by Gardner Fox
He found shelter for them in an empty building that once had been a dwelling. Old draperies and furniture were piles of dust now, but Bran built a fire of wood he found beyond the city and made a cozy warmth for them as they slept.
They had no way of knowing how long a day might be on Molween, or how long its nights, but when they woke there was a hushed redness in the air which might have been dawn or dusk. They were very hungry but there was no food to be found on Molween.
Bran lifted Peganna to her feet. “We’ll go back to Deirdre,” he smiled.
“And test the egg on the humming thing?” she asked. The Wanderer nodded and put his arm about her in reassurance.
The blue egg did nothing to the metal machine when they stood before it once again. Bran touched it to its surface, felt the vibrations through the jewel, but nothing happened. Peganna took her turn, sliding the egg across the metal, holding it high, resting the egg against the metal and walking away.
In despair, she handed it to Bran. “We’re getting nowhere. We might as well go home to Miranor. Maybe our scientists have found something in the Crenn Lir writings they’re deciphering on Miranor that will give us a clue.”
She broke off suddenly and put a hand to her mouth. Above her fingers, her green eyes were wide with dismay. “Oh, I forgot! We have no spaceship! And we can’t go back to Makkador for the Crenn Lir ship.”
“I have my own ship, Peganna. The one I used before I discovered the tele-doors. It’s on one of the Frontier worlds.”
The Frontier worlds were planets on the very perimeter of the Empire, lifeless planets for the most part, rich in metals and minerals but unfit for agriculture and with little water. For reasons as yet undetermined by Empire astrologicians, they were to be found close to such shell stars as had been discovered by Empire space explorers. They made excellent hideouts for outlaws and those who grew rich by preying on the merchant ships that plied the space lanes.
There was a tele-door on the planet called Lethe by Empire star mappers, in a small chamber that seemed to have been erected hurriedly by panic-ridden Crenn Lir engineers. Perhaps in the last few hours any of them had to live, as an escape hatch. It was an incomplete building, a desperate searching out for a world on which to flee the mysterious death that hounded down their people.
But the tele-door worked. It had taken Bran the Wanderer out among the Crenn Lir worlds, and now it brought him back. He led Peganna into the Lethean sunlight where his one-man cruiser rested on its vanes.
It was not a large ship; it had been a reject from a consignment ordered by Empire Fleet Command Headquarters nine years before; Bran Magannon had taken advantage of the surplus equipment sales held while he had been a Commander. Ordinarily, no single individual could afford a space ship, except a few multi-billionaire merchants.
“I’ve never regretted the money it cost,” he remarked as Peganna went up the ladder ahead of him. “Without it I couldn’t have wandered around the way I did. I’d never have found the tele-doors, either.”
He closed the port behind him with a little clang. A quick glance told him the ship was as he had left it, so many months ago. At least the Intergalactic Command troops hadn’t been through one tele-door.
Peganna followed him into the tiny galley, helped him open sealed cans of meat and pre-cooked vegetables. She put plates and cups on the stilfoam top of a wall folding table and arranged knives and forks beside them. A sudden thought made her turn toward the open control room door with a smile.
“This will be our second meal together since the Treaty Dinner before you went to Earth from Kuleen,” she called.
“Let’s hope we have lots more,” he replied from the control seat forward. He was adjusting coordinates and relay circuit diodes so that the cybernetic controller could take over the chores of liftoff and shifting into hyperspace gear.
When he was done he threw the starting lever and felt the answering hum sound from beneath the floor-plates. The ionic engine began revving up to takeoff power. Bran came out of the chair. From now on, every move the ship made, until it slowed for a landing on Miranor, would be guided by its own relay circuits.
As they ate, anti-gravitic plates lifted them above Lethe and hurled them outward into space fifty thousand miles. The ship lurched an instant—Bran made a mental note that the hyperdrive gears needed adjustment—then the deep black of space beyond the port windows turned to the misty gray of hyperspace, that universe of no-thing and no-when through which the starships traveled.
“A day,” he said to Peganna. “No more than at that, surely. Then we’ll be on Miranor. I’m going to check my weapons.”
“Weapons?” she wondered.
“I’ll be frank with you, acushla. I’m thinking about your brother, Gron Dhu. He was mighty friendly with Alvar Drexel eight years ago on Kuleen when we were working out those Treaty details.”
Peganna shook her head. “You worry too much. Gron Dhu is Commander of the Lyanir war forces, no more. I’m his sister and his queen. He is bound by custom to obey me.”
“Has no one among the Lyanir ever broken a custom, Peganna? Unless I miss my guess, Gron Dhu is an ambitious man.”
“Not that ambitious,” she stated.
Bran only shrugged and went on eating.
Gron Dhu turned from the window that looked out over the rolling grasslands of the world of Miranor. He was a tall man, heavily muscled through the shoulders that glistened nakedly where the ocana-fur of his military cloak failed to cover them. A dress sword hung in silver chains at his side; when he moved, the chains made faint clanking sounds. His hair was black and closely cropped above a hard brown face. He was a fighting man, and looked it.
He said easily, “You worry too much, Commander Drexel. I have explained it to you, quite thoroughly.”
Alvar Drexel gloomed at the tall young Lyanirn from under frowning brows. Necessity and a similarity of ambitions had drawn him to this younger brother of Peganna of the Silver Hair, right from the beginning; as time wore on, he was finding that their destinies were linked even more closely than he had realized.
“You don’t know Bran Magannon. He’s a devil.”
Gron Dhu let his lips thin. “I know Bran Magannon. He and he alone defeated my people. Oh, I remember him, all right. But devil or not, there isn’t anything he can do when he and Peganna put themselves in my power by coming back to Miranor. As they will do, sooner or later.”
The Empire fleet commander shook his head. “The Wanderer always finds a way. It isn’t there for you or me to see—but Bran sees it.”
The Lyanirn made an impatient gesture. “I’ve told you what Peganna seeks. A weapon, to use as a wedge to force the Empire to give my people living room. If she finds it, she will bring it here. We capture her—and Bran Magannon—take away the weapon and as ruler of the Lyanir I make peace with the Empire, turning Peganna over to you as a warmonger. If she doesn’t find the weapon we’re no worse off. She’ll come back eventually and when she does, I’ll turn her over to you as we’ve arranged. No matter what, she loses her throne.”
“And Bran Magannon his life.”
Gron Dhu nodded. He moved away from the window, stepped before a map that took up an entire wall of the large chamber in which he entertained Alvar Drexel. His fingertip touched it, made a circling gesture.
“I’ve put patrols in the back country, from Wurll to Pandimar. If Peganna tries to avoid us by taking refuge there, my patrols will seize her. But she’ll come straight to Andelkrann, which we have made our capitol on Miranor.”
“I wish I were as confident as you.”
The younger man let his cold black eyes assess his companion. “You had them once, on Makkador. If I’d let them slip from my fingers as you did, perhaps I’d be as worried. You’re in a sweat, Commander—which you betrayed by running here to Miranor for my help when Bran and Peganna escaped you on Makkador.”
Alvar Drexel half rose from his seat, his face flushed. He sank back soon enough; he was in
no position to give free rein to his galled pride. He commented lightly, “Maybe I deserve that, maybe not. I could do no more than give the orders. I could not ride in every zad nor walk with every foot patrol across the planet.”
His palm slapped the tabletop with an explosive sound. The golden winecup at his elbow trembled. His eyes glowed in feral rage. “A devil! That man’s an absolute devil. Always he finds the one way out, the one way to do what must be done!”
“Not this time,” snarled Gron Dhu confidently.
The fleet officer brooded at him. “Listen to me. Bran Magannon got off Makkador without a spaceship. Do you understand that? He used no spaceship, yet he left the planet!”
“Maybe he’s still there,”
Alvar Drexel shook his head. “No, no. He has some other way of traveling. He came to Makkador without a spaceship. He left it the same way. Gods! What I’d give to learn how he did it. Teleportation? Could he have learned its secret during his years among the stars?”
“He won’t be able to do his tricks in a prison cell—and we have some fine old dungeons here on Miranor, built eons ago by the Crenn Lir race who called it home.” He gestured at the window through which the red ball of a star-sun could be seen. “Were this a younger world, it would suit the Lyanir, but it’s old—old. Worn out! Drained of its ancient metals, its chemicals, its loams and vegetation. And bathed by some mysterious force that kills my people unless they swallow medication against its effects.”
He swung about, put both palms on the tabletop as he glared down into the upturned face of Alvar Drexel. “Peganna has failed her people, Commander. I shall not fail. You have promised—for my help—that you will see the Lyanir accepted into the Empire.”
“As a subject people only,” the uniformed man pointed out. “Liable to tribute payments and forced conscriptions. Not as equals. That much, I could not promise.”
“The other is enough,” Gron Dhu nodded. “From such a beginning, we may hope for more. Peganna was too proud to accept the role of subject people. I’m not—just so long as I’m made rayanar.”
He stood with highheld head, young and eager, hard and unscrupulous. I was such a youth, mused Commander Drexel, before the years and the disappointments ate so deeply into me. A man does what he may with what talents he possesses. The trouble is, we can boast of so few. So few! Even those we do not learn to control, to use to their best advantage. We can never attain the visions of our inmost selves, never quite create the godlike images we believe ourselves to be. Idols all, with clay feet.
The fleet commander sighed. To be young was to be arrogant of failure, intolerant of anything less than the absolute. Wryly he thought, I hope Gron Dhu has not fashioned his own feet with clay. If Gron Dhu falls, I fall with him. It was not a nice prospect.
Glumly he sipped the tart Molarian wine.
FIVE
THE SHIP came down on Miranor when the dawn was a cool redness on the land, with white wisps of mist rising from the thick clumps of berry bushes and the heat waves dying out across its pale deserts. Below its metal hull men came to stand before their hide tents and stare upward, shielding their eyes from its reflection where sunlight caught it. A thousand feet above the topmost ridges the ship moved, slowly.
Its gray bulk followed the ridges to a winding stream and then slipped out over a stretch of open country. From this flatland they could see the distant spires of a ruined city.
“Andelkrann,” murmured Peganna at the port window.
Behind her, Bran turned to a weapon rack and lifted out thin rods with energy coils about their barrels. Gravely he handed one to her; as gravely, she accepted it, then slipped it into her belt. In exchange she offered him a pill.
“These are as important as the a-guns if you want to stay alive on Miranor,” she told him. “Without them, the radiation on the planet will kill you as surely as would an atom beam.” Her lips twisted wryly at his scowl, but he swallowed the tablet.
“A planet with a bellyache,” he said harshly. “I’m glad I came with you, acushla.”
This low over a planet a starship needed human hands and so Bran swung back to his control levers, pushing off automatic and guiding the metal hull upward over a rise of rocks. Peganna was at his elbow, standing, pushing back her spill of silver hair.
The land below was old. As there are stars ten billion years old, glowing faintly in their fading heat, as there are young stars with scarcely a million years to their name, so are there young and old planets. Miranor was a planet that knew only its past, having no future as it had no mountains. All the high places had long ago been chipped away by temperature changes and carried off by rain and wind and a glacier here and there. Only the low hills remained, and an occasional ridge to point its crown at the sky.
The little encampments over which they passed were a page torn out of its dim had-been, with the hide huts and the cooking fires set in rings of stones. The men and women wore crude garments for the most part, and the few children Bran saw wore nothing at all. There were bows and arrows on the backs of small bands of hunters over whom they moved, and once Bran caught the flash of a spear point.
It made no sense, Bran told Peganna.
“It makes good sense, if you’ll open your mind to it,” she told him tartly, fingers digging into his shoulder muscles for emphasis. “Why else do you think I went to Makkador? My people live like nomads because they must. A man needs no atomic energy—which we hoard as zealously as a miser does gold—to put an arrow in a running deer.”
Bran grunted and Peganna went on, “The a-guns are stored away in woolen wraps. The women weave garments that are crude and fashionless, but that are also strong and able to stand up to the rigors of a hard existence. When you live in a hide tent, what need is there of silks and satins?”
“Damn the Empire policy makers,” he breathed.
“My brother would make submission and trade—in flame pearls and some other knickknacks we’ve amassed in our travels—for good things and for permission to live here. I say to hell with that!”
Her fire surprised him so that he turned his head and stared up at her. Tears made crystal streaks on her soft cheeks. Then her red mouth curved and her eyes slanted toward his gaze.
“Do I so amaze you, Bran Magannon? Is it so astounding that I want something better for my people than a—than a planet with a bellyache? I would give them a world with high mountains and tall trees, of grass and water and bushes thick with berries. There the Lyanir would build cities that could compete in beauty with your own.”
“You don’t have to argue with me,” he said.
“I only explain the tents and arrows, darling. We hoard our treasures, being a sensible people. We put away the a-guns and the silken garments until we can use and wear them properly.”
A maze of stone and marble lifted into view along the horizon. Andelkrann, Peganna whispered again, bending to stare at the ancient ruin. As they neared its spires and fluted columns, Bran saw that beyond it, row on row until they made a metal forest, were the gray metal hulls of the Lyanirn spaceships. Put away in mothballs, in a manner of speaking, against the moment of their need.
On two of the nearer ships there was movement as ray-barrels in their gun mounts swung to cover their progress. At any moment those weapons might spit red destruction at his little ship, Bran knew, and shivered to the coldness at his spine.
The guns menaced, but they did not speak.
He set his starship down in an open space between the ships and the city itself. Peganna was running to the hatch controls before the engines stilled, unhooking the locks and swinging wide the door. Cool air came into the compartment as she stood poised there in the opening, a white arm lifted.
At sight of her the people ran forward. Eager hands lifted to catch and hold her as she descended the ladder. They love her, Bran thought, following her to the ground. See how they crowd about, touching her almost reverently, laughing in delight at her safe return.
From their que
en, the people looked at Bran Magannon.
Some of them remembered him from the treaty planet, Kuleen. A few eyes opened wide and tongues wagged, but mostly they were indifferent to his presence. Peganna had brought him here; he would be respected as her guest, despite the fact that they owed their present misery in large part to this man.
Peganna turned and held out her hand to him. He caught it, pressed it, then walked beside her like a brazen giant in fur kilt and leather jacket, a-gun bumping to his stride at a hip. Where her shadow touched the ground, his was also, like a protecting spirit.
At one time in some remote past, Andelkrann had been a mighty metropolis. It stretched for miles, all white marble and tile rooftops, stone edifices massive above more dainty temples and long porticoes. Its streets were flagged in the same hardness that Bran had seen on other Crenn Lir worlds. Fountains splashed their waters—pure now after the unknown millennia that had passed since the Crenn Lir had died out—the great statues in stone and some red metal told onlookers that the Crenn Lir had been a handsome race.
Bran might have paused to study the statues more closely, but the soft hand in his tugged him on, almost at a trot. The green eyes that laughed at him and the pretty red mouth urging him to greater speed would hear of no delay. Now that they were on Miranor, Peganna was impatient to test the blue egg.
Two warriors at a gateway saluted their queen.
A door swung open and they moved inside, to a garden. Only a few hardy plants bloomed here, relics of the Lyanir past on their home world, transplanted now but scarcely thriving. Past all these the girl brought him, with a lightness to her step that told the man how happy she was at her homecoming.
The darkness of a corridor beckoned. They went through it into a room so massive they felt dwarfed. The furniture which had been carried from the starships seemed lost in this magnificence of faded wall murals and paving-stone floor.
Bran turned when he saw a shadow.
He was too late. A hand clamped on his gun wrist and a brawny forearm hooked his throat. From the corner of an eye he saw two men gripping Peganna, a hairy hand stifling her scream as she was swung up off her feet and held helpless. A red fury took hold of Bran at sight of her being manhandled, so that he cursed the men who held him.