Tama Princes of Mercury

by Terry Pratchett

"Yes." The clouds overhead ' were shot with occasional turgid yellow shafts. They illumined the valley far more than did the enemy barrage beams. The air here on the cliffs was cold.

  A little wind had sprung up fitfully.

  "We had better go back," Roc added. "The storm may burst now, or in an hour or two."

  "Soon, Roc." Presently, as an experiment, Grenfell tried a shot from the long-range Earth gun on the deck of the Cube. But Dorrek's men were alert. The gun spat yellow; instantly one of the barrage projectors bent downward. The shell went into the beam, exploded harmlessly in mid-flight over the valley.

  "I'm going down there," Jimmy said suddenly. "Roc, you've got to help me. Get our platformassemble our gills. We're going down." In the darkness he could not see Rocs face.

  "Yes. I will try."

  "Now listen-" A sudden thought struck Jimmy. "If you see Guy and Toh, tell them what we're doing. Maybe they'd like to come" If only Jimmy had insisted on that! Roc was on his feet. In the darkness Jimmy could only hear his voice. "Very well. You wait here. If I see Tama, I will ask her to come. Down there in the darkness, if trouble should arise, we could send Tama quickly up for help." As Jimmy hesitated. Roc added vehemently: "I am not one who would want Tama placed in danger. But just to land in the darkness down therenot too dangerous."

  "O.K. Hurry it." Jimmy sat alone on the clifftop through another interval, staring down at the distant enemy barrage. The projectors could not sweep the ground since their long range would annihilate the projector next in line, he noticed.

  Suddenly he saw a hand heat-beam dart sidewise from near one of the projectors. It swept the ground with a range of nearly a hundred feet. And a guard at the neighboring projector answered it with a similar horizontal beam.

  Jimmy smiled grimly. That was not so good. But his fabric suit might withstand that smaller beam. He would have to chance it.

  His attention was distracted by the beat of wings close over his head. Roc arriving with their platform? But it was not. Another platform, seven girls on each of its sides, went sailing past. Fifty feet over Jimmy, and twice that far beyond the brink of the clifFtop: Two men were crouching on the platform.

  A sudden silent burst of yellow-red radiance in the sky briefly illumined themGuy and Toh I They did not see Jimmy. He stood up impulsively, cursed his leg, and hastily sat down again.

  The platform winged away, but Jimmy did not lose sight of it, as it headed off toward Grenfells other camp. But it rose steeply and presently came back. Then in a broad spiral, almost directly over Jimmy's head, it mounted.

  Grenfell was making another test. The platform was a mere dot against the turgid sky. Great funnel-shaped clouds were slowly wheeling up there. Queer green and yellow shafts occasionally burst in them.

  The platform rose steadily. A mile? Two miles? Twelve or fifteen thousand feet? Then Jimmy realized: Guy and Toh were trying to fly acioss the top of the barrage curtain to test the height and try to drop a bomb.

  The little dot up there began moving out over the valley.

  Dorrek's men had seen it. There was a movement of all of the barrage beams. They turned diagonally inward, closing at the top almost together in a mingled blurred glow.

  The platform crossed over them. The falling bomb was Invisible to Jimmy at first. But then he saw it strike the upper reaches of the barrage funnel as a glowing point of light.

  Its metal shell turning luminous. The heat was weak at first. But in a second or two the falling dot of fire burst into a puff of flame. A tiny report echoed over the silent valley.

  The platform came sailing back, descending well behind Jimmy, lost in the darkness of the upper plateau.

  A rush of wings sounded behind Jimmy. His platform, complete with its crew of fourteen girls, landed near the brink.

  Jimmy saw Roc and Tama dismounting. They came toward him.

  Tama greeted him: "Jimmy, you must not try this thing.

  Roc has told me" He waved away her protests.

  "Don't worry, TamaI'm no cripple. I'm sparing myself nowyou wait until you see how I can make speed when I have to. You going with us, TamaP"

  "Yes," said Roc quietly. "For a little way." They mounted the platform. Jimmy saw three knives, three small hand cylinders and a flashlight in the weapon rack.

  And a pile of garmentsthe black insulated suits.

  "There is a cloak and hood for Tama," said Roc. "But in flying it cannot protect the wings." The little leading girl, Grazia, was beside Jimmy. The platform was raised, ready for launching.

  She leaned toward him. Her face was white and earnest.

  There was fear in her eyes, but her jaw was set with determination. All the girls were watching her. She said, in an undertone: "You instruct us where to go, Jimmy."

  "Start us off, Grazia. Down to the valleykeep close to the cliff, right along here on this side. Understand me?"

  "Yes. I take orders from you or Tama. Not Roc." The platform lifted, swayed over the brink and swooped downward.

  XIV NO MAN'S LAND JIMMY HEADED THEM down the valley for a mile. They landed on the dark rocky floor close to the foot of the cliff.

  It was far darker than above. There was no wind down here.

  But the heavy air was dank and chill. The girls were shivering from cold and from excitement.

  Jimmy and Roc had donned the black suits. Jimmy carried a knife, a cylinder and the flashlight. His suit encased him from feet to neck, and to the tips of his gloved fingers. His hood, with flexible-paneled visor, dangled now at his back.

  Tama donned her cloak. It covered her wings for walking, but was slitted so that for flying her wings could come through it. The three of them stood whispering.

  "Roc, did anyone know we started?" demanded Jimmy.

  Roc stood apart, waiting. "No," he answered.

  '"Well, we're all right so far. I want the platform to take us as near as we dare go," Jimmy explained to Grazia. "Pick out a gully or something, where you can hide while you wait for me." It seemed that Roc hesitated. Tama turned to him abruptly.

  "We will do what he says.'" The platform fluttered cautiously forward, landed in a little pit-like depression. The enemy line was near at hand. The barrage loomed up, a huge, glowing veil. They left the platform hidden. Tama stayed with it.

  "We haven't been seen," Jimmy whispered. "You wait here.

  We may come back in a rush, Tama." He gripped her slim shoulders. "I hope to God we have Rowena and Jack with IM usi "Come," whispered Roc.

  He helped Jimmy for a short distance. The barrage curtain seemed almost overhead. But there was no light from it here on the rocky surface. The loose boulders were often ten or twenty feet high. Jimmy and Roc made their way cautiously forward. They were heading into the dark space between two of the projectors.

  Jimmy pulled up his hood. "We'd better get lower. CrawL I can make it." They crept on. Jimmy, without thought of the pain, found he could drag his abnormally light weight swiftly forward.

  Roc crept behind him. After a time, Jimmy was winded.

  He paused for breath, then went on. The nearest projector was some two hundred feet to the left of him. Occasionally it was hidden by intervening crags. The other, to the right, lay obscured below a little upstanding ridge.

  There was no alarm, though every moment Jimmy feared it might come. Every boulder might have a lurking guard in the blackness beside it.

  Soon Jimmy figured he was within the enemy line. The barrage curtain closed in a great sweeping arc over his head. The left hand projector was a trifle behind him now; in the dim light from it he could see the dark forms of the attendants.

  Ahead, the broken, ridged surface went down a gentle slope. Shapes were down therestraggling tents, the outposts of the camp. He saw a group of moving lights.

  Abruptly Jimmy realized that Roc was not with him I He waited, stretched out, panting, gazing back. Roc had been .following, but he was gone now. Afraid I Desertedgone back to the girls A grin was on Jimmy's face. He rested a few moments, th
en dragged himself on. In Jimmy's mind there had been no thought of how he might get Rowena out of Dorrek's clutches. He told himself now that be would decide that when the time came. The first thing was to get to the Mercurian vehicle and into it.

  There was a commotion ahead, men dragging a projector across the camp. Their small hand lights showed. Jimmy rolled into a little crevice between two boulders and rested until they had passed. He was well within the lines now.

  Overhead he could see the green-yellow sky, and frequent lightning flares now. He heard a dim, queerly muffled thunderclap. And a wind was surging over the valley. The storm was at hand.

  He saw too, that a distant section of the barrage was moving out from the camp, toward the valley wall. Three or four of the projectors were being rolled outward. It was a mile away, but the movement was obvious.

  The camp showed distant activity. Dorrek was starting something. Jimmy lay with pounding heart, watching. The barrage was moving toward the cliff, in the direction of the canyon entrance where Grenfell had established his girls, and the Cube.

  An enemy rocket mounted from a point on the valley floor less than a mile from Jimmy. The barrage parted to let it pass. It went in an arc upward. Through the brief blank hole in the barrage Jimmy saw it clearly; it fell on the cliff.

  Burst with a puff of light, and from it came a turgid ball of smoke. Gas fumesi They clung heavily to the clifftopa little widening cloud. The wind which now was up there caught the fumes, and blew them back over the plateau.

  Grenfell's projectors were sweeping the nearby rocks. The Cube fired a shot. It came screaming down, went into the barrage and burst in mid-air.

  The battle had begun. A sudden activity everywhere. From the faraway clifftop, girls were rising, dropping bombs to dissipate the approaching gas fumes.

  Jimmy came to himself to realize that whatever he could do must be done now. He crept on forward. He had forgotten Dorrek's brues, the gruesome giant insects. With a shudder that turned him cold, he saw one slithering across the camp with a man driving it.

  They did not see him. Other men passed; he rolled into a tiny hollow and lay breathless as their feet and legs showed almost overhead. Legs garbed in a woolly brown fur. He waited a moment or two after they were gone, raised himself up on his hands to gaze cautiously out of the hollow.

  From the nearby darkness two fur-robed figures were advancing! Jimmy ducked back, fumbling for his knife; he could not risk a ray flash which would give the alarm.

  But he was too late! A giant man came with a leap upon bimi Tama crouched in the ravine with the platform and the fourteen other girls. Ten minutes passed. Every instant she feared to hear the sound of alarm within the enemy camp.

  It was a mad, desperate attempt. She was sorry she had not tried harder to restrain Jimmy.

  A dark form showed at the brink of the ravine. These girls were not armed, except Tama, who carried a knife and a ray cylinder. The little projector was in her hand; but before she could level it, a soft warning voice came from the arriving figure.

  "Tamal" It was Roc. He slid down into the ravine, greeting Tama in their native language.

  "All is well, Tama." His black hood dangled to his shoulders, exposing his pale face. In his hand he held his cylinder. He fronted Tama and the girls, with his back to the gully side.

  "But where is Jimmy Turk?" Tama lowered her weapon.

  "What happened, Roc? Why did you return?"

  "He goes on in." Roc laughed, harsh as the grind of a file rasping on steel. "I let him go. Why not? They will catch him, of course. Kill him... . Look there!"' His swift gesture made Tama and most of the other girls turn around. There was nothing to see. Tama felt Roc leap upon her. His hands tore away her cylinder, jerked her knife from her belt, and flung her to the platform.

  "Quiet, all of youl" His weapon swept the girls, menacing. His voice hissed at them. "If you do not want me to kill your Tama, do as I tell you. Take your places at the handles. We are going up. Lie still, you By the god of light, I'm in no mood to fool with you, Tama." He shoved her to the forward end of the platform. "If you try to fly off, my beam will kill you. I mean it."

  "Rod Are your senses gone?"

  "No. "I've just got them... . Grazia, start us up. To any of you who dares to leave your placeit is death! I mean iti" The white, frightened girls lifted the platform. Roc crouched ia its stern, facing forward. Tama huddled tense, watching him. His weapon was leveled. It swept the girls, came back upon her.

  "To the nearest difftop, Grazia. Low at firstdown, you fooll Do you want us to be seen? The barrage turned on us shrivel us to ashes?" They skimmed low over the valley, back toward the cliff.

  Tama, facing the rear, could see the enemy lines over Roc's crouching form. The barrage, on its distant side, was moving outward. Activity in the enemy camp. Was Jimmy caught? She feared so. She saw the rocket mount to the cliff. Saw Grenfell answer with a shot.

  Roc chuckled. "Out of it, just in time." The girls were flying in frightened disorder. He warned them. They flew more evenly. The platform ascended, reached the plateau at a point some two miles from Grenfell's upper camp. It passed above the cliff at an altitude of a few hundred feet; sailed back over the dark empty reaches of the upper plain. It flew swiftly; the panic-stricken girls were menaced by Roc's weapon and his grim threats.

  The lights and sounds of the battle faded into the distance. Ahead lay the black desolate vastnesses of the mountains, with the bursting storm upon them. The sky was lurid now with shafts of red and yellow light splitting the cloud funnels. Rain was falling, tossed by a crazy wind.

  Roc had not moved from his crouching place in the platform stem. The red lightning flares painted his livid face, the Satanic peak of hair on his forehead, his blazing dark eyes.

  Tama said abruptly out of the silence, "Are you mad, Roc? Where are you taking us?" Roc laughed again, but calmly now, and shifted his tense position. But he was still alert with his weapon.

  "Back home. The Cave City, where you will be safe, m the Cold Country until this fighting is over, Tama. Dorrek will win, I hope. These fool meddling Earthmen1 wish them all to their hell. And I have youthat is all I want."

  "But I thought" Her protest sounded so futile. She checked it. And then her heart leaped into her throat. Over Roc's shoulder, in the lurid darkness behind them, it seemed that she saw a following shape. She forced herself to speak, to hold Rocs attention, to keep him from turning to gaze back.

  "But, Roc, I thought-"

  "You thought I was going to plunge into a battle? Get killed! Or have you tell me you love that accursed Earthman, Guy Palisse."

  "I never said I loved him. Roc."

  "Do you?"

  "Or do I love you? Is this the way to make me love you? Trickery once more. Traitor, again." The blob behind them was coming closer. Overtaking them.

  Another flying platform.

  "Perhaps it is the way to make you love me," Roc retorted.

  "We shall see. I do not want you to be killed. I'm taking you to safety."

  "Or is it for yourself you most fear?" she demanded. "You are despicable. Roc. A traitor. A lying little coward" The girls at the handles showed a sudden confusion. They had seen the pursing platform; two or three of them were looking backward.

  It attracted Roc's attention. He turned; and Tama would have leaped upon him but he was too quick for her.

  "Back! Sit quietl You, Graziaa faster strokel" But the girls, although they pretended to do their best, were faltering. Roc did not dare turn his head again; he moved forward, almost upon Tama, with the cylinder leveled at her breast. He called to the girls: "Faster! Do you want me to kill her?" The other platform was now barely a hundred feet behind them, and coming at far greater speed. It suddenly began ascending, to pass over them. The wind had momentarily lulled, but now it came up again as a roaring blast. The platform swayed, lurched as the girls fought to hold it.

  The wind tore at his words and hurled them away. A crimson flare in the sky
illumined the other platform clearly.

  Two men 'were upon it. Triumph swept Tama. It was Guy and Toh! They were close behind, rising to a fifty foot higher level. Tama could presently see only the black insulated bottom of the platform, the winged shapes of its girls around it, and a face projecting beyond its forward edge.

  The face of her brother Toh, staring down.

  Roc was crouching on one knee.

  "Faster!" Grazia, flying close at Tama's side, had looked -up and seen Toh, and had caught a signal from his hand over the edge of the platform. Guy was leaning over the side, trying to aim down at Roc. Both platforms were lurching; he could not make sure of any aim.

  Grazia suddenly left her handle and with folded wings dropped into the void. It distracted Roc, as she had intended.

  He leaned sideways, his weapon spat its small deadly beam.

  But it missed Grazia's falling body; her wings opened; she flew away and vanished.

  The lower platform wavered dangerously, all its girls in a panic of confusion. And then Toh leaped over the forward edge of the upper platform. He came hurtling down the fiftyfoot space with a knife in his outstretched hand.

  Roc forgot Tama. He turned his cylinder upward and fired.

  Toll's body crashed upon Roc. loh's knife stabbed in one convulsive blow.

  On the swaying platform under Tama's homfled gaze, the bodies of the two men lay writhing in last agonies,, and then were still.

  XV TRAPPED ROWENA AND I illight have escaped from the silver ball that time when Muta smuggled the brown-furred garments to us.

  She was ready to distract the attention of the guards. But the alarm came. Grenfell's Cube was sighted, sailing high over the valley. Dorrek's encampment sprang into confusion.

  He rushed in to us.

  "You stay here with Rowena. We move the ball-not safe here." Rowena had barely time to hide our robes in her bed covering. Muta stood against the wall. Dorrek whirled around and was gone.

  Our futile plans! Escape was impossible now. Men were clattering everywere in the small vehicle's interior. The guards still held their position at the foot of the ladder. And other men were constantly upon it. The upper-tier rooms near us were occupiedmen in the control rooms, which had hastily been unsealed. The lower door was closed. The ball lifted; the thrum of its rocket-stream ejectors sounded amid the turmoil of footsteps and voices.