Showdown on the Planet of the Slavers

by Helena Puumala

  “I remember Mikal telling me that Gorsh and his minions were keeping him under the mind-tangler on the slave ship because they believed that the drug would eventually break down his resistance to spilling the secrets of the Star Federation Peace Officer Corps,” Kati said. “Would that have happened, or was that a misunderstanding of what Scientist Hsiss had said, on Gorsh’s part?”

  “It was purely a case, on Gorsh’s part, of hearing what he wanted to hear,” Llon answered her. “I think that he heard the word ‘barrier’ and immediately interpreted what was being said the way he wanted it to be.”

  “I think that’s true,” Ciela agreed. “By the time the Scientist gave the recipe to Gorsh he was getting quite annoyed with him. He may not have been human, but I could read the smirk on his face when Gorsh took the recipe, and the two of the workers we had trained, for the drug factory that he was planning to put together. The Scientist knew that Gorsh was not getting exactly what he thought he was, and he was pissed off enough to be pleased by that. Especially since he hadn’t misled Gorsh; Gorsh was misleading himself.”

  “So, what you’re telling me is that Mikal, by having spent as much time under the mind-tangler as he has, is finding his resistance to psychic communications eroding.” Kati made a wry face. “So much for his book on the laws of physics.”

  Lank chuckled at that.

  “That must be a little hard on him, poor Mikal,” he said. “Though he’s not a man to be kept down. He’ll recover, the stronger for all the ESPy abilities he’ll be able to share with you, Kati.”

  Llon grinned.

  “I prescribed some mental exercises that should speed his psychic development,” he said. “By the time we get to Wayward he should be a whiz at it.”

  *****

  Mikal was struggling with the stickies of the mind-tangler. What the hell? How had he ended in this situation again, inside the black, gluey cocoon that was his brain under the mind-tangler? But he was coming out of it now, thank goodness.

  “Ah Mikal, Llon was right. You are freeing your mind.”

  It was a woman’s thought, but not that of Kati, his beloved Kati.

  The woman must have heard the thought because she responded:

  “Hey, remember me, Xoraya? Good friend to both you and Kati. If you can clear your mind a little more, you and I will be in business, on a ship in deep space!”

  Ah. Things were beginning to fall into place, more so as he managed to banish the black stickies further. He tried to sit up, and found himself doing so even while his body remained lying down. He was out of his body!

  “Now you’re getting it! It does feel really weird at first, I know, having done it before. You sort of have to get used to being separate from your physical self. But we do have bodies of a sort, even in this state, though they’re pretty ephemeral, and can change size and shape.”

  “So, what Llon said would happen, really is happening,” Mikal said, or thought, he was not quite sure which.

  “Oh yes. The Guides generally know their business.”

  Xoraya sounded much more comfortable with the situation than Mikal felt. Well, she did have the advantage of experience, plus the unflappable mentality of an Xeonsaur.

  “Have you tried to contact Kati, or Llon, yet?” Mikal asked.

  “Yes, but I came across a blockage of some kind. There was nothing like that on the Vultairian Space Cruiser, when I was out of my body, inside it. The Master Healer, Vorlund, had no trouble at all finding me, or approaching me. This time, I suspect that even if Kati and Llon were in a vehicle travelling in tandem with us, they still wouldn’t be able to contact us. Nor we contact them.

  “I don’t know what the problem is, but I’m sure that it is why Llon was keen on having us be the bait for Gorsh. I think that he wants us to figure out what is happening—with help from Xanthus and the boy, Murra, once we’ve been decanted from this vessel—and to counteract it somehow.”

  “I’m afraid that, at the moment, I have less faith in my abilities than Llon did,” Mikal sighed (mentally). “I feel pretty disoriented, and the thought that my mind is somehow being blocked, and confined to quarters, does not help.”

  “It doesn’t help either of us. However, I have been wandering about this ship—Xanthus’ ship—a little, while you were struggling with the drug, so we do have some knowledge. I can help you orient yourself around the vessel, and at the same time give aid when it comes to the out of body state. It can be a little confusing at first, but you’ll adjust.”

  Xoraya led Mikal out of the cabin—through the closed door. That was disconcerting, but the Xeonsaur kept up a light patter of thought-talk, apparently to distract him. It did help to keep him from fixating on the weirdness.

  “I checked over our physical forms while you were still struggling with the stickies,” she said. “I used some of the tricks Master Healer Vorlund taught me, to move each of us into a reasonably comfortable position. Those louts weren’t particularly gentle when they tossed us onto the bunks.”

  “That’s not surprising.” Mikal was thinking about his time on Gorsh’s slave ship, and what the teens who had looked after him when he had been under the mind-tangler, had said about the casual way the slavers had shoved and booted him around. “Gorsh’s minions are not exactly dripping with the milk of human kindness.”

  “I suppose not. They’re not taking very good care of this ship either. At their rate of neglect, it’ll be finished in a few years. These ships, with proper maintenance, can last indefinitely, but for that to be so, the owner either has to have someone on board who can maintain the engines, or else spend the money once a year, or every two years at least, to have a capable professional do a thorough check-up, and fix everything that needs fixing. Someone has been skimping on the maintenance with this ship, or else it is deteriorating at a faster than the normal rate.”

  “Skimping on the maintenance of a star ship is not a smart move,” Mikal mused. “But I wouldn’t put it past these fools to do so.”

  They had reached the bridge. Invisible and formless, they could look at anything and everything without disturbing the two men who were there. Mikal noted immediately that what Xoraya had said about the ship’s condition was visible here, and wondered uneasily how things were in the engine room. There was an air of fraying dinginess about everything on the bridge; it was not just that a good cleaning would have done wonders, although that was so, but something more bothersome.

  “I don’t think that I’ve ever been on a ship bridge this unpleasant,” he communicated uneasily.

  “It wasn’t like this, when Xanthus left Xeon,” Xoraya replied. “It wasn’t a new ship then, but it was clean and in first-class condition. And Xanthus would have kept it well-maintained. It was, after all, his living place, and his life-line home. Seeing it like this is depressing.”

  “I wonder...,” Mikal let the thought trail off, then decided to express it: “I wonder if whatever negative energy is blocking us mentally isn’t also hastening the vessel’s deterioration? Would that be possible?”

  “Hm.” Xoraya responded. “The guy who believes in the inviolability of the laws of physics came up with that?”

  Mikal could sense the amusement behind her thought.

  “Ah. The woman thinks that I’m on the right track,” he responded.

  With that, he allowed the ironies of the situation rest, and settled down to do what an Agent was supposed to do—in or out of body. He scrutinized his surroundings carefully, taking note of what was on the bridge screens and looking over the two men tending to them, impressing their features into his memory. He was not sure whether or not he could count on having his node help him; the first time he had come from under the mind-tangler, when Kati had been helping him off Gorsh’s slave ship, his node had not been fully functional until the two of them had eluded capture for some time. Kati had had the help of her Granda node during her extrasensory excursions, but she had never needed chemicals to break her psychic barriers; apparently
she never had built up such barriers, the way most people did. Mikal decided that he simply had to pay attention to details, and not casually leave them to his node the way he was accustomed to do. He was a trained Agent; he could do whatever was necessary. There were times when training came in handy; this was one of them.

  As he concentrated on memorizing the details of the bridge, aware that Xoraya was doing something similar, he grew aware of a low level of malice that seemed to emanate from everything about them. Was this the negative energy field? Mentally he attracted the Xeonsaur’s attention to it; he and Xoraya paused to study it.

  “Yes, that’s what it is,” Xoraya said with a psychic shudder. “We’re dealing with something really not very nice, though, if Llon is correct, we’re not in any danger from it on the ship. It takes a lot of energy to keep a psychic field functioning, and whatever is behind this one must be using all that is available to keep it operational, and to block our mental access outward. If it wants the ship to get to its destination, it can draw only so much strength from the crew. It may try to drain you and me, but we’re hardly willing sources of energy for it. We’ll cost it more than it can possibly gain.”

  This perhaps explained the faster-than-normal deterioration of the ship. The entity was feeding on the very substance of the ship. It must have been transmuting matter into energy, to keep itself going. What was it that Llon had said to Mikal about the pockets of evil that existed on Wayward? (At the moment, Mikal could not call on his node to root out the precise memory.) He had said (more or less) that, in the end, the negative manifestations depended on the positive energies of the universe, just like everything else did; that they could not exist without the life-giving support of what was good. Evil was destructive, using up energy; it was not a creative force.

  The kidnappees wandered through the ship in their bodiless state. The third one of Gorsh’s men was in the galley, looking glum while he put together a supper dish made up mostly of Tarangayan seafood; the brutes had had the presence of mind to load up on local delicacies while they were on a planet made up, mostly, of oceans.

  “Gee, I wonder if they bought any thornberry juice?” Mikal asked Xoraya, and received a mental facsimile of her silvery laugh in return.

  “I doubt it,” she replied. “These louts look more the type to prefer distilled spirits!”

  “You don’t think they drink beer or wine?”

  “Oh, they probably do, when nothing stronger is available. But by the expression on this man’s face, he’ll be wanting to do some serious drowning of sorrows—and he’ll expect his node to stay out of it!”

  Mikal rather thought that she had the right of it.

  They moved on from the galley, and Xoraya showed Mikal where the final member of the crew was working out in the exercise room. He looked glum, too, although he was making a strenuous effort to push his body. Mikal noted that he was the fellow whom Stan, the Maldosan, had partially stunned on the Laboratory Island.

  “I’d like to show you the engine room,” Xoraya told Mikal. “Not that you understand engines—I realize that—but just so you get the fullest possible picture of how things are on this vessel which used to be Xanthus’ pride and joy. Though it actually belonged to his Consortium; but since he was the one who left Xeon to do the work, it was his to use.”

  She obviously knew where to go, and in her non-physical state did not bother with the hallways, the doors, or other such niceties, but took Mikal directly to where she wanted him. They had barely left the cabins, it seemed to him, when they were already in the bowels of the vessel, where its core was located.

  Mikal had, of course, examined the engine room of The Spacebird, so he knew what to expect, even though he knew very little about space ship engineering. This ship was lot bigger than The Spacebird, and correspondingly had a larger engine room, although the engine itself did not appear to be all that much bigger.

  “The engine size does not necessarily go up when the size of the ship does,” Xoraya explained, having picked up his thought. “The engine of a bigger ship does not have to take up more space; it only has to be more powerful. The amber crystal engines vary in size, depending on their ages. The newer ones can pack more power into less volume; since this is a fairly new ship with a newer engine than The Spacebird has, the engine is smaller in relation to the size of the vessel.

  “But never mind that. Look around you, and think about what you’re seeing. Draw your own conclusions.”

  “I think that I’m seeing the same neglect and fraying at the edges that we saw on the bridge,” Mikal mused after taking a moment to examine their surroundings. “In addition to a slovenly attitude. Should all the junk that’s piled on the floor be here? Didn’t Lank say that the Engineer of Marta, the tub that carried him and Rakil to Vultaire, was fanatical about keeping the engine room clear of everything extraneous, even though the rest of the ship was primitive, claustrophobic, and messy?”

  “Yes, and he and I kept to the practise on The Spacebird. It only made sense. If you needed to get at something unexpectedly, you could do so. Obviously this engine room has to be cleaned out before proper maintenance can be performed; another reason to put off necessary work. The ship’s present owners are fools.”

  Mikal did not miss the scorn in Xoraya’s thought. He could understand it. The vessel had been stolen from her Life-Mate, and then allowed to start falling apart. However, at present, it might not be a good idea to dwell on frustrations, not with the malicious entity which had apparently been encouraged to take residence in the vehicle, strong enough to keep them mentally confined to it. He suspected that the creature—whatever it was—could feed off Xoraya’s anger—or his.

  “Oh dear, you’re right about that,” Xoraya sighed, having, once again, read his thoughts almost as soon as he had formulated them. She was good at this business of functioning as a purely mental being. “I’ll have to try to school myself into patience. I don’t want to give our amorphous adversary any unnecessary advantages.”

  “Right,” Mikal agreed. “Sooner or later we will reach a point at which we have no choice but to show some strong negative emotions, either towards the being, or towards the people keeping us prisoners. The longer we can not let our energies be bled off, the better.”

  “Maybe we’ll have to try to cultivate hope and humour,” Xoraya added wryly. “See if we can’t sicken it with kindness, or fun.”

  Map of the Star Federation Galaxy (Detail)

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Space Station Plata’s Port was a hive of chaotic activity. The official on duty snarled when Free Trader Captain Katerina insisted on registering her arrival under her name, rather than with a ship registration number.

  “This ship didn’t have a registration number when I bought it,” Captain Katerina snapped back, “and it doesn’t have one now.”

  “Fine. Fine,” sighed the official. “We do make allowances for crazy Free Traders. I never could understand why you have to be so secretive; one would think that there are demons chasing some of you. What’s your business here on Plata, and how many people are you bringing to visit us? And how long do you plan on staying?”

  “We’re here to visit, and, hopefully, to do business with a warehouse which deals in Shelonian electronics. I have with me some Tarangayan relatives: my uncle, a niece, and a nephew. We’ll be here long enough to conduct our business, probably less than a Station day.”

  “A short-term berth, then.” The official’s tone had thawed somewhat. “You have family connections on Tarangay? That’s a nice world with some awesome music!”

  “That it is,” agreed Captain Katerina.

  “And you’re here to buy Shelonian electronics?” the voice cooled a bit. “What is it with Free Traders and Shelonian electronics these days, anyway?”

  “Shelonians make good gadgets,” was all that Captain Katerina could be bothered to answer to that.

  She suspected that the official was bored and looking for gossip fodder, and had n
o intention of providing such.

  The man gave up on her, assigned her ship a berth, and moved on to the next arrival, likely hoping for a more talkative ship Captain. Kati heaved a sigh of relief, while Lank who was piloting, directed The Spacebird Two towards its berthing spot.

  *****

  On docking, they arranged to have a shipment of perishable groceries, and a few other items that they needed, delivered to the ship before they would leave again. Kati had expected to be challenged when she asked to defer payment until she had finished with her trading on the Station, but that did not happen.

  “Free Traders probably do that kind of thing all the time,” Lank said, when she commented on it. “They likely live from trade to trade, and the merchants know it. They also know that the Free Traders can’t afford to antagonize Stationsiders; they need them as much as the Station people need the Traders.”

  “I guess that you’re getting a valuable lesson in proper Space Lanes etiquette,” Kati responded, grinning.

  “Maybe when this is all over I’ll turn Free Trader,” Lank replied. “Someone ought to be bringing in lace crystal and amber salt crystals from Darla and her ex-partner’s source. And the people on that world deserve to get the gadgets that they have become accustomed to.”

  “Ah. But don’t forget what happened to Zeke. You don’t want to follow too precisely in his footsteps.”

  “That’s true. However, the Star Federation Peace Officer Corps are going to have a troop of new recruits ready to chase the criminals of the Space Lanes, considering how enthusiastically Arya was snagging them on Vultaire. Rakil, Roxanna, and Joaley are joining the ranks, and who knows how many Vultairians the wee, formidable Lamanian Lady managed to draw into her net?”

  “She and Maryse are going to be disappointed if, instead of joining their cohorts, you become a Free Trader, Lank,” Kati said. “They’ll probably give Mikal and me shit for not hanging on to you.”