by E. C. Tubb
Craig was lying asleep on the cot he kept in the engine room, lost in a nightmare in which he lay at the edge of a turbulent sea wreathed in hampering weed and with crabs tearing at his face. Cruel pincers ripped and stung and shed his blood to be lapped by slimed things which reared from the sand.
Looking down at him Dumarest saw the restless twitching of the eyeballs beneath their lids. Sweat dewed the scarred face and edged the spikes of hair. Lines had dug their way into the corners of the eyes and the expanse of the forehead, betraying marks of age as was the flaccid skin beneath the jaw, the mottled blotches marring the hands. The man was too old to hope for a better berth, content to ride with slavers, to be treated like a dog. He needed a carrot as Ysanne needed a whip.
He shuddered awake as Dumarest touched his shoulder.
"God! I thought-God!" Sleeping while on duty, taken unawares-what would Pendance have done? Then he saw the tall figure standing at his side with the bottle in his hand. "I dropped off," he said quickly. "Just to take a short nap. The instruments were beginning to blur."
Excuses Dumarest didn't need. He said, gently, "You needed a rest, Jed, and were wise enough to take it. A tired brain can make mistakes and you're the only engineer around. Like a drink?" He lifted the bottle. "Mind sharing the neck?"
Craig shook his head, rising to stand beside Dumarest as he tilted the bottle, neck to his mouth, throat working as he pretended to drink.
"Here!"
"Thanks!" Craig's own drink was real and he felt the warm comfort of the alcohol as it hit his stomach, the stimulation of the drugs it contained which banished his nagging fatigue. "We got a destination yet?"
"Ysanne's working on it."
"A smart girl. The kind I could have gone for if I were younger and had the kind of face a woman could bear to look at. It was never good but Pendance made it worse. Well, the bastard got what was coming."
Dumarest said, "Those scars can be fixed."
"Sure. With money."
"You'll get money. We'll all get it. A fortune." Dumarest held out the bottle. "Have another drink."
Craig nodded his thanks and swallowed and said, "You understand, Earl. You've known what it is to be short and stranded and glad to take anything as long as you can eat I'm a good engineer. I can strip and assemble a generator, tune it too, there's not many can do that without the right equipment."
"I believe you," said Dumarest. "I guess we're lucky to have you. Ysanne and I, that is. Our lives are in your hands. Think we can make it?"
"I wish I knew." Craig gestured to the console, the instruments it carried. "The synch-variation is getting wilder and I don't know how much longer it will stay within tolerance. It could strike a balance, but if it doesn't and the generator goes-" He broke off, shrugging. "I guess you know what'll happen then."
The Erhaft field would collapse to leave the Moira drifting in space at sub-light velocity. Long before it could reach a planet they could all be dead.
Dumarest said, "I expect you've thought of fixing a monitor to cut the field if the variation gets too far out of line?"
"I was about to do that."
"Good. One with a mutual override? How long will it take?"
"Not long. It's mostly a matter of registers and cut-outs. Say a couple of hours. I'll have to cut the drive to do it though. When do you want me to start?"
"As soon as you're ready. Can you manage on your own?"
"Sure, but you could leave me the bottle."
Dumarest lifted it, checking the contents. More and the engineer would have had too much. "Later," he said. "I'll save it until you've finished."
Back in the control room Dumarest took his place in the big chair, letting his head fall back against the padding, looking at the screens with their patterns of stars, the instruments, the glowing telltales. As normal the room was in gloom, the lights bright, hypnotic in their shifting flickers.
Captains rarely stood watch alone. Usually there was someone with them, the second in command, the chief engineer, the navigator, a junior officer. A human presence to ease the strain of concentration as well as to provide a second pair of eyes and a brain to monitor the messages the instruments delivered.
To be alone was to be enclosed in a surrogate womb, warm, comfortable, isolated, entranced by endless vistas of space.
"Earl!" Dumarest jerked as Craig's voice came from the intercom. He had been drifting on the edge of sleep, bemused by the lights, the repetitive pulse of a glaring ruby eye on a piece of unfamiliar apparatus. "Ready to cut drive now."
"A moment." Dumarest checked the systems and found no trace of ethereal danger. "Go ahead."
A moment later the stars flickered as the instruments flared. An alarm sounded, dying as he touched a control, lights shifting as the ship's systems adjusted to the new conditions. Now the Moira was helpless before the impact of interstellar forces; the shifts and eddies of spatial disturbances which eroded planetoids, disintegrated the detritus of broken worlds, turned hapless vessels into things of abstract sculpture.
Before him the ruby light blazed with a new, eye-searing intensity and looking at it Dumarest knew what it had to be.
A radio beacon.
Something in space was calling for help.
"It's a ship! Earl! It's a ship!" Ysanne leaned close, previous animosity long forgotten in the excitement of the chase, eyes glistening with reflected light as she stared at the shape swelling larger in the screens. "Slow down, Earl! Slower!"
The shape steadied as he obeyed, seeming to move as the Moira came to relative rest. A craft after the general pattern of their own, the hull blotched with markings.
"The Galya," said Craig as he joined them in the control room. "Small, maybe a private, adapted to carry extra cargo." He read the symbols and design with practiced ease. "Not drifting for long by the look of her. There'd be more attrition of the plates if she had. Any idea as to where she's from?"
"No." There had been no answer to their signals. Dumarest added, "We'd best try direct laser contact. That beacon's automatic and the normal radio could be broken. Ten minutes, Jed?"
It took fifteen before Dumarest, suited, saw the hatch open and the Galya framed in the aperture. He lifted the communication-laser in gloved hands, aimed, fired the beam and spoke into the connected microphone.
"Calling the Galya. Moira calling the Galya. We picked up your signal. Answer if you can."
He received vibrations carried as electronic pulses by the beam of the laser, impinging on the hull and being translated back into vibration. These harmonics repeated his voice within the ship's structure.
"Answer if you can. Flash a light. Show a signal. Respond. Respond!"
Again the wait, the silence.
"Dead," said Craig. "They must all be dead."
Lying stark and withered or too ill to move. Starved or dehydrated, listening to the voice of rescue but unable to make the one sign which would bring it in time. Not, perhaps, even recognizing his voice for what it was.
An emergency radio beacon was the last, desperate effort anyone stranded in space could make. The odds against it being picked up were astronomical. The chance that, even if it was received, a ship would break its journey to make a tedious search was almost as slim. Only the hope of a reward would encourage anyone to try.
"Salvage," muttered Craig. "The kind a man dreams about. All out there for the taking-and we've no way to get it to a market. What do we do, Earl?"
"Go and investigate," said Dumarest. "But I'll go alone."
He heard a keening as he crossed the gap between the ships; a thin, wailing echo which lifted to fade and die as if a crying child had been suddenly snatched far distant at high velocity. The sound seemed to originate within his brain, created by electronic impulses from surging particles of radiation, riding a spatial wind or circling and gaining momentum as they spun in the magnetic flux which could swell to become the heart of a vortex or the twisting complex of a warp.
A danger sign he ignored a
s the Galya grew large before him.
The hull slapped against his boots and he swayed before inching over the rounded plates to where the lock rested toward the rear. It was sealed but there was an emergency trip on which he rested his hand.
To Ysanne he said, "Anything?"
"Nothing, Earl. It's still as dead as before." Her tone carried a note of anxiety. "The instruments register a growing nexus of undisciplined energy. We're close to a decaying vortex and there could be a transference of energy potential. If so there could be a danger of a local storm."
"Remote or immediate?"
"You've got time," she said. "But don't waste any. Be careful-I want you back."
The trip moved beneath his hand and the lock gaped open. Releasing his safety line he jammed it against the hull, the gekko-pad holding it fast. Inside the lock he paused for a moment then thumbed the mechanism. Rotated inside he stepped from the lock into the hold of the vessel.
It was as he had expected, matching the holds of a hundred other vessels he had known. A compartment half-filled with bales, some sacs lying to one side, the caskets designed for the transportation of beasts lined up beneath a cold, blue-white glow. The normal appearance of any trader working on a slender margin. The handler probably doubled as steward, there would be only one engineer, one navigator, a captain and his second in command. Even if, as Craig had suggested, the Gayla was a private vessel, there would be no more.
Dumarest moved toward the engine room, opened the door and stared at a scene of devastation. The generator was ruined, nothing but a seared and fused mass of metal resting where it had been. To one side the burned body of a man lay in a pool of congealed blood, the fluid dried to a brown hardness. The blast which had caught him had seared his upper torso, turning his head into a knob of ash, his chest into a blackened crust through which showed the yellow of bare bone. His hands were gone, his arms past the elbows, and Dumarest guessed he had been leaning over the generator, touching it, when it had blown.
From the lower regions a corridor ran between cabins to the salon and control area. Light shone with a steady luminescence from plates set in the ceiling and dust reflected it in misty shimmers. A sure sign of air but Dumarest made no effort to open his helmet. The air could be breathable but contaminated.
A cabin door opened beneath the pressure of his hand and he saw an unmade bunk, some scattered clothing, a bottle lying on its side, a scatter of small, blue pills. The pillow carried long, dark hairs, and a woman's cosmetic kit rested on a shelf. Another held some toys, a heap of small garments, the portrait of a girl with wide eyes who clutched a furry pet.
In the third waited madness.
Dumarest saw the flicker of motion and threw himself backwards as steel whined through the air where he had stood. A long, curved blade shimmered like a mirror bathed in light, flashing as it sliced toward him, missing as he dodged, making a dull, flat sound as it bit deep into the edge of the door.
Bit and stuck as the man who wielded it screamed in maniacal fury.
He was tall, skeleton-thin, wearing soiled but ornate robes. His hair hung in a shoulder-length tangle from a peaked skull and his mouth, open, revealed filed teeth set with gems. The eyes were red, crusted, blotched with yellow.
His face belonged to a creature from delirium.
The flesh had left the contours of the bone and taken on a shape of its own, hanging in pendulous drippings and puffed protrusions as if the face had been made of wax and exposed to the softening influence of a fire. Or of a soft plastic bathed in the vapors of a corrosive acid.
"No!" he screamed. "You will not take me! The transformation is not yet complete. I will not yield to demons of torment. Die! Die!"
The sword came ripping from the door to lift and slash as Dumarest turned and ran down the corridor back to the hold. Hampered by his suit, restricted by the confines of the cabin and corridor, faced by a creature with insane strength and a sword which could slash through metal, he needed space in which to defend himself.
He reached in just in time, diving sideways as the blade whined through air, moving, searching for a weapon, seeing a pile of metal rods stacked beside a case together with the familiar bulk of an extinguisher.
Dumarest reached it as curved steel slashed a long opening in his suit, lifting it as the blade rose for another cut, ducked behind a case as it came down. A moment gained in which he slammed his head against the control and raised the extinguisher in time to block a slash which would have taken the head from his shoulders.
Foam spouted from the nozzle, caught the tormented face, the red, glaring eyes. Filled the mouth with its substance and coated arms and torso with clinging whiteness. The foam robbed the air of oxygen and sent the swordsman to his knees, blade falling, hands lifting as he fought to clear his mouth. The fight ended as the assailant slumped, sprawling, in the unmistakable posture of death.
CHAPTER TEN
The hold was silent save for the gushing whisper of air from his tanks, Ysanne's voice echoing urgently from the speakers.
"Earl! Earl, answer me! Is anything wrong? I heard odd noises. Earl!"
"Nothing's wrong." She had caught the sounds of combat carried via the diaphragms. He hurried on before she could demand explanations. "Everything's under control here. Can you move the Moira to make direct contact?"
"Maybe, but it wouldn't be wise. That storm I mentioned is building up into something serious. Direct contact means we increase our united mass and invite energy condensation."
"Do what you can. I want things easy for transfer."
"People? Goods?" A pause, then, "How's the generator?"
He left that question unanswered as he doffed the suit. Slashed, it was useless and if the air was contaminated he had already been exposed. Drawing his knife he stepped to where the swordsman lay sprawled and kicked aside the fallen blade. Thirty inches of polished steel, curved like the stamen of a flower, the hilt a continuation of the blade, made of wood elaborately carved. The guard was small, ornate, and from the pommel hung a tassel of yellow silk.
A weapon favored by the Akita of Sardo-had the Galya come from there?
Dumarest rested his left foot on the man's right wrist and, stopping over the figure, used the point of his knife to open an artery. The blood barely welled from the shallow gash, lying dark and turgid in the wound. A sure sign of death; that was a precaution, as had been his silence as to the condition of the generator. If Ysanne knew it had blown and was useless she might be tempted to leave him and run-take the Moira to a close world, sell it and live soft on the proceeds. Twice as soft if Craig was disposed of.
"Earl!" Her voice called from the speakers of the discarded helmet. "Earl, answer me, damn you! Earl!"
The voice faded as he made his way back up the corridor, ears strained, body alert, and he halted to lean against a door. This cabin was empty but showed signs of hasty evacuation; clothing scattered, some rings and vials of perfume lying on the floor. One had broken and the air held the memory of a cloying scent.
In the next cabin he entered lay the body of a man.
He was dressed like the swordsman in an ornate robe, the condition immaculate, the long hair braided and wound in a topknot pierced with a spine of polished wood. His thin hands rested on his chest, the fingers gripping a sword which was the twin to the other. Cosmetics had turned his face into a snarling mask of bestial fury, but beneath the paint it was unravaged.
Next to him, on a small table, rested an empty glass containing the dregs of wine and a locket graced with a familiar symbol. Dumarest looked at the grinning skull, at the glass, then at the dead man. Suicide, but the painted face showed it was not chosen because of any personal sense of disgrace. The man had armed himself, painted himself for war-and had died to combat enemies untouchable on a physical plane.
The rest of the cabins were deserted or locked as was the salon, the control rooms. Dumarest returned to the hold and picked up one of the metal bars. Back at the salon he rammed it between t
he door and the jamb, heaved, stepped back as it yielded.
At the table sat a ring of statues.
Men and women frozen in the midst of a game, cards in their fingers, chips scattered on the baize. An old woman, gems on her gnarled fingers, cosmetics on her raddled cheeks. A younger woman at her side, hard-faced, hair cropped, dressed in a quilted tunic, pants, calf-high boots. Two others who could have been attendants. A man who had the appearance of a trader. Another who wore the robe of a monk.
The monk sat at the end of the table, cowl thrown back to reveal a face thin but not austere, as if he had seen too much of the harsh side of life; the poverty and deprivation, the disease, the hunger, the despair which stalked all worlds like a corroding miasma. A man who believed in a simple credo and was dedicated to a life of personal sacrifice, he wore no gems; ornaments could buy food for the hungry. He had no pride; that was a luxury beggars could not afford. He had nothing but the conviction that, one day, when all men could look at each other and say, "There, but for the grace of God, go I!" the millennium would have arrived.
He would never live to see it; men bred too fast and spread too quickly, but he would continue to do what he could to ease suffering where he found it. He and his fellows formed the Church of Universal Brotherhood.
Neither he nor the others had looked up when Dumarest had broken open the door. Lost in the magic of quick time, their metabolism slowed to far below normal, they had barely registered the incident. For them normal minutes were but seconds and before they could even see him he had gone.
At the control room Dumarest lifted the bar then, pausing, again tried the door. This time it swung open and he looked into the dim interior lit with the glow of signal lights, the blaze of stars from the screens.
In one of them the Moira loomed close, Ysanne's voice coming from a speaker, edged with sharp impatience.
