by E. C. Tubb
"To Earth!" Craig lifted his cup. "All the way to Earth!"
Or where he and she believed it to be. As Dumarest wanted it to be. He leaned back and looked up at the blaze of stars; suns so close they almost seemed to be touching, worlds so near they almost made spheres in the heavens. A shimmering splendor against which he heard again the thin, cracked voice of an incredibly old man. One of the Terridae-the misers of time.
"Thirty-two, forty, sixty-seven-that's the way to get to Heaven. Seventy-nine, sixty, forty-three-are you following me? Forty-six, seventy, ninety-five-up good people live and thrive."
A mnemonic which held navigational coordinates when reduced to its basic essentials, as Ysanne had shown. Three dimensions of distance coupled with the essential radial unit which would lead them to a world of promise.
The one, Dumarest hoped, on which he had been born.
"Earth," mused Batrun. "The planet of unending riches. Where no one ever grows old or knows hurt or emotional distress. A paradise free of all the evils which plague mankind." He took a pinch of snuff, firelight illuminating his face, the question in his eyes. "And you left it, Earl. Why should any man run from such splendor?"
To escape cold and starvation. To huddle in a ship bearing strange markings. To be found and, instead of being evicted as he deserved, to be tolerated by a captain more than kind. One who had later died to leave Dumarest to wander alone from world to world. Heading ever deeper into the galaxy into regions where his home world was unknown.
Turned into a mystical legend, a fabrication of imagination, a jest heard in taverns-the Earth Batrun spoke of was not the one Dumarest remembered.
"We'll know that when we get there," said Ysanne. "Maybe he grew sick of endless sweetness. Bored with each predictable day. It happens." She drained her cup and looked at the engineer. "Is that bottle empty, Jed?"
"We'll share what's left."
"As we'll share the loot," she said. "The riches Andre dreams about. Wealth to buy a new ship and maybe a world to call his own. Money to ease his hurts and cushion his declining years. And you, Jed? A new face? A young and smiling visage to appeal to the young girls who haunt your dreams? A harem? An army of mercenaries killing at your command? And you, Earl? What will you do once we get you home?"
Dumarest said, "You're beginning to shout."
"So?" Ysanne emptied her cup and threw it on the fire where it lay wreathed in flame before bursting into a green eruption. "Who is listening? A few ghosts? Some invisible monsters? Shadows? Stars?" She lifted a hand toward them, fingers spreading, curving as if to clutch at the shining splendor. "Jewels, Earl. All jewels. Let us gather them and form them into ropes and chains and strands of sparkling wonder. Adorn me, my love, with the gems of your favor. Cover me with the glow of your affection. The burning flame of your desire." Her hand fell as she laughed. "Or shall we dance? Stamp out our wedding vows around the fire. We have witnesses and I remember the ritual." Her hands moved as if pounding the taut skin of a drum; a beat following the monotonous throb of the pumps. But the beat faltered as the sound abruptly ended. "What's wrong? What-"
"Nothing." Craig heaved himself to his feet. "The tanks are full and the safety cut the intake. Push in too much and they'll blow like bombs. I'll go and couple up the next batch."
He moved toward the Erce, boots rustling through the grass, the night strangely silent now that the pumps had ceased their pounding, with a heavy, brooding stillness in which small sounds were magnified; the movement of fabric, the stir of distant fronds, the rustle of falling embers.
Ysanne said, "We should stay here for a while. Search for gems, spices, things to sell. New catalysts will cost money and there'll be other expenses. If we set up camp and went hunting we could smoke the meat and make a decent trade. Hides for leather and there could be furs."
"From the beasts which don't exist?"
"Damn you, Earl. You know what I mean."
A cargo for the gathering and anything it fetched would be a bonus-but the price of collecting it could be too high.
Leaning close Batrun said quietly, "That check you asked me to make, Earl."
"Yes?"
"Positive."
The final proof of sabotage if it were needed and by his admission the captain had proved his innocence. Dumarest looked at the woman, sitting with her face turned toward the stars, lost in euphoric imaginings born of alcoholic stimulus.
She said, not looking at him, "The drums, Earl. What's happened to the drums?"
Rising, Dumarest stared at the ship. Craig had had more than enough time to have reached the vessel and switched to fresh tanks. The base-port was open to throw a fan of light into the darkness. As Dumarest neared it, rifle in hand, he saw its edge broken by the silhouette of the engineer.
"Jed?"
"I thought I saw something." Craig turned to face Dumarest as he approached. "A movement over there. See?" His hand lifted to point. "Near that big tree."
It reared to one side at the edge of the fan of brilliance. Tall, spined, crested with fronds. Small points caught and reflected the light in transient gleams. An oddity, gnarled, distorted-vegetation shaped and fashioned by the conflict of local forces.
A tree where none had stood before.
A thing alive-betrayed by the quivering of its bulk.
Dumarest said, "Get the others into the ship and stand by to seal the hull."
"Earl? What-?"
"Do it!"
Lifting the rifle Dumarest fired as nightmare flowered before him.
It was big, fast, darting from where it had stood, then freezing, to lunge forward again as another bullet followed the first. The missiles appeared to do no damage as the thing changed from the likeness of a tree into something bizarre which scuttled in the fan of light and lashed the air with barbed whips.
Dumarest jumped back and heard the thin, vicious hiss of parting air. Felt the jar as something hit his leg just above the knee. The blow ripped plastic to reveal the protective mesh buried beneath the surface. Beads of yellow fluid edged the rip and scarred the metal with acid fury.
"Earl!" Ysanne called, shocked into sudden sobriety. "My God! Earl!"
He saw the flash of her movement and ignored it as the thing lunged, spined legs tearing at the loam. A thing like an insect, a mass of fronds covering serrated claws, feathery tufts masking questing antennae. Spawn of this bleak world attracted by their scent and hungry for the kill. Dumarest fired again, knowing the bullet had hit but seeing no sign of damage. The missile could have passed through the creature or been absorbed by woodlike tissue.
Again he heard the hiss of parting air and threw himself down and to one side as living whips cut the space he had occupied. The rifle blasted as he rolled, again as he rose, and from one side he caught the livid beam of a laser.
Ysanne firing, wasting her time, betraying her position.
"Stand clear!" he yelled. "Spread out and stand clear!"
The thing reared a little as they obeyed, ridged protuberances lifting to track the sound of their passage, palps working beneath a waited crust. Camouflage carried to the extreme; living plants growing on the monstrous body, hiding it, masking its outlines. But the move had shown where to find the head.
Dumarest fired, traversing the area in an effort to hit the eyes. Splinters flew and the spiteful whine of ricochets filled the air. Again the bullets had done no apparent harm.
Ysanne called, "Earl! Maybe I can draw it away!"
Using her laser as a goad, but the thing was too big and too well protected for the handgun to have any real effect.
"Earl?"
"Leave it! Wait!"
The thing was at rest and could be studied. A creature which had adopted a bizarre camouflage; the bullets had ricocheted from stone and now he could see branches and slabs of slaty material among the fronds. A pattern-there had to be a pattern. All things of the wild followed instinctive procedures in order to ensure survival. To hunt, to wait, to lurk until ready to strike. To be attr
acted by motion…
"Freeze!" yelled Dumarest. "Don't move!"
"For how long?" Craig spoke from one side, his voice tense. "How do we get into the ship?"
Batrun was calmer. "A plan, Earl? You have a plan?"
He had a plan based on his knowledge of the wild. Of crabs which adorned their carapaces with shells and fragments of stone and weed in order to appear other than what they were. If the creature followed similar dictates they had a chance.
As he explained Ysanne said, "Earl! You're crazy! We-"
"Have no choice." He was curt, impatient. "Once it drives us from the ship we'll be helpless."
They'd be left to starve, unprotected from the elements, the prey of other, similar creatures eager to feast. Dumarest narrowed his eyes as he checked distances. The door spilling the fan of light was twenty yards from where he now stood. The creature was about thirty yards from the vessel-and its whiplike tendrils had left scars on the hull.
A race; unless Dumarest reached the door and passed through it before the creature could strike he would be dead.
"Ready?" He sucked air as Ysanne answered in the affirmative, hyperventilating his lungs. "Now!"
She fired, aiming at the head, the invisible eyes. A moment of distraction which Dumarest used as he threw himself toward the port. A step from it and he heard the whine of parting air. As he reached it something rasped against the metal above his head. As he dived into the opening a slashing blow hammered across his back, hurling him forward to roll in agony on the deck as fire surged in his kidneys. Pain he set to one side as he lunged at the row of newly filled tanks.
They were four feet tall, squatly round, fitted with a standard valve. Dumarest grabbed one, tasting blood as he heaved, feeling sweat bead his face and neck as he dragged it to the port. The opening swam before him as he lifted the weight, holding it poised in his hands. Before him, blotched by his shadow, the alien creature waited in watchful immobility.
"Now!" yelled Craig. He threshed at the vegetation. "Now!"
The noise attracted the beast, and the motion caused it to spin, tendrils lashing. As it moved, Dumarest lunged through tide port, arms swinging beneath the weight of the tank, muscles exploding in a burst of energy to send it hurling through the air. A brightly colored container which hit and rolled and came to rest close to the creature's bulk.
The thing froze. It became a nightmare shape of blurred configurations then, after an eternity, it moved with cautious slowness, inching toward the container, touching it, a claw rolling the cylinder.
Opening to grip it, to lift it closer to the masked head. The invisible eyes.
"Ysanne!" Dumarest threw himself toward the rifle. "Hit it!"
She fired before he had landed, the beam of her laser impinging on the tank, its heat causing the paint to fume and vanish. The pulse-beam allowed vapor to dissipate so as better to heat the metal. Softening the prison containing the trapped gases.
Dumarest lifted the rifle, aimed, fired at the glow of heated metal. The claw dipped, the creature backing as if it scented danger. The first bullet whined in a ricochet. The second slammed home with the dull echo of a direct impact. The third hit to point fuming beneath the beam of the laser.
The tank exploded as he fired again.
Metal yielded to become a hail of jagged shrapnel driven by the fury of expanding air. A bomblike explosion which filled the air with a lethal rain. Dumarest heard the whine and impact as missiles hit the hull above his head. Heard another as something lanced through the open port and into the ship itself. A twisted scrap which tore into another of the tanks, rupturing the metal, releasing the force held within.
A gush of energy slammed him with invisible hands, driving his face into the dirt, filling his head with stars.
When he'd blinked them away the clearing was empty.
And Craig was dead.
He lay sprawled on the dirt, his head at an impossible angle, blood edging the grinning rictus of his mouth. In the starlight his eyes were scraps of flawed and frosted glass.
"He was hit as he tried to run," said Ysanne. "His back broken, his neck. A hell of a way to end."
"He was lucky." Batrun was curt. "He died quick and easy."
"What?"
"He sabotaged the ship," said Dumarest. "He wanted us to land on Aschem." Where he would have collected his reward, a new face, a fortune-the Cyclan could be generous. "He destroyed the air-plant and bled the tanks. The alarms should have sounded but didn't. They had been fixed."
"An accident?"
"No. In any case he should have read the monitors."
The routine duty of any engineer. She said, "You knew. From the first you must have known yet you said nothing. Did nothing. Why?" She supplied her own answer. "The Chandorah! You needed him." She added, bitterly, "We still need him."
"We can manage."
"Have we a choice?"
"No." Dumarest moved toward the ship. "Let's check on the rest of the damage."
A row of tanks had exploded, one setting off the others in a chain reaction, filling the compartment with a rain of shrapnel which had ruined the pumps.
Batrun helped himself to snuff. "Bad," he said. "But it could have been worse. We can travel but not too far." The lid of his ornate snuffbox closed with a sharp snap. "The point is-to where?"
"Ysanne?" As she hesitated Dumarest said, "We've twice the air we had when entering the Chandorah and one less to breathe it. Find a world we can reach."
She found two; Weem and Krantz. Dumarest delved into a pocket, found a coin, named each side. Tossing it he watched it fall.
"Krantz," he said. "We go to Krantz."
Chapter Three
From her window Eunice could see the distant haze rising from the Purple Sea, the mountains to the west, the dull pattern of fields to the east. These things held little interest against the crescent-sweep of the town, which rested in the curve of jagged hills; the down-sloping mass threaded with a maze of narrow streets, the whole touched with shifting, vibrant color.
It was a good view and Eunice was proud to command it; many high in the hierarchy of Krantz had to be content with less. Proof of the importance of the Family to which she belonged-the Yeketania took care of their own. And Vruya was kind.
Thought of him turned her from the window to face the room. It was one she had made her own; high-roofed, circular, decorated with abstract symbols learned from ancient tomes. Seated on a long bench a row of bright-eyed dolls regarded her with unwinking attention. Facing the window a mirror held the subtle distortion of a limpid pool. A plume of scented smoke rose from a container of hammered brass. A clock measured the hours. A bowl held a fluid as black as liquid jet. An ornate box held bones marked in an elaborate pattern.
These things reflected her personality as did the drapes, the chair and table, the thick books adorned with scarlet ribbons.
One lay open on a desk, the pages held by a skull set with ruby eyes.
Ignoring it she turned to the dolls. Vruya held the place of honor, small, wizened in his ceremonial robe, the thin, peaked face holding the whimsical expression she knew so well-she had seen it often as a child.
Impulsively she picked up the doll and kissed it, breathing into the mouth, transferring some of her strength and vitality into the replica and so into the man it represented.
"Live, Vruya," she said, replacing the doll. "Live and grow strong."
Her movement disturbed the next in line; Mada with her sour face and bitter mouth. A bitch, but she had influence and so was capable of harm. She had little patience with those of the Family who had yet to prove their worth.
A situation soon to be changed; once married and a mother Eunice would be entitled to preference. Even Sybil who despised Urich would have to defer to her then; a dozen years of barren waste would provide no bastion for the woman once she had laid her child at Vruya's feet.
The phone rang as she straightened from the dolls. It was Helga with her usual spite.
"Eunice, my dear!" In the screen the woman's face creased and puffed beneath its paint, betrayed a sadistic pleasure. "I simply had to call and let you know about Myrna. Such fantastic news!"
"She's pregnant?"
"You knew!" A cloud passed over the painted face as she said, "No, you couldn't have done. The test only proved positive an hour ago and I was the first she told. Of course we must have a celebration. I thought tomorrow evening would be nice. Just a small gathering and we'd best restrict it to the Family. No friends or outsiders. I'm sure you understand."
Urich wasn't to be invited-she understood well enough.
"Eunice?"
"I'm not sure. I don't think I can make it." She added, with venom, "I'm pretty busy just now. Or have you forgotten I'm to be married soon."
"My dear!" The raddled face was clownish in its pretense. "How can you forgive me? But the news-Myrna is so close. Just like my very own daughter. And you, to be married, well, well. To a fine man, I'm sure. How could it have slipped my mind? Sybil mentioned it the last time we met. Urich, isn't it? A pity he's an Outsider but-" Her shrug was pure insult. "We have to take what we can get at times. And they do say age isn't everything. A mature man can have unexpected compensations. Tomorrow evening, then?" Helga's smile held acid. "I'm sure you'd like to congratulate Myrna on her achievement."
The screen blanked and Eunice looked at her own reflected image. It was startlingly young, the face round, smooth, bearing a childish immaturity matched by her eyes, the soft line of her jaw. Blond hair added to the doll-like impression and only the curves beneath her gown betrayed her ripe femininity.
With sudden anger she slapped the screen wishing it was Helga's face.
Should she call Urich?
In a moment she was punching his number. If nothing else he would provide comforting reassurance as to his love and their future security. Impatiently she waited for his face to appear on the screen. Instead she looked at a stranger.
"Madam?" He was of the Ypsheim, his brand livid between his eyes, and dutifully polite. "How may I serve you?"