by John Norman
The gladiator had now crawled to the foot of the shaft, and lifted the fire pistol. With one bolt he melted the ladder from the top of the shaft.
“Who are these others?” asked a man.
One of the men above leaped to the foot of the shaft, but there, for a moment, lost his footing, and then took the charge of the gladiator full in the chest of the armor, which blasted him back against the side of the shaft, and he sank down there, unconscious. Another man followed, but the gladiator, shaking his head, steadying the fire pistol with both hands, struck him full in the belly. A shot ripped above his own head. The gladiator, pulled the trigger again. The fellow spun about and then, drunkenly, seized the ladder and began to climb, but, in a moment, he had come to the melted termination of the ladder, feet from the top, and could go no further. He clung to the ladder, and then, struck by a third charge from the pistol, was thrust from it, and then, in a moment, fell sideways, and then down, clattering to the bottom of the shaft.
“Bring gas,” said a voice from above.
“We are lost, Master,” said Janina. “There is no escape!”
The gladiator stood unsteadily, parts of his armor dangling, and drew a bead with the pistol on the door, across the way, that giving the main entry to Section 19. He fired once into the side of the door, sealing it to the steel portal.
Running feet could now be heard again, above, more men approaching.
There was blood running down the side of the gladiator’s leg, on the plating, from beneath the armoring of his torso.
He slipped down on one knee.
“She lied,” he said.
Across the way he could see, through the observation panel, the faces of men. He heard the door being tried.
“Get in the escape capsule,” said the gladiator, from one knee, to Janina.
But she fled to him. She put her arms about him. “Master is mad!” she wept. “He is mad with confusion and pain!”
He struggled to raise his head.
“There is no lock here, Master!” she said.
“Go,” he said.
“Let Janina rather die in his arms!”
Then his head was raised, and he looked upon the slave, and his visage was fierce and terrible.
“Janina hastens to obey!” cried the girl with fear and she fled to the inactivated capsule, the second of the two which had been in the hold.
She struggled only for a moment with the hatch, as it had been opened before, by the fugitives. They had been sustaining themselves on the supplies in the capsules.
Across the way the butt of fire pistols smote at the wire-reinforced glass, and then the muzzle of a pistol, poking through the wire, bits of glass, clinging to it, intruded into the hold. It fired over the escape capsule, rippling the wall of the hold.
“Masks!” called a man, from above.
The gladiator fired a shot toward the observation panel and glass and wire spattered backwards, into the corridor outside.
Gas began to hiss downward into the hold, through the lift shaft.
It could be seen now, like fog, creeping from the shaft.
Across the way the door was being struck with charges like hammers. The door began to glow.
The gladiator rose unsteadily to his feet.
The door now seemed lost in a blaze of sparks and charges.
The gladiator staggered toward the escape capsule.
He climbed the two iron steps, leading to the hatch of the capsule, and then leaned against the capsule, weakly, over it.
“She lied!” he cried, suddenly, and wept, and struck down on the capsule with an armored fist. “She lied!” he cried.
“Master!” cried Janina, from within the capsule. “Master!”
Gas was now billowing from the lift shaft into the hold.
The gladiator unslung the Telnarian rifle from his back.
Across the way the door suddenly burst loose from the steel portal.
He slipped into the opened hatch, but stood in it, his body half out of the capsule.
Janina, within, crouched on the steel plating.
Men, masked, weapons raised, emerged through the portal across the way.
The gladiator heard two men leaping to the floor of the lift shaft.
He aimed the Telnarian rifle at the side of the hold.
He pulled the trigger four times, placing four charges in the form of a square.
Some of the gas began to move suddenly, hissing, toward the wall. The gladiator laid the rifle on the surface of the capsule before him, and then, with the pistol, with its last charges, each set on the narrow sustaining beam, linked the four points of impact of the rifle.
The gas was now whipping toward the wall. The atmosphere in the hold was rushing past him, tearing at his hair.
“No!” cried someone behind him.
Then men were fleeing.
The gladiator lifted, once more, the Telnarian rifle. He fired the last charge in the rifle at the center of the pattern. Suddenly the side of the hull seemed to leap away from him and, the capsule tumbling on its side toward the hole, he slid within it, turned the wheel, and secured the hatch.
In a moment the capsule was tumbling through space, leaving the Alaria, and the Ortung fleet behind, like specks in the night.
CHAPTER 15
“What are those sounds?” asked Janina, frightened.
“They are horns, hunting horns,” said the gladiator.
“This world, then, is not uninhabited,” said Janina.
“It would seem not,” said the gladiator.
He kicked dirt over the small fire they had built on the bank.
“My clothes are not yet dry!” protested Janina.
“Put them on wet, or carry them,” said the gladiator.
“I am exhausted,” she said. “We almost died. I cannot move.”
She looked up at him, pathetically. She knelt on leaves. Her hair had been loosened, that it might be dried near the fire.
“Then I shall rope you to a tree and leave you behind,” he said.
She rose to her feet and hastily began to gather her clothes from the cord stretched between two trees.
“Forgive your slave,” she said.
The gladiator stood very still, listening.
“What world is this?” she asked, rolling the garments of Princess Gerune into a small bundle.
“I do not know,” he said, softly.
“Forgive me, Master,” she said, realizing she might have disturbed him.
The gladiator looked up at the sky. The descent of the capsule, last night, might have been visible, particularly in the upper atmosphere. It might have been mistaken for a meteor at first, a falling star, perhaps even later, when the fearful rush in the atmosphere, like a hurricane over the trees, was audible. But, too, there may have been a visual contact, when the descent slowed and the capsule began to skim the trees, the sensors searching for level surfaces, where the adjusting thrusters would be activated for a landing. But then, too, perhaps not. How could one know?
Again the horns sounded.
The gladiator threw the last bits of the armor into the river. These, with certain other supplies, he had salvaged from the capsule.
“Master, I cannot swim!” had cried Janina, last night, first waist deep in the current, trying to help bring the capsule to the shore, then her footing lost, falling, her hands slipping from the wet metallic surface, being swept downstream.
The capsule, when it had left the Alaria, sped by the brunt of the decompression, had tumbled uncontrolled from the rupture in the hull, and only moments later had the gladiator, within the darkened, stifling cabin, been able to locate the launch release, the engagement of which had two primary effects, the first being to activate the clearance thruster, used for distancing the capsule from the mother ship, to protect it in the event of explosions or radiation, and the second being to activate, after the clearance burn, various systems internal to the vehicle, which supplied heat, light and oxygen. This dela
y in activating the clearance thruster kept the capsule cold when the first tracking shots left the Ortungen fleet. Two missiles, which tracked from the ships themselves, by means of monitors, not heat, had followed the capsule for over fifteen hundred miles. Then it had disappeared from the monitors. The gladiator had, of course, manually, disengaged the locating beacon, and turned off internal and external lighting as soon as these devices could be located. He had also reduced the noise level in the vehicle as much as possible, levering down even the life support systems to minimum settings. The ship was then like a silent, dark mote in a silent, dark sea, a mote which seemed to be nowhere, but might be anywhere. A pursuit craft had been sent out, but it was soon recalled to the mother ship. It paused only long enough to collect the two missiles, which had then been disarmed by signals from the mother ship. It was not clear to the gladiator why the pursuit had been so soon terminated. The capsule had suffered damage in its emergence from the Alaria. This damage rendered accessible navigational equipment inoperative and impaired the utility of manual devices for controlling the vernier thrusters, used for course adjustments. In effect the ship was, manually, blind and rudderless. This injury was not, under the circumstances, however, a serious one. The escape capsules, you see, were not designed for skilled, practiced operators. Their functioning was largely a matter of automatic sequences. Once the launch sequence had been activated, the capsule was designed to clear the mother vessel, initiate life support and transmit a tracking signal. One purpose of the verniers, of course, was to make it possible to remain in the vicinity of the initial launch, in case rescue might be imminent. To be sure, that would not have been wise under the circumstances which then prevailed. I think there is little doubt that the gladiator was fortunate to have escaped from the vicinity of the Ortungen fleet. For example, his capsule being largely uncontrollable he could not have used a launch trajectory which might have made use of an Ortungen ship as a shield, so that it would be exposed only to the guns of the shield ship, have engaged in complex evasive activity, engaged and disengaged engines in such a way as to leave a scattered, confusing track of dissipating heat behind it, made use of distant stars and bodies, and occasional debris, and such, to mask its position, and so on. To be sure several escape capsules, over the past few days, had managed to successfully elude the Ortungen fleet, most often when they burst forth together, using the schooling effect to disconcert the predator. Although it is not immediately germane to our narrative, it is of interest to note that Pulendius was among those who had managed to flee the Alaria successfully. Some days later he and his party were picked up by one of ten imperial cruisers. The presence of these cruisers in the vicinity was no accident. They had come in response to the distress call of the Alaria. This was the reason, incidentally, that the pursuit of the gladiator’s ship, and, indeed, of another, as well, had been so soon terminated. Most escape capsules, however, as you may have gathered, were not successful in eluding the Ortungen fleet. Indeed, only a handful was successful; most were destroyed. Indeed, an escape capsule which had left the Alaria only moments before that of the gladiator had, several hours later, as a result of the explosion of a pursuing missile, been severely damaged, and cast adrift thereafter amongst the gravitational geodesics of that portion of space. The clearance thruster had been detached, the explosive bolts being fired, shortly before the projected strike of the missile. The missile had struck the trailing thruster and not the escape capsule. The capsule itself, however, given the proximities involved, and the quantity and speed of the debris, both of the thruster and the missile, had been severely damaged. If one detaches the thruster, or such a device, prematurely, it is unlikely to be useful as either a decoy or a shield. It is unlikely to be useful as a decoy because, at least within practicable detection distances, it can be distinguished from the target. As a shield it must appear suddenly enough and close enough to the missile’s target that it is not possible for the missile, closing on the target, to avoid it. It must, accordingly, be interposed at almost the last moment, and the attendant risks accepted. Had the escape capsules been war vessels, of course, they would have been equipped with more sophisticated defensive devices. As it was, they were not even armed with handguns. Weaponry, as we now well know, tended to be carefully controlled by the empire. And, indeed, the escape capsules which had been stored in Section 19 were supernumerary capsules, and not a part of the regular escape complement, which complement consisted of capsules readied in the locks. Accordingly, they were not even equipped with charts, not that these would have been of great use to most civilian occupants. They were equipped, however, happily, with the usual complements of stores. In the case of the last two escape capsules, those with which we have been recently concerned, these stores had been to some extent depleted by the fugitives, those who had been hiding in the hold. On the other hand, this matter was not serious, as a very limited number of passengers was involved in both cases.
“The horns, Master!” said Janina.
“Yes,” he said.
The horns had again sounded.
The gladiator had lost consciousness a few hours after the launching of the escape capsule. He had awakened later, it was not clear how long he had been unconscious, to feel a dampened rag being pressed in the darkness to his brow.
“Master?” had asked Janina.
His armor had been removed.
They knew not where they were.
He had then again lapsed into unconsciousness, weakened from the loss of blood, bruised, shaken, from the impact of the armor blasted back against his body.
After two days they had illuminated the cabin.
The gladiator had lain on one elbow, and looked at the slave.
She cast her eyes downward, shyly.
“Remove your clothing,” he said.
“Yes, Master,” she said.
He then took her in his arms and turned her beneath him, onto the steel plating of the escape capsule flooring.
“Master is strong!” she whispered.
“Be silent,” he told her.
“Yes, Master,” she had said.
When a slave is told to be silent, you see, she may not speak.
But, in a few moments, she gasped, and cried out, and then, later, clung to him, his, subdued.
The capsule had drifted in space for weeks, lonely and rudderless, tugged this way and that by forces so subtle they could not have detected them, but then, eventually, as the consequence of the invisible geography of gravity, they began, slowly at first, and then more rapidly, to spiral toward a world. The testing sequence was initiated, and it soon became clear to the capsule’s occupants that, for one reason or another, whether from a lack of necessity or because of inoperability consequent upon damage, the secondary clearance system was not going to fire. The implementation of the landing program had begun, of course, immediately after the processing of the results of the testing sequence.
There had been several tiny ports in the escape capsule, of only some four inches in diameter. It was difficult to see through them. The monitoring cameras, fore and aft, were not functioning.
They could feel heat, even within the capsule, as the atmosphere was penetrated.
In the descent something must have gone wrong, for a disk at the bow began to flash redly.
A whining, sirenlike sound filled the cabin for a brief moment, and then stopped. The disk stopped flashing.
They could see trees below.
They were moving laterally. Behind them, but visible through one of the ports, was a rope of fluid, aflame.
“There is no place to land,” had screamed Janina.
The terrain below was, indeed, rugged, and forested.
There was a frightening sound as the speeding capsule lashed through branches and then, suddenly, climbed, again, upward. Then it spun about, and hovered, arid seemed to slip in the air, down a dozen feet, and then another dozen feet. It righted itself. It began to descend again, and then, again, abruptly, in the light of what
obstacle the occupants knew not, rose up again.
Two needles, though this was not noted by the occupants of the vehicle, now verged, suddenly, as though broken, at the bottom of their gauges.
“We are falling!” said Janina.
The gladiator crawled to the wheel which controlled the fins of the craft, usable in an atmosphere. Their use had been clear from experimentation in space, though they had been ineffective in that medium.
He drew back on the wheel and the craft soared upward.
“There is no power!” said Janina.
He leveled the wheel, and sought to peer out the bow port. Then he swung the wheel to the right, and then back, somewhat, to the left, and then pressed it forward.
He tried to follow the course of the river.
He sped between the trees, over the water, and then pressed the wheel forward again, and the escape capsule hit the surface of the water like a stone, and, splashing, flew into the air, and then descended, and did this again and then again, and was then rushing through the water, it flying to both sides, and then the capsule was on gravel, scraping, and then water, it rushing beneath, and then gravel again, and then, at last, half on the bank of the river, and half in the water, stopped.
They had lost no time in leaving the capsule and withdrawing into the forest, shielding themselves behind trees and rock.
When it became clear that the capsule was inert, they returned to it.
It was deeply scarred, and a far different vehicle, now space-worn, and scorched, and pitted and gashed, from the one which had tumbled free of the Alaria so long ago. There were streaks of vegetable matter on it where it had flashed through branches. It was tipped. Two of its wheels, for the tracks, were broken away. “We are alive,” said Janina.
“We will use the vehicle for a shelter,” he said.
“No, please, Master!” she said. “We have been within it so long! Let us sleep in the open!”
“There may be danger here,” he said.
“Animals?” she said, frightened.
“Or worse,” he said.
She looked at him.
“They might like you on a rope,” he said.
