by Hal Annas
She talked with her mother, but didn’t mention keys. “Do you think he would release one of those men for me?”
Aleta looked at her long and anxiously. Tears came into her eyes. “I know you’ve been lonely,” she said. “You’ve never known young men of your own race. You’re as naive in such matters as a child. I’ll have to send you to school on Earth. I can arrange it through someone in the Eg System. Don’t think any more about those men down there. If Moxol isn’t found soon they will all die horribly.”
The thought sickened her. She made up her mind to free Chris Darby herself.
In the morning she rose early and dressed quietly. She waited until she heard her mother enter the sun room and lower herself into the pool. She hurried to the private chamber and began the search. It was not rewarded and she escaped with barely seconds to spare.
Later she entered Rahn Buskner’s chamber, found the cabinet in which he kept special trophies and charts of gravity fields in space, but could not get it opened. She had no doubt that keys, or the secrets of opening doors in the castle, were there.
Still later she cornered an aged Unorian woman servant and asked her to tell of the days when the castle was building. The story rambled and she had to bring her back to the point time and again.
Finally she said, “But didn’t they build secret passages? How would they escape if the castle was surrounded by enemies?”
The woman chuckled. “You have a fanciful imagination. Surround Rahn Buskner! Everyone on this planet is his friend. But there were some secrets. Your mother insisted on one. Have you ever noticed the gray circle under the stairs to the tower?”
Aline had, but thought that it was part of the stone.
“At this season,” the woman went on, “it is directly in line with a star that rises between ten and midnight. The starlight comes through the vent opposite. When it strikes that circle all the secrets of the castle are revealed. Now listen close. That star is the one under which your mother was born. It is called Sol.”
In trembling eagerness Aline hurried to the tower, crept under the stairs. The years had made no difference in the circle. It was simply a gray mark in the stone.
Disappointed, she went to the vast cosmograph room. It took her quite a while to locate Sol. and even then it wasn’t impressive. But a faint tingling ran through her. Chris Darby had also been born under that star.
Loading her arms with edibles, she went to the storage rooms, called. He came quickly, but there was little animation in his voice. The thought that he was becoming discouraged tore at her heart. She told him of the circle and the star and tried to put enthusiasm and conviction in her voice.
“I’m sure I’ll find a way to get you out,” she said.
The commander came forward. “We trust you implicitly, Miss Du David,” he said. “Whatever the outcome, you shall be exonerated of guilt in connection with piracy or treason.”
She didn’t understand, thought that perhaps the strain had become too much for him. She was glad when he went away and left her with Chris Darby.
They talked on until she heard footsteps in the corridor. Six Unorians came down bringing food. They bowed to her, spoke softly, made room for her to pass. She returned to her rooms, brooded for a time, then went in search of her mother.
Aleta was dressed in black. “I’m about to give up hope,” she said.
Aline knew she was alluding to Moxol. The lines of grief in her strong blonde creatures were mute evidence of her love for Rahn Buskner’s son.
“How would you get into the storage rooms if Rahn Buskner wasn’t here?” she asked.
Aleta eyed her with interest. “I’d rather you’d forget about those men,” she said. “You’re torturing yourself with thoughts of their misery. You can’t help them that way. But if you must know, I have a set of keys locked away; Rahn Buskner has another.” She hesitated. “The doors can also be opened by rays. The idea was a whim of mine when we built the castle. It was to remind me of something on an Eg planet.”
The thought set her afire with interest. She begged her mother to tell of those days before she came to Unor with Rahn Buskner.
“It’s too frightening.” Aleta said. “Especially after your father died.” She paused. “He was slim, graceful and quick like an Earthman. But he wasn’t an Earthman. He did something no lone Earthman has ever done. He stood off Novakkan raiders. And he fought Novakkans alone hand-to-hand and lived to fight again.”
The story always interested Aline, but something else was more important at the moment. She wanted to know what it was that had provoked her mother to have secret ray-locks built into the castle. She said so bluntly.
“There was a snow mesa,” Aleta went on. “It’s hard to believe, but we actually moved from one planet to another in seconds and without a ship. We arrived on the snow mesa. It was bitterly cold. We had to find and break beams to get into warmth.”
It was incoherent. Aline wondered if the strain had also been too much for her mother. That sensitivity to moods, so long theirs together, was strangely missing. She got the impression that her mother didn’t actually believe what she was saying, or felt that it sounded so improbable that others couldn’t accept it, and so failed to put conviction in the telling.
“You broke beams? What kind of beams? Like those in ships?”
“Yes.” Aleta nodded. “I’ve forgotten how many and how they were arranged, but if I were there now I know I would remember. Anyway, I can find out between ten and midnight tonight. Shall I show you?”
Aline was not certain whether she wanted her mother to show her. It might not be best for anyone to know what she was going to do. But she urged her to talk on and in the following hours she learned about the Eg planets, things unbelievable, but which she was beginning to believe. Her retentive mind clung to the knowledge.
At ten o’clock she was under the stairs in the tower. The gray circle wasn’t visible in the darkness. But a few minutes later it glowed crimson.
In fascination she watched the color change to amber and then the purest yellow. From the vent opposite a triangular beam of silver slanted down, touched a point just below the circle. It wasn’t this that held her attention. It was a perfectly round golden beam. It was coming directly through the wall, exactly filling the circle.
The stone seemed to have turned to crystal. She leaned forward and looked directly into the beam. She was almost blinded. It was a golden ball of fire, and then she understood that she was looking directly at Sol, its light magnified innumerable times. She had never been more deeply impressed.
Turning back to the circle, she saw that it had taken on depth. It was crisscrossed with yellow streaks on the surface, but the effect was of looking into an infinite depth. Shadows moved in that depth and took on substance and shape. It seemed that life was there.
And in every changing pattern one single design was constant. It was a crimson streak to the right, and then to the left three dusky, almost invisible, silvery streaks.
She rose to her feet, drew a deep breath. The sensitivity to moods had returned. She felt that she was attuned to the energy field of the castle. No secret, however dark, could it withhold from her. She had touched those things, out of the past, of which her mother had spoken.
They made her feel uneasy, fearful. She could almost forget the men below, even Chris Darby, in the knowledge that something had come to her that hadn’t come to other mortals. It gave her a sense of unlimited power. At the same time it terrified her.
Trembling, shaken to the core, she clung to thoughts of Chris Darby. Nothing else, she realized, could hold her steady and unswerving in her purpose to free him. She smothered all other thoughts, determined not to clutch again at the power that was there for the taking.
The crimson beam and the silvery beams were identical with the design on the big chest in her mother’s reading room. Quietly she went there, experimented. By touching the design with her palms and waiting until warmth had soaked into it, she foun
d she could unlock the chest.
Inside were hundreds of keys of every size and shape. They were all inscribed and indexed. Some were magnetic keys. Others were of combinations of substance that would move a bolt only when they came in contact with their reciprocal inside the lock.
She took out two keys, closed the chest and allowed it to lock of itself.
CHAPTER FIVE
CREEPING down the cold stone stairs, she experienced indescribable fears. She wanted to turn and run back up the steps and to her mother’s rooms. But thoughts of Chris Darby drew her on. She couldn’t leave the man she loved locked in a dungeon.
At the heavy door she stood in darkness and called his name through the opening in a loud whisper. Stirrings sounded inside. Someone said, “Darby, wake up. Your angel is outside.” There were further sounds of movement and then he stood at the door. In the darkness she could barely see his eyes.
“Here,” she said, thrusting her hand through the opening. “The big one opens this door. The other opens the servants’ supply and implement room just along this corridor. You’ll find clothes there. I’ll wait for you in the tower.”
She was about to hurry away when she heard the voice of the commander: “Miss Du David, you’ve performed a noble service for Earth and its colonies. Someday you shall be welcomed by the Council of Councils and receive a fitting award. Your deed shall not go unnoticed.”
The words didn’t evoke the response intended. They made her even more uneasy. She was trembling when she tore herself away and ran up the steps.
Darby was not long in coming. He too, seemed disturbed. In Unorian clothes too small for him, he was not the dashing figure he had been in his SYZ uniform.
He said, “I received specific orders from the commander himself to come to you and thank you again. I was even ordered to remain with you until I hear a signal. It’s to be the hissing and clacking such as the carnivorous plants on Delos make when they’ve captured prey.”
“But you must hurry,” she warned. “Get away from the castle. Hide somewhere. Rahn Buskner may return at any hour. When he goes to space come back in the night. Someway we’ll plan how to leave the planet together.”
In his presence she was still uneasy, fearful. But when his arm came about her nothing else seemed to matter. She lost herself in the ecstasy of the moment, and time fled.
“I can’t understand why the signal doesn’t come,” he said.
Fearful, she, too, was impatient. But she knew that it would take time for the others to get out of the storage rooms and clothed.
Losing herself in the warmth and glow of his presence, she ignored other things and began to feel again that nothing could be wrong anywhere.
“It’s time for the signal,” he said. “We’d better go down.”
Hand-in-hand they crept down the steps, paused in the unlighted big hall. Then she drew him along the side corridor toward her rooms.
“You can drop to the ground from the balcony,” she whispered.
They stood by the open windows, waiting, listening. Still the signal didn’t come.
He moved about nervously. To divert him, she switched on the visual.
“Moxol,” it said, “has been found.”
A tingling ran from her head to the tips of her toes. It seemed that everything in the universe had suddenly become right again. It might not be too difficult now to persuade Rahn Buskner to give Chris Darby freedom on this planet. She flung herself into his arms, clung. And she felt that she would never be afraid again.
At that moment a terrifying hissing and clacking sounded.
Again he kissed her, then stepped to the balcony and dropped silently into the night. She stood there watching, saw him move as a shadow, vanish. She turned back to the visual, and the terrible thought came that Moxol might be dead.
But the view reassured her. It showed Moxol very much alive; and it was explained that the lifeship in which he and twenty-eight others escaped the doomed raider, had crashed into a crater overgrown with an almost impenetrable jungle.
Of the twenty-nine, one died from injuries received when the ship was hit. Another was crushed to death in the crater by a huge reptile which Moxol subsequently killed.
The survivors had not exactly been found. They hacked and cut their way out of the crater and were making their way to the castle when they encountered search parties.
Aline ran to her mother’s rooms. Rarely had she been happier, and she felt that her mother would be mad with joy.
The rooms were quiet. In the bedroom the windows were open, the curtains blowing. The canopy was drawn on the bed and the bed was empty.
For a long moment she stood unmoving. Then her eardrums were assaulted by a terrific roaring. She sprang to the window.
The grounds were lighted as by the noonday sun. Long plumes of flame reached down from the sky. At the top of the flame a battle-scarred raider was laboring upward, beginning the long climb out of the grip of the planet.
As she stood numb, watching, she couldn’t put her thoughts in order. But finally the truth forced itself on her. The freed prisoners had taken a ship. Chris Darby was on his way back to the SYZ System.
With confused emotions racing through her body, she went back to her rooms. It didn’t matter, she felt, what he did or was doing, but he should have told her, should’ve taken her with him.
And then the second shock came. Her mother. The words of the commander. It all fell into place.
In frantic haste, she roused servants, searched the castle from tower to scullery. Her mother was not there. At last she dropped on her bed and wept.
Rahn Buskner found her there. He was in a fearful humor. A ship had gone to space without his orders. Aleta was missing. It seemed that he would take the castle apart stone by stone, but by daylight he had accepted what had happened and begun to make plans.
Every grounded ship had been damaged. It would take days for repairs. In the meantime Novakkans swarmed about the grounds, fuming at the thought of being tied to a planet.
The vast communication room was opened, the atomic powerplants pot into operation, and for the first time in Aline’s knowledge Rahn Buskner broke long-range communication silence.
She heard it said that as much power was used in the broadcasts as was used to drive a hundred ships to Arcadia. It would reach out to the Eg System and might even be picked up in SYZ. But he sent only one message over and over.
“Blue scrolo . . . Blue scrolo . . . Blue scrolo . . .”
It went on hour after hour. And after it had begun going out, Rahn Buskner ignored it and gave his attention to repairing the ships. Unorians were driven in from far reaches and compelled to work until they dropped. Novakkans stood over them with guns and knives, and scores died.
This was the state of affairs when Moxol returned.
He came in limping and accepted Aline’s nervous embrace with reserve. He looked older, full-grown, but less like a Novakkan than he had. He took the news quietly. Indeed, he had heard the gist of it long before he reached the castle.
Aline gestured toward the communication room. “What does it mean?” she said. She felt, now that her mother was gone, that he was the only one on the planet with whom she could talk, who could understand, who might have a spark of feeling left for her.
He shook his head. “I don’t like it anymore than you, but it had to come. The galaxy is growing smaller.”
“But what does it mean?”
He sought words with which to make it clear. “Novakkan vengeance,” he said. “Rahn Buskner is sending out word to the scattered raiders to bring them together.”
“But what does it mean?”
He studied her eyes, his own olive features showing the strain. “In your lifetime and mine the Novakkans have been scattered. They settled on remote planets, as we have, built bases far apart, made hit and run raids. Some may even have taken up other callings. But Novakkans are restless, warlike. It’s in their blood. All they’ve needed at any time was a
single call such as is going out now. They will gather. Far back, when they abandoned the Lexn System, they made a pact, mapped plans, and each knows where he is to rendezvous in space. The plans have been handed down from father to son, to cousins, to brothers and sisters. They have come to me. It means that the hour has come when Novakkans have decided that the galaxy is not large enough for both them and Earthmen.” The thought left Aline without feeling of any kind. She went about in a halfdaze, not caring. She would’ve felt better, she believed, if Rahn Buskner had blamed her for the loss of the ship and her mother. But she got the impression that he had wanted an excuse to send out the call that might spell doom to intelligent life in the Milky Way.
He ignored her, and when the ships were repaired he dispatched them, one by one, to the Arkl System, to Minox, to Arcadia, Zekn, Wekell, Udveden, Xosk, Nick ton, Septo, Luxvor, Andam, and to remote Xnor, Singuel, Arto, Sedwo, Lubre, Nocto, and others.
Three ships remained on the planet; these, and her mother’s cruiser which hadn’t been to space in Aline’s memory. He brought it out of a roofed crevice in the hills, where it had rested in memory of something important to Aleta, and had it groomed. He had the SYZ ship rebuilt and inscribed with ovals and dots, symbolizing a planetary system or an atom, in the familiar Novakkan raider markings.
“I still don’t understand,” Aline told Moxol. “He’s killing Unorians by the scores, driving them day and night. It won’t be safe on this planet when you go to space again.”
Moxol shrugged. “No life will be on this planet long,” he said. “The spaceways must know the raiders are gathering. And there are those who will reach the SYZ from here. They’ll have this planet located. It will take a hammering very shortly. You’ll be sent far out.”
“But I shan’t. I’m going to the Eg System. And you’re going to take me.”
She hadn’t spoken to Moxol in that tone since he was twelve. Before that they had been chums, playmates, and it didn’t matter how she talked. Now he was a raider, though much different from any Novakkan she had ever known. She didn’t expect him to agree. It was not the Novakkan way to let a woman make the decision in matters of danger.
