by Hal Annas
The scattered elements of the SYZ fleet had regrouped and were moving on the planet.
Again it was essential not to be caught sitting, and word from Strak informed him Rahn Buskner had nearly completed his task on Earth, and as a result he ordered the armada into space before the girl had recovered enough to stand on her own feet.
It was then that incidents began to occur to bring disaster. The ship’s gravity failed and confusion followed until the engineers got the ship revolving. No damage could be found. Nothing. And then reports came that the gravity in other ships had vanished.
The situation became desperate. So long as they revolved it was difficult to keep the ships on course. And to maneuver in battle, and score effectively with their heavy batteries, would be an impossibility.
He gave permission for the ships to bypass Relay and exchange any information that might aid in. clearing the trouble. This made their plight even more grave. As the visicoms crackled, he knew, the enemy would be busy pinpointing their position.
The trouble had to be cleared if the armada was to survive in hostile space. And yet nothing could be found wrong. Everything checked perfectly. The lines of force were there in the plating, but they somehow neutralized themselves.
Pleas came from commanders for permission to run for the energy field outside the triangle, beyond SYZ.
He sent back orders that such pleas must cease, then carefully pointed out that the SYZ fleet was between them and the energy field. He made his point by adding that Rahn Buskner and the third armada depended on them and that raiders never turned back from a mission of vengeance until they’d drawn the last drop of blood.
The gravity returned as mysteriously as it had vanished. Nothing could be found to account for it. One moment there was confusion with the ships whirling through space, their occupants less than a third their normal weight, and the next moment the gravity took hold.
By checking reports it was discovered that it had happened in all ships at the same time.
Disquiet spread among the Novakkans. Speculation went round that the enemy had a new weapon. Then unscrambled reports indicated that the same thing had happened to SYZ ships in the vicinity.
A few days later the matter was apparently forgotten and they were proceeding normally toward the center of the triangle.
Evela was up and able to take walking exercises. He saw her and the Havelon doctor in the passage from time to time. The first time, she looked up, stared at him, and seemed suddenly frightened. She and the doctor turned and hurried back to her compartment. Thereafter she didn’t raise her eyes when he was near.
As days passed she regained the weight that had dehydrated from her willowy body. Her cheeks took on color and he again noticed that his breathing became faster when he looked at her.
Normally he slept four to six hours out of twenty-four. But this was not ordinary raiding. If was war and his enormous responsibilities kept him restless. He came out of light sleep into awareness of something out of order. Faint, almost imperceptible sounds came from the alcove beyond which was the girl’s compartment.
In coming awake he reached for his gun and blade before taking a breath. It was a matter of training. He came off the couch silently but with the suddenness of a man keyed for an emergency. Back to the bulkhead, he moved toward the alcove. He could easily step to the intercom and summon aid, but he didn’t. Whatever danger was here threatened him, he felt, and he would take care of it personally.
After a brief pause he stepped quickly into the alcove, gun and blade ready, then halted, held his breath.
In the rose light coming through the doorway to her compartment the girl was moving, very slowly, toward him. Her slender arms were outstretched. Every line and alluring hollow and swell of her dusky figure was tinted a rosy hue by the light. She was naked. Her eyes were open but unseeing.
It took a moment for him to grasp that she was asleep.
Breathing deeply, he stood aside and watched her move on into his compartment. She turned and faced his couch. Her right hand opened wider, and as it did something flashed from the couch and was caught there. As he held his breath, he saw that it gleamed as steel. Then he recognized it as a slender blade, much too small to interest a Novakkan.
Nerves keyed high, he watched her turn slowly, the subdued light again tinting her charms a rosy hue, and move effortlessly back into the alcove and on into her compartment.
He was certain that his eyes had deceived him. In the semi-darkness he had thought he saw her catch something that came from the couch. But nothing was there to send the blade to her. He concluded that it had been in her hand all along and the spell cast by her lovely figure had kept him from noticing it.
Dressing quickly, he went along the corridor to the vaults in which the plunder was stored. He selected a dozen of the finest feminine sleeping garments, three from Nobra, three from Mallika, three from Havelon, and three that had been imported from Earth.
When the girl awoke he gave them to her. She seemed puzzled, then said, “But of course you know I brought nothing aboard.”
The thought hadn’t occurred to him. Now he noticed she was still in the same colorless gown. He told her to go to the vaults and choose whatever she liked.
It was while she was doing this that he returned to his compartment and discovered the slash in the couch where his body would’ve been had he not awakened.
He checked the connecting door to her compartment. It was locked. He could open it by demanding the combination from the files. But he shrugged, dismissed the thought and went on to the operational room.
Reports there showed the Patrol, with heavy support, moving on the Eg System. The meaning came instantly. If the Patrol recaptured the Eg System and used it as a base, the third armada would be threatened. It could not cross the spacelane to aid either him or Rahn Buskner.
Nor could he cross in the other direction.
The enemy was choosing his position. He meant to bottle up him and Rahn Buskner in the triangle without access to an energy field.
Designating a number of ships as expendable, he ordered them to scatter over a wide area at the center of the triangle and use their visicoms constantly. They were to be decoys to hold the attention of enemy Relay.
The other ships were ordered to remain silent and proceed with him at maximum velocity toward Eg.
He thought of sending word to Rahn Buskner, decided against it. Success or failure depended on his reaching Eg before the enemy overran the planets and got firmly established.
Strange incidents continued to occur. A man was found dead beside an airlock. No wound or sign of illness was visible. Another died, for no apparent reason, in the power rooms.
Visicom silence was maintained and the first inkling that something was wrong on the other ships came when two collided and exploded.
From the head of the armada he sent out a score of courier ships with orders to investigate and attach themselves to a fast ship at the rear. The couriers couldn’t attain the velocity of the armada and would have to be brought forward.
Expecting others to take note and follow in order, he decreased the velocity of the lead ship.
He went sixty-two hours without sleep waiting for the couriers. Strange happenings continued. The hull of a ship within clear view glowed a brilliant red. As the glow faded and vanished the ship seemed to be displaced, brought closer. A courier ship was launched from it with a photonic charge. It almost overshot, but finally attached itself outside the lower forward airlock. Brought inside, its crew reported that his own ship had been seen to glow and become displaced. It was the same report he was about to make to the other ship.
The couriers were brought forward from the rear. Their reports were of hundreds of mysterious and fear-inspiring happenings. And, he was certain, other hundreds must’ve happened in the time it had taken to make the investigation and overtake the command ship.
The fighting men were on edge. They were not superstitious and would face any
thing into which they could drive a knife. Things they couldn’t understand made them want to draw blood. And all about them were supernormal events which even the Sedwonian and Artonian scientists couldn’t explain. Nor the Dexbonian and Denovian mystics.
Tension mounted. Danger of bloodshed became acute. It was essential to break the visicom silence and issue orders to sweat the fighting men in twenty-hour drills, and at the same time permit the learned men to exchange information. But he determined to delay until the last moment. He was closing on the Eg System. Another day at this velocity would place him in a position to strike outer planets.
Unscrambled reports told him the Patrol and heavy, elements of the SYZ fleet, supported by Earth units, had held the third armada at bay and virtually subdued Novakkan resistance on the outer planets and even now had the inner planets in a ring of fire. Without support from space the Novakkans would be wiped out.
He didn’t want to attack strength of that calibre with exhausted fighting men. He wanted them keyed to the breaking point, where they could find release only in killing.
As he began grouping his ships in battle formation, passing the orders by courier, and wording a directive to the third armada, he received a report that a dead man had been dissected and that a strange piece of metal had been found in his heart. There was no wound, nothing to show how it got there.
As other dissections were performed metal was found in the brain, in the liver, in the lungs, in other vital parts.
The metal was curiously shaped. One piece resembled the open mouth of a serpent; another the wing of a small flying creature, and still others were shaped like a man’s fingers, a woman’s comb, a child’s whistle, a single claw of a carnivore, the coils of a Sedwonian musical harp, an artist’s paintbrush.
Some were edged and some were blunt. Some were smooth and adjustable as a wrench.
The Sedwonian scientists advanced the theory that all of them could be used in some way as tools. The Artonians admitted the possibility, but didn’t believe they were intended as such.
The Dexbonian mystics believed they were exquisite instruments of torture with which to convert the unbelievers. The Denovians thought they were gifts from a ubiquitous god and that in due course the god would reveal their purpose.
Whatever they were, they were killing men, not systematically, but haphazardly. One man fell in a forward turret. At about the same time another fell in the power rooms half a mile away.
And couriers brought reports that they made no distinction between commanders and the men who drew food from the hydroponic wells. The veteran commander of the lead ship in echelon seven was dead. A long metal instrument had been found extending from his bowels into his throat. At rightangle, another had been found extending through his lungs.
CHAPTER FIVE
COMING out of the conference room, he heard a faint grating, noticed that the door didn’t close smoothly. He was halfway to Operational when a wall of air struck him in the back. As the concussion rolled over him, he clapped his hands to his ears and opened his mouth.
Stumbling, he saw the Havelonian doctor, his body half hidden, peering along the passage from the distant companionway.
The intercom roared, “Upper lateral chambers four sixty-one through sixty-six. Get men outside the hull to look for buckling. Seal an air pocket about the chambers and get men in to repair the damage.”
In Operational he learned that the damage was not extensive. It had not been caused by a photonic explosion, but something that hadn’t yet been identified.
Coming as it had when he was preparing to go into battle, it seemed a bad omen. He ordered the ship inspected from nose to tubes.
In need of sleep, he went down the shaft to his compartment. He thought of the girl. Stopping in the passage, he started to knock, hesitated. She was his property, he knew. He didn’t have to knock.
Slowly pushing open the door, he again hesitated. A voice droned, “Make the metal men understand that they must get off this ship and then destroy it. Make them understand!” There was a swish followed by a crackling sound and a gasp. “Make them understand!”
He went on into the room. The girl was stretched on her couch. Her sleeping garment had been turned back and her upper legs and abdomen were a series of welts. As he moved forward, the heavy belt came down again. Again she gasped, her whole body quivering.
Concentrating on his task, the Havelonian doctor seemed unaware that he was not alone. “Make them understand! It’s the only way you can avoid pain.” He started the belt in another swishing cut.
And then his arm got broken at the elbow.
Moxol seized him round the body, squeezed until he heard ribs crack. His shriek didn’t bring response from the girl. She lay there as if held by invisible-bonds. Her body trembled. She went on gasping for breath, the blue marks on her legs and body visibly throbbing.
Moxol squeezed the broken ribs until he knew they’d punctured lungs. He dragged the man to the passage, dropped him and kicked his kneecaps out of place so he wouldn’t crawl off.
In his own compartment he opened the intercom, summoned a medic, then called the quarters of the fighting men.
“Take that Havelonian out of the passage,” he ordered. “Skin him alive, then dismember him—slowly.”
He returned to the girl. She still gasped, trembled. A Novakkan doctor came in, made a hasty examination.
“She’s under a spell,” he said.
“Then,” Moxol snapped, “get the mystics to break it.”
“No.” The doctor brought out a needle. “It’s another kind of spell. Drugs. The voluntary parts of her responses are blocked off. Earthgirls can’t stand much pain. Better not wake her.”
“Remain with her. As soon as I break visicom silence summon a Unorian doctor from another ship to aid you. By my orders.”
He couldn’t sleep and when his signal came over the intercom he was listening. “Fighting men have searched all passages. Unable to find Havelonian.”
He searched the passage himself, went to their quarters and questioned the fighting men. His order had been clear. They were prompt to obey. They knew a Havelonian was aboard, but he was not in any passage.
He ordered the ship searched. On edge, the men went at it eagerly, but six hours later hadn’t turned up the Havelonian. They had encountered strange things. Doors didn’t open and close as smoothly as they should. Grating sounds occurred unexpectedly.
When, exhausted, he broke visicom silence he learned that blood had been shed on other ships. The fighting men couldn’t be kept in idleness. Even the commanders demanded that he loose them on a planet at once.
It was the kind of edge that meant they would give a good account of themselves so long as they were carefully directed. But the moment the leaders lost control they would be worthless in battle. The situation was tense. Desperate measures were called for.
Reports from Relay told of enemy ships standing across the spaceline facing the third armada. As yet they had made no move to intercept him.
The logical thing, he reasoned, was to attack the ships while many of their units were still engaged in subduing resistance on the other planets. It was the only safe course. No foothold he might seize on the outer planets would be secure as long as heavy elements remained above.
But time would be consumed in jockeying for position. The fighting men couldn’t be kept under control. He ordered a direct strike on the nearer planet, and knew as he did that he was exposing his back to the full strength of the enemy.
His directive to the third armada advised it to support his movements.
As the ships focused on the planet, he cancelled all previous orders, which had called for typical maneuvers, such as the Infinio Curl, and ordered, “Direct attack. Sweep everything.”
It was then that he noticed the grating sounds in the visicoms and intercom. They were even present in the channels to the turrets.
Relay reported enemy ships moving to intercept him. The third armada wa
s beginning to move, but slowly.
As his ships closed on the planet they met a storm of photonic energy. On the visicom he could see the visible surface come alive and sparkle as if some giant hand had touched off a thousand square miles of tinder. The energy came up in great glowing balls, burst, became red and faded.
Closer, the upward rain of photonics became so dense it obscured his view of the planet.
Reports from Relay told of heavy losses. He had no time to check them. His own batteries were blazing. Every visicom channel, every turret channel, even the intercom, was overloaded with masses of data, computations, orders, pleas for permission to maneuver or break off.
Near at hand he saw ships explode, others go out of control, and still others take direct hits and hold steady.
Word came that the damage to his laterals had spread to the aft lower chambers.
Casualties were reported at the batteries and among the fighting men. They dropped for no apparent reason. Replacements were slow in coming from the midsection and the men on the batteries did double duty.
Above the noise in Operational he heard a man yell, another curse bitterly. He didn’t turn away from his instruments until someone tapped him on the shoulder.
“The Earthgirl,” the man said. “Something.” The man was confused. “Half of her has sunk inside her couch.”
It sounded insane. He had no time now to think of the girl nor wild reports. But deep inside him something drew into knots. Cold tension spread through his body, made his hands uncertain, his calculations slow.
Words of the Dexbo witch came back. They seemed to rasp audibly in his ears. They seemed to tell him that she would open the gate to another era and all the furies of hell.
Along his spine ran the tremor he had first experienced when he started to enter the golden room aboard the Mallikan pleasure cruiser. He saw again the small figure of the girl as she had looked then, the black hair, the black eyes, the fierce attitude of defiance; he felt her again squirming in his arms, felt the knife slash his groins. His body felt heavy, sluggish, as if suddenly weighted with metal.
