Looters Of Tharn rb-19

by Джеффри Лорд

  He had been right. The war machine had unleashed another weapon, the most powerful yet.

  Chapter 5

  Blade had expected fireworks when the machine unleashed its heavy weapon. Clouds of smoke, wreckage flying high in the air, the belt and an acre of grass around it blasted to fragments or burned to a cinder, a ground shock or concussion violent enough to knock him unconscious.

  Almost nothing happened. A slight quiver in the ground, a purple glow and a slight wavering in the air above the grass where the belt lay, a hiss of disturbed air. Then even the after-image of the searing purple glare was fading from Blade’s eyes. He stared toward the belt. The grass around where it had fallen looked fresh and undisturbed. No smoke, not a blade out of place. The machine stood motionless, its turret still turning slowly and steadily.

  Blade crouched in the grass and began to run his thoughts back over what he had just seen. He was no scholar, but he had a mind superbly skilled in analyzing any practical situation. It was a mind that had worked with computerlike efficiency long before Lord Leighton had gone to work on it. If it hadn’t, Blade would never have lived long enough for Lord Leighton to deal with him.

  Some sort of warning device tracked targets for the main weapon, the purple ray. Some targets called that ray into operation, some didn’t. What was the difference? Blade considered how he had thrown the two belts. He couldn’t remember any real difference in the way they had flown through the air or landed in the grass.

  No, it was something in the targets-the belts, in this case-themselves. The two were virtually identical in size, shape, and weight. But-they weren’t identical in material.

  Blade’s mind raced. The first belt had been made of leather and the teksinlike plastic. The second had been made of leather with iron discs sewn all over it. Iron, a metal. Or at least something nonorganic-something that had never been living. Now suppose the plastic was really made of something like the mani plant of Tharn? Then it would be organic. Leather was certainly organic.

  Blade’s mind raced on even faster. The detectors in that machine worked on a principle that Home Dimension scientists hadn’t even imagined, let alone studied! The ability to distinguish between even small amounts of living or once-living matter and any and all nonliving matter seemed to be there. It was hard to believe, but it was there.

  There was an awesomely advanced science behind that machine, however battered and rundown it might have become. Getting a closer look at it was something worth enormous risks. Getting inside it would be even better. The idea that there was such a detectable difference between organic and nonorganic matter would throw a bombshell into half a dozen branches of Home Dimension science. The idea that machines might be built to detect it was something that might leave even Lord Leighton temporarily speechless. Blade suspected there were a good many people, J included, who would enjoy the spectacle of a speechless Lord Leighton.

  One thing was certain-this dimension could hardly be Tharn. The neuters of Tharn had served well at keeping all the complex machinery functioning. They had known more of magnetism and gravity than Home Dimension scientists could have imagined.

  But the neuters had not had creative, curious, exploring minds. There was nothing of interest for them beyond what they already knew well. They had not discovered anything for many centuries, nor had they any need or wish to do so.

  When Blade was among them, they certainly had not discovered anything that might have gone into making the war machine.

  So he had solved one problem. But he still faced another-how to approach that machine which squatted grim and gleaming, so tantalizingly close at hand.

  If a target carried metal-or at least some nonorganic material-it presumably was not an animal and might be dangerous to the machine. Then the purple ray was called into play. What it did to what it hit, Blade still didn’t know. But he remembered those skeletons bleaching in the grass. Had they been struck down by this same purple ray, to lie there until the flesh was rotted and weathered away from the bones?

  Perhaps. Well, the machine would find that Richard Blade was a tougher opponent than those poor helpless savages! Blade mentally shook his fist at the war machine. The effort cleared his head. His mind leaped ahead again, mapping out a strategy.

  To get any closer to the machine would risk detection. But what if he was detected as nothing but a moving mass of organic matter, nothing but a large animal for all the machine could tell? The machine seemed to be programmed to fire at anything that might be an intelligent and therefore dangerous being. But it might not fire at all on something that merely registered as an animal. Or it might at least hold its fire until Blade was too close to be hit.

  That meant stripping himself of all his equipment. He didn’t much like going up against the machine naked and barehanded. But if his reasoning was correct, he had no choice. The first belt he had thrown was the only item of gear that wasn’t metal or metal-studded. It was unfortunate that the people of this dimension hadn’t learned to work their plastic into effective sword blades as had been done in Tharn.

  Blade laughed at himself. It was unfortunate that the people of his dimension hadn’t provided him with a good many things that would have made him feel better about tackling the machine, starting with that antitank rocket. But regretting their absence wasn’t going to conjure them out of the ground or out of thin air.

  Moving slowly and carefully, staying low to the ground, Blade stripped off his equipment. He piled it on the grass beside him, marking the place by pulling out several clumps of grass. It might be handy to be able to find the gear again in a hurry. The war machines weren’t necessarily the only enemies roaming in this land.

  Still moving slowly and carefully, he crawled away from the gear, occasionally sticking his head up through the long grass. The war machine showed no sign of moving. But something new was happening in the city beyond. Several columns of thick black smoke were coiling greasily up into the air, rising as high as the tops of the tallest towers before the wind broke them up and spread them out. Blade froze for a minute, watching and listening. He thought he could hear occasional hissing and crackling sounds, followed by the crash of heavy weights falling.

  Blade would have given a good deal to be able to stand up and get a better look at what was going on in the city. Something new and perhaps deadly was at work there. But he couldn’t risk being detected prematurely by the war machine. He went on crawling.

  Finally he reached his intended position. He was less than thirty yards from the machine. That was a distance he could cover in a matter of seconds even in the long grass. The raytube was pointed a hundred and eighty degrees away from him. It would take time for it to swing back toward him. Hopefully it would take more time than it would take him to reach the platform on the rear of the machine. He could see some kind of hatch there.

  If his guess was right, he didn’t need to worry about the purple ray. But he might be wrong, and then he might be dead if he made too easy a target of himself.

  Blade took a deep breath, sprang to his feet, and ran toward the machine.

  Chapter 6

  Blade hurled himself through the grass in great leaping bounds. Once grass tangled around his ankles and he staggered and nearly went sprawling on his face. Several times thorny branches raked his calves, leaving oozing scratches. His heart pounded with the exertion, but even more it pounded with the tension of waiting. Would the turret swing in time, and if it did, would the purple ray lance out at him?

  He was barely halfway to the machine when he saw that the turret was turning faster than he had expected. The tube would be bearing on him in seconds. His throat went dry at the thought, but his legs went on churning and his mind went right on working. If death was only moments away, he would die on his feet, fighting and thinking to the last.

  Clank-clank-clank-screeeeeech. The tube was rising into firing position. Thirty yards to go. Twenty-five. Twenty. The tube was bearing directly on him now. More lights flashed on, and th
e purple lens at the end of the tube glowed like a neon sign.

  Nothing happened.

  In a moment of wild joy Blade realized that he had guessed right. The machine would not, could not fire at something that did not register as a possible enemy.

  If he had been able to spare the breath, he would have let out a sigh of relief. But he didn’t have the breath, or time to stop and catch it. He lengthened his stride, arms and legs pumping furiously. The machine might not fire at him, but it might still fly or walk away.

  Fifteen yards.

  Ten yards.

  Five yards.

  The machine’s legs flexed, and it let out an ear-torturing howl like a dozen fire sirens all going at once. But before the machine could move, Blade reached the platform in the rear. He grasped the railing and vaulted over, landing on hands and knees with a clang and a thump. It vibrated and quivered under the impact of Blade’s two hundred and ten pounds.

  The turret continued to turn until the raytube was pointing directly backward, over the platform and only a foot or so above Blade’s head. Blade flattened himself against the hatch as the tube sank down. With an audible click it reached the bottom of its slot and stopped. The siren died away. Apparently something in the machine had concluded that the danger was past or that the ray would be no good against it. Blade hoped it was the first and raised his head to look about him.

  The smoke was rising from nearly a dozen places in the city now. The individual clouds merged into a vast sullen gray black pall that was spreading ahead of the wind. The hissing noises were louder now and almost continuous. So was the crashing and rumbling of great weights falling. Something powerful and destructive was at work in the city.

  It certainly wasn’t the other two war machines. They still stood motionless where they had been, their turrets turning slowly. They seemed to be paying no attention to anything that was going on in the city. They also seemed to be ignoring what had just climbed aboard their companion.

  Blade turned toward the hatch. It would not be a bad idea to get away from here for a while. Something much more powerful and destructive than the purple ray was at work in the city. Blade couldn’t help feeling that it would be wise to be ready to leave in a hurry if the something turned his way. The best and fastest way to leave would be aboard this machine. If he could learn to run it, he could put a good many miles between himself and whatever was tearing the ruins apart, then study the machine at his leisure.

  Step one get inside the bloody thing! Blade examined the hatch. It offered no obvious knobs, dials, latches, handles, wheels, or any other way of opening it. It was simply a slightly recessed circle of metal about three feet in diameter, set in the rear slope of the machine’s hull. Blade thumped the center with his clenched fist. The metal resounded with a faint hollow boom, but that was all.

  There were no visible hinges, and it wouldn’t have helped Blade much even if there had been. Without tools he would have been hard put to dismantle them. He went to work with both fists, systematically and carefully tapping the whole surface of the hatch.

  A metallic rattling from the front end of the machine interrupted Blade. He broke off his examination of the hatch and craned his neck to peer around the curve of the machine’s hull.

  Four long flexible metal tentacles were creeping out of the ports in the front of the machine. They seemed to be composed of hundreds of circular segments, like giant earthworms. At its base each tentacle was a good six inches in diameter. Three of them tapered to whip-fine tips. The fourth ended in a flared section, crowned with a circular knob. All four crept slowly out of their ports until they reached out a good thirty feet or more. Then they began to rise, bending backward as they did so, over the turret, toward Blade.

  Blade stopped his work on the hatch and froze, his eyes fixed on the tentacles as they arched toward him. His mouth was dry again, but his mind was still racing furiously. The tentacles could only be a back-up defense for the machine, to handle anything that got through the other defenses.

  Or help it? The idea flashed into Blade’s mind. The machine was almost certainly unmanned now. But if it ever had a live crew, there might be times when a wounded or helpless crewman needed help to get inside.

  How to imitate a wounded man? The tentacles were already reaching down toward him. The one with the flared end and knob was the farthest away. Blade suspected it held some sort of lens or other sensing device, to study any doubtful specimens and pass on the word to the machine’s computers.

  If it passed on the wrong word, the other three tentacles would grip Blade and tear him apart like a rag doll in the hands of an angry child. He knew that as clearly as if he had seen it done. A vivid picture of it happening flashed through his mind for a moment as he got ready.

  He made his breathing as slow and shallow as he could without blacking out. If he could have done it, he would have slowed his heartbeat as well. He let himself go limp and slid down the hull to sprawl on the platform, arms and legs outflung. He let his head sag to one side like a drunken man’s. But behind half-closed lids he kept his eyes fixed on the hatch. With luck the tentacles would show him the way into the machine. Without luck-The first tentacle touched him. Its touch was chill, hard, with a nightmarish fumbling quality about it. It tapped at his shinbone, curled around his ankle, tugged gently. Blade forced himself not to tense his leg, but instead to let it rise as the tentacle pulled. It rose only a few inches, then the tentacle uncurled. Blade let his leg drop back to the platform with a thud. Pain flared as his shinbone smashed into the metal, but he clamped his teeth down hard on a gasp of pain.

  Now another tentacle was curling around his waist, roaming up and down the area between his navel and his groin. Blade felt the tentacle grip his testicles, and had a harder fight than before not to freeze or yell out loud. A third tentacle crept into his hair and explored there. Its chill metallic touch was a grisly parody of the caress of a woman’s fingers.

  Meanwhile the fourth tentacle was hovering in the air over Blade’s head. The knob at the end was turning slowly, with audible clicks and beelike dronings. Blade continued to force himself to stay limp, quiet, and calm. The struggle was getting harder by the minute. He had no idea what conclusions the machine was reaching. Would it conclude he was somebody who had a right to be where he was, perhaps even a right to be helped? Or would it conclude that he was an enemy who had slipped through the other defenses and order the tentacles to-The knob-ended tentacle reared up until its full length swayed in the air. It looked uncannily like a giant cobra. The siren sounded again-three earsplitting boots. The tentacle exploring Blade’s hair moved over to the hatch. So did the one at his feet. The third one remained wrapped loosely around his waist.

  The two at the hatch hovered for a moment in the air. Then both plunged their tips into the narrow crack around the edge of the circular hatch. Metal scraped against metal as they wedged themselves deep into the crack. Ripples ran up and down the tentacles as they explored it. The one around Blade’s waist tightened its grip.

  Then the tentacles found what they were looking for. Two sharp clicks sounded. Silently, without the faintest whine or hiss or clanking, the hatch swung outward. Blade saw darkness in which a few humped metal shapes gleamed dully.

  The tentacle around his waist tightened its grip still more. Blade held his breath. The other two tentacles arched downward again. One crept under his head, to cradle head, neck, and shoulders in its coils. The other supported him from knees to feet. Then all three tentacles lifted. They lifted him in through the hatch as easily as a housewife lifting a loaf of bread from the grocery shelf. They laid him down as gently on a smooth but warm and yielding surface. Then they withdrew, and in the same silence the hatch swung closed. Two clicks sounded again in the darkness as the latches snapped into place.

  Chapter 7

  Lights flashed on. For a moment the sudden white glare after the darkness dazzled Blade. He closed his eyes, then opened them slowly as they adjusted to the light
. He did not try to rise or even move so much as a finger or a toe. The relief at being safe for the time being from those coiling tentacles was too great. His skin dripped a cold sweat from head to foot.

  His plan had worked. He was where he had to be to learn to operate the machine and then drive it away from the city. But awareness of that stayed in the back of his mind for a couple of minutes, while he savored the sheer delight and relief at being alive.

  After those minutes Blade gathered his legs under him and rose to his feet. His head promptly banged into the roof of the cabin, hard enough to make him wince and swear. He hunched his shoulders, rubbed the sore spot on his skull, and looked about the cabin.

  The machine had obviously been built by and for humans, or at least beings about that size and shape. That was good news. Blade had been too busy to consider the problems of operating a machine designed for a crew with seven stalked eyes, four arms, three legs, and a prehensile tail. But they would have been nasty problems. He was perfectly happy not to have to face them.

  The layout of the controls was a model of simple design. Six screens on the forward wall of the cabin. No doubt they showed views in four directions plus up and down when they were turned on. A control panel with various dials and large switches. A black-enameled wheel on a central shaft in front of a leather-upholstered seat. Three more control levers sprouting from the shaft.

  Blade sat down in the chair and fastened the seat belt snugly around his waist. His first few efforts to control the machine would probably be a bit erratic. He didn’t want to be splattered all over the cabin if the thing turned over or started doing loops. Then he examined the switches and levers more closely.