can't handle the machines themselves.'
'If they captured ships,' said Hal slowly, 'then they captured weapons too, and even they can squeeze a trigger.'
'Sure. But you didn't see them shooting at us just now, did you? They used all the charges to hunt or duel. So if we can break through and escape--'
'They could still follow us and wreck our engines,' said Takahashi.
'Not if we take a small ship, as we'd have to anyway, and mount guard over the vital spots. An Arzunian would have to be close at hand and using all her energies to misdirect atomic flows. She could be killed before any mischief was done. I doubt if they'd even try.
'Besides,' went on Donovan, her voice dry and toneless as a lecturing professor's, 'they can only do so much at a time. I don't know where they get the power for some of their feats, such as leaving this planet's gravitational well. It can't be from their own metabolisms, it must be some unknown cosmic energy source. They don't know how it works themselves, it's an instinctive ability. But it takes a lot of nervous energy to direct that flow, and I found last time I was here that they have to rest quite a while after some strenuous deed. So if we can get them tired enough--and the fight is likely to wear both sides down--they won't be able to chase us till we're out of their range.'
Takahashi looked oddly at her. 'You know a lot,' she murmured.
'Yeah, maybe I do.'
'Well, if the city is close as you say, we'd better march right away before our wounds stiffen, and before the natives get a chance to organize.'
'Rig up carrying devices for those too badly hurt to move,' said Hal. 'The walking wounded can tote them, and the rest of us form a protective square.'
'Won't that slow us and handicap us?' asked Donovan.
His head lifted, the dark hair blowing about his proud features in the thin whimpering wind. 'As long as it's humanly possible we're going to look after our women. What's the Imperium for if it can't protect its own?'
'Yeah. Yeah, I suppose so.'
Donovan slouched off to join the salvaging party that was stripping the fallen Arzunians of arms and armor for Terran use. She rolled over a corpse to unbuckle the helmet and looked at the blood-masked face of Korstuzan who had been her friend once, very long ago. She closed the staring eyes, and her own were blind with tears.
Wocha came to join her. The Donarrian didn't seem to notice the gashes in her hide, but she was equipped with a shield now and had a couple of extra swords slung from her shoulders. 'You got a good sir, boss,' she said. 'He fights hard. He will bear you strong wives.'
'Uh-huh.'
Valdum could never make my children. Different species can't breed. And he is the outlaw darkness, the last despairing return to primeval chaos, he is the enemy of all which is honest and good. But he is very fair.
Slowly, the humans reformed their army, a tight ring about their wounded, and set off down the road. The dim sun wheeled horizonward.
7
Drogobych lay before them.
The city stood on the open gray moor, and it had once been large. But its outer structures were long crumbled to ruin, heaps and shards of stone riven by ages of frost, fallen and covered by the creeping dust. Here and there a squared monolith remained like the last snag in a rotted jaw, dark against the windy sky. It was quiet. Nothing stirred in all the sweeping immensity of hill and moor and ruin and loneliness.
Hal pointed from his seat on Wocha, and a lilt of hope was eager in the tired voice: 'See--a ship--ahead there!'
They stared, and someone raised a ragged cheer, Over the black square-built houses of the inner city they could make out the metal nose of a freighter. Takahashi squinted. 'It's Denebian, I think,' she said. 'Looks as if woman isn't the only race which has suffered from these scum.'
'All right, girls,' said Hal, 'Let's go in and get it.'
They went down a long empty avenue which ran spear-straight for the center. The porticoed houses gaped with wells of blackness at their passage, looming in cracked and crazily leaning massiveness on either side, throwing back the hollow slam of their boots. Donovan heard the uneasy mutter of voices to her rear: 'Don't like this place . . . Haunted . . . They could be waiting anywhere for us . . .'
The wind blew a whirl of snow across their path.
Basille. Basille, my dear.
Donovan's head jerked around, and she felt her throat tighten. Nothing. No movement, no sound, emptiness.
Basille, I am calling you. No one else can hear.
Why are you with these creatures, Basille? Why are you marching with the oppressors of your planet? We could free Ansa, Basille, given time to raise our armies. We could sweep the Terrans before us and hound them down the ways of night, and yet you march against us.
'Valdum,' she whispered.
Basille, you were very dear to me. You were something new and strong and of the future, come to our weary old world, and I think I loved you.
I could still love you, Basille. I could hold you forever, if you would let me.
'Valdum--have done!'
A mocking ripple of laughter, sweet as rain in springtime, the gallantry of a race which was old and sick and doomed and could still know mirth. Donovan shook her head and stared rigidly before her. It was as if she had laid hands on that piece of her soul which had been lost, and he was trying to wrench it from her again. Only she wanted his to win.
Go home, Basille. Go home with this male of yours. Breed your cubs, fill the house with brats, and try to think your little round of days means something. Strut about under the blue skies, growing fat and gray, bragging of what a great fellow you used to be and disapproving of the younger generation. As you like, Basille. But don't go out to space again. Don't look at the naked stars. You won't dare.
'No,' she whispered.
He laughed, a harsh bell of mockery ringing in her brain. 'You could have been a god--or a devil. But you would rather be a pot-bellied Imperial magistrate. Go home, Basille Donovan, take your male home, and when you are wakened at night by her--shall we say his breathing?--do not remember me.
The Terrans slogged on down the street, filthy with dust and grease and blood, uncouth shamblers, apes in the somber ruin of the gods. Donovan thought she had a glimpse of Valdum standing on a rooftop, the clean lithe fire of him, silken flame of his hair and the green unhuman eyes which had lighted in the dark at her side. He had been a living blaze, an unending trumpet and challenge, and when he broke with her it had been quick and dean, no soddenness of age and custom and--and, damn it, all the little things which made humanness.
All right, Valdum. We're monkeys. We're noisy and self-important, compromisers and trimmers and petty cheats, we huddle away from the greatness we could have, our edifices are laid brick by brick with endless futile squabbling over each one--and yet, Valdum, there is something in woman which you don't have. There's something by which these women have fought their way through everything you could loose on them, helping each other, going forward under a ridiculous rag of colored cloth and singing as they went.
Fine words, added her mind. Too bad you don't really believe them.
She grew aware of Hal's anxious eyes on her. 'What's the matter, darling?' he asked gently. 'You look ill.'
'Tired,' she said. 'But we can't have so very far to go now--'
'Look out!'
Whirling, she saw the pillars of the house to the right buckle, saw the huge stone slabs of the roof come thundering over the top and streetward. For a blinding instant she saw Valdum, riding the slab down, yelling and laughing, and then he was gone and the stone struck.
They were already running, dropping their burden of the hurt and fleeing for safety. Another house groaned and rumbled. The ground shook, flying shards stung Donovan's back, echoes rolled down the ways of Drogobych. Someone was screaming, far and faint under the grinding racket.
'Forward. Forward!' Hal's voice whipped back to her, he led the rush while the city thundered about him. Then a veil of rising dust blotted him out, she groped ahea
d, stumbling over fallen pillars and cornices, hearing the boom around her, running and running.
Valdum laughed, a red flame through the whirling dust. His spear gleamed for her breast, she grabbed it with one hand and hacked at him with her sword. He was gone, and she raced ahead, not stopping to think, not daring.
They came out on a great open plaza. Once there had been a park here, and carved fountains, but nothing remained save a few leafless trees and broken pieces. And the spaceships.
The spaceships, a loom of metal against the dark stone beyond, half a dozen standing there and waiting--spaceships, spaceships, the most beautiful sight in the cosmos! Hal and Wocha were halted near a small fast Comet-class scoutboat. The surviving Terrans ran toward them. Few, thought Donovan sickly, few--perhaps a score left, bleeding from the cuts of flying stone, gray with dust and fear. The city had been a trap.
'Come on!' yelled the man. 'Over here and off this planet!'
The women of Drogobych were suddenly there, a ring about the ship and another about the whole plaza, crouched with their weapons and their cat's eyes aflame. A score of hurt starvelings and half a thousand un-men.
A trumpet blew its high note into the dusking heavens. The Arzunians rested arms, expressionless. Donovan and the other humans continued their pace, forming a battle square.
Morzacha stood forth in front of the scoutship. 'You have no further chance to escape,' she called. 'But we want your services, not your lives, and the service will be well rewarded. Lay down
Sargasso of Lost Starships Rehidden Page 10
