“Khruuz has been here,” Kickaha said, “and he captured Dingsteth despite its traps. Nothing subtle or easy, just powered his way through them, destroying them. So, we go to Khruuz’s World.”
“Elyttria!” Wemathol said. “How do we get into his world? And would it be wise to go there?”
“No,” Kickaha said. “Not if you want to live forever. We’ll have no trouble, though, transmitting ourselves there. The Great Mother is helping us. She told me some time ago how we could do it. The way is now set up.”
They flew back to the final X marking the gate through which they had entered. Here, Kickaha blew three times on the Horn. Manathu Vorcyon had also arranged that blowing it thrice at this point would alert her to open the passage to Khruuz’s World. Kickaha did not know how she did this, but the important thing was that she could. She was now willing to use the knowledge she had kept to herself for so many millennia.
After warning them, though unnecessarily, to be alert, Kickaha led them into the gate. They came into the many-tunneled place a long way from Khruuz’s headquarters. Using the detector Manathu Vorcyon had gated to him days ago, Kickaha saw where the cluster of gates was located and rode off in that direction. Though the Khringdiz must have assumed that he had closed all the gates, they still glowed faintly in the detector and so could be found. The Great Mother had indeed provided well for them.
They had expected traps in the form of explosions, deadly gases, or gates switching them into a circuit or to a desolate universe. But they encountered none. Khruuz seemed to have assumed that no one could gate to his complex unless he permitted them entrance. Finally, after searching the scaly man’s living quarters, which were empty, they got to the entrance to Khringdiz’s control chamber.
Kickaha was the first to go into it. He halted; the others crowded around him. They stared at the smears of dried blood on the floor directly before the main control panel. Then Kickaha saw the body on the floor fifty feet from the stains. Clifton was lying there on his face. His outstretched hand still gripped a beamer. He had not been taken completely by surprise by Khruuz.
Kickaha strode to the body, noting on the way that there were no bloodstains between the smears and Clifton. Kneeling down, he put his finger on Clifton’s neck. No pulse. He had not expected one. Clifton was wearing only a kilt, sandals, and a belt with a holster. On the back of the left arm was a cauterized hole, and close to the lower spine was a similar hole. He had been shot twice with a narrow beamer ray.
He turned the Englishman over. The two wounds in the front matched those in the back. Rising, he said, “Khruuz must’ve been in a hell of a hurry. He didn’t even take the time to get rid of the body.”
He ordered Wemathol to take the corpse into the hall some distance away and disintegrate it with the big beamers on his airboat. The Thoan put on his gas mask and began dragging the body from the room. Kickaha went back to the smears before the main control panel. He looked at them more closely.
“Clifton did get off some shots before he died. It looks as if Khruuz was wounded. But not bad enough to lay him low.”
Again, he got down on one knee, and he examined one edge of the stains. He said, “Ah! Here’s the imprint of the front part of a foot! It’s not human! And it’s not Khruuz’s! Has to be Dingsteth’s! He was standing close to Khruuz when the beamer fight was going on!”
Ashatelon got close to the half-print. When he arose, he said, “You’re right. But was Dingsteth a prisoner, or did he come with Khruuz voluntarily?”
“I doubt very much he came willingly.”
Ashatelon said, “Why would Khruuz take Dingsteth with him? If Dingsteth obeyed your orders, it would have erased all data about the creation engine.”
He stopped, then said, “Oh, I see! I think I do, anyway. The data in the computer could be erased, Dingsteth having followed your orders. But it could be in Dingsteth’s brain!”
Kickaha nodded. “I goofed up. I should have thought of that Dingsteth wouldn’t have told me the data was in his mind unless I’d asked him if it was. Khruuz was smarter. He may even have thought of it when we were there. But he kept quiet about it for his own reasons.”
The clone said, “He’s hellbent for revenge. He’s going to do what Red Orc meant to do! Destroy all universes except one!”
Kickaha said, “We don’t know that for sure. But you’re probably right. We’re going back to the palace but not until we see Manathu Vorcyon. Bad as the situation is, she may want to join us. I think Khruuz is already in the palace. He’ll expect us to be treading on his heels. We may have hurried him so much he didn’t take time to prepare for us. Let’s hope so. In any case, we’re going to take a detour, see Manathu Vorcyon first.”
If the giantess was surprised by their sudden appearance, she did not show it. As soon as she had been informed of the latest events, she said, “I’m going with you. I have not left my world for many thousands of years, but I have not forgotten how to fight. It will take a few hours to get ready. Meanwhile, eat. You need the rest and the food.”
What she did during this time, the others did not know. But when she appeared before them, she wore a suit like a firefighter’s, a transparent globe over her head, gloves, and an oxygen tank on her back. A harness over her torso held at least a dozen weapons, some of them unfamiliar to Kickaha. Behind her were four servants carrying similar outfits. These were given to the men.
She is indeed the goddess of war, he thought. But Athena never looked so formidable. And it was at once evident that she had assumed command. Though Kickaha did not like that, he knew that it was best for all of them. Her millennia of experience made him look like, pun intended, a babe in arms.
“Follow me,” she said, her voice coming through a speaker in her helmet. “We’re going to a place where only I have been. You may put on the suits when we get to it.”
They went up the winding staircase in the tree to her room. She spoke a code word. The glindglassa, the huge mirror, shimmered. Kickaha, the first in line behind her, stepped through it into a gigantic room with many doors. He did not have time to marvel at its many objets d’art, some of which must have been twenty thousand years old, nor at the stuffed bodies of men and women standing here and there, all arranged in various postures, their faces expressing a range of emotions. These, he supposed, were enemies she had killed during the ancient Time of Troubles. Unique mementos—and dust-free, too.
She led them from the room into a hallway at least four hundred feet long. Near its end, she turned into a fifty-foot-high entrance. Beyond it was a huge hangar housing scores of aircraft. At her orders, the four donned the clothes. The holsters on their harness, however, contained only the familiar: beamers, hand grenades, knives, and tasers. She told them how to snap the globes into the metal rings at the top of the suits and secure them with a tiny snap lock on the rim. Inside the globes were transmitters to bring in outside noises. She also gave them instructions on the operation of the oxygen apparatus. After their helmets were on, they heard her voice only through a transmitter-receiver attached to the globes.
A minute later, they got into a transparent-hulled vessel shaped like a blimp envelope minus the rudder and fins, but with top and bottom turrets. She showed them their posts and how to operate the big rotatable beamers spaced around the ship to be able to fire from every side of the craft. Two of them were instructed briefly on the operation of the retractable turrets. She pointed out the six foldable single-pilot craft secured along the hull.
“They operate just like those you rode into Zazel’s World. Be ready to use them.”
She got into the pilot’s seat and instructed them in the use of the simple controls. After that, the others strapped themselves into the swivel chairs at the beamer stations. Wemathol occupied the bottom turret; Ashatelon, the top turret. Kickaha was the rear gunner. He preferred to be the pilot or, if he could not be that, the top turret operator. But the Great Mother had ordered otherwise. Like the rest of the crew, he took ten minutes
familiarizing himself with the turret and beamer controls. Then Manathu Vorcyon lifted the ship from its landing supports and drove it slowly into the wall at the back of the hangar. The gate, unlike so many, did not display a shimmering as the vessel went through it.
For a moment, they were at an altitude estimated by Kickaha to be five thousand feet. The sun was bright, the blue sky was clear, and the land beneath was forest-covered. Whether or not they were still in Manathu Vorcyon’s world he did not know. Then, they were suddenly surrounded by water and a feeble light from above. A minute later, they were again flying, this time in a moonless night.
The Grandmother of All certainly made it difficult for an enemy to track her through the gates.
Kickaha recognized the constellations. He had seen them every night while in Red Orc’s stronghold. They were flying above Earth II. Their attack would be from outside the palace instead of inside it.
Manathu Vorcyon’s voice came through his helmet receiver.
“In two minutes, we’ll be within the palace! If you can take Khruuz alive, do it! He is the repository of knowledge that we do not possess. And he is the last living person of his species. He may plan to destroy all living creatures in all the universes. He cannot be condemned for his madness, though he cannot be excused.
“We Thoan cannot repay him for what we did to his people. Nevertheless, we cannot allow empathy or guilt to interfere in this. If you have to do it, kill him!”
A minute passed. She cried out, “We’re going in!”
The night sky vanished. They were inside the well-lit and enormous dining hall for the guards and servants. Approximately forty corpses of guards, severed by beamer rays, were scattered through the hall. Three of the four maids left in charge of gating food to Red Orc and Anana were dead on the floor near a table. The overturned chairs and the half-eaten food on the dishes showed that they had been interrupted in their meal. The ten remaining guards had either fled the palace or were dead somewhere in it or, perhaps, hiding.
By now, Kickaha thought, the alarms Khruuz must have set up will have told him an intruder is in the palace.
The doorway into the dining hall was just large enough for the vessel, despite its top and bottom turrets, to scrape through. Like the dining room walls, ceiling, and floor, the hallway was blackened from beamer rays. The ship emerged into another huge room. It was also blackened. The fried or severed bodies of five guards sprawled there.
Manathu Vorcyon’s voice came to Kickaha. “The fourth maid was probably kept alive so that Khruuz could question her. He would want from her the code words allowing him to gate through whatever he wishes to send to Red Orc’s and Anana’s quarters.”
Kickaha gritted his teeth. The scaly man could send explosives or poisonous gas through the small food gates. Given enough time, Khruuz might be able to figure out how to expand the food gates to a size large enough to gate a person in or out. That is, he might if he wanted them in his presence for some reason.
Sweat poured over him when he envisioned the scenario. He groaned softly. A high imagination was both a blessing and a curse.
“… might have done that before he resumed his interrogation of Dingsteth,” Manathu Vorcyon said. “He may have the engine data by now, or he may still be trying to get it out of Dingsteth. That depends on how long he has been here, and what the situation is.”
The ship squeezed through another hall. The scars and the broken-off parts of the walls and ceiling showed that Khruuz had entered the palace in a craft similar in size to theirs. But they were quickly in another wide, long, and high room. This was for receiving many guests, even though Red Orc never gave parties. In its center, sitting unoccupied and unlit, was a ship much like Manathu Vorcyon’s. But its hull was rounded fore and aft, and its bottom was flat.
“Khruuz has gone ahead on foot, because the hallways are too narrow for his ship unless he blasted his way through them,” the giantess said.
Her vessel settled down. The bottom turret withdrew into the hull while Wemathol scrambled out of it. When the ship was resting on the floor just behind the scaly man’s, she said, “Get out the fliers.”
While the men were unfolding the aircraft outside the hull, she investigated Khruuz’s vessel. It did not take her long. When she returned, she said, “Its door seems to be locked. Here is my plan. We go in two parties to make scouting forays. Kickaha, you and Ashatelon will go together down the nearest hall. Wemathol, you and I will go into the far hallway. That leads to the control room if what you told me about the layout, Kickaha, is correct. Report at once if you need help.”
She told them the code words for unlocking the two doors of her craft and for turning the power on in the big vessel. Anybody who had to run for it would return to it and use it as the situation required. They would have no trouble operating it. The controls were clearly marked.
As Kickaha rode off with Ashatelon’s machine by his side, he said, “You know, Khruuz may have already flown the coop. If he did, he probably left a bomb strong enough to blow this building to bits.”
“You’re the most encouraging man I’ve ever met,” the Thoan replied. “Why don’t you keep all that cheer to yourself?”
Kickaha laughed, though not as enthusiastically as he usually did.
In twenty minutes of cursory search, they had been in every room and corridor on the first floor in the eastern half of the palace. Kickaha reported their findings. Manathu Vorcyon’s voice quickly followed his. She and Wemathol were in the second story and outside the door to the control room.
“We’ve found the fourth maid. She is lying in the hallway. Her body is covered with small burns, her eyes are burned out, and her head is sliced off. Evidently, she had to be tortured before she would tell him what he wanted to know. A very brave woman, though it was foolish of her not to reveal her secrets. She could have spared herself all the pain.”
She paused, then said, “All of you come up here. I’ll wait for you before I enter the control room.”
When Kickaha and his partner got there, they found that Manathu Vorcyon’s beamers had cut the door away from the wall. It was lying in the hall. She was now carving out a large circular area in the wall thirty feet from the doorway. It was large enough to admit her and the airboat.
“Kickaha and Ashatelon, make another entrance on the other side of the door at the same distance from it as this one.”
While they were doing that with the large beamers of their vehicles, they heard the other section fall crashing into the room. Shortly thereafter, Kickaha rammed his flier into the section he and the clone had cut out. The impact would have knocked him off his seat if he had not been belted to it. The section fell inward and crashed onto the floor.
He looked through it, wary of a beamer ray or a grenade. The huge room contained many control screens and panels, but it also had many machines, their purpose unknown to him. He reported that he could see part of the room. No one was in his view, but he’d be happy to stick his head through the hole to see all of the room. He was relieved, however, when Manathu Vorcyon forbade that. Did he want his head sliced off just to show how brave he was?
She continued, “The part of the room I can see seems to be unoccupied. Nor do my sensors indicate any body heat in there. Nevertheless, he may be shielded by something—if, that is, he is indeed in there. When I give the signal, we’ll all go in at the same time. As I said, I prefer that we just wound him, but that will probably be impossible.”
She held her hand up. Then she shouted, “Go!”
Kickaha pressed down on the acceleration pedal of his craft. It shot through the hole so swiftly that he was pressed back against the upright support behind him. Just as he entered the room, he raised the airboat so that it lifted in a tight curve to his right. His head almost touched the ceiling, which was forty feet above the floor. He straightened out the machine as his retrofield fired. It slowed down so abruptly that he was pushed forward against the restraining belt.
Ashatelon�
��s vehicle, which had curved to the left, stopped in front of Kickaha’s. It was so close to his that the cone noses almost touched. Ashatelon’s flight path was supposed to end at a level lower than his partner’s, but he had miscalculated. No time for reproaches. Kickaha was too busy looking around below him for Khruuz. He did not see him.
He grunted when he saw Dingsteth stretched out face down behind a massive machine set out a few feet from the back wall. Its hands were tied together behind its back. A trail of blood in front of the machine led around it to Dingsteth.
Khruuz must have walked out of the room before his pursuers got there or he had gated out of it. The latter, probably. His enemies had interrupted him just as he had shot Dingsteth. Since the Khringdiz did not have time to finish it off, he had fled through a gate or down the hallway.
Kickaha, along with the others, rode down to the console behind which Dingsteth lay, landed, and got off his craft. Manathu Vorcyon ordered Wemathol to stand guard by the doorway. She did not want Khruuz to surprise them by doubling back from a gate. Then she strode around the console. The others crowded behind her. Kickaha was turning Dingsteth over on its back.
He looked up as she stopped by him. “Beamed through a shoulder and a leg,” he said. “His pulse is weak.”
The giantess said, “Khruuz has not been gone long. Dingsteth’s blood is fresh.”
Kickaha started to stand up. A strange disorienting feeling passed through him. He seemed to be floating. It was as if he were in a very swiftly descending elevator. When he straightened up, he looked up through the giantess’s helmet at her face, twisted with alarm. She opened her mouth. Before she could say anything, a great noise stopped her.
Then the floor came up at him. He struck it very hard, and it buckled and broke open against his fallen body. He was vaguely aware that the console was skittering over the floor, hurling aside Ashatelon, who had been standing at its corner. Something hit him hard in the back, and he lost consciousness. The last things he heard were a deep rumbling, a crashing like an avalanche, and his own feeble voice crying out.
The World of Tiers, Volume 2 Page 94
