a snipper-sealer and Coryn set to work separating the girl from the animal before releasing her from the net. The cat appeared to accept its situation without protest; it lay very still, merely following Coryn's actions with its beautiful green eyes.

  "Shall I try to get in touch with Castilo?" Steph asked. "I should think that he'd be glad to hear that his ship mechanic is safe. If they’re still alive, that is."

  Coryn wondered if that was a rebuke, or just Steph’s natural matter-of-fact nature. He thought it best to give them both the benefit of the doubt, and consider it the latter.

  “We’ll send a message when we know more. We still don’t know if we’ll make it to Kordea alive.”

  Coryn began to snip open the netting to release the girl's form. "Let’s see what sort of a shape she's in. I hope she’s ok – everyone went to a lot of trouble…."

  While the pilot waited silently he pulled the body free of the net and carried it in his arms onto the couch which dominated the Camin's living area. He was appalled at the appearance of the comatose body - where had Sarah Mackenzie spent the past days to end up in such bad shape? Her hair and face were filthy, and the protecto-suit which she wore looked like it was going to need at least a week in a sterilizer before it would be clean again. She was terribly skinny, as if she had gone without proper nourishment for days. And the boots she wore were badly scuffed. Obviously she had been doing some serious hiking.

  Coryn's medical training was limited to first aid but, nonetheless, he proceeded to perform a rudimentary physical examination as was necessary. He found no broken bones or any other evidence of accident or violence, except for red marks of chafing on the wrists and the ankles. Had Sarah spent some time tied up? By whom?

  The pockets of her protecto-suit bulged with something hard. Coryn investigated and pulled out a pair of gloves, apparently belonging to the suit. They now appeared to be filled with something and tightly sealed shut. The knots refused to give way to his fingers so he cut the material with the snipper-sealer and poured the contents of the gloves on the couch. He let out a sharp, strangled shout as he stared at the pile of small, green stones that he had released. A tiny pin-prick of gold light burned in the heart of each ellipse.

  "What's the matter?"

  Coryn's only answer to Steph's query was to point at the stones. He reached for a couch arm in order to steady his shaking knees.

  Steph leaned down to examine the pebbles.

  "Well I'll be damned," he whispered hoarsely as he straightened up again.

  "That settles it. Unless Castilo’s Explorers won the firefight, that Organization ship is bound to be coming after us. Their machine will have surely picked up the presence of all these amartos.

  “Maybe that will help out the Beth,” Coryn added wistfully. “Maybe the hounds will leave them be, and high-tail after us.”

  "Got any insulated bags anywhere on this ship?" he then asked. He seemed to have recovered himself somewhat, but still stared intently at the precious jewels. "An insulated bag and inside a safe - if anyone thought to include such a thing as a safe in this ship. That might give us some shielding from detection."

  Steph had scrambled to locate the required bag. "No safe," he said, "but the compartment that holds the ray guns is lead-lined to the best of my knowledge. Would that do?"

  "It’s better than nothing."

  Coryn scooped the Stones into the bag that the pilot handed to him. "Lock them up, please. Then you and me and our cargo are going to have to disappear from here as quickly as possible – with a bit of luck, the Hounds’ machine might not have gotten a good fix on us yet."

  He turned his attention back to the unconscious girl. It was a pity that they could not take her back to the Explorer ship where Jaff could have practiced his arts on her. But that’s not how things turned out. Coryn knew that there was not much that he could do for her besides clean her up and pump her full of revival shots. What if he and Steph were forced to make omega-jumps with her on board, still in the unconscious state?

  Grimly he fetched a portable spray cleanser from the shower cubicle and set to work on the girl's inert body. First he attacked the horrid mess of dirty, tangled hair on her head and the gaunt face streaked with a mixture of sweat and something black that looked like soot.

  Coryn scowled as he gently mopped Sarah's face. "Let us head for Kordea, Steph."

  Was he going to be able to revive the girl to consciousness in time for the first omega-jump? He began to undo the fastenings of the girl's protecto-suit, gazing upon the skinny form thus revealed with a mixture of anger and pity. It did not seem right that the kid should have struggled through whatever it was that she had struggled through, to bring the amartos this far, just to lose her life in omega-space. As soon as he had her clean he would try the revival shots, and stuff some nourishment capsules into her mouth.

  Forty-five minutes later Coryn sat at the Camin's tiny dining table intently drumming his fingers on the tabletop. He stared at the still comatose girl, now clean and dressed in masculine garb several sizes too large for her. The revival shots and the nourishment capsules had put some color into her cheeks, but they had not returned her consciousness to her body.

  Steph was piloting the Camin towards the omega-coordinates which he had chosen for their first jump. Behind them, the Wanderer of The Organization Hounds was chasing them - at a considerable distance, thanks to the great speed that the Camin was capable of attaining in normal space.

  "Any luck with her yet?"

  Steph was making one of his frequent forays into the living area to check up on Coryn's progress with Sarah. He knew as well as Coryn did that Sarah did not have much of a chance of surviving the trip unless she regained consciousness before the first omega-jump had to be taken.

  "I even stooped to slapping her cheeks, but all I've done has been no good," Coryn replied, shaking his head ruefully.

  "As a matter-of-fact I'm starting to wonder about her coma. I've administered two sets of revival shots and shoved several capsules of nutrients under her tongue. I poured a glass of water down her throat and she swallowed all of it - which proves that her body reflexes are operating. Look at her, she's starting to look alive, physically, at least. But as to regaining consciousness, I haven't seen the slightest sign of that."

  "Maybe it isn't a normal coma that she's in," Steph suggested thoughtfully. "She was in rapport with the Witches’ Stones, wasn't she? And she was carrying them on her person. Who knows what those things can do to a person?"

  Coryn shrugged.

  "Even if you're right about that it doesn't help the situation one bit. How long before we have to jump?"

  "We'll reach the coordinates in fifteen minutes. But I can circle around them for a while if necessary. Provided, of course, that an Organization battleship doesn't materialize next to us, ready to ray us into oblivion."

  "Yeah, there's always that p
ossibility, isn't there?" Coryn sighed and got up from the chair. He stepped over to the couch and stared at Sarah's motionless body for a moment.

  Then he began to pace the floor, what little there was of it to pace, considering how much space the cat in the net took up. Steph moved out of his way and returned to the ship's controls. A quick scan of all the viso-screens told him that no unexpected ship had appeared in their corner of the universe, yet. But for how long would that space remain empty?

  Surely the hounds had already figured out what coordinate sector the Camin was heading for, and surely they were planning to try to intercept it before Steph had the chance to jump. Or was their luck going to hold out longer than he could reasonably expect?

  Barely had the hope sprung in his mind when the alarm he had set earlier buzzed into life quashing it. A ship had omega-jumped into the vicinity and Steph immediately set about identifying it.

  "I can't give you any extra time, Coryn!" he shouted thirty seconds later. "We're going to have to jump as planned! And at that we'll be lucky to make it without the Hounds getting into shooting range!"

  Coryn paced back and forth along the sliver of floor beside the couch throwing a frustrated glance at Sarah's comatose form, every time he turned around. He was at wits' end.

  What more could he possibly do to try to bring the girl back to consciousness? She was not injured, so he was quite certain that the shots and the nourishment he had pumped into her body would have strengthened her enough to pass through the necessary omega-jumps without danger, if only she was conscious. But as she remained, with her mind off heaven only knew where, her chances were not nearly as good. She might or might not make it through the first hop alive; with the second one there would be no doubt about the result. Yet, what could he possibly do?

  He was not a person used to accepting defeat. Moreover, the thought that Sarah should die from omega-jumping aboard a well-equipped spaceship after all that she must have already lived through, struck him as too tragically absurd. There had to be a solution!

  He ground his teeth together and looked about him as if hoping to find an answer to the dilemma somewhere within the ship. His eyes fell on the big green cat that lay quietly inside the net which imprisoned it. The animal was following him with its incredibly beautiful eyes, and as those eyes caught his he stopped walking to stand very still.

  Later he could never quite explain to himself what happened next. It felt as if the cat was trying to communicate something to him, trying to penetrate his mind. Almost without thinking he grabbed the snipper-sealer and began to cut apart the netting that restrained the animal. As soon as the hole he was making was large enough, the cat deftly let itself out of the net, and noiselessly stepped over to the couch where Sarah lay, gently laying its big head on the girl's shoulder. It stared into the girl's vacant face intently.

  As if coming out of a trance Coryn dropped the snipper-sealer on the floor and stared from the animal to the empty net and back again. He could barely reconcile himself to what he had done.

  Yet there was a sense of certainty in the back of his mind that had not been there before. He had done the right thing. He had chanced upon the solution to the problem. Sarah was going to pull through the omega-jumps with the help of the large cat which had chosen to befriend her. He threw himself into one of the dining chairs and wiped the sweat off his brow.

  "Get ready to jump!"

  Steph's command was sharp and urgent. Coryn, staring at the big cat and Sarah, took a deep breath and forced his body to relax. He blanked his mind, letting go of all the worries that had been nagging at him. Here...we…go...

  He came apart into a million fragments - then was back aboard the spaceship Camin 001, pulling himself together. He inhaled deeply, then blew the air out again - and felt like his old self. Immediately he sprang out of his chair to check on the comatose Sarah.

  The big greencat lifted its head off Sarah's shoulder and stared into the Agent's eyes. Coryn could have sworn that he detected a smug, self-satisfied glint in its eyes. But it merely stood up on its legs for a moment, stretched its body luxuriously, and then lay down on the floor beside the couch to sleep.

  Meanwhile Coryn studied Sarah's face anxiously and checked her breathing and her pulse. She was still unconscious but perfectly fine. She was in no worse shape than she had been before the jump - if anything, Coryn thought as he studied her colouring, she looked better than she had earlier.

  "What the hell - ?"

  Steph stood at the edge of the living area and stared at the scene.

  Coryn pressed a finger to his lips. He retreated to the table and motioned the pilot to do the same.

  "The girl's in excellent shape," he whispered to the incredulous pilot. "No ill effects at all from the jump. That animal pulled her through - don't ask me how."

  "How'd it get out of the net?" Steph was staring.

  Coryn smiled a wan smile.

  "I let it out. Why - I don't know. It doesn't make any sense - I just found myself doing it. It made sense at the time and it looks like doing it helped to save Sarah's life. So I'm not about to apologize for it."

  Steph's eyes flitted from the animal to Sarah and back. He shrugged.

  "Well, we do what works. And the cat doesn't look like it's going to attack us the first chance it gets. Maybe all four of us will get to be friends yet. If we make it through this ordeal, that is."

  "Yeah. So where in the galaxy are we at the moment, anyway?"

  A wicked grin spread across Steph's face.

  "I dare the Hounds to follow us here," he said. "We're within breathing distance of the Firedragon!"

  Chapter Seventeen

  Sarah fought fiercely to get away from her two attackers. Mindroom! That's what she needed! But alas, her two assailants were not giving her much of that. Nevertheless, she forced herself to make what use she could of the mindspace that she did have and try to think.

  What had happened to her? Understanding the situation might perhaps help her to deal with it, she told herself. Possibly she could figure out some way out of the present predicament.

  It was clear that she was no longer a worn-out, physical person running away from pursuers. Her mind had escaped her body and had left the dark tunnels, now to speed through the atmosphere of an alien planet as a formless shadow, and dogged by two other non-physical presences, each of which was trying to bend her to its will. This much she quickly understood.

  She was out-of-body - so where was her body? What had happened to her body?

  Barely had she formed the questions before she already found herself somewhere other than the place where she had asked them. She - and her persistent companions alongside of her - now hovered above a turfed slope on a mountainside.

  Nearby, on the “grass”, the greencat lay, and beside it, the empty, weary husk of Sarah's body. Suddenly, while the invisible watchers observed, a small space craft appeared from behind some ridge, swept towards the two on the “grass” and stopped to hover precisely above them. A net fell from the craft down on top of the cat and the comatose girl, and scooped them up into the ship.

  "All is lost," mind-whispered one of the presences hounding her. "You may as well give up. We have your body and the Stones now. We have your peculiar friend. There's nothing left for you to fight for, you might as well give in. Give in to us, to the Neotsarians, whom you know as The Organization; we are too powerful for you to fight us!"

  "No!" hissed the entity on her other side, pressing closer to her. "Those are lies that they're telling you! All lies! Don't listen to their lies!"

  They were closing in on her again, trying to squeeze to nothing the small mindspace that she had been able to maintain. At the same time she felt them pulling at her being, each force drawing her in an opposite direction.

  "No!" she shouted at them both. "Go away! Leave me alone! I won't deal with either one of you!"

  With a tremendous, angry effort of will she jerked herself free of one tormentor and then of t
he other. She moved so quickly that she was loose and gone before either of the presences had time to recover. They reeled with shock while she shot off, accelerating into unimaginably fast motion, and rushed towards the black void of space!

  Yet she knew that she was not safe! Within moments, the fires would be on her trail. They would catch her soon enough, for it was clear that they knew much better than she did the rules of non-physical being. Once caught, she would have no chance of a second escape, that she was sure of. They would be ready to block her the next time. This was her one and only chance to escape! She must make use of it - but how? Where could she hide? She was not in any familiar physical environment; there were no rocks to hide behind, no rooms to lock herself in, within this mental space. She did not even know the game that she was playing! How could she flee from her pursuers?

  But she had not made it this far just to give in! There had to be a way! She willed herself to find a route to a safe haven! Even as she sped through the dark space at breakneck speed she demanded that the darkness around her offer a solution. She had to find a way to get away! Nothing else was quite as important at the moment!

  "Let there be a way out!" she screamed into the black space that surrounded her. "I refuse to be caught by those things again! I will be free! I will not be swallowed! I will be me!"

  The pursuers were right behind her, she knew. And suddenly she knew that there loomed a barrier in front of her, right in her path! But it was too late, she was moving too fast - and besides, there was the pursuit. She crashed into the wall, felt how it strained, splintered, heard it groan under her assault. There was a tear, she stumbled through it and knew that immediately behind her it knit together again, leaving her pursuers on the other side.

  She had escaped.

  *****

  The hot white sun had sunk behind the western hills leaving the tower room cool and dim. The shutters that blocked out the fierce sunlight were still in place on the southern windows. It was the gloomy hour between sunset and the rising of the first moon, when one needed a candle to light the way as one went about one’s business.