by Hal Annas
From where the sudden knowledge had come she had no idea, but she was certain that she was looking at energy in motion.
CHAPTER NINE
AT the moment we must remain here,” Nyuk said. “When our position is exactly right relative to our destination we will move on.” He glanced upward and it seemed to Aleta that he saw something she had missed.
His explanation about going on was not clear. She grasped that it had something to do with the motion of the planet. What interested her was his sudden ashen pallor. She was also disturbed by strange vibrations in the earth.
Following his gaze, she looked up. Scarcely larger than ants to her eyes, Novakkans worked on the surface. Not precisely the surface; they were down many feet.
Without warning she experienced the same kind of tremor she had experienced on the lifeship when the Novakkans were sealing a chamber about the airlock.
The situation was much the same. Somehow the Novakkans knew their quarry was below ground. They were drilling and burning their way down.
Nyuk’s features grew more ashen. And Aleta was certain that hers were the same color. She made no effort to rise. Her nerves had been tense so long that exhaustion had overcome her. She relaxed, stared about her and studied the laboratory.
Hanging as in space, but actually from the ceiling in an adjoining room, visible as in the background of a picture, were miniature planetary systems, great colored cosmographs, and endless mathematical symbols. Books stood on shelves that seemed to have no end, and she recognized spools and audio equipment which would enable students to learn while sleeping. A treasure-trove of knowledge, just beyond the wall, visible to her eyes.
Sometime later Nyuk swore lightly and breathed an exclamation. Again she followed his gaze.
The Novakkans had made progress. Their work still made the earth vibrate. But some of them were no longer upright, and it suddenly dawned that they were suffering from lack of oxygen.
Again Nyuk breathed relief as others fell. His strategy had worked, was working, and he walked about in triumph, again talking, his features regaining color.
But not for long. Novakkans still standing worked on doggedly driving their shaft deeper into the ground. When one keeled over another took his place. Their determination on a mission of vengeance was unrivaled, so far as men knew.
And then other Novakkans arrived with helmets and spacesuits.
Soon the fallen were again standing, in full spaceman’s regalia, and the tempo of the work increased.
Nyuk’s apprehension returned. He studied dials, moved controls, tried to hurry up the process that would enable them to go on. But it appeared to be geared to planetary motion.
And in those last minutes, when the Novakkans were but a few yards away, hacking through the laboratory wall. Nyuk came out of his jacket, unsheathed a long slender blade, half the weight of those of the Novakkans, and a raygun.
His action came as a surprise to Aleta. She had thought that he wouldn’t fight. Now he was a man prepared to die in the heat of conflict. And in his features, above that jutting red beard, was a look that declared he would take some of his enemies with him.
She wondered how she’d been able to think of him as other than human. For only a human is so grimly fierce and premeditated in that hour when he knows he must fight to the death.
The wall crashed behind her. She heard thundering Novakkan voices. One stood out above the others. It was the roaring of Rahn Buskner. The last time she had seen him his back had been an expanse of gore and a blade was buried to the hilt in the muscles of his chest. No ordinary man would have lived to fight again. But Rahn Buskner, she knew, was not ordinary. Earth’s exiles were, in some respects, supermen. Their enormous growth and strength were merely the outward expression of their vitality and courage.
As she came up from the floor and whirled to look, she was unprepared for the final shock. The Novakkans were inside the laboratory, true, but to them it was solid and nothing about it was transparent. They had come down through a shaft of their own making. And in relation to her they were little more than two feet tall.
His body showing fresh scars through plastic armor and spacesuit, his ugly features black with hate and recent fighting, Rahn Buskner stood scarcely an inch taller than his followers.
Astonished at the size of his opponents, he hesitated briefly, as Aleta watched. Whether he recognized her before she screamed was another question. But he must have recognized her voice, she reasoned. He turned away, hurled himself straight at Nyuk, his tiny blade whistling about his head.
Rays flashed. Another section of wall came down. Bodies burst, burned.
She heard a groan, a shriek from Nyuk, whirled in time to see him spit two Novakkans on his blade which was now three times the length and size of theirs.
His trousers had been slashed and he was bleeding about the legs. She saw tiny Novakkan blades reaching for him, their wielders leaping high.
It was not because of these things that he shrieked. He had called a warning to her. And before her eyes he began to grow less dense, to become almost transparent, almost invisible. It took a moment for her to realize that the same thing was happening to her.
“The time,” he shouted. “The position!”
And as he spoke, a thrown blade passed through his body. No blood spurted. Nothing. It left him undamaged. They were moving into still another dimension. Or something equally as radical was taking place.
Points of light flashed on every hand. A great white expanse, as of snow, grew about them. Bitter cold came.
Still clamoring about the laboratory, and apparently growing in stature, were the Novakkans, now in confusion. It was apparent that they could still see their quarry, could see the points of light and the expanse of snow, but could not follow.
Aleta realized that her own size was diminishing which presented the illusion that the Novakkans were growing.
She saw Rahn Buskner, now his normal height of something more than seven feet staring at her and at the scene behind her. She could hear his voice which was no longer roaring.
“The Eg planet,” he said. That was all. Then he vanished from sight.
“Another moment,” Nyuk warned, as he took her hand. “Eve salvaged my jacket. Put it about your shoulders.”
She glanced down at the blood dripping from his legs.
“It shouldn’t have happened,” he explained. “Their metal should have passed through me without injury. But as they came down deeper into the field they acquired some of the properties of the field. We’re lucky to be alive.”
Aleta had no doubt about that. She had never been closer to death.
And then they were in darkness and the points of light were stars. In a moment she was numb with cold. Under her feet were ice and snow. She would freeze to death, she knew, within minutes if something weren’t done.
Nyuk drew her along by the hand. “We’re on the outer surface,” he said. “My father could never be certain that the inner city wouldn’t be captured.” He led her down a dark passage, paused. “It’s here somewhere,” he went on. “Beams that have to be broken. Only minutes to find them.”
He found one beam. It was a thin crimson streak, faintly visible.
“The others are invisible,” he said in dismay. “I remember now. We’ll never find them.”
The mention of beams, some of them invisible, stirred something in Aleta’s memory. It was vague, but she, recalled electrical instruments attached to her nerve terminals and someone exclaiming, “The snow mesa!”
“There are three more beams?” she said.
“Yes,” Nyuk almost shouted. “Do you know where they are?”
What had prompted her to say there were three more beams was not clear. Shivering, she probed her memory in desperation, trying to recall something that seemed to be right there on the fringes.
Finally the words came. “Break the beam on your right and the three invisible beams on your left at the same time!”
Nyuk moved swiftly, spreading his arms wide. A door yawned open and let purple light into the passage. They stepped through the doorway into warmth and increasing light. They went on through another doorway and then she recognized the room in which she had been questioned by the Egs in their under mountain palace.
Memory made her legs tremble. The Novakkans knew about this place. She would never forget the fighting and orgies in the corridors. But it all seemed impossible. A few minutes ago she had been on a remote planet, still in this system, true, but remote. Or, she asked herself, could Nyuk have circled back and touched down on the dark side of this same planet? It all seemed unreal, impossible. But there could be no doubt that she was back where she had fought off Wilmo the Younger until the Novakkans interrupted his amours.
As they moved along from chamber to deserted chamber, now stripped of their riches, she felt that she would never be free of fear here. But there was one consolation. Her last glimpse of Ernest Vardon was on this planet. If he was still alive she would find him and again they would plot to escape.
“My father built this place.” Nyuk told her. “He was a friend of the Egs and helped them move their wealth out.”
She could understand how the elder Nyuk had grown rich trading with the Egs, carrying out Novakkan booty to other system, but how he had escaped the Novakkans themselves was another question. He had to be a man of many resources. And the galaxy was broad. No doubt she would learn many things from the redbearded man. She determined, at the first opportunity, to exercise her wiles and gain any knowledge that could be put to use in escaping to Earth.
CHAPTER TEN
NYUK led her to a blank wall where he broke invisible beams that set in motion hidden machinery.
“At the end of a full cycle,” he said, “we will have a place of refuge. It opens by the rays of our two suns. In the meantime I will get food.”
He was gone so long that Aleta feared he had lost his way in the endless corridors. His clothes were torn and dirty when he returned, and his face was bruised. He offered no explanation, but handed her a container of Vinth and several kinds of fruits and meats, and again departed.
She had thought that she would never be hungry again, but now she was famished. Sight of the food made her try a bite without waiting. She went on eating, glancing up from time to time with words of apology ready to be uttered the moment he returned. An hour passed, and she grew worried.
Fearfully, she went in search of him. The moment she reached the corridor she heard a hissing sound that reminded her of the opening of an airlock. Holding herself rigid, she waited, listened. The sound came again, but was distant, receding.
Heart hammering, she crept along in the direction from which the sound had come. The cross corridor was quiet, nothing moved as far as she could see in either direction.
And then she heard a faint gasp.
Moving forward again through purple dimness, she felt her foot strike something. The gasp came again. She leaped back, then kneeled, touched the body.
It wasn’t Nyuk. It was a beardless Eg, lying in a pool of blood. Nearby was a blade crimson from point to hilt.
Quickly she felt for his pulse. It was rapid but very faint. He was dying. Blood oozed out of his side and from a gash in his throat. He groaned one more time and lay quiet. Soon his pulse stopped.
There was no sign of Nyuk, but that he had killed this man she had little doubt. Long ago she had stopped being squeamish and now she reasoned coldly.
Nyuk had been followed back under the mountain. At some point he had learned about it. After leaving the food with her, he had gone back to waylay his followers.
The thought gave her a sense of helplessness. After what she’d seen and endured, she knew she could fight beside a man, at least against the unwar-like Egs. Had he taken her into his confidence the two of them might have made a successful stand. As it was, Nyuk was gone—dead or captured.
Alone, facing the necessity of depending solely upon herself, she picked up the blade, wiped it on the dead man’s clothes, balanced it in her hand, to get the feel of its weight. It was lighter than a Novakkan knife, as slender as Nyuk’s blade, well balanced, keen.
Without a flicker of an eyeash, she unbuckled the dead man’s belt, drew it about her own slender waist until the sheath hung at her left hip. She rammed the blade home, rested her left hand on the hilt, and vowed that if the need arose somebody would die on that point with her own hand driving it through his body.
Though exhausted, she didn’t rest. She recalled what she could of the corridors, as she had seen them when Rahn Buskner took her from Wilmo the Younger, and began the long search for yellow daylight or rosy twilight.
Hours later she stumbled across packages of food and fragments of clothing and splotches of blood. It took no deep reasoning to tell her that fighting here had been recent.
The pupils of her eyes had expanded and she was no longer bothered by the dimness. She followed a well-worn course and emerged into mid-twilight directly beneath the snowclad peak.
It was the Eg world, all right, and in a little while she had her bearings. She had no trouble finding the quarters across from the bazaar. Moving noiselessly, she entered, found the apartment she had occupied, paused.
The question now was whether it was occupied by another. It was a chance she had to take. Unsheathing the blade, she pushed open the door.
Faint sounds reached her ears, but she couldn’t tell whether they were coming from a. sleeping person or from the building as a result of the changing temperature.
Cautiously she went on in and found the photon gun she had got from the ancient of the House of Admo in the niche behind the bed of hides, exactly as she had left it. With blade in one hand and gun in the other, she stretched out on the bed to relax until yellow daylight.
Twice she leaped up ready to defend herself, and twice sheepishly lay back down.
Daylight came. She crept out before others in the building were awake and waited in the pavilion.
The stall of the House of Admo opened, but not by the hand of the bearded ancient. An aged Eg woman opened the door, stepped back out of sight.
Aleta crossed the byway, entered. The woman came forward, studied her briefly, drew back.
“You’re the girl who brought trouble,” she said emotionally. “Go away. Don’t ever come here again.”
“I’m sorry,” Aleta said. “If the execution was carried out, I know your loss has been great. I would like to do something to help.”
“You can help by leaving this planet and never coming back.”
“I intended to at the first opportunity. But in the meantime I need help. If your man were alive he would give it. I must have clothes, men’s clothes, and my hair cut short.”
The woman repeated, “Go away.”
Aleta fingered the photon gun, the blade. She had resolved to be ruthless, to let nothing stop her. But this aged and griefstricken woman was too pitifully helpless. She couldn’t bring herself to do what she had planned.
With tears dimming her own eyes, she returned to the byway. A short distance farther on she saw a Golgon about her size. Instantly the resolve renewed itself.
Closing up the distance, she glanced about hastily for others. The byway was deserted. She rammed the photon gun against the Golgon’s back and shoved him between two building.
“Now,” she ordered, “out of those clothe—”
He seemed amused. Again she threatened him with the gun, whipped out the blade and opened a tiny wound on his arm. This he understood, and no longer hesitated.
As he came out of the clothes she slipped out of her dress and got into them. She examined his turban, wound it about her head.
“Now,” she said, “do I pass?”
“Yes,” he said, “but I don’t. At least leave me money enough to buy clothes.”
She found a package of metal tied to his belt, flung it to him.
“Thanks,” he said. “I won’t even report the holdup.”
An hour later she was at the Vinth garden. The dancing girls were not there, but the small fat Eg was. She concluded that he had bought immunity from the Novakkans by betraying her. She asked him to join her at a table.
“I want information about a man named Nyuk,” she said in a bass voice.
The Eg eyed her suspiciously. She couldn’t tell whether he penetrated her disguise.
“Nyuk,” he said, “is a wealthy man with many interests in this system. He has not been seen here recently.”
This was much too cagy. He should have mentioned, she felt, Nyuk’s escape with the Novakkan slave-girl. She went on:
“Tell me of the Earthmen who come here.”
He shrugged. “Not many. Earthmen and Novakkans don’t mix.”
“Then tell me of the Novakkans.”
He was hesitant, but said, “Two ships were down a season ago. There was the usual amount of fighting. Then they went out on a mission. Earth ships appeared soon thereafter, but didn’t touch down They were interested only in the Novakkans.”
“Did many die in the fighting?”
“Our people, yes. Novakkans fight; others suffer. There were a number of executions.”
“A crippled man, a man with one leg, was he executed?”
The Eg shrugged. “It is not wise to be too interested in such things. Novakkans come and go. Earth warships stand off and watch. Our position is delicate. You understand? And now perhaps you’ll tell me the name of your ship and why you want so much information?”
“I’m an Earthman, as you can see.” The Eg smiled, “Colonist?”
“Naturally. And I’m interested in both Novakkans and Earthmen.”
The smile vanished. “It may be wise to decide which side you’re on. Earth is settling its differences with its colonies and soon their ships may be out in force against the Novakkans. This planet has no worthwhile bases, except for minor repairs, but it may become a ball of rubble when Earthmen and Novakkans clash in full-scale war.”
