by Douglas Hill
CHAPTER TEN
Creffa was small for a moon, but as airless, rocky, cratered and uninviting as any. Keill’s course took him on one orbital sweep, far enough out so that anyone spotting him from the moon’s surface would not be able to identify the ship, or imagine that he was anything other than a bypassing ship on its way to planetfall on Saltrenius.
His viewscreens, at extended magnification, showed the gleaming space-dome clearly. The bubble of sturdy metal and plastic was set on a broad, dusty plain on the moon’s bright side, yet not far from the sharply defined boundary of the far side’s darkness. There were no craters or rock formations within several hundred metres of the dome itself, he saw. A man on foot would have no cover approaching it.
But at least one piece of luck had come his way. The orbital sweep showed that the space cruiser which belonged to the dome’s occupants was not in sight.
‘Probably on Saltrenius again,’ Keill decided.
Some have remained,Glr said. I can sense human minds within the dome, though I cannot tell how many.
‘Anyway, it lowers the odds,’ Keill said. ‘And it gives me a chance for some exploring. Whoever’s been left in the dome is likely to stay inside.’
He curved his ship to a landing – just inside the deep shadow of the moon’s dark side, and over the horizon that would be visible from the dome. He knew that the landing would not be detected: its sound would not travel in the vacuum, and he had chosen a spot surrounded by upthrust clumps of rock that would swallow the vibrations.
Unstrapping himself from the slingseat, he gathered up his helmet and went to the weapons compartment. It contained a sizeable selection of rifles and pistols, with even a few knives and other hand weapons. But Keill did not hesitate over his choice. He had no illusions about what might happen: if there was a fight, it would be no place for more civilized weapons like anaesthetic needle-guns or stun-guns.
Instead he strapped on an ion-energy pistol, a beamer – a modified version of his spaceship’s weapons, firing a focused beam of raw energy.
Glr watched the preparations with interest. You are very calm, for a human, she said.
‘What did you expect?’ Keill smiled. ‘That my knees would tremble?’
I would have expected some worry or excitement,Glr replied. It is the human way.
Keill shrugged his way into his airpack. ‘It isn’t the Legion way. A waste of energy.’
Some day you must instruct me in the ways of the Legions,Glr said.
Keill laughed. ‘Little friend, if I survive this, I’ll happily put you through an entire training programme.’
He fastened his helmet, swiftly ran through a final check of his equipment, then turned again to Glr, concentrating, trying to form words dearly in his mind, as if speaking them.
‘Are you receiving me?’he asked.
Perfectly.
‘Good – then we can keep in contact. I want you to stay at the controls, but do absolutely nothing unless I tell you. Clear?
Perfectly.
‘And if any of the others spot the ship, and try to board it, let me know at once?
I hear and obey.There was a hint of laughter in the reply.
‘Keep your jokes for afterwards. And one more thing – if I don’t come back...’
You will be dead,Glr replied calmly, and no longer able to give me orders. So I will use my initiative.
Keill smiled. ‘All right. Then you can go off and report to your Overseers’
I will,said Glr. But first I might try out the weapons of this ship. On the dome and its occupants.
The airlock closed silently behind him as Keill dropped to the surface of Creffa. It was a slow, dreamy drop, in the light gravity of the moon – and his progress was also like a dream, long, reaching strides that were in fact huge, slow leaps of many metres at a time. Soon he had reached the edge of the undiffused glare that was the bright side of the moon.
The plastiglass of his helmet darkened instantly, protectively, as he moved across into the light. Behind him, his ship could no longer be seen over the horizon. Ahead, somewhere beyond the jagged clusters of rocks where he stood, the dome lay.
In some ways, he thought, with the abundance of fanged rock and the absence of vegetation and water, his surroundings were like the region of the Iron Peaks on Moros, where trainee legionaries went for individual survival tests. But at least in that place there would have been the moan of a mournful wind, and the crunch and slide of your boots over the rock, to prove that you were still alive. In this dreary place, airlessness meant an inhuman silence, bleak and disturbing, so that Keill felt like a disembodied ghost.
But he shook off the oppression that gathered in his mind, and began to make his way through the rocks – slowly and stealthily, controlling his movements now so that he kept low to the ground despite the low gravity, trying to step only on rock so that no tell-tale footprints would remain in the dust behind him.
At last, edging beneath an overhang that would have collapsed long before in normal gravity, he saw the dome.
It rose from the broad expanse of dust like a blister rises from human skin, but so bright in the reflected glare that it seemed to be made of mirrors. Around it, the dust was crisscrossed with the tracks of many boots, from the comings and goings of the dome’s nine occupants. But at the moment there was no one in sight, no sign of movement or activity around the dome.
He drew back behind the screening rock and began a cautious circling, wanting to examine the dome from all sides, and most especially to locate its entrance.
Keill.
Glr’s voice within his mind – and a tone of some urgency in the one word.
Your ship’s sensors report another ship nearby. On a course for a landing.
As before, Keill concentrated, to form the reply in his mind. ‘W ill it overfly your position?’
No, its course will bring it down near the dome, from the bright side. I will not be detected.
That was some luck, anyway, Keill thought to himself. But he wished that the other ship could have delayed its arrival awhile. Even so, he thought, if he could get close enough to the landing without being seen, and watch the men that disembarked, he might learn something.
He knew perfectly well, with a calm and untroubled sure-ness, that he would eventually have to try to enter the dome, no matter how many men were waiting inside. But he also had no intention of going in too blindly – not if he could manage a careful study of the opposition, or some of them, beforehand.
He wound his way as swiftly as he could through the rocks, still circling the dome but at no time exposing himself to it. Then he felt the ground tremble slightly beneath his feet. And at the same time Glr’s voice reached into his mind again.
Sensors indicate the ship is landing. It seems to be the cruiser.
An image began to form in Keill’s mind, projected by Glr – of the dome, squatting in its empty stretch of ground, and on the edge of that plain a ship coming in to land. The ship was recognizably a cruiser, but Glr’s mind had added a few touches of her own – a great plume of fire from the ship’s drive, and an evil face painted on to the front of the ship, all jagged teeth and cruel, slanted eyes.
‘Thanks’Keill said sardonically.’ Very artistic.’
Better than a map, is it not?asked Glr, her laughter bubbling.
‘Much better. Be quiet now, while I go and look.’
The heavy vibrations set up by the cruiser’s landing increased steadily as lie crept forward, until –
crouching within the solid blackness of a tall rock’s shadow – he was again at the edge of the plain.
The vibrations eased and stopped. The cruiser was down. Keill leaned forward to peer round the rock that sheltered him – and at once jerked his head back.
The cruiser had landed about three hundred metres away.
And beyond it, he had seen the entrance of the dome – its airlock open and spacesuited men emerging, moving at speed in the same long, leaping s
trides that Keill had used earlier.
He flattened himself against the rock. If any of those men, or the men in the ship, had glanced his way –
and if his helmet had glinted even for an instant in the brilliant light...
It was an outside chance – but it was possible. Time to move.
But he did not retrace his steps. He drifted with slow caution from rock to rock towards where the cruiser had settled. Whatever the risk, he was not going to pass up a chance to see whatever might be seen.
Soon he had spotted another vantage point at the edge of the open area. When he reached it, he saw, he would be able to observe the ship and the dome while staying safely hidden in a bulge of deep shadow.
He began to circle an outcropping, moving towards that point.
And he came face to face with two men, rounding the outcropping from the other direction.
Their faceplates, like Keill’s, were darkened against the glare, revealing nothing. But one of them was wearing a space-suit identical to Keill’s – with the blue circlet of the Legions gleaming from helmet and chest.
And both men were holding weapons, ready in their hands.
Keill identified the guns at a glance, and with some distaste. Janglers, they were called – stubby pistols with ugly, flared, bell-shaped muzzles. They discharged a field that set up interference with the human nervous system – which caused, at the very least, indescribable pain. The guns were a sadist’s weapon, outlawed on many worlds, and never, as Keill well knew, carried by legionaries.
He stood calmly where he was, making no motion towards his own weapon, while the other two took a tentative step towards him. The one in the Legion spacesuit lifted a gloved hand to his helmet, touching the switch that activated the man-to-man communicator.
‘That you, Jiker?’ The voice within Keill’s helmet was metallic, distorted by the communicator.
Keill felt relieved. Of course there were two men on Creffa wearing full legionary uniform., which obviously included spacesuits. This one, seeing Keill’s suit, naturally thought he was looking at his fellow impostor.
Keill flicked his own helmet switch. ‘Yeah, it’s me,’ he said gruffly, knowing his voice would be just as distorted in the other man’s ears.
But to his surprise the other raised his gun menacingly.
‘The hell it is,’ said the voice in Keill’s helmet. ‘I’m Jiker.’
Keill’s hand flashed, and his gun leaped from his belt. But the other man had only to press the firing stud on the jangler. And pure, raging agony reached out and grasped Keill’s body like a monstrous fist.
Dimly he heard himself cry out, dimly he felt himself twisting, jerking, beginning to fall.
Then he heard and felt nothing at all.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Keill awoke totheclamour of his own name being shouted, over and over.
No, not shouted, he realized. It was Glr’s mental call, as penetrating as a cry of fear.
‘Stop it’he thought, raising one hand to his head, which was throbbing dully. ‘I’m here.’
Relief flooded into his mind from Glr’s. What happened? Where are you?
Keill’s probing fingers found a raised and tender bump on his head, and the slight roughness of dried blood. ‘I must have bounced my head around in my helmet when I fell. As for where I am...’
He looked around. He was lying on a hard bunk in a small, metal-walled cubicle – which he recognized as the usual cramped sleeping quarters for men in a space-dome. The air smelled stale and musty, but was breathable – and he was his normal weight, which meant that some form of artificial gravity was operating in the dome. His spacesuit had been stripped off him and flung untidily in one corner – though his energy gun, predictably, was not with it.
‘I’m inside the dome, and I’m in one piece.’He swung up to a sitting position, ignoring the headache.
One thing about the janglers, he thought to himself – for all the pain they caused, it stopped instantly when the weapon was deactivated. Though there could sometimes be serious after-effects...
What now?Glrasked.
‘Y ou stay there, and stay quiet awhile. The door is probably guarded, and I’m going to...’
Whatever it was, he was not able to do it. The door swung open, and two men entered. Both were carrying guns, and they separated as they entered, moving to either side of Keill and keeping their weapons trained on him, all very professionally.
One of them, holding a jangler, was thin, wiry, with a long jaw and small, glittering eyes. The other was heavy-set and swarthy, with a nose that seemed to have been broken many times. And he had Keill’s own beam-gun in his hand.
Both were wearing legionary uniforms.
‘Y’ve come round, have y’?’ the thin one said. ‘Thought y’ might’ve cracked y’r skull.’ He grinned, a mouthful of small, yellow teeth. ‘Nice trick, that, wasn’t it? Askin’ y’ if y’ was me? Ol’ Rish here, he would’ve answered different, wouldn’t y’, Rish?’
The heavy-set man grunted, never taking his eyes from Keill. So the thin one was Jiker, the one who had shot Keill. And, yes, it had been a good trick. But Keill remained silent, studying the two men, judging their abilities, doubting if he would have much of a chance to move against two guns, but poised and ready if even the edge of a chance offered itself.
‘Nothin’ t’ say t’ y’r brother legionaries?’ Jiker went on. His laugh was high-pitched and ugly.
‘Where did you get the uniforms?’ Keill asked, his voice as expressionless as his face.
‘Took ’em off a ship that just came floatin’ by,’ Jiker grinned. ‘Boys wearin’ ’em didn’t have use for
’em, not any more.’
‘Where was that?’ Keill asked.
‘Just off good ol’ Moros,’ Jiker said, snickering. ‘You remember Moros, don’t y’, boy?’
‘Why were you there?’ Much could be learned from talkative men, Keill knew, if they could be kept talking.
Jiker seemed all too ready to chatter. ‘We like it there, don’t we, Rish? Quietest place y’ ever saw –
real peaceful now. Like the boss said, when we did the last sweep...’
‘Jiker!’
The voice from the doorway was deep, resonant, musical,
seeming effortlessly to fill the room. Jiker’s thin mouth snapped shut, and he paled slightly beneath his spacer’s sunburn as he glanced towards the door.
The bare-chested man who was entering the cubicle had to stoop, and to turn his vast shoulders sideways, to pass through the doorway. Here was the leader of the original three false legionaries – the half-naked giant who had gazed at Keill, and laughed, that frustrating day on the spaceport of Saltrenius.
He was smiling now, unpleasantly. ‘Jiker, one of these days I think I will send you for a walk outside without a suit, and see if you can talk in vacuum.’
The threat seemed all the more vicious for having been made in that easy, melodious voice. Then the giant turned to inspect Keill – who countered with an inspection of his own.
The enormous, smoothly muscled bulk of the man was belied by the lightness of his step, the control of his movements. Here was no lumbering man-mountain, Keill saw, but a man who was as athletic and co-ordinated as he was powerful. Which made him all the more formidable.
Probably from one of the altered worlds, Keill surmised. The hairlessness, the bronze skin were indications. But there was something else...
He remembered the words of the newsman back on Saltrenius, which seemed so long ago. About the strange markings round the throat and belly of the giant. The marks were plainly visible to Keill – looking very much like raised, narrow ridges of scar tissue, evenly and completely encircling the powerful neck and abdomen. Then Keill looked again, and his skin crawled.
The ridges seemed to be moving. Writhing, swelling slightly. As if serpentine things with lives of their own were curled round the giant’s body, just beneath the skin.
The giant’s malic
ious smile widened as he surveyed Keill. ‘So we have finally caught one, have we?’ His chuckle resounded in the narrow room. ‘And, I believe, the very one who was hurrying to make our acquaintance on Saltrenius. What took you so long to pay us a visit, legionary?’
Keill said nothing, watching the giant impassively.
‘Taking refuge in silence, I see. Very well – we shall go through the formalities. Your name and rank?’
‘Keill Randor, Group Leader of the fourth Strike Group of the 41st Legion.’ Keill’s voice was flat and cold.
‘Of the planet Moros,’ said the giant. ‘Is that not how the ritual went on?’
Keill let the question pass. ‘Gloating is a pastime of small minds. Do you have a name, gloater?’
The giant’s smile faded for an instant, then returned. ‘Ah, the legendary fighting spirit of the Legions is not quelled. Yes, Keill Randor, you may know my name – for the short while that you have left to know anything. I am the Lord Thr’un of Irruq-hoa.’
Keill raised a sardonic eyebrow. He had never heard of a planet called Irruq-hoa, but then there were many planets he had never heard of. He did know that aristocratic titles were common in many human societies through the galaxy. But it was an odd distinction for the leader of a gang like this to bear.
‘Why is a lord of Irruq-hoa sitting on a moon of Saltrenius pretending to be a legionary?’
The giant’s laughter boomed. ‘On my world, we have a species of water creature that is hardly more than a large stomach, with filters. It sits quietly across the current of the stream, and other creatures swim blindly in, to be eaten. I have been waiting here to eat you, legionary.’
‘On my planet,’ Keill replied coldly, ’there was a poisonous reptile that had the ability to disguise itself as other, less vicious creatures. We always killed them, whenever we discovered one.’
‘I am the reptile in disguise, am I?’ laughed Thr’un. ‘And you would like to kill me, I am sure.’ He stepped forward, looming over Keill, the eerie markings jutting and squirming beneath his skin. ‘It would be interesting to let you try, Randor. I have often wondered how the famous fighting skills of the Legions would measure up to those of the... to mine.’