"So she found you," Chane said. "But she hasn't come back herself."
Ashton said, "Who are you? And where is ..." He was making an effort to collect his wits. Underneath the confusion was a growing anger. "Helmer, Vreya said. Helmer would destroy the Free-Faring. So I came back. That girl made me come back!" He started to get up. "Is it true, or was that just a lie, to get me ..."
He lost his balance and Dilullo caught him, eased him down again.
"It's no lie, Mr. Ashton. Just sit quiet there, and I'll ..."
But Ashton's eyes had cleared suddenly. He was looking at Dilullo, and the anger was now full grown and ugly.
"You're Mercs," he said. "Who hired you to come here?"
"Your brother, Mr. Ashton."
"My brother. My goddamned meddling brother. Wants me back, I suppose, for my own good." The anger in his face grew hotter. He began to tremble. "I will not leave this place. Not for my brother, not for anybody. Do you understand?"
Raul whispered Vreya's name again, and Chane followed his gaze to the grid. He thought—
Before Dilullo could prevent him, he ran out and across the walkway to the grid.
Vreya still lay motionless, her splendid golden body sprawled near the edge of the grid. Beyond her lay the Arcturian scientist, Sattargh. He had the faint red skin and aquiline face of his kind, and he made not the slightest movement either.
Two missiles blam-blammed almost together against the wall of the shaft high above, and fragments rattled off the walkway.
Chane squatted down on the walkway, only two feet away from Vreya, staring at her still form.
Another missile went off above, and this time a fragment ricocheted off the grid only inches away from Sattargh. The glasslike grid and the metal walkways seemed as impervious as the walls.
"Chane, come back here!"
That was Dilullo, with his commander's voice, but Chane paid no attention to the call. He waited, while the missiles went off above. He watched Vreya.
He thought he saw a slight movement of her fingers. She might be back, but still unconscious, numbed, as he had been.
Chane leaned forward, as far as he dared. "Vreya!" he said loudly. "Wake up. Get up."
There was no sign that she heard, no more movements. Chane made his voice harsher, louder.
"Vreya! Wake up or I'll whip you!"
It seemed to take a little time for that to penetrate, but presently she opened her eyes. They were bemused, dazed, but also they had a spark of anger in them.
"Up, I say, or I'll give you the best whipping you ever had in your life!"
He glared at her, and she glared back, her eyes focusing more steadily, the color rising in her cheeks. He lifted his hand, and she made a furious small sound and got to her feet and lurched toward him, her own hand raised to strike.
The moment she came off the grid Chane grabbed her. He held her, easily now because her strength had not returned yet, and he laughed and said in her ear, "Forgive me, Vreya, but you're such a damn strong-willed wench that I thought only a threat like that would get you up."
He picked her up in his arms and carried her back across the walkway and to the tunnel. He set her down carefully, and she sat limply and gave him a stormy look.
It was nothing to the look Ashton was giving Dilullo. He appeared like a man on the verge of losing his mind. But he was not saying anything. Not for the moment. And Dilullo's mouth was set like a steel trap.
Presently Sattargh stirred feebly on the grid, and Bollard and Dilullo ran out and got him and brought him back.
"Thanks, Vreya," said Chane. "Thanks for getting them back here."
"Now that they are back," said Dilullo, "we can try getting the hell out of here. We'll never have a better chance than now, when most of them are up in those fliers."
Vreya said, "I thought you were going to fight Hel-mer, to save the Free-Faring. Did you lie to me, Chane?"
"Of course he lied," said Ashton. "They don't give a damn about the Free-Faring. All they care about is taking me away from it."
Chane noticed that Dilullo and Bollard were standing between Ashton and the mouth of the tunnel, as though they thought he might try to break back to the grid, missiles and all. Chane took the hint and kept a close eye on Vreya. She was sitting beside Raul now, her hand on his.
Chane said, "We can't fight very effectively from this tunnel, can we?"
She watched him, unconvinced. Raul sat with his head leaned back against the wall, and he watched Vreya, except for the times when he would lift his free hand and look at it, and touch his face, and then his body, feeling the gaunt bones. Chane thought, He loves her. Perhaps he's thinking now what he almost lost in the Free-Faring.
He wondered if she loved him. And was astonished at the twinge of jealousy he felt.
The Mercs were collecting their gear while Dilullo brooded.
McGoim said nastily, "You told me the entrance to the tunnel would be guarded."
Dilullo looked at him. "It will be, for sure. Which means we'll have to fight our way out. But if we can do it, and get to the skitter-flier, we have a chance."
He turned to Milner. "You're the best with a laser. Chane, you're the fastest. You two, I think."
Neither made any objection. Milner said, "A light-bomb would help us."
Dilullo nodded. "I thought of that." He took from a pocket a little plastic sphere no bigger than a marble and handed it to Milner. Then he said, "I don't like killing, everybody knows that. But these fanatics intend to kill every one of us, so—take no chances."
Chane still had no boots on. While Milner removed his, Vreya said,
"You did lie."
"About the need to come back, no. About saving the Free-Faring ..." Chane shrugged. "So far Helmer hasn't done it much damage."
Raul spoke suddenly, with startling violence. "He must. He must destroy it."
Vreya stared at him, shocked. "You can say that, Raul? After you've done it?"
"Because I have done it," he said. "Yes. Look at me, look at Ashton and Sattargh. The Free-Faring is sweet poison, but that is what it is. It is death."
Milner said, "Be sure to bring our boots." Bollard nodded. Milner turned to Chane. They took their lasers and started down the tunnel.
They went quite noiselessly; it was perfectly silent except for the echo from the great shaft behind them when missiles went off. It was dark here in the tunnel, but they could not lose their way.
After a while there was glimmer from up ahead. They went more softly until they were near the bright daylight of the tunnel end.
Milner held up his hand, signalling Chane to stop. Then he drew the little sphere from his pocket, touched a stud on it, and hurled it out through the tunnel opening.
Instantly, Milner and Chane shut their eyes and clapped their free hands over their eyelids.
They knew when the light-bomb went off, not only by the sharp snapping sound that was intended to signal its detonation, but also by the fact that the blaze of light it created was so terrifically intense that even through hand and eyelid it registered.
Next moment, they opened their eyes and plunged out of the tunnel. Chane was first, going low and going fast, not caring if Milner saw his Starwolf speed, in this moment of utter danger.
His speed saved him. For an instant later, the laser mounted in a fixed stand on the ledge to cover the tunnel-mouth was triggered off by an Arkuun man whose eyes were still utterly dazzled.
The laser cut Milner almost in half. Chane bounded to one side as Milner fell.
There were two of the Arkuuns left here to guard the tunnelmouth, and their eyes were beginning to recover and they could see well enough now to kill. They swung their lasers toward Chane.
Chane shot one down, leaping aside with all his blurring Varnan speed just after the weapon's flash and crack.
The remaining Arkuun shot and missed, and then tried to swing his weapon to follow Chane. But already Chane, his teeth showing in a mirthless grin, was firing. Th
e second Arkuun went down.
Chane bent over Milner. There was no doubt at all that he was dead.
Chane ran into the tunnel and put all the power of his lungs into a shout that echoed and re-echoed down the long tube.
"Come on!"
Presently he heard them coming. When they got to him, Dilullo looked down at Milner and said nothing. He just dropped the boots that Milner would no longer need.
As Chane put on his own boots, the others arrived. Bollard and Janssen were dragging Ashton between them.
"I won't go," Ashton was saying, over and over. "I will not leave the Free-Faring!"
Dilullo turned on him and said, "We took a contract to bring you home, Mr. Ashton, and we'll keep it. There's nothing in the contract that says I can't encourage you to come quietly, so here's some encouragement."
And he gave Ashton a violent crack across the mouth with the back of his hard hand.
"Bring him," he said. "And bring Milner's body."
XVII
They went out of the tunnel and along the ledge. Dilullo kept them hugging the inward side.
"Those fliers are still circling around up there over the summit," he said. "If we're spotted going down the mountain, it'll be bad."
When they had followed the ancient path down off the ledge and onto the rock-strewn slope, Dilullo halted them in the concealment of a big boulder. He nodded to Janssen and Bollard, who had carried Milner's body with them.
"This is far enough," he said. "We'll build a cairn over him. But don't show yourselves."
"This is insane," said McGoun, looking upward at the sky, a badly frightened man. "The man's dead, and—"
Dilullo interrupted. "Yes, the man's dead, and he wasn't the man I liked best in the world. But he was a good Merc and he followed me here to die. He's going to have a proper burial."
In the shadow of the big boulder, they built the cairn over Milner's body.
"All right," said Dilullo. "We're starting down now, but not all together. We'll move one or two at a time, from one bit of cover to the next. I'll lead, and you follow the way I go. Bollard, you can help Ashton. Chane, bring up the rear."
They moved out, Dilullo scuttering fast to another big boulder a little way down the slope, then Bollard following with Ashton. Chane thought that Ashton did actually need a helping hand, but that the real reason Dilullo had Bollard stick with him was to make sure he didn't desert them and go back up to the tunnel. Ashton was talking in a moaning whimper now about the Free-Faring, and how he could not leave it.
Chane, waiting to go last, glanced up at the three fliers circling the summit. Then he looked down at his own party, running by ones and twos from boulder to boulder, a deadly game of follow-the-leader.
Chane did not think they could long remain undiscov ered. The Mercs were pretty good at this sort of thing, but Ashton and Sattargh and Garcia were not, and neither was Raul, nor Vreya.
They did not even get as far as Chane expected. They were barely a third of the way down the rocky slope when Chane, glancing upward again, saw one of the three fliers break off its circling of the summit and come rushing down toward them.
Chane yelled a warning and skipped behind a rock. He raised his laser, but the Arkuuns seemed to know the range of a portable and the flier kept well above it as the pilot let his missiles go.
The explosion filled the air with rock fragments. Chane peered, but his comrades were all hidden and he didn't know if any of them had been hit.
"Pinned!" he muttered to himself. "That about does it."
The flier went on out away from the mountain so it could circle and come back over them again.
Now the Arkuuns in the other two fliers up there had waked up to what was happening, and they came hurrying to join the attack.
Chane, watching, thought that one of the two, in its haste, went almost over the summit of the mountain. He hoped that the shaft of the Free-Faring had caught it.
His hope died when both fliers came straight on down toward them. The missiles from the lead flier began to bang around him.
Chane hugged his rock. At the same time he glanced away from the mountain. The first of their attackers would be circling back and catch them on the wrong side of their shelters.
The last of the fliers came down over him. To his surprise, it fired no missiles at all. It just went majestically downward in a straight, declining line until it hit the slope and ploughed up the rocks and vanished in flaming wreckage.
"So the Free-Faring did catch that one!" thought Chane. "Good."
It did not much help his party, though. Pinned on the mountainside as they were, two fliers were quite enough to finish them off as long as the pilots stayed out of laser range.
The first flier had circled and now was coming back. Chane skipped to the other side of the boulder; as he did so, he saw Dilullo and the others down there below doing the same thing. He thought a few of them were missing, but could not be sure.
The missiles exploded in a line up the slope. One went off close to the boulder behind which Chane crouched.
Chane jumped up and staggered out into the open. He clutched his middle with his free hand. Then he collapsed onto the ground, lying on his back with his eyes open, the laser still clutched in his hand.
To his amazement, as he lay there, he heard feet pounding up the path. Dilullo, sweating and with his chin bleeding from a small gash, looked down at him.
"Chane?"
Chane did not move a muscle. He said, "Get the devil out of here, John, and leave me alone. And try to work your way farther down the slope."
"Ah. I might have known it was some Starwolf trick," Dilullo muttered, but all the same he looked relieved.
He pounded back down the slope. Then Chane heard one of the two fliers coming back toward the mountain, and heard its missiles banging again.
The flier circled around without loosing any missiles in Chane's vicinity. He began to hope.
It went on and on as he lay there, the fliers relentlessly coming toward the mountainside and firing, and then circling to swing out again. But the uproar seemed to be moving gradually down the slope. Dilullo would be trying to work them lower between attacks, Chane thought.
Lying still, with his arms outflung, he watched each time as the flier that had just attacked came circling over him. The fliers were getting closer to him, for though they stayed out of range of Dilullo and his party, the movement of the party down the slope was lowering the altitude of the attackers. And they had obviously ceased to worry about Chane.
Another banging of missiles and the flier came on and curved around over Chane, lower than before.
Not yet, he thought. I've got to be sure ...
He waited and heard the attack still receding down the slope. He wondered how many of Dilullo's party still survived.
Then, when the sound was even more distant, Chane sensed that the moment had come, and gathered himself. He waited until the flier curved about him; this time it was low enough.
With all the speed that Varna had given him, he jumped, aimed the laser and let go with it.
The bolt went right through the cockpit. The flier did not complete the curve it had begun. It rammed straight into the side of the mountain.
The remaining Arkuun flier, which had been circling around to come in for another attack-run, changed course. The pilot seemed to have become crazed with rage, for he dived the flier straight at Chane, letting missiles go in a steady stream.
Chane had leaped to cover, but the rocks seemed to lift up around him and the air was full of dust. The explosions almost stunned him.
He staggered out when the explosions stopped, but the flier had already swung around and was winging out to turn and make another run at him.
Chane saw Dilullo, over a way from him on the slope, climbing higher than Chane's position, running like mad.
Then Chane ducked and once more the explosions were all around him and he thought when they stopped that he was stretching his luck
pretty thin, that he would not get through another of these salvos.
But as the explosions stopped, he heard another sound—the crack of a laser. He jumped up, but he could see nothing for a moment, through the dust.
It cleared a little, and he saw the last Arkuun flier fluttering over and over. It hit the ground and rolled a little way down the slope.
Dilullo came limping down toward him, carrying his laser. "I am not," said Dilullo, "as cunning as a Star-wolf at these tricks, but I can imitate them when I see them. I figured that pilot was so mad at you he wouldn't be looking for me higher up."
They went to the wrecked fliers and examined them. No one was alive in them. In one of them Helmer sat with his head lolled back. On his gold-skinned face was nothing now, just a dead-expression.
"Damn all fanatics," said Dilullo bitterly. "They get themselves and a lot of other people killed because they won't argue for their ideas—they have to enforce them."
Chane shrugged. "Well," he said carelessly, "he didn't destroy the Free-Faring, and he didn't destroy us. At least not all of us. How many are left?"
"Raul took a missile fragment right through the heart. McGoun got another fragment in the stomach, and I think he's bought it. Janssen has a shoulder wound, but not bad."
It was very quiet now on that upper slope. The wind blew through the broken cockpit of the flier and stirred Helmer's bright hair. Dilullo turned and walked wearily away, down toward where" the others were. Chane followed him, feeling a little sorry for him and not envying him his conscience.
When they reached the others, Bollard was giving first aid to McGoun, who seemed to be unconscious. Vreya sat crying beside the body of Raul. The others seemed a little stupefied.
"They're all done for," Dilullo told them. "You're safe now.
Stay here till you get McGoun tended to and then make a sling litter for him. Chane and I are going down to the skitter-flier."
They started away. When they had gone perhaps fifty yards there was a sudden outcry behind them. They turned, and saw Randall Ashton running away from the group, back up the mountain toward the tunnel-mouth.
Starwolf (Omnibus) Page 25
