The Fugitive Worlds

by Bob Shaw

  But, even as the adjectives paraded through his mind, he was forced to acknowledge another diamond-hard fact. Unless the Dussarran machine was successfully defended for another three to four minutes, until it performed its vital task, every man, woman and child on Overland would be annihilated in an unimaginable pulse of energy. That—above all else—had to be the single truth which governed his actions in the trial which lay ahead.

  He looked around his little group of warriors, wondering if his face was as pale as theirs. They had taken their swords in hand and were gazing at him with expressions which seemed to convey complete faith in his leadership. Their trust was probably a legacy from all those times when he had swaggered and boasted of his prowess in combat—and now he was appalled by the responsibility he had taken upon himself. These people knew they were facing death, and they were afraid, and in the moment of ultimate tribulation they were turning to the only source of hope they could find. It was quite likely that they now regarded Toller as a pillar of strength, and he was numbed with guilt and regret as he realized the extent of his unworthiness to play that role.

  "If we advance too far to meet the enemy they will be able to outflank us and overturn the machine," he heard himself say in a firm, clear voice. "We must form a defensive line outside the radius of safety—and take a solemn vow that none of the Vadavaks shall pass.

  "There are many more things I would like to say—" Toller's eyes locked fleetingly with Vantara's and he repressed an urge to reach out and touch her face—"but now is not the time. We have important work to do first."

  Toller turned and ran on a curving path to a point which placed him exactly between the impeller and the oncoming force of Vadavaks. Within a few seconds the other humans had taken up stations on either side of him, at spacings which

  they instinctively felt could be protected by the sword. The Vadavaks were now only a hundred yards or so away, running fast, and the sound of their feet swishing through the grass could easily be heard by the defenders. Pinpoints of red light danced before them in a horizontal swarm.

  Toller tightened his grip on his sword as he saw that the Vadavaks, in place of the rag-like garments of the ordinary Dussarran citizen, wore white helmets and armor. The latter was of a glistening material which seemed to have no effect on the wearer's mobility in spite of covering torso and limbs. The livid, black-holed faces glaring from under the rims of the alien helmets gave the attackers the semblance of an army of corpses, indefatigable because they were already dead.

  Toller raised his sword to the first readiness position and waited. I beg of you, Beloved Creator, the Xa's words threaded down from the remoteness of the sky, do not kill me.

  One of the Vadavaks outdistanced the others, nominating himself as Toller's first individual opponent, and dived forward with twin black rods outstretched like stings. The alien must have been totally accustomed to routing docile and unarmed civilians, because he came at Toller with head and torso quite unprotected. Toller struck down into his thin neck and the alien went down and backwards in a fountain of blood, his head connected to his body by only a narrow strip of tissue. The rods he had been holding fell close beside each other at Toller's feet.

  Toller stamped on them, extinguishing the crimson glow at their tips, and his momentum took him into immediate conflict with two more Vadavaks. The pair apparently had not enough time to learn anything from the fate of their companion, because they remained close together and lunged at Toller with enervator rods held only a few inches apart. He took their arms off below the elbows with two transverse strokes which sheared the white armor as if it were paper.

  The aliens dropped to their knees, their mouths black circles of silent agony, and doubled over the stumps of their forearms.

  Toller paid them no further attention—they had ceased to be combatants—and ran his gaze along the line of battle. The Vadavaks were throwing themselves into the fray with undiminished vigor and ferocity, but Toller was heartened to notice that not one Kolcorronian had been laid low. Their lack of experience in handling swords was being more than compensated for by the incredible sharpness of the blades, and the Vadavaks were being cut down as quickly as they advanced. The defense line had lost its regularity, but it was remaining intact, and the white wave of alien attackers was now liberally stained with red as its members collided with and stumbled over their wounded.

  Can it be possible? Toller wondered. Are we all to be spared, after all? There can be very little time left before the impeller does its work, and if the Vadavaks are stupid enough not to change their tactics. . . .

  From the corner of his eye Toller saw a flicker of white as an alien appeared beyond one end of the battle line and ran towards the rectangular shape of the impeller. Toller broke free and ran on a course which enabled him to intercept the Vadavak about halfway across the margin of safety. The alien slid to a halt in the grass and turned on Toller, the milky marbles of his eyes gleaming beneath the rim of his helmet. He was holding one of his enervator rods as though it were a sword, darting and slicing with the glowing tip, striving to make contact with the skin of Toller's sword arm.

  Toller dealt with him by making a sideways flick of his blade which lopped the end off the menacing rod. The alien threw it down, transferred his remaining rod into his right hand and resumed the duel, apparently quite unafraid. Toller —acutely aware that he was within the impeller's radius of death—decided to end the matter speedily in a rain of unstoppable blows. He was on the point of lunging forward

  when he heard a sound close behind him. He spun around just in time to see a second Vadavak thrusting an enervator rod into his midriff. Toller did his utmost to twist clear of the spitefully gleaming tip, but it made contact with him and pain fountained up through his chest. He fell to his knees, gasping for breath, and his two opponents—now moving at a much more leisurely pace, apparently relishing their moment of victory—closed in on him with black rods upraised.

  A second touch from one of the red tips would bring about his death, Toller had been warned, and it was obvious that the Vadavaks intended to make sure of him by administering multiple contacts. But he had no intention of accepting death so easily, not with so much at stake. In spite of the debilitating pain which was washing through his body, he made a despairing effort to raise his sword to fend off the descending rods —and was thrilled to find his arms responding with close to normal speed and control.

  The Vadavaks, abruptly realizing their peril, stabbed at him with their enervators, but his sword was now moving swiftly in a near-visible defensive arc. The black rods were destroyed and scattered in an instant as Toller rose to his feet. One of the aliens got away from him by sprinting off to safety; the other was transfixed as he turned to flee. Toller withdrew his sword from the twitching body and ran back to rejoin the main battle. He noticed a soreness in his legs for the first few paces, but it quickly faded and he deduced that a Dussarran enervator was a fairly inadequate weapon when used against a large and healthy human.

  That seemed a favorable omen, but when Toller reappraised the continuing struggle he saw the situation had altered for the worse in the brief time that he had been sidetracked. One of the women was on the ground and surrounded by Vadavaks who were jabbing at her with red-glowing enervators. Fearing that the inert figure might be Vantara, Toller pounded his way towards her attackers with a hoarse cry of rage. He reached them simultaneously with Steenameert, taking them unawares, and in an impossibly short space of time—a time of raging red mists speckled with seething bright-rimmed corpuscles—the two humans had reduced at least five of the enemy to a bloody mass of carrion.

  The woman on the ground was revealed as Corporal Tradlo. An enervator had been driven down her throat, her blonde hair was matted with blood, and it was obvious that she was dead.

  Toller raised his eyes from her and saw that the remaining four women had split into pairs, each of which was busily engaged in close combat. To his left, Jerene and Mistekka had taken on f
our Vadavaks and were giving every appearance of being able to deal with the threat; to his right, Vantara and Arvand were almost hidden by a larger group of aliens who were pressing in on them from all sides.

  Marveling at the aliens' carelessness over the essential matter of guarding their flanks, Toller nodded to Steenameert and they flung themselves at the milling group of white-clad figures. Again they wrought a fearful slaughter in the space of a few heartbeats, inflicting terrible gouting wounds which either leveled the recipients at once or sent them staggering blindly away to sink down and expire in pools of blood.

  Other aliens were coming forward to take their places, but Toller was beginning to sense a change in the overall situation. The Vadavaks, possessing not even a rudimentary battle sense, were pressing their attack with undiminished fervor in spite of conspicuous lack of success—and their forces were rapidly being depleted. Snatching a quick glance around the complex scene, Toller guessed that less than half of the Vadavaks were still on their feet, and a proportion of those were becoming slow and uncertain in their movements.

  It had to be less than a minute until the impeller unleashed the energies which would displace the planet, and from that time onward Director Zunnunun's warriors would—

  presumably—have no reason to continue the struggle. They should be well content to withdraw at that stage and limit the number of their dead. Feeling a resurgence of optimism, Toller risked looking in the direction of Greturk and his fellow Dussarrans, hoping for an indication that the machine was about to function. He felt a dull shock when he saw that his allies had disappeared—the only sign that they had ever been present being a fast-fading tinge of green in the morning air.

  An instant later Toller paid the price for allowing himself to be distracted from the deadly conflict all about him. Pain exploded through him as something touched his left shoulder, and an instant later the sensation was repeated again in the region of his left hip. He had twice been hit from behind by enervators, but this time—miraculously—the effect was less devastating than before and he was able to remain on his feet. His attacker, who had clearly expected a quick and easy kill, was still gaping at him in astonishment when Toller swung an ill-controlled blow which was intended to sever the alien's neck. The strike was slightly lacking in reach, because of Toller's partial immobility, and the sword tip reached no further than the Vadavak's throat, slicing cleanly through his windpipe. He clapped a hand to his throat and backed rapidly away, only to be impaled from behind by a sword held by the tall, dark-haired figure of Mistekka.

  "These large bodkins are quite fun," she called out to Toller, her brown eyes glinting as she casually pushed the dying alien away. "I'm beginning to see why you always carried one."

  "Just don't get careless!" No sooner had Toller spoken than he heard Steenameert give a bellow of pain. He turned and saw that his friend was surrounded by four Vadavaks who were jabbing at him with their enervators, at least one of which had found its mark.

  "Stay on your feet, Baten!" Toller shouted. He threw himself forward, closely followed by Mistekka and the stockier figure of Jerene. They descended on Steenameert's attackers in a murderous swoop which, again in what seemed the blink of an eye, had a significant effect on the balance of forces. Steenameert had been hit with enervators several times and was sinking to the ground in spite of Arvand's attempts to hold him up. But when Toller took a broader view he was uplifted to see that the humans were running out of live opponents. Of the original attacking force only two were on their feet in the immediate vicinity, and they were being competently dealt with by Jerene and Mistekka.

  Three other Vadavaks, having faced strong and well-armed enemies for the first time, were withdrawing in dismay, fleeing across the plain towards the point where they had materialized. The only other movements among the aliens, Toller noted with an exultant feeling of relief, came from the white-and-crimson carpet of the wounded. It was a tragedy that even one of the Kolcorronians had been lost, but. . . .

  "Behind you, Toller!"

  Jerene's warning shriek came too late. Toller heard the sudden movement shockingly close behind him, and realized at once that he had become too complacent, too certain that the diminutive Vadavaks had none of the tenacity of a genuine warrior. Now he felt a curious, unmanning sensation in the calf of his left leg. There was no pain to speak of, and yet he had just received the most serious injury of his life. He looked down and saw that a Kolcorronian sword, almost certainly Tradlo's, had gone to the bone in his leg. He struck backwards at the wounded Vadavak who had been lying on the ground, feigning death and awaiting his chance to strike. The alien sighed and rolled away to meet the point of Jerene's sword.

  "We must finish the lot of them," Jerene shouted. "Show no mercy!"

  "Keep everybody well away from the machine," Toller said to her, wondering why Vantara was not more in evidence

  in her capacity as Jerene's commander. "It is bound to detonate, or whatever it does, any second now."

  Jerene nodded and signaled for the combatants to move farther away from the box, which was now glowing like fresh snow in the light of the rising sun. "And we had better take a look at that leg of yours."

  "I'll be. . . ." Toller glanced down at his leg and felt a moment of giddiness as he saw that a grinning red mouth had opened right across the calf. It was spewing blood down his ankle on to the grass, and in its depths he could see the gleam of bone. When he tried to move the leg his foot remained obstinately on the ground.

  "That has to be stitched here and now," Jerene said in a hard and unemotional voice. "Somebody give me a held kit."

  Toller allowed himself to be lowered to the ground beside Steenameert, who was beginning to show signs of regaining consciousness. He felt nauseated, and was glad to surrender all responsibility to another for a period, even when the pain of the stitching began. With his chin resting on folded hands, Toller clenched his teeth and distracted himself from the pain by thinking about the impeller. What would the crucial moment be like? Would they hear great explosions or be blinded by flashes of lightning? And why was the cursed box taking so long to unleash its power?

  "Surely more than four minutes have passed since we arrived in this place," he said to those who had clustered around to watch his leg being repaired. "What say you? Can you see anything happening?"

  Steenameert, who was lying with his face towards the sky, startled Toller by answering his question as though he had never been unconscious. "I don't know about our wonderful white box, Toller—but I think something very strange is happening up there."

  He pointed straight up to the zenith and others followed his example. Toller twisted his upper body around, grunting as he involuntarily disturbed the work being done on his leg, and looked into the center of the sky. The vast disk of Land was divided equally by the terminator, and mounted exactly on the central line was the pulsing yellow star the watchers knew to be the Xa. But changes had taken place since Toller had first looked at it.

  The Xa had grown much brighter—it now resembled a miniature sun—and its pulsations had become so rapid that they were almost merging into each other. It came to Toller that he had been so preoccupied with Greturk's impeller, and the events surrounding it, that he had practically forgotten about that infinitely greater impeller which had spread itself across the weightless zone. The collective attention focused on the distant Xa seemed to throw a telepathic gateway wide open. . . .

  I cannot believe you are doing this to me, Beloved Creator! The anguish-laden message washed down out of an aureate sky. After all I have done for you, you are bringing forward the time of my death! I implore you, Beloved Creator, do not deny me a last few minutes in your treasured company. . . .

  "What's going on here?" Toller growled, tearing the needle and suture from Jerene's fingers as he raised himself to a sitting position. "Greturk told us that his cursed box of tricks would do its job long before the Xa . . . long before Dussarra was hurled into another galaxy . . . but the wa
y things are going. . . ." He fell silent, a chill perspiration gathering on his brow as he realized that he, and everybody he knew, and his entire home world could be on the point of instantaneous destruction.

  Steenameert raised himself on one elbow. "It may be that Greturk's device is imperfect. He told us it was built in too much haste. Dussarrans can make mistakes, also, and it may be that the delay mechanism he spoke of is not. ..." Steenameert's voice faded and his eyes grew wide as he pointed with one trembling finger at something beyond Toller's shoulder.

  Toller followed his gaze and swore savagely as he saw

  something which had the power to dismay him, even in this time of astonishing and momentous events. The gleaming white figure of a Vadavak, one who must have concealed himself during the closing chaotic moments of battle, had appeared by the boxy shape of the impeller. Professional training must have made him much stronger than the average Dussarran because, as the petrified humans watched, he squatted and put his hands under one edge of the impeller, then slowly but steadily straightened up.

  The impeller tilted in unison with his movements and fell on its side. An instant later, almost as though triggered by impact, something in the white box began to emit a mechanical scream.

  Toller tried to scramble to his feet, but his left leg refused to take his weight and he lurched painfully to the ground. "That's the final warning," he shouted, undergoing a unique kind of torment because of his inability to move. "The machine must be uprighted—otherwise all is lost!"