Vandy's Veever, Vandy's Hacon, Vandy's dream—Nik lay flat, waiting for the landing controls to take over, and thought about how right Leeds had been so far. From that moment when Vandy had looked up in the garden to see Nik standing in the open sunlight, he had accepted Nik unquestioningly. Nik squirmed now on the plasta-foam filled bunk. Too easy—this whole operation had begun. His hand twitched, but the straps prevented his raising it to his face, to feel tangible evidence of the change he accepted as a small part of truth, the one thing he clung to fiercely. And how long could he continue to cling? Leeds had said perhaps two months—
LB's were fashioned to rove wide courses in space. The very nature of those escape craft meant that they had to be almost equal to the fastest cruisers as they took the "jumps" in and out of hyper-space to carry out their rescue missions. But how much time had passed now? Nik had no idea of how long it had been since they had taken off from Korwar. Any minute the change in him might start—
His smooth lips twisted on a sound that was close to a moan. Leeds—surely Leeds would be waiting for their landing. Nik believed that Leeds was the leader in this Guild operation. But what if he wasn't there or if he did not have power enough to make good on his promise? And how long would it take to learn from Vandy the information they wanted? Even if the boy had accepted Nik easily as an adventure companion, would he share something he had been taught to keep secret? The holes in the future became bigger and blacker all the time!
With a final clang, the chime stilled, and Nik was aware of the increasing discomfort of landfall. His past traveling on ships had been long ago, and now he was conscious of the strain on his body, though an LB, which might be transporting injured, was rigged with every possible protection against pressure.
"Hacon!" The cry shrilled with a sharp undertone of fear and made Nik force his head to one side on the bunk. Across the narrow space between them, he saw Vandy's eyes wide open, the fear in them.
"All—right—" Nik got out the words of assurance. "We're setting down—"
Then he felt the surge of the deter-rockets, and the weight of change brought him close to the edge of a complete blackout.
They were down, a smooth three-fin landing he judged, though his knowledge of such was very meager. Wriggling one arm loose from the straps, Nik pushed the button on the side wall and looked up expectantly at the visa-plate for the first glimpse of the new world. And in spite of all the worries nibbling at him, there was a small thrill of excitement in waiting to see what lay outside the skin of the LB.
Dark—darker than the blackest night on Korwar—with a faint glimmer in the distance. But such dark!
"Hacon—where—where are we?" Vandy's voice was thin, shaken.
"On Dis." At least Leeds had supplied him with a name. But where Dis was remained another matter.
"Dis—" the boy repeated. "Hacon—what are we going to do here?"
Nik unbuckled his straps, sat up, and reached across to do the same for Vandy. "We"—he tried to make his voice express the proper authority—"are going to have an adventure."
"The Miccs—they're hunting again?"
The Miccs—those were Vandy's ever-present, ever-to-be-battled enemies. But no use in Nik's building what he might not be able to deliver, well-versed as he was in Vandy's fantasy world.
"This is just a scouting trip," he replied. "I don't know whether they are here or not."
"Hacon—look! Something's coming!"
Nik glanced at the visa-plate. There was movement there, the on-and-off flash of what might be a torch, and it was advancing toward the LB. He helped Vandy from the bunk and drew the boy with him to the escape lock at the end of the small compartment, but he made no move to open that until he heard the tapping from without.
Air poured in—humid, hot, with a sweetish, almost gagging odor, as if it had blown across a stretch of rotting vegetation. It was cloying, clogging in the nostrils. Vandy coughed.
"That smells bad," he commented rather than complained.
"All right?" The inquiry came from without. The light from the LB port showed a man, his face, raised to view them, half masked with large goggles. "Here." A hand reached to Nik, and obediently he took the ends of two lines, both made fast to the welcomer's belt. "Tie those on," he was ordered. "This is no place to be lost!"
The humidity of the dark beyond was so oppressive that Nik was already bathed in perspiration, and he breathed shallowly, as if a weight rested above his laboring lungs. He knotted one cord to his own belt, one to Vandy's, and then dropped from the lock hatch, lifting down the boy.
"This way—" Their guide had already melted into the all-enveloping dark, towing them behind him. Luckily, he did not walk fast, and the ground under their feet appeared reasonably smooth. Vandy pressed against Nik, and the latter kept hold of the smaller boy's shoulder.
As they moved away from the lights of the LB, more features of the dark landscape became clearer. Here and there were faint halos of misty radiance outlining a large rock, a weird-seeming bush—or at least a growth that had the general appearance of a bush. But for the rest, it was all thick black, and when Nik turned his eyes to the sky, not a single gleam of a star broke the brooding blackness. Always the rotten stench was in their nostrils, and the humidity brought drops of moisture rolling in oily beads across their skin.
"Hacon—" Vandy was only a small body moving under Nik's hand, not to be seen in this night-held steambath. "Why doesn't that man use his torch?"
For the first time, Nik's attention was drawn from their weird surroundings to the guide. Vandy was right; they had seen the flicker of a torch when the stranger had approached the LB, but since they had left the ship, he had not used it. Yet he moved through the soupy blackness with the confidence of one who could see perfectly. Those goggles? But why link his two companions to him by towlines? Why not simply use a torch and show them the way?
The lines became for Nik not a matter of convenience but a symbol of dependence, which was disquieting. He stepped up, bringing Vandy with him and closing the gap between them and their guide.
"How about using your torch? This is a dark night."
To Nik's amazement, the answer was a laugh and then the words, "Night? This is the middle of the day!"
If that was meant to confuse him, Nik thought, it did.
"First day I ever saw that was a complete blackout," he retorted sharply.
"Under an infrared sun," the other replied, "this is all you'll ever see."
Nik was puzzled. His education had been a hit-or-miss—mostly miss—proposition, so the guide's explanation was meaningless. But Vandy apparently understood.
"That's why you're wearing cin-goggles then," he stated rather than questioned.
"Right," the stranger began, and then his voice arose in a shouted order. "Down! Get down!"
Nik flung himself forward, taking Vandy with him, so that they rolled across a hard surface on which evil-smelling, slimy things smeared to pulp under their weight. Their guide was using the torch now, sending its beam in a spear shaft of light to impale in the glare a winged thing of which they could see only nightmare portions. Then the beam of a blaster cut up and out, and there was a curdling scream of pain and fury as the blackened mass of the attacker whirled on, already charred and dead, to fall heavily some distance away.
Again their guide laughed. "Just one of the local hunters," he told them. "But you see that planet-side walks are not to be recommended. Now, let's get going. There're going to be some more arrivals soon; they don't get a chance to dine on flapper very often." Jerking at the towlines, he hurried them along.
They were going on a downslope, Nik knew, and walls of stone were rising higher on either side. But whether those were purposeful erections or native cliffs, he had no idea. He did see at one backward glance that, where their boots had crushed the ground growths, there were small ghostly splotches of phosphorescence with an evil greenish glow marking their back trail.
But even if he and Van
dy could regain the LB, the ship would not lift. The controls had been locked in a pattern to bring them here, and Nik had neither the knowledge of a course to take them home or the ability to reset the controls. Home? Korwar—the Dipple—His hand went to his face. What lay behind him was not home! And why did he wish to backtrack? The action, as Leeds had outlined it, was simple enough. Vandy accepted him without question, and to the boy this would be only a very real adventure straight out of his fantasy world. He would be induced to share with Hacon the information Leeds or his superiors wanted. Then Vandy would go home, and he, Nik, would have earned his pay. He knew from his briefing what Vandy had made of Hacon and what he would have to do to sustain his role. Only, in these surroundings, with their total and frightening alienness, could Nik Kolherne be Hacon long? Already he was baffled by information Vandy knew and he did not, and he would be a prisoner wherever they were going until he gained some manner of sight. He was sure that this was a planet on which Terran stock were total aliens and where every danger was to be fronted without much preparation on his part.
But once he saw Leeds—Nik held tightly to that thought. Leeds was the stable base in this whole affair and meant security.
Without warning, there gaped before them a slit of light, which grew wider as they approached it. Then they passed through and into a rock-hewn chamber, for that was what it was, not a natural cave. A click behind them signaled the closing of the door.
The humid, sickly air of the outside was thinned by a cooler, fresher current, and their guide shed his goggles. He was a stocky, thick-set man, with the deep browning of a space crewman, like any to be seen portside at Korwar. Now he stepped into an alcove in the wall and stood while a mist curled out and wreathed about him. In a moment he came out and waved Nik and Vandy to take his place.
"What for?" Vandy wanted to know.
"So you don't take them inside." A crook of thumb indicated the floor.
There were the smears from their boots, and in those smears tiny lumps were rising. One branched in three—waving arms? Branches? Tentacles? A quick-growing thing from smears. Nik shivered. That flying creature their guide had killed he could accept, but these were different. He took firm hold of Vandy and shoved the boy in before him so that they huddled together in the alcove, sniffing a bracing air that carried a spicy, aromatic odor, the very antithesis of the humid reek outside this chamber.
Beyond the entrance, they found themselves in a barracks-like series of corridors and rooms, all hollowed in rock, mostly empty of either people or furnishings. They passed only two other men, both wearing space uniforms, both as nondescript as their guide.
Nik sensed a growing restlessness in Vandy. None of this resembled the dream adventures he and Hacon had shared in the past. Nor, Nik realized, was his own passive part akin to the figure Vandy had built up in his imagination. Nik had promised him an adventure, and this was far from the boy's conception of that.
"In here!" A jerk of the head sent the two of them past their guide into another room. This was manifestly designed as living quarters, with a bunk against the far wall, a fold-up table, and a couple of stools. The air current sighed overhead at intervals, coming through a slit no wider than the edge of Nik's hand. When he turned quickly, the door had closed, and he did not have to be told that they were prisoners. He pressed against the slide panel just to make sure of that point, but the barrier held.
"Hacon!" Vandy stood in the middle of the room, his fists on his hips, his small face sober with a frown. "This—this is real!"
"It's real." Nik could understand the other's momentary bewilderment. He had fashioned fantasies, too. And when he had fallen captive to Leeds' weapon in the warehouse, been freed from the Dipple, and gained what he had wanted most—why, at times all of that had seemed just part of a dream. But there had been moments of awareness, of doubt—and those were more than fleeting moments now. If Leeds had been here, if Nik had been told more of what to expect—
"Hacon, I want to go home!" That was a demand. Vandy's scowl was dark. "If you don't take me home, I'll—"
Nik sat down on the nearest stool. "You'll what?" he asked wearily.
"I'll call Umar." Vandy fumbled with the mid-seal fastening that covered a carry pocket in the breast of his tunic. He brought out a glistening object, which he held on the flat of his palm and studied with concentration. A moment later he looked up. "It doesn't work!" The scowl of impatience was fading. "But Father will find me; he'll bring the guard—"
Hadn't they told Vandy his father was dead? Nik's fingers picked at the broad belt with its fringe of weapons and tools that Vandy had thought up for his created hero. There were plenty of those. It was a pity they didn't have the powers Vandy had endowed them with—or would some one of them provide him with a weapon, a tool, so that he would not have to wait passively for trouble?
Why did he expect trouble, one part of Nik's brain demanded even as he began to pull that collection of show armament out for examination? Because he had been set down on a world where he was blinded among sighted men? Because he was limited by lack of information and driven by a feeling that there was little time?
"This is real, Vandy," he said slowly. "But it's an adventure, one we'll take together." If only Vandy hadn't build Hacon up as invincible! How was he going to keep Vandy believing in him? And if Vandy learned the truth, then the chances of getting what Leeds wanted sank past the vanishing point. And if he, Nik, could not deliver—
He was holding a small rod in his hand, one that was tipped with a disk of shining metal. In Vandy's imagination, it could generate a heat ray to cut through stone or metal. Now it served Nik as a mirror to reflect the smooth face he still did not dare to accept. If Nik Kolherne did not, and speedily, keep his part of the bargain, could he hope to keep that? He had to get Vandy's knowledge, and he could do it only by preserving Vandy's image of him—or rather of Hacon. Which meant that his own doubts must be stifled, that he must make a game of all this.
"Why are we here?" To Nik's ears, that held a note of suspicion.
"They think that they have us." Nik improvised hurriedly. "But really we came because your father is going to follow us—he can trace you, you know. And then at the right moment, we'll get him in. Then the Miccs will be taken—"
"No!" Vandy's shake of the head was decisive. "These aren't Miccs—are they, Hacon? It's Lik Iskhag's doing! And how are we going to help anyone if they keep us shut up? If Umar tells Father and they come to get us—maybe it's all a trap and Father and Umar will be taken, too! We have to get out of here! You get us out quick, Hacon!"
None of this was promising. Nik shoved the "heat ray" back in its belt loop. With Vandy in his present mood, Nik would never be able to talk him into telling what Leeds wanted. And Iskhag—that was the blue-skinned alien on Korwar. But Vandy wasn't of the same race. How did Iskhag fit into the picture or into the story Leeds had detailed for Nik?
"Listen, Vandy. I can't work blind, you know. Remember when we went hunting for the jewels of Caraska? We had to have information such as those map tapes we found in the derelict ship, and we had to learn the Seven Words of Sard." Feverishly, Nik delved into past Hacon adventures. "Now I have to know other things."
"What things?" There was a note of hostility in that, Nik believed.
"You're helping your father, aren't you, Vandy? Keeping some information for him?"
When the boy shook his head, Nik was not too surprised. Whatever had been left in Vandy's brain under the drastic safeguards Leeds had described was not going to be extracted easily.
"Why else would Iskhag want you?" He tried a slightly different approach.
"Bait—to get my father!" Vandy replied promptly.
"Why? What does Iskhag have against your father?"
"Because Warlord Naudhin i'Akrama"—there was a vast pride in Vandy's answer—"is going to hold Glamsgog until the end. And Lik Iskhag wants the Inner Places—"
The reply had no meaning for Nik at all. And why didn'
t Vandy know his father was dead? Had that been kept a secret from him for pity or for policy?
"If Father comes here and Iskhag gets him," Vandy continued, "then—then Glamsgog will be gone and every one of the Guardians will be killed! We have to get away before that happens—we have to!"
Vandy pushed past Nik and set his palms against the sliding surface of the door. His small shoulders grew stiff with the effort he was making to force it open. "We have to!" he panted, and his fear was plain to hear.
Five
"Vandy!" Nik made that sharp enough to attract the boy's attention. "When did pounding on walls ever open a door?" He was working by instinct now. Hypotapes had made him part of Vandy's fantasy world; he knew that to the smallest detail. But with Vandy himself, beyond that imagination, rich and creative as it was, he trod unknown territory. How much dared he appeal to the boy's good sense?
He did not even know Vandy's real age. Various branches of once Terran stock had mutated and adapted so that a life span might vary from seventy to three hundred years. Vandy could be a boy of ten or twelve; also he might be twice that and still be a child. And Nik realized that the perilous gaps in his own information concerning his companion were dangerous. Surely Leeds could not have intended this companionship to endure for any length of time.
Vandy had come away from the door to face Nik. There was a shadow on his small face, but his jaw was set determinedly.
"We have to get out."
"Yes." Nik could echo that. "But not without a plan—" He grabbed at the one delaying suggestion that might not only give him time to think a little but might also produce information from Vandy. To his vast relief, the boy nodded and sat down on the other stool.
"Once we're out of this room"—Nik took the first difficulty that came to mind—"we can't manage without goggles."
Norton, Andre - Dipple 02 Page 4