by K. H. Scheer
He came a few steps closer. I continued to stare at him. Inwardly I was highly tensed. Was this test to end here after barely getting started? This deserter was a factor which even the Inner Circle had not foreseen. He was the real thing—or at least he could be genuine! I knew that here on the planet of Largamenia a number of crewmen had escaped from ships that were in for overhaul.
And he fit the description perfectly! His insignia were letter perfect. Code number, unit symbol, weapons and equipment—nothing was missing. It would have been an almost impossible task to simulate his wild and savage appearance.
Besides that, he stank. Apparently he had not bathed for weeks. There were dried spots of blood on his suit which might have been from animals he had shot and butchered.
The weapon was de-safetied and ready, its focus adjustment set on wide-beam projection. If he had fully made up his mind I didn’t have a chance. Still— there was just one. He needed the boat!
I suddenly tucked up my legs and back-flipped into the boat. Then I peered at him over the rim. He cursed at me in the well-known patois of a Fleet spaceman.
I laughed. “Arbtan, I’ll make you a proposition. Now don’t lose your head! I’m not concerned with you or where you go. We have one thing in common— to get through that gorge. Then go where you want to. I’ve never seen you. What do you say?”
He spat again and came closer.
“Careful!” I warned him. “You’re a good ground-fighter, I can tell, but you’d better remember that you won’t be able to kill me and disintegrate me without a trace—unless you also destroy the boat. So?”
He looked about suspiciously and then back at the boat, whereupon he smiled thinly. “Not a bad argument, blueblood! It makes sense—but you’ve underestimated me. Before you die, let me say that I think you would have won your idiotic Ark Summia with flying colours. Sonny, I’m going to get you and the boat!”He turned the focus setting. The glittering eye of energy in the cone-shaped muzzled narrowed to a brilliant pinpoint. I didn’t wait for him to complete the adjustment. Before he could aim and fire I slipped overboard into the water like an eel, taking the sturdy paddle with me. Almost simultaneously I pulled the boat partially from the bank. I was in the water and the craft’s hull concealed me completely.
“Now you have to shoot through two sides of the boat!” I shouted to him. “You’ll never be able to patch it, soldier! Temporary plugging won’t work. That water in the gorge will yank loose any caulking you can find! Or do you have better material at hand, ‘expert’?”
Again he cursed aloud and came closer. I had to distract him. The man was fully determined. I couldn’t give him time to think.
“Another problem—the wood will catch fire, soldier! Maybe you can put it out but by that time you’ll have holes big enough to shove your head through. There’s no way out of this rock trap except by boat, or do you think you can whistle up a short flight with those singed-off rotors? Whose line of fire did you run into, anyway—a sniper in the search patrol?”
“No!” he retorted exasperatedly. “It was some damned fool like you!”
“Oho! And where did he get hold of a high-power heater like that?”
Instead of answering, he jumped. I saw his feet going up over the bow. He wanted to get to the waterside of the boat so he could see me. But he had made a mistake. Granted, on land he could move faster than I could where I was at the moment. It wasn’t possible for me to dive under the boat because of its sharp angle to the bank. The water wasn’t deep enough there. But I had figured on his move—in fact I’d been waiting for it.
Except that he didn’t jump into the boat. He landed directly in the water, probably hoping to find a firm footing immediately. In so doing he offered me a much better chance to get at him than I had hoped for. Fratulon’s training bore fruit. The sharply pointed paddle was my broadsword. Before the deserter could stabilize himself I had found firm footing on the rocky bottom. When he reached out with his right hand to support himself on the edge of the boat, I struck home with the sharp edge of the paddle. His elbow shattered under the weight of the blow.
He staggered back in an outcry of agony and fell on his back halfway onto the shoreline. But that didn’t help him much. Before he could aim the Luccot with his left hand, the sharp plastic point of the heavy paddle struck him in the throat. I had been forced to hurl it at him like a lance. There had been no time for a second strike at him at close quarters. He had gotten too far away.
A hard, sun-bright bolt of glowing energy whipped straight across the haze-shrouded lake. It struck somewhere in the cliffs and generated a gleaming heat spot, causing a slight dribble of molten lava.I waded over to the dying soldier and took charge of his dangerous weapon. It had gotten wet but a Luccot couldn’t be damaged that easily. I tried to stop the heavy flow of blood from his throat but it was no use. He was beyond my help.
What now? Break up the trial run and simply stay here on the spot? I knew it couldn’t be considered. Had I not been cautioned against any act of sympathy or compassion? I could not suppress my feelings, at any rate. I was really sorry for this poor fellow. He had forced me into an action that I would have strictly avoided under normal conditions.
I pulled him up onto the shore and looked around for a place where I might be able to bury him. Wherever I looked, all I saw was solid rock. Finally I began to think again in a logical manner. I could not allow the dead man to delay me. On the contrary I should have been considering my new advantage. No—not mine alone! This test was a simulated emergency mission under hostile conditions. It was therefore fundamental that his equipment should be my first concern. The weapon plus the complete combat suit could be incalculably valuable to me now.
I began to strip him out of his suit. He was just my size and
At that point I stopped and swore. How was it he just happened to be my size? Why wasn’t he short and stocky or tall and thin? Was I supposed to obtain his equipment in the face of mortal danger and thus demonstrate reason, adaptability and the power of decision?
I jerked the high-frequency oscillator knife from the armoured leg sheath of the combat suit and turned my attention to the so-called dead man. The humming blade easily cut through the solid bone sheath of the left side of his chest— which was typical of Arkonide anatomy. But in another minute or so I found that I had merely taken the synthetic life of an android-robot.
It was the most ingenious product of biochemical and electro-mechanical technology that I had ever seen. I opened the skull and found that it only contained communications circuits. There was no independently operating positronic brain.
So our little question-and-answer game was being led by a teacher from Faehrl, over radio; no doubt by a psychologist. With incredible shrewdness and skill they had offered me a chance to capture a weapon and a complete combat outfit. And I had made the most of it.
From that point on it became clear to me that without these things I’d never have passed the test. Probably beyond the gorge there were dangers awaiting me that I couldn’t even suspect at present. An Ark Summia candidate who would have failed to take care of the “deserter” would have also given up his chances right there.
Hastily I donned the combat suit, fully realizing now why it fit so well and also why the rotor blades were damaged. I unsnapped the locking mechanism of the flying unit and disengaged its universal drive, laying the whole thing aside. It would only have been a hindrance.My next concern was the weapon itself. Could it also be some sort of imitation? No—it was a genuine, fully loaded Luccot. So they’d even let a test-tube creature like this handle one of these? I should have caught on to the ruse if they hadn’t been guiding its speech and actions by radio.
Now fully dressed and equipped, I shoved the boat into the water and got into it. I only had until sundown.
5/ THE RIVER OF NO RETURN
While traversing the outlet gorge beyond the lake I realized that although the rushing water was wild and rough it couldn’t have really endan
gered any average Ark Summia aspirant unless he really pulled an awful boner of some kind.But now, three hours after my start, I found conditions considerably changed. I had journeyed into a second lake which was also hemmed in by towering cliff walls. Without the necessary equipment they were unscalable. So now as before I was dependent upon the boat.
The previously wild mountain river found room for expansion here, which was to my advantage. The raging waters seemed to spread out in the long rocky basin and the strong current subsided accordingly. Yet the rate of drift toward the opposite end was quite noticeable. The closer I approached the towering precipices there the stronger it became.
I took the oars out of the oarlocks and moved swiftly to the stem. Of course the boat did not respond to the rudder alone. In a current like this I hadn’t expected it to. So now the paddle had to be put to its purpose. Kneeling down, I thrust the paddle into the water and pulled heavily in a direction opposed to my drift. By this means I achieved some control of the skiff.
Fine, I thought, so this was the way they wanted it—“E” for effort! I was startled by the sound of laughter until I realized that I myself was the source of it. From then on I maintained a tighter self-discipline.
So far I had been unable to observe an outlet to the lake. By the Master Founders of Arkon—where was the water going? When I raised up higher in the boat, I saw it! And I let out a curse. They weren’t sparing me anything!
Far ahead, almost indiscernible in the midst of foam-flecked masses of rock, I could see a low but widespread opening. Measuring perhaps 60 meters in width, it seemed to be a giant archway but its roof was barely above the surface of the water. In fact that ceiling was probably so low I’d have to duck down in the boat to keep from being knocked overboard.
So this was the outlet! The increasing current carried me relentlessly toward this portal of the underworld. There was no escaping it. I ducked down as far as it was possible while still working the paddle. Now more than ever I needed this useful device, which helped me at least to make critical changes in my course.
When I was only a few boat lengths away from the roaring throat of the tunnel I perceived the real trap. Suspicious-looking vapours were churning out of that rocky maw. I was already picking up their sharp, penetrating odour. My lungs reacted with a convulsive warning. Immediately I experienced the first attack of asphyxiation. The pains increased and the burning became unbearable. The sharp odour became more intense as I approached the opening. Those were clouds of ammoniac fumes, highly concentrated poison gas such as was exhaled by the non-Arkonide Maahks as a combustion product of their life-sustaining hydrogen. In fact both elements were deadly to us. Now I knew why the Ark Summia candidates had been given such serious warnings. The prize was not to be won for nothing.
At such a high concentration the ammonia could only have been generated synthetically and injected into the rocky cavern under pressure. Normally ammonia formed in Nature in negligible quantities during the decomposition of nitrogen compounds as in the decay of plant and animal substances. It was an impossibility for it to occur naturally in such a concentration as this. The Inner Circle was playing for keeps with my health and my life.In a reflex action which had been practiced thousands of times, my hand struck the emergency switch of my combat suit. Owing to more than 40 years of war against the Maahks, the men of my race reacted to ammonia fumes with the instinctive swiftness of an animal. But even then the only possibility of survival was an immediate switchover to an automatic oxygen system.
For this reason there was no Arkonide mission or combat suit which was not equipped with an instant-demand life-support system. In earlier days that didn’t always apply but the Maahks had taught us this bitter lesson.
The sturdy plastic foil of my collapsible helmet unfolded almost with the swiftness of thought. Its hemispherical hood snapped down over my head and face and its magnetic rim clicked hermetically tight into the circular slot of my collar piece. I had held my breath although I felt that the poison I had breathed in was about to leach out my lungs. I exhaled in the instant I heard the incoming hiss of oxygen. Due to the resultant inner pressure the helmet completed its expansion to a smooth half-globe that was devoid of wrinkles.
At last I could take in air again but I could not suppress a convulsion of choking and nausea or the accompanying attack of coughing. But it might have been worse. The suit’s automatic system had analysed the poisonous gas immediately. Spacemen such as the landing troop commandos were far from being able to operate the absorption apparatus when suddenly overtaken by ammonia poisoning—so this was also handled automatically. In my case it functioned without delay. A mildly sour vapour was mixed into my breathing air, which quickly alleviated the terrible burning.
I felt the sting in my upper right thigh as a built-in high-pressure injection needle administered medicine into my tissues to stabilize my circulation. I felt better almost immediately. The red rings before my eyes dissipated and disappeared. Still panting, I raised up to look around.
I found myself inside an elongated cavern under the cliffs. The ceiling was still only a few feet above my head. The current was powerful and the sound of the rushing water was deafening. Far ahead I could see a spot of light which swiftly grew larger. It had to be the exit from this poisonous underworld.
I looked at the indicator lamps inside the suit. The ammonia gas was still as much in evidence as ever. Any man entering here would certainly meet his death if he were without protection.Again I thought of Tirako Gamno. How had he passed through this chamber of torture? Had he succeeded at all in the acquisition of a protective suit such as I was wearing? Had he been able to handle the remote-controlled android also? If not, he would have had to suffer unspeakable torture in this tunnel. Perhaps he was dead by now.
Suddenly my boat shot out into the light of day. The channel widened and the racing current slowed down. Inside my suit an indicator lamp flashed violet. The danger of gas poisoning had passed. Here was a breathable atmosphere once more. After double-checking the analyser I released the helmet lock. The transparent foil snapped back behind my neck and packed itself into a narrow, barely perceptible roll.
My legs were painfully cramped from the crouched position I had been in. I straightened up with a groan and cursed aloud, then moved forward to the oars. I didn’t want to lose any time. Although the sun was only vaguely discernible through the all-pervading mist, I could tell that it was already nearing the zenith.
By the time I replaced the oars in their locks and looked searchingly ahead, which I still assumed to be the direction of my goal, I suddenly felt overcome by a sense of dejection. Very probably many a Hertaso before me had gone through this stage. The Masters of the Inner Circle were either insensitive monsters or scientific zealots who were always thinking up new methods of testing.
Why? Why was it necessary to endlessly torture a young man when he was obviously willing to give everything he had to win the Ark Summia? Why couldn’t they give preference to other things, like honouring and respecting his intelligence and well-founded learning?
Now I had mastered many things—or so I hoped!—and I had risked much, only to be unexpectedly-confronted with an obstacle that I might never be able to get through.
Far ahead but clearly visible from my position, it seemed that the natural direction of flow of a tributary stream had been altered. On the basis of my bitter experiences nobody had to tell me that something here had been manipulated by technical means. At least I had never seen a tributary that flowed into a river in opposition to the main stream’s direction! Here Nature was somehow inverted. The small but enormously turbulent mountain stream shot away from a rock ledge and thus formed a waterfall that served to increase the water’s velocity considerably. At its point of impact it was compressed and diverted by what was most likely an artificially prepared channel, which then guided it to the final outlet. It was this that was placed at an obtuse angle to the direction of the main current in which my swaying skiff w
as drifting.
The resulting effect of this diversion was a water barrier. It was like a tidal wave which completely interrupted the favourable down-stream now. From all appearances there was a stretch of some hundreds of meters where there was no normal flow at all but instead a raging turmoil of crashing waves and crosscurrents in which even a modem boat would have become a plaything of colliding forces.
I suppressed my anger and decided for the time being to take a rest. My throat still burned and gradually the thin air and the lower percentage of oxygen had been taking effect on me. I was weary. So I rowed the boat toward the left-hand bank in order to…My thoughts were interrupted. What was that? Sternward of the boat I caught sight of a brownish patch of colour. It was on the right bank in the bluish green wall of unfamiliar jungle growth. It lingered in my line of sight long enough so that I could identify it as a boat—or at least what was left of a boat!
I thought for a moment. According to the ground rules of this test I was to carry on like a spaceman under conditions of an emergency landing. I had to reach the depot. Was I to be’ distracted by the wreckage of a boat?
My subconscious processes won out over logic. I was already rowing toward the discovery with all my strength, even before I had made any well-founded decision. I was there in a matter of minutes. The right side of the boat had been ripped open where the planking was smashed and splintered, the bow had been crushed. The paddle and one of the oars were missing.
I jumped to shore and pulled my boat up into the underbrush. Then I released the safety catch on my weapon. Before me was a thick tropical forest. I seemed to have won my way through the barriers of stone but what dangers lurked now in the middle of this thick jungle growth?
I searched for footprints and found them. The easily recognizable imprints had been made by boots that were standard issue to students. One of my predecessors had been stranded here, a Hertaso who had probably been sent on his journey shortly before me. I followed the trail until I discovered a low rocky ledge. My fellow testee had taken the precaution to leave the marshy shore area and find shelter on a stone elevation that was relatively free of vegetation.