“There’s nothing to stop us at the moment. All my intelligence tells me that no Martian fleet has embarked or is ready to embark; once again, even with cloaking devices it would take them time to get into position. I say we have to go now.”
“We have adequate ships safely camouflaged, just as you counseled.”
“I knew Cornelian would try something like this! It’s too bad he wasn’t more reasonable, boy. I hate to say it, but I had the feeling all along that he wouldn’t let you go ahead with your plans for Earth.”
“In my gut, I knew it, too. But I had to try.”
“He wants it all,” Shatz Abel spat. “He wants it all and he’s going to try for it all. But we’ll stop him at Venus, if I have to do it myself.”
“You won’t be alone, Shatz. Maybe later, when this is all over, we can come back to Earth and try to bring it alive again.”
“It’s a noble sentiment, Sire. But there’s work to be done now.”
“Yes.”
On the Screen, there was sudden frantic activity behind Shatz Abel; the remarkably scarred face of Yar Pent hove into view as he whispered something fiercely to the pirate.
“No!” Shatz Abel shouted. He looked hard into the Screen and shouted, “Sire, you’ve got to get off planet now!”
“What’s wrong?”
“That second Plutonian device wasn’t a concussion bomb! It was a Gas Emitter!”
For a moment Dalin was startled into incomprehension. “Gas … ?”
“It’s diffusing Puppet Death virus in low orbit!”
Still reeling from the revelation, Dalin sputtered, “But viral warfare was outlawed a hundred years ago! No one would dare unleash the Puppet Death again!”
More frightening than the revelation was the vision before him of huge Shatz Abel nearly reduced to tears. “Damn him, he’s done it! Dalin, there’s nothing we can do! You know that as well as I—within an hour that damned disease will be scattered to the four corners of the planet! And there’s nothing we can do!”
In awe at the consequences of the pirate’s words, King Shar whispered with certainty, “There isn’t even time to get the children off world.”
Now tears were streaming down Shatz Abel’s face. “There’s no time to save anyone!” In a rage, he smashed something before him, and the Screen picture went momentarily dead before returning.
Shatz Abel brought his face close to the Screen. His eyes were hard within his tears. “Listen to me, boy,” he hissed. “I promise with the last ounce of my strength that I’ll avenge this. For you, and for all of them. For Earth.”
Standing straight, Dalin said, “I must go.” He locked stares with Shatz Abel. “Good-bye.”
“Good-bye,” the pirate said. “I’m proud to have known you, Dalin Shar.” Then, unable to control his rage and frustration any longer, he screamed, “Damn them all, I’ll make them pay!” And clenching his fist again, he brought it down, and the Screen went blank.
Dalin turned to see the boy who had been manning the Screen staring at him wide-eyed, pale as a ghost. “It’s … true?”
The king put a gentle hand on the boy’s shoulder and urged him to sit back down at his console. “Just do your job,” Dalin said gently. “Just do what’s expected of you.”
“Y-yes, Sire,” the boy said, gulping, and the king squeezed the boy’s shoulder before releasing him.
Dalin walked to the communication center’s window; part of the sill was missing and the casing was cracked, but it had been opened to make use of the warmth of the day and gave a magnificent view. In the distance was the ancient Acropolis, which had survived centuries of war and change; the sky was bright blue and the faint scent of wild olives dappled the warm air. There were fields to the north, a forest leading back to the Grecian Lost Lands to the west; in the far distance, the ruins of another ancient structure sat like a wise old god on a misted hill.
It would have worked, Dalin thought. We could have brought it all back. Our children would have seen it in full flower, and their children would have held it all in their hands. If fate had been kind, I would have seen it begin with Tabrel Kris at my side.
For the briefest moment, the scent of olives turned to the scent of roses, and he was transported back to a young man’s garden where a Martian girl gave him his first true love kiss. For the briefest moment he was there again, on that warm day, at the most perfect and knowing instant of his life, looking into those depth-less almond eyes. She had been as startled as he by the realization of what had suddenly happened between them. As startled and as sure.
He came back to the present, the faint odor of ripening olives, and looked up into the bright blue sky, salted with death that would fall at any moment—
“Why does it have to end this way?” he screamed out of the window, unable to control himself. “There isn’t even time to tell them!”
And then the scream filled his head, along with a white-hot light, and he fell to the floor unconscious.
Erik’s voice accompanied his awakening.
“Sire! Quickly, you must wake up!”
He awoke, and knew instantly that something was different. “How long—”
“You collapsed almost an hour ago!”
“But we should all be dying by now … .”
“We have to hurry!” Erik said, helping him to his feet. “The last of the transports are loading. Shatz Abel is waiting for us in orbit—”
“I don’t understand … about it. A kind of shield, a patch, formed over our people and is holding the Puppet Death away from the surface. I don’t know how, but we’ve been given a chance to get away. We have to leave now!”
“Yes…”
And then, in his head, Dalin heard, You must hurry. We can only hold it for a short time longer.
Shaking off his grogginess, Dalin looked evenly at Erik and nodded. “Yes,” he said with certainty.
An hour later they were in orbit, ready to rendezvous with Shatz Abel, whose grinning face filled the communications Screen of Dalin’s ship.
“Boy! I thought we’d said our last to each other!”
“So did I,” the king responded; and then his attention was drawn away from the Screen by a voice in his head:
We must go now, the Calling is over. We will meet with you again … .
“When?” Dalin said out loud.
When it is time, the voice said, and then, Dalin knew, it was gone.
“Dalin?” Shatz Abel was saying; his face on the Screen was filled with concern. “What is it, boy?”
Dalin regarded him with a puzzled look. “Something … but I’m not sure what. Remember the goblin on Pluto?”
The pirate’s face filled with primitive alarm. “What?”
Dalin tried not to laugh. “Never mind, for the moment. What’s our next move?”
The pirate’s look turned to one of satisfaction. “The cloaking device we … borrowed from Europa was made for one of Cornelian’s huge plasma generators and will cover almost the entire fleet in tight formation. My own ship and a couple of the other military boats will scatter and scout ahead. As I told you before, Sire, there’s nothing to stop us from getting to Venus now. Once we’re there, it’ll be a different matter, I’m sure. There will be a fight, sooner rather than later.”
“Venus…”
“Yes, Sire. Venus is our new home. The one we fight for. With what that damnable insect Cornelian has done to Earth, it won’t be habitable for a hundred years or more.”
“Maybe our children can bring it back …”
“If we live to have ’em,” the pirate said, with a gruff laugh.
“Yes …”
“By the way, Sire, in my rage I’m afraid I took care of that Plutonian ship. It was filled with Martians, just as I thought it would be. And I’m afraid I won’t have quite as much ammunition stores as I should have left for our present venture. I … went a bit overboard on it.”
“I understand.”
“Thank you, Sire. Till Venu
s, then.”
“Till Venus.”
The Screen went blank, and Dalin continued to stare at it for a few moments, before turning to wander back to one of the transport’s side ports.
In the near view, the remains of the Plutonian transport were sliding by, adrift in space, its oblong shape stood gutted and burned from stem to stern. Not one section looked as though it had escaped Shatz Abel’s rage.
Dalin turned his gaze from it.
And there, receding in the view, was the blue-brown ball of Earth, which up until a few hours ago had been not only his home, but his future. His people’s future. Even the dun??? and blackened lines of the Lost Lands had held promise, for they had seen their worst days and, with help, would have seen better. Now all of that was only memory, as the deadly snow of Puppet Death settled over the globe. Until the unstoppable virus burned out, it would affect nearly all life, twisting it into its grotesque shape, and Dalin felt a pang for the poor mutant beings that still roamed the Lost Lands, and even now were no doubt writhing or dying under the influence of the dreaded disease. Dalin thought he could see the faint sparkle of the falling death as it settled toward the surface of the area where he had recently waited for destruction. The area was faintly triangular in shape.
“We’ve indications that the shield that saved us is gone,” Erik remarked, joining the king at the window.
“It seems to have settled to Earth, along with the virus.”
“Do we know what it was?”
“Some sort of faint energy field.”
“That’s all? Just an energy field?”
“Yes.”
“Strange,” Dalin said.
“Yes, very strange.”
Dalin continued to stare at the damaged blue globe, until Erik finally added, “Sire, are you all right?”
“Yes,” Dalin whispered, continuing to stare. “I’m just saying good-bye.”
“To Earth?”
Without even realizing that he had said it, the king added, “To many things.”
Chapter 17
It was strange for Kay Free to be within a life-form again.
Especially one in the process of dying.
She could tell that the others were not enjoying the experience, either. Mel Sent was full of complaints, and Pel Front had regained his usual demeanor, one of churlish arrogance, which he especially reserved for Mel Sent. The two were like oil and water—well, not exactly, but that was a human term that applied.
“Life—now, there’s an interesting thing,” Pel Front said, the lips of his life-form, a half-man, half-vegetable mutant with leaves of translucent skin, curling in agony as Pel Front spoke. The creature writhed on the ground, in the throes of blindness and worse.
Immediately, Mel Sent, whose own choice had been a volelike thing with two heads and goggling eyes, spat, “You’ve said that before!”
“Yes, and meant it! But this time, it was meant with irony, not reflection. Not that you would know the difference!”
Kay Free was filled with a mixture of feelings, not the least satisfaction that her compatriots were back to their old selves. Perhaps it had been the inaction that had so disabled them all; but she knew it was deeper than that, and that this elation they all felt at the Calling might be only temporary. After all, look at where they were now.
Her own creature, a large, flat, round, tea-colored life-form symbiotically attached to the bole of an expiring tree, felt not only its own pain but that of its host. To Kay Free the experience was doubly unpleasant.
“This is not an affable world,” she said.
“Not in the least!” Mel Sent huffed. “Even without this disease, I would have passed it by. If you’ll remember, it was at my urging that we sampled the system’s life-forms on the second planet, not this or any of the others.”
“And left them as dead as we’ll leave these,” Pel Front sniped.
“That was inevitable,” Kay Free said, recalling with sadness their introduction to the system’s creatures, on Venus; she especially remembered Mel Sent’s majestic whale, its mammoth body at ease like a dancer in the depths of a burgeoning Venusian sea.
“Yes, as will this be,” Pel Front said, his tone less haughty when addressing Kay Free. “I can only hope that this will be over soon!” His life-form, in the throes of Puppet Death, pronounced the word as a whistling screech of pain.
“Strange, to have one with vocal ability, even though its brain is primitive,” Pel Front remarked, letting the creature have its own voice back to wail as its rubbery body began to twist into horrid shapes, nearly back on itself. “I don’t like this,” he appended testily.
“Mother thought it important that we experience death, as well as life,” Kay Free said.
“And I do hope Mother is all right!” Mel Sent blurted.
“I’m sure she is—” Kay Free began, but was interrupted by a cry from Mel Sent.
“Oh! This one is dying! I can feel it!”
In confirmation, the two-headed vole began to shake violently, and its bulging eyes burst outward as the body collapsed sideways, twisted into a circle on the ground, and lay still.
“That was horrid!” Mel Sent wailed, hovering, a bar of pure energy, above the dead thing.
Kay Free’s own life-form suddenly peeled away from the tree it had been parasitically habitating and rolled up into a tube, its tea coloring turning brackish; in an instant, Kay Free was above it, studying it sadly.
Pel Front’s entity gave a last wail of pain and lay still, its leaved skin draining of color and then turning brittle. Pel Front left as pieces of leaf began to flake off.
“Isn’t it best we go?” he said, a bit shaken. “Their expiration is quite … upsetting.”
“I wish Mother were here!” Mel Sent cried.
“Mother knew we had to experience this alone,” Kay Free said. With that she rose, and the others followed.
Kay Free paused high in the atmosphere, and regarded the planet below for a moment. “It’s ugly now,” she said, “and all but dead. But you can see where it once was beautiful.” She beheld the South China Sea, its waters lapping against blackened soil; its waves were now dotted with the floating carcasses of fish exposed to the Puppet Death.
“I wonder if he could have made it fertile again,” said Pel Front. “It must have once been like the second planet.”
“Very much like it,” Kay Free said. “But the second planet is where they will live or die, now. We must wait to see what they do there.”
“I want to leave!” Mel Sent said, giving something like a shiver.
“Yes, we must leave, and wait. I think I want to be alone again until this is over. Out beyond the last world, facing away from the star. There are things I need to contemplate.”
“Don’t think me too rude, but I must go immediately,” Pel Front said, speeding away; Mel Sent, too, took her leave, in the opposite direction.
Kay Free paused, a shimmer of inanimate energy—in effect, an energy machine. And yet, she felt something very close to other emotions: sadness, grief, dread.
She shimmered sideways and sensed a dot of light larger than the surrounding stars. The second planet. This she regarded for a moment, before speeding off to a place well beyond the Kuiper Belt of cometary material, and yet farther, altogether out of the system of worlds she had been sent to. She sped until the star behind her, and its attendant worlds, were tiny specks, nearly forgotten in the background of other stars surrounded by other worlds. She sped until her directive made her stop, and then she faced outward, away from the star and its tiny specks behind her.
The sense that filled her which was something like desolation was complete, and Kay Free herself, as had Mel Sent, gave something like a shiver.
She thought of the one who had given them the Calling—and still she would not turn to look back
She would wait here, alone, empty, until it was time.
We can help you no more, she thought; and her thought reached back, through the d
esolate space, to the one who had called them. Now you must help us.
Chapter 18
Visid Sneaden considered it a game.
Light soldiers were stupid: this she knew for a fact. They only reacted to direct stimuli—that is, movement; they could detect, and, to a lesser degree, radiant heat.
So … dress oneself in, for instance, a suit made of aluminum foil, don’t move—and you’ve beaten them!
This was only one of the mind puzzles that occupied Visid when she wasn’t working. Which wasn’t often, lately, since, after their brush with death at Sacajawea Patera, she and Benel had been forced to move their lab to a safer spot in the mountains. In effect, Benel had gotten his cave after all, though once Visid had finished outfitting it, it looked like anything but. Though technically within one of the mountains of the Arabia Terra range, Visid had given it all the comforts of home—or, home in a hostile environment, anyway. The four-foot thick walls were concussion-bomb-proof, laced with devices to deter detection from the air or ground. The satellite and communications link array was similarly camouflaged and protected a hundred feet above them in a second cave, with a backup system mounted in a third cave hidden in an adjoining peak.
When Benel had complained (which he did often, whether working or not) about the lack of natural light in their abode, Visid amazed him by developing a light shift mechanism that in effect gave them a view at the front of the lab. Though still four feet thick, the wall appeared to be gone. Benel had more than once tried to walk through it, prompting Visid to adjust its “density” so that it more resembled a picture window, complete with the glint of sunlight off its panes. Benel had finally figured out how it worked, but was still amazed.
Visid amazed him with other things, not the least of which was the transporter device which had saved their lives, Though she gave credit to the Machine Master of Mars for its development, her own version had proved easier to use. After their fall from the Piton, she and Benel had materialized in the recreation center; finding it swarming with Red Police and Martian Marines, they had instantly transported out again, leading the Martian authorities on a merry chase as they hopped from destination to destination, earning the transport device the name “kangaroo.” Periodically they had transported back into the center in lightning-quick raids to recover what they could of their equipment—until the Marines caught on and smashed what was left.
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