Camelot in Orbit

by Arthur H. Landis

  The Dark One’s protectors now numbered less than forty. We’d re-barred the doors against attack from below; though we hardly had to. Indeed, fewer and fewer of those had advanced to test us in the last two hundred feet. Their enthusiasm seemed to wane in direct proportion to a lessening of the Dark One’s thrumming. I wondered about that, especially since I could scarce hear the thrumming at all now….

  The time was 22:15, Greenwich. We had but fifteen minutes to gain the exit, traverse the two hundred feet of corridor and seize the room with the Kaheen and his mechanism.

  We threw ourselves into them, drove them before us. We were a small bristling hedgehog, using the spears we’d seized below. Then we lost our third Yorn and stopped to still our hearts and catch our breath. The pace, indeed, was becoming a thing no man could stand.

  Then the hoary Griswall-his surcoat and hauberk were now literally soaked in blood-announced in a rasping, whispered voice so only we could know, “Hear me now, Cohlin, and you, my princess. Each minute’s precious. Man for man we are the better. And so ‘twould be proven. But time’s the thing, and time we do not have. But the room is large.

  There’s space to maneuver. Therefore, I propose to challenge, and to plunge into them.

  When they’re thus occupied-and of that you can be sure-then the rest of you must break up in twos and threes, dash ‘round and through them and thus gain yonder exit. They’ll be split in such a way as to be unable to stop you. And if they try,” and he grinned wryly, “well, sirs, you’re still the better!”

  His logic was implicit. I quick-scanned the others. Their pleasure at his gambit shown bright in every eye. That he would go to his death was understood by all; especially Griswall.

  I reached to touch his arm, and said softly, “Then go, old friend-and know that you have our hearts, and love.”

  Without a word he stepped easily out before our ranks; this, though I’m sure he had a dozen wounds. He stretched his arms and shook his shoulders to settle his hauberk, loosen his shield. He tossed his sword into the air just once, and caught it, and moved toward them….

  They had a shield front of fifteen, two deep, and some others still behind them.

  Griswall contemptuously dashed aside their spears with a twisting movement of his own shield, then whirled his sword high and plunged into them. Two he killed almost instantly, and then two more-And they fell back to form a half circle before him. Again he charged their spears.

  And precisely then we split, raced down their front, and around them, to either side.

  They watched, amazed, stunned, fixed for perhaps three fatal seconds by the fact that in their very midst our aging killing machine wreaked havoc.

  We continued across the carpeted floor-but not without loses. Unghist and his remaining Yorn, slower than the rest of us, were caught first and pierced through with a dozen blades. Unghist took two red-cowled wizards with him. Hoggle-Fitz, also slow and awkward, bothered too by his wound, blundered against a table and fell to one knee. He was instantly overrun by a half dozen pursuers. The young Omnian captain with him-he’d tried to lift Fitz up-was himself pinned to the floor by three heavy blades. But Hoggle, rising with the help of Tober, then stood his ground for two brief minutes and raging, slew the lot of them. Rawl, who was with Caroween and an Omnian captain, were pinned against the wall some thirty feet from the exit. A sad mistake on the part of his pursuers. He killed one with his shield’s edge, split the head of another, then fell to one knee to literally “halve” a third.

  Caroween, lithe body twisting this way and that, dodged every weapon to spear three men in as many seconds. Their Omnian captain, an older, heavily muscled man, was likewise terrible in his wrath.

  I saw it all since I’d reached the exit first. We, too, had had a running fight In the last exchange. Murie, knocked flat in a clashing of shields, received a spear thrust through the thigh. She called from where she lay-“Collin, love! Go on! I command you!”

  But I snatched her from where she’d fallen, saw with a red mist before my eyes the sweat of pain upon her forehead. I lifted her gently to my shoulder, protected the while by my hard-fighting young captain. I then killed two who sought his life while he, in turn, cut the throat of the wizard who’d wounded Murie.

  At the exit-and a closed door barred our way to the corridor beyond-we were joined by a cursing Hoggle and Tober, then Caroween, Rawl, and their captain-and that was all.

  Of our enemy, just ten remained alive. These huddled some distance from us, making no move to approach. I noted, curious, that the thrumming had stopped completely.

  Scanning, I saw Griswall in the room’s very center. He sat quite dead against a table’s leg where he’d dragged himself. Three spears still hung from his battered body. He faced us. His smile was peaceful. I’m sure he’d seen us make it to the door.

  The door!

  The seconds were ticking by. I turned to look at it, to test it. The thing was solid iron.

  “Well, now,” I told the others, “I’d have been a fool to think it otherwise…. But stand aside.

  What little magic your Collin has will now be used.”

  “Collin?” Rawl questioned, his hand abruptly to my shoulder to stay me, “What beast is that depicted there?”

  His voice, rasping-loud in the now deadly quiet, was instantly echoed by sneering laughter from the wizard-warriors. He’d referred to a drawing of some sort of creature etched strongly on the door.

  “I know not,” I answered; then jokingly, “Mayhap it awaits us on the other side They moved Murie to a safe distance down the wall. The doorway cleared, I expanded the laser beam to encompass it fully. The effect would be disintegration! As of that moment we had less than ten minutes.

  I pressed the stone. Blue light coned out. The door disappeared in a whoosh of imploding sound. I waited. Dust motes glowed in the corridor beyond, but that was all. I sighed in relief, moved quick to Murie, brushing her cheek with my lips. “My love,” I said. “I’ll be leaving you now, but not for long. We’ve won so far. We’ll win this last one, too.”

  Tears brimmed her eyes. She nodded and squeezed my hand.

  And then, to the sound of clanking steel and a roaring, frog-like voice, the damned thing, as etched upon the doorway, came hurtling from the corridor!

  Its momentum carried it a full thirty feet through the blasted door. It whirled, surveyed us, and with a gargoyle grin to show its teeth. It was a full nine feet in height. Its’ torso was massive, dressed in a rusted, steel-link shirt. Its’ arms and legs, the latter protected by greaves, were as the boles of small trees. Its’ iron shoes were weapons in themselves. The helmed head was humanoid, the eyes, blue-black, piercing, intelligent! Without a doubt it was the last, the ultimate guardian!

  I knew instantly that there, indeed, was no matter-to-energy conversion, and back, of some Fregisian netherworld monster. The Dark One had created it-of bits and pieces!

  The thing’s liquid eyes passed over us, settled on me, and stopped; upon which it raised its mighty arms, one hand with a sword, the other a spear, and signaled a greeting.

  In moments of peril most humanoids exhibit a rare and personal telepathy. Each of ours knew instantly that the thing sought me. They therefore moved to bar the way to me, with their lives.

  “Go!” Murie whispered. “They will not let him follow.”

  I squeezed her hand. And because I had to, I moved toward the door. But I didn’t leave. I froze-to watch.

  Tober and the two Omnian captains stepped forward, each with a spear and sword.

  And Rawl, too, and brave Hoggle-Fitz, though his wound had drained him, visibly, of blood.

  Stout Tober, our dottle warden’s son, thinking the thing would try to seize me instantly, attacked incautiously. He ran straight toward it, hurled his spear, and at the same time tried to chop a foot from the mighty legs. It dodged the spear and contemptuously crushed poor Tober’s chest with a single kick of an iron-soled shoe.

  The younger Omnian, he’d
been with Murie and me, feinted his spear’s point toward the monster’s belly, then dodged the expected sweep of greatsword to run behind it. The second Omnian threw his spear, aimed for the eyes. It was dashed aside by the thing’s own spear. But the captain’s effort, too, was a feint, for he then leaped ‘neath the creature’s spear to plunge his sword to the very hilt up through its groin.

  The roar from that cavernous mouth was hellish. Around came its sword to literally cut our courageous captain into two parts. Anther roar! The younger Omnian had thrust his sword deep into the flesh and tendons behind the knee. The monster whirled, hitting the captain with his spear’s butt, sending his body sliding over the blood-stained carpeting.

  Then Rawl attacked, doing what I would have done. He struck to disarm it.

  Hamstrung already, it faltered, stumbled, put out its sword-hand for balance. Whereupon my shieldman leaped and with one mighty blow severed hand from wrist and was instantly drenched in the creature’s pumping blood. Around came the spear butt again to catch our blinded Rawl fair on the helm so that he dropped dead or unconscious to the floor.

  And now it was left to Fitz, our brave but bumbling “theologian.” And he need not have made that final effort; indeed, I yelled for him to hold. In no way could it prevent me now from reaching the upper room. Its left leg was useless; blood poured in streams from the severed wrist and an artery in its groin. But Hoggle, drunk with his hatred of that epitome of all his nightmares, ignored me.

  He roared in a voice to match its own: “Ho, now, Sir Fiend! You’ve killed my comrades! But by all the gods, I promise you’ll take no joy of it. You’ve me to deal with now, sir!”

  He stamped his feet. His eyes blazed with a templar’s fervor. He advanced to within a few yards of it.

  If he was killed, I reasoned, there’d then be only me in a race to the Dark One’s room; the creature, sore wounded, would obviously lose. In no way, however, did I dare help him.

  If I did, and killed the creature, he’d never forgive me. He’d swear only that I’d robbed him of the glory which was his right!

  Caroween, who’d come up behind me, put a hand on my arm. She understood her father well, for she said softly, “Stay, Collin. My father’s made his choice.” Tears brimmed her eyes.

  And so I stayed. For if Fitz lost, the monster, though he could never race me to the Dark One, could still reach Caroween-and Murie.

  Fitz had discarded his shield. He chose his sword over the creature’s spear. I knew instinctively that he’d try to strike the spear from its hand. Instead, as he stepped in-and I’m sure now that our Hoggle’s eyes were blurring from his blood loss-he slipped and hesitated so as to catch his balance. And the Dark One’s creature, with an echoing roar to loose the stones around us, plunged his great shaft right through brave Hoggle’s body.

  I thought then, as I stepped forward, “Well, now I’ve no choice, have I? Here’s Caroween, and Murie lives, and so, perhaps, does Rawl. What difference then does it really make to me if I kill the Dark One in his cloistered room while all I love in life are slaughtered here?”

  Caroween had cried out behind me.

  But Hoggle was not dead! With the momentum of its thrust the thing had fallen to its unwounded knee. The tip of the spear that had gone full length through Fitz’ body now rested on the carpet. And Fitz, roaring a prayer to Ormon, was with a single hand, pulling himself up the shaft toward his hated enemy. The monster saw its’ death. Black fear and terror-perhaps for the first time-shone in its eyes.

  Then our Lord of Durst (and no longer would he be a king in Great Ortusund), brave Breen Hoggle-Fitz, let go the shaft o seize his greatsword in both hands. He whirled it once with an effort that took all his remaining strength-and struck off the creature’s head.

  I heard him say quite calmly then, “Well now, my Lord, to whom I’ve always prayed, I’m ready. And I truly thank you that ‘twas given to me to send this Dark One’s monster straight to hell….

  And thus he died.

  Tears washing my eyes, I went to Murie, saying to Caroween, “Stand now for these few brief moments of my absence and guard your queen to be; and your Sir Fergis, too, for I am sure he lives.” Then, in a voice to equal Fitz’s roar, I yelled to the remaining warrior-wizards: “You’ll stay where you are, sirs-exactly there! I go to slay your master. If I fail, the world dies, and you with it. But if I live and return to find that you’ve moved one inch from where you stand, I promise you a death more terrible than this world has ever known.”

  Not a word did they answer. They simply stood, red cowls thrown back to disclose their terror-stricken faces.

  “The charge is yours,” I said to Caroween.

  She put her head against my bloodied hauberk. I held her and kissed her cheek, then stepped through the ruined door into the corridor….

  I left shield and spear behind, holding only my bared blade as I went up the steep incline. The corridor for its full two hundred feet was empty. Moreover, when I think on it now, I hadn’t really expected anything. The absence of the thrumming indicated that what ever awaited me was in the Dark One’s chamber.

  The time was 22:26, Greenwich!

  The corridor’s pervasive silence after the screaming and the interminable clash of shields was an almost tactile thing. It was as if the world had died around me, or soon would. Two hundred feet of tight spiraling corridor to end-where? And then a surprise. I spotted the chamber-and there was no door, just a general darkness tinged by what must have been starlight from outside the pyramid, plus a strange “blueness” from within.

  Three minutes left. I crossed the threshold to the final mystery.

  The carpeting was soft, luxurious; the room circular. A great arc bisected the pyramid’s top, separating the east and west sides. The width of the opening was perhaps twenty feet, its length, forty, which was the width of the room itself. Starlight flooded the interior, to mingle with “starlight” from another source. For the room’s interior was as an inverted bowl, reflecting the night sky of an alien universe, as seen from an alien world.

  Strange constellations glowed in diamond colors. Stars. Clusters. Island galaxies; all were depicted. The effect of the alien universe upon the hemispheric dome was startling. Indeed, it was the single thing the Dark One had ever created that smacked of feeling-a bit of home, as it were.

  At the room’s center was a dais. Upon it was a bank of instruments, control panels and the like. Each stud and button glowed with a small light of its own. To the right and left of the controls were two great machines of a design I’d never seen before. The very lines of their contours wavered, became vague with a kaleidoscopic quality if one tried to trace them, to see them in their totality. They had one thing in common: each focused upon some given point in the true space that lay outside.

  The instrument on the left controlled the power load, the right, its’ use. Both load and use-the instantaneous release of one at the exact point of accumulation by the other, was controlled by a single bar above a three-dimensional grid wherein I saw the tracery of Fregis-Camelot’s magnetic lines, the faint connection to far Fomathaut II, and the conjunctive, linear alignments of the small moons, Ripple and Capil….

  They were, or so it seemed, in conjunction now. But I knew they weren’t. There were still two minutes!

  ‘Well!” I said to the small, basketballheaded figure with fuzzy ears who stood quite casually before the control bank. “So this is it-the end of our bloody road.” I’d switched my sword to my left hand.

  “All things must end,” Hooli replied in cliche. “Let’s just be glad it did so in our favor.

  What do you think of this?” His accompanying gesture encompassed the control panel, the instruments, and the hemispheric projection. His voice, usually so intimate, was stilted now, reserved.

  “Fantastic! But how’s about the big blast? I figure less than two minutes to total alignment”

  “Wrong, Collin. It’s already over. Zero point was just before you entered.”r />
  “What happened?”

  “Nothing. I stopped it, before.”

  “Then I’m off by three minutes.”

  “Apparently…. ” “Where is he-it?”

  Hooli grinned. “You saw it die.”

  I frowned, uncomprehending. “That thing? That was the Dark One? It’s hard to believe.”

  “Why not?” Hooli glanced down to the 3-D grid, moved even closer if possible, to the panel.

  “That he would be there, below, in his supposed moment of victory.”

  “Supposed?”

  Etched by the starlight, he stood statue-still against the instrument panel. I stared at him hard. Then I asked softly, “Hey, Hooli? How many whores did the Ripper actually kill?”

  “The Ripper?”

  Just before I pressed the laser stone a faint light shimmered, took form before him-a silvered shadow of the Grail!

  Then both Hooli and the Grail were gone in a burst of light from a simple miniature laser power-pack disguised as an agate stone to embellish the beauty of a Terran Adjuster’s medieval sword belt.

  It took me exactly five seconds to mount the dais, slap the control bar, press buttons to right and left-and to then witness, gridwise, the actual conjunction of Capil, Ripple, and Fomalhaut II.

  Nothing happened!

  Seconds later my held breath exploded from my lungs. I shook my head, staring hypnotically at the puddled wetness on the stones before the grid. He’d played it cool.

  Indeed, he’d almost won! But with all his power, he’d not once been able to organize it properly; to concentrate it in the right place at the right time. He just wasn’t smart.

  Moreover, like so many humanoids his very arrogance was a bar to thinking things out I sighed, breathed deeply of the fresh night air from the opened arc above. I could scarce take my eyes from the stars of our own universe. My feeling of euphoria was laced with the solid knowledge that now, at this very moment, in Hish, and outside, in all the towns and villages, and in Glagmaron, Gheese, Ferlach, Kelb, Great Ortmund, it was finished-kaput!