But we were above the mists. Sanders had built his hotel atop the tallest mountain in the chain. We were floating alone in a swirling white ocean, on a flying castle amid a sea of clouds.
Castle Cloud, in fact. That was what Sanders had named the place. It was easy to see why.
“Is it always like this?” I asked Sanders, after drinking it all in for a while.
“Every mistfall,” he replied, turning toward me with a wistful smile. He was a fat man, with a jovial red face. Not the sort who should smile wistfully. But he did.
He gestured toward the east, where Wraithworld’s sun rising above the mists made a crimson and orange spectacle out of the dawn sky.
“The sun,” he said. “As it rises, the heat drives the mists back into the valleys, forces them to surrender the mountains they’ve conquered during the night. The mists sink, and one by one the peaks come into view. By noon the whole range is visible for miles and miles. There’s nothing like it on Earth, or anywhere else.”
He smiled again, and led me over to one of the tables scattered around the balcony. “And then, at sunset, it’s all reversed. You must watch mistrise tonight,” he said.
We sat down, and a sleek robowaiter came rolling out to serve us as the chairs registered our presence. Sanders ignored it. “It’s war, you know,” he continued. “Eternal war between the sun and the mists. And the mists have the better of it. They have the valleys, and the plains, and the seacoasts. The sun has only a few mountaintops. And them only by day.”
He turned to the robowaiter and ordered coffee for both of us, to keep us occupied until the others arrived. It would be fresh-brewed, of course. Sanders didn’t tolerate instants or synthetics on his planet.
“You like it here,” I said, while we waited for the coffee.
Sanders laughed. “What’s not to like? Castle Cloud has everything. Good food, entertainment, gambling, and all the other comforts of home. Plus this planet. I’ve got the best of both worlds, don’t I?”
“I suppose so. But most people don’t think in those terms. Nobody comes to Wraithworld for the gambling, or the food.”
Sanders nodded. “But we do get some hunters. Out after rockcats and plains devils. And once in a while someone will come to look at the ruins.”
“Maybe,” I said. “But those are your exceptions. Not your rule. Most of your guests are here for one reason.”
“Sure,” he admitted, grinning. “The wraiths.”
“The wraiths,” I echoed. “You’ve got beauty here, and hunting and fishing and mountaineering. But none of that brings the tourists here. It’s the wraiths they come for.”
The coffee arrived then, two big steaming mugs accompanied by a pitcher of thick cream. It was very strong, and very hot, and very good. After weeks of spaceship synthetic, it was an awakening.
Sanders sipped at his coffee with care, his eyes studying me over the mug. He set it down thoughtfully. “And it’s the wraiths you’ve come for, too,” he said.
I shrugged. “Of course. My readers aren’t interested in scenery, no matter how spectacular. Dubowski and his men are here to find wraiths, and I’m here to cover the search.”
Sanders was about to answer, but he never got the chance. A sharp, precise voice cut in suddenly. “If there are any wraiths to find,” the voice said.
We turned to face the balcony entrance. Dr. Charles Dubowski, head of the Wraithworld Research Team, was standing in the doorway, squinting at the light. He had managed to shake the gaggle of research assistants who usually trailed him everywhere.
Dubowski paused for a second, then walked over to our table, pulled out a chair, and sat down. The robowaiter came rolling out again.
Sanders eyed the thin scientist with unconcealed distaste. “What makes you think the wraiths aren’t there, Doctor?” he asked.
Dubowski shrugged, and smiled lightly. “I just don’t feel there’s enough evidence,” he said. “But don’t worry. I never let my feelings interfere with my work. I want the truth as much as anyone. So I’ll run an impartial expedition. If your wraiths are out there, I’ll find them.”
“Or they’ll find you,” Sanders said. He looked grave. “And that might not be too pleasant.”
Dubowski laughed. “Oh, come now, Sanders. Just because you live in a castle doesn’t mean you have to be so melodramatic.”
“Don’t laugh, Doctor. The wraiths have killed people before, you know.”
“No proof of that,” said Dubowski. “No proof at all. Just as there’s no proof of the wraiths themselves. But that’s why we’re here. To find proof. Or disproof. But come, I’m famished.” He turned to our robowaiter, who had been standing by and humming impatiently.
Dubowski and I ordered rockcat steaks, with a basket of hot, freshly baked biscuits. Sanders took advantage of the Earth supplies our ship had brought in last night, and got a massive slab of ham with a half dozen eggs.
Rockcat has a flavor that Earth meat hasn’t had in centuries. I loved it, although Dubowski left much of his steak uneaten. He was too busy talking to eat.
“You shouldn’t dismiss the wraiths so lightly,” Sanders said after the robowaiter had stalked off with our orders. “There is evidence. Plenty of it. Twenty-two deaths since this planet was discovered. And eyewitness accounts of wraiths by the dozens.”
“True,” Dubowski said. “But I wouldn’t call that real evidence. Deaths? Yes. Most are simple disappearances, however. Probably people who fell off a mountain, or got eaten by a rockcat, or something. It’s impossible to find the bodies in the mists.
“More people vanish every day on Earth, and nothing is thought of it. But here, every time someone disappears, people claim the wraiths got him. No, I’m sorry. It’s not enough.”
“Bodies have been found, Doctor,” Sanders said quietly. “Slain horribly. And not by falls or rockcats, either.”
It was my turn to cut in. “Only four bodies have been recovered that I know of,” I said. “And I’ve backgrounded myself pretty thoroughly on the wraiths.”
Sanders frowned. “All right,” he admitted. “But what about those four cases? Pretty convincing evidence, if you ask me.”
The food showed up about then, but Sanders continued as we ate. “The first sighting, for example. That’s never been explained satisfactorily. The Gregor Expedition.”
I nodded. Dave Gregor had captained the ship that had discovered Wraithworld, nearly seventy-five years earlier. He had probed through the mists with his sensors, and set his ship down on the seacoast plains. Then he sent teams out to explore.
There were two men in each team, both well armed. But in one case, only a single man came back, and he was in hysteria. He and his partner had gotten separated in the mists, and suddenly he heard a bloodcurdling scream. When he found his friend, he was quite dead. And something was standing over the body.
The survivor described the killer as manlike, eight feet tall, and somehow insubstantial. He claimed that when he fired at it, the blaster bolt went right through it. Then the creature had wavered, and vanished in the mists.
Gregor sent other teams out to search for the thing. They recovered the body, but that was all. Without special instruments, it was difficult to find the same place twice in the mists. Let alone something like the creature that had been described.
So the story was never confirmed. But nonetheless, it caused a sensation when Gregor returned to Earth. Another ship was sent to conduct a more thorough search. It found nothing. But one of its search teams disappeared without a trace.
And the legend of the mist wraiths was born, and began to grow. Other ships came to Wraithworld, and a trickle of colonists came and went, and Paul Sanders landed one day and erected the Castle Cloud so the public might safely visit the mysterious planet of the wraiths.
And there were other deaths, and other disappearances, and many people claimed to catch brief glimpses of wraiths prowling through the mists. And then someone found the ruins. Just tumbled stone blocks now. B
ut once, structures of some sort. The homes of the wraiths, people said.
There was evidence, I thought. And some of it was hard to deny. But Dubowski was shaking his head vigorously.
“The Gregor affair proves nothing,” he said. “You know as well as I this planet has never been explored thoroughly. Especially the plains area, where Gregor’s ship put down. It was probably some sort of animal that killed that man. A rare animal of some sort native to that area.”
“What about the testimony of his partner?” Sanders asked.
“Hysteria, pure and simple.”
“The other sightings? There have been an awful lot of them. And the witnesses weren’t always hysterical.”
“Proves nothing,” Dubowski said, shaking his head. “Back on Earth, plenty of people still claim to have seen ghosts and flying saucers. And here, with those damned mists, mistakes and hallucinations are naturally even easier.”
He jabbed at Sanders with the knife he was using to butter a biscuit. “It’s these mists that foul up everything. The wraith myth would have died long ago without the mists. Up to now, no one has had the equipment or the money to conduct a really thorough investigation. But we do. And we will. We’ll get the truth once and for all.”
Sanders grimaced. “If you don’t get yourself killed first. The wraiths may not like being investigated.”
“I don’t understand you, Sanders,” Dubowski said. “If you’re so afraid of the wraiths and so convinced that they’re down there prowling about, why have you lived here so long?”
“Castle Cloud was built with safeguards,” Sanders said. “The brochure we send prospective guests describes them. No one is in any danger here. For one thing, the wraiths won’t come out of the mists. And we’re in sunlight most of the day. But it’s a different story down in the valleys.”
“That’s superstitious nonsense. If I had to guess, I’d say these mist wraiths of yours were nothing but transplanted Earth ghosts. Phantoms of someone’s imagination. But I won’t guess—I’ll wait until the results are in. Then we’ll see. If they are real, they won’t be able to hide from us.”
Sanders looked over at me. “What about you? Do you agree with him?”
“I’m a journalist,” I said carefully. “I’m just here to cover what happens. The wraiths are famous, and my readers are interested. So I’ve got no opinions. Or none that I’d care to broadcast, anyway.”
Sanders lapsed into a disgruntled silence, and attacked his ham and eggs with a renewed vigor. Dubowski took over for him, and steered the conversation over to the details of the investigation he was planning. The rest of the meal was a montage of eager talk about wraith traps, and search plans, and roboprobes, and sensors. I listened carefully and took mental notes for a column on the subject.
Sanders listened carefully, too. But you could tell from his face that he was far from pleased by what he heard.
Nothing much else happened that day. Dubowski spent his time at the spacefield, built on a small plateau below the castle, and supervised the unloading of his equipment. I wrote a column on his plans for the expedition, and beamed it back to Earth. Sanders tended to his other guests, and did whatever else a hotel manager does, I guess.
I went out to the balcony again at sunset, to watch the mists rise.
It was war, like Sanders had said. At mistfall, I had seen the sun victorious in the first of the daily battles. But now the conflict was renewed. The mists began to creep back to the heights as the temperature fell. Wispy gray-white tendrils stole up silently from the valleys, and curled around the jagged mountain peaks like ghostly fingers. Then the fingers began to grow thicker and stronger, and after a while they pulled the mists up after them.
One by one the stark, wind-carved summits were swallowed up for another night. The Red Ghost, the giant to the north, was the last mountain to vanish in the lapping white ocean. And then the mists began to pour in over the balcony ledge and close around Castle Cloud itself.
I went back inside. Sanders was standing there, just inside the doors. He had been watching me.
“You were right,” I said. “It was beautiful.”
He nodded. “You know, I don’t think Dubowski has bothered to look yet,” he said.
“Busy, I guess.”
Sanders sighed. “Too damn busy. C’mon. I’ll buy you a drink.”
The hotel bar was quiet and dark, with the kind of mood that promotes good talk and serious drinking. The more I saw of Sanders’ castle, the more I liked the man. Our tastes were in remarkable accord.
We found a table in the darkest and most secluded part of the room, and ordered drinks from a stock that included liquors from a dozen worlds. And we talked.
“You don’t seem very happy to have Dubowski here,” I said after the drinks came. “Why not? He’s filling up your hotel.”
Sanders looked up from his drink and smiled. “True. It is the slow season. But I don’t like what he’s trying to do.”
“So you try to scare him away?”
Sanders’ smile vanished. “Was I that transparent?”
I nodded.
He sighed. “Didn’t think it would work,” he said. He sipped thoughtfully at his drink. “But I had to try something.”
“Why?”
“Because. Because he’s going to destroy this world, if I let him. By the time he and his kind get through, there won’t be a mystery left in the universe.”
“He’s just trying to find some answers. Do the wraiths exist? What about the ruins? Who built them? Didn’t you ever want to know those things, Sanders?”
He drained his drink, looked around, and caught the waiter’s eye to order another. No robowaiters in here. Only human help. Sanders was particular about atmosphere.
“Of course,” he said when he had his drink. “Everyone’s wondered about those questions. That’s why people come here to Wraithworld, to the Castle Cloud. Each guy who touches down here is secretly hoping he’ll have an adventure with the wraiths, and find out all the answers personally.
“So he doesn’t. So he slaps on a blaster and wanders around the mist forests for a few days, or a few weeks, and finds nothing. So what? He can come back and search again. The dream is still there, and the romance, and the mystery.
“And who knows? Maybe one trip he glimpses a wraith drifting through the mists. Or something he thinks is a wraith. And then he’ll go home happy, ’cause he’s been part of a legend. He’s touched a little bit of creation that hasn’t had all the awe and the wonder ripped from it yet by Dubowski’s sort.”
He fell silent and stared morosely into his drink. Finally, after a long pause, he continued. “Dubowski! Bah! He makes me boil. He comes here with his ship full of lackeys and his million credit grant and all his gadgets, to hunt for wraiths. Oh, he’ll get them all right. That’s what frightens me. Either he’ll prove they don’t exist, or he’ll find them, and they’ll turn out to be some kind of submen or animal or something.”
He emptied his glass again, savagely. “And that will ruin it. Ruin it, you hear! He’ll answer all the questions with his gadgets, and there’ll be nothing left for anyone else. It isn’t fair.”
I sat there and sipped quietly at my drink and said nothing. Sanders ordered another. A foul thought was running around in my head. Finally I had to say it aloud.
“If Dubowski answers all the questions,” I said, “then there will be no reason to come here anymore. And you’ll be put out of business. Are you sure that’s not why you’re so worried?”
Sanders glared at me, and I thought he was going to hit me for a second. But he didn’t. “I thought you were different. You looked at mistfall, and understood. I thought you did, anyway. But I guess I was wrong.” He jerked his head toward the door. “Get out of here,” he said.
I rose. “All right,” I said. “I’m sorry, Sanders. But it’s my job to ask nasty questions like that.”
He ignored me, and I left the table. When I reached the door, I turned and looked bac
k across the room. Sanders was staring into his drink again, and talking loudly to himself.
“Answers,” he said. He made it sound obscene. “Answers. Always they have to have answers. But the questions are so much finer. Why can’t they leave them alone?”
I left him alone then. Alone with his drinks.
The next few weeks were hectic ones, for the expedition and for me. Dubowski went about things thoroughly, you had to give him that. He had planned his assault on Wraithworld with meticulous precision.
Mapping came first. Thanks to the mists, what maps there were of Wraithworld were very crude by modern standards. So Dubowski sent out a whole fleet of roboprobes, to skim above the mists and steal their secrets with sophisticated sensory devices. From the information that came pouring in, a detailed topography of the region was pieced together.
That done, Dubowski and his assistants then used the maps to carefully plot every recorded wraith sighting since the Gregor Expedition. Considerable data on the sightings had been compiled and analyzed long before we left Earth, of course. Heavy use of the matchless collection on wraiths in the Castle Cloud library filled in the gaps that remained. As expected, sightings were most common in the valleys around the hotel, the only permanent human habitation on the planet.
When the plotting was completed, Dubowski set out his wraith traps, scattering most of them in the areas where wraiths had been reported most frequently. He also put a few in distant, outlying regions, however, including the seacoast plain where Gregor’s ship had made the initial contact.
The traps weren’t really traps, of course. They were squat duralloy pillars, packed with most every type of sensing and recording equipment known to Earth science. To the traps, the mists were all but nonexistent. If some unfortunate wraith wandered into survey range, there would be no way it could avoid detection.
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