Rescue from the Planet of the Amartos

by Dale Olausen

  What were the aliens' plans for her? What hope did she have of breaking free from them in the darkness? Even if she did manage somehow to escape, how could she ever hope to find her way back to the planet surface, never mind the Beth?

  Furry hands grabbed her again, dragging her onto her sore feet and prodding her aching body into motion. Once again there were guards all around her. The only thing she could do was to try to keep up with the pace they set. As she stumbled in the darkness she found herself cursing. If only the humanoids would do her the small favour of lighting up another torch! A little light would be most welcome!

  As if in response to her wish, a faint light flashed up ahead in the distance. Suddenly, as she squinted at the gleam she realized that she had not heard any of the whistling sounds since she had been awakened. The aliens around her were keeping eerily silent.

  The light grew brighter as they advanced in the strange silence. They came to a corner, rounded it, and came upon a bizarre scene.

  A torch blazed brightly in the middle of the passage, held aloft by one of the white-furred, eyeless humanoids. He was flanked by a half-dozen of his fellows. Six more of the creatures faced them, only these were not naked the way all the others had been. They wore long hooded capes of some rough cloth over their shoulders. Sarah nearly cried out at the sight, for the eyeless, caped creatures looked to her like some horrid caricatures of the XER Authorities! She closed her eyes for a moment but it was no use; when she opened them again the aliens were still there.

  She stumbled and the help that she was immediately given was rougher and more impatient than that which she had received before. The scuffing of her shoes and the crackle of the torch were the only sounds to be heard as her guards led her to the middle of the scene, to stand next to the torchbearer. One of them remained by her side there, gripping her shoulder harshly while his companions joined the group around them. Now Sarah, along with the torchbearer stood face to face with the tallest humanoid of the caped group. He was very tall indeed, a head taller than the others of his kind that Sarah had seen. She felt like a dwarf in front of him, and frightened, even awed! She craned her neck to study his face but had to immediately turn her eyes away, shuddering. How do you read a face that is without eyes?

  Abruptly the tall, caped alien broke the silence with a short whistle. Immediately he repeated the thin, reedy sound, but with a slight change of pitch. Next the whistle grew continuous, but varying in tone, pitch and volume as it stretched through time like a fine wire might hang, strung high up across empty air.

  Then, just as suddenly as he had begun, the creature stopped. But seconds later the torch bearing alien picked up the wailing, sounding not very different from the caped one. After a time the caped one joined him, and as Sarah listened, motionless, the two whistled an eerie duet. Eventually that died down, but seconds later a whole chorus erupted around the captive girl; all the humanoids, including the guard gripping her shoulder, broke into a weird whistling song.

  Sarah listened to it while a sensation of dread grew in her belly. There was something ominous about the whole weird tableau. All the aliens stood so still while they whistled; the only motion to be seen was the dancing of the long shadows on the tunnel walls as the torch flickered. The caped humanoids and the naked ones faced one another solemnly as if they were enacting some strange ritual. Did the ceremony, if that was what it was, have something to do with their prisoner?

  Abruptly the whistling stopped. The torchbearer took a silent step forward and handed the burning piece of wood to the tall caped creature who accepted it with a gracious bow which only Sarah could see. At once the grip on her shoulder tightened and she was shoved from behind. As she stumbled forward one of the shorter caped figures came to break her fall; at the same time he drew her away from the unclad humanoids and into his own group!

  Sarah stifled a desperate howl. She balled her hands into fists and thrust them deep into the pockets of her protecto-suit. What use would it be to try to break away and run? There was nowhere that she could hide, nowhere that she could see to run away to. She was a prisoner, and now, it appeared, that she had been turned over to the priests - priests of what? What was she to them - a sacrificial animal?

  Sarah was subjected to another long hike, again guarded by humanoids on either side of her, and one before her, and one behind. The tallest alien swung the torch aloft in front of the group. Fortunately for Sarah's aching feet these robed creatures chose to travel more slowly than the naked ones had, and she had little trouble keeping up with them even as, once again, hunger, thirst and weariness set in.

  They made one quick meal stop during which Sarah was proffered the sour juice and the tasteless cake with which she by now was quite familiar. She gulped down all that she was given, glad that the food had not turned out to be poison to her system. Then she was prodded up again, and the journey continued.

  Soon after the stop she saw a glow of light gleaming far ahead, warning that they were approaching something. As they came nearer she realized that whatever she was seeing was a lot farther away than she had, at first, thought, and much brighter. Sunlight? Her heart leaped with hope, but she dismissed the wish as quickly as it had come. What she was seeing was not the light of the big orange sun; neither the colour nor the texture was right. This light was colder, more pale. Besides, Sarah reminded herself scornfully, surely she would not have been led through the bowels of the mountain, just to be led right out again.

  The aliens had speeded up their pace and Sarah found that she, too, was hurrying without protest. The new light eclipsed the blaze of the torch that still burned in the hands of the tall humanoid. They rounded a corner and, suddenly, the walls fell away on either side of them. Sarah came to an abrupt stop and stared, open-mouthed, ahead of her, barely aware that her escort had also stopped.

  A cavern! They had come into a huge cavern! A cavern so large that when she looked up she was not sure where the ceiling was!

  The bright light came from countless bonfires lit on the cavern floor. The place was a giant campground; home, no doubt, to numerous furry white humanoids, who were scurrying around the fires, going about their daily lives, completely disregarding the group that had just entered. Some of the creatures dancing about the nearest fire were very small; children, Sarah thought, surprised to realize that she was surprised!

  A shove from behind prodded her into motion again. As the procession of robed humanoids and their prisoner approached what looked like a broad avenue leading across the cavern floor, the naked white forms that seemed to scurry everywhere melted away in front of them, leaving an open road for them to travel on. Sarah stared around her with candid curiosity, mechanically keeping up the pace that was expected of her. It was all so incredible! What a story to tell it all would have made, if only she had not been trapped inside the plot!

  Her escort came to a stop in front of a round platform, which Sarah presumed to mark the centre of the huge cave. A fire burned in the middle of the platform; the flames licked at a tall, thin stone pillar which rose ceilingwards until it was swallowed in smoke and darkness. Around the fire moved more of the caped aliens, their robes fluttering eerily with every motion. Sarah thought they looked like sinister birds attempting to take wing and fly. It was a scene straight from a vid depicting ancient rituals of sacrifice! Sarah's mind reeled. Was she to be burned at the stake?

  When her brain cleared the humanoids were pushing and pulling at her to get her on to the platform. Even if she had been willing to climb onto it on her own, Sarah could not have done it; it was too high up from the cavern floor.

  Frightened by the fate that she thought awaited her on the dais, she fought her guards fiercely as they dragged her up. It was of no use, of course, and minutes later she lay on the edge of the platform, panting, and was subjected, once again to that torturous process of being "looked at", this time by the caped creatures that had been waiting around the fire. Then, deftly, before she fully realized what was done to her, the
humanoids bound her wrists and ankles together. At that she screamed, and struggled futilely against the cords, while the tallest robed alien stood above her, the still-burning torch in his hands. He seemed to wait until her fighting subsided into sobs; then, gracefully, he threw the torch into the bonfire.

  Immediately, two of the others gathered Sarah up again. She closed her eyes, biting down painfully on her lip - she fully expected also to be tossed into the fire. But no, that was not to be, at least not yet. Instead, she was dumped back on the platform floor, nearer the fire, in what felt and looked like a pile of odd rubbish to her.

  "Ouch!" Sarah's shoulder hit something sharp as she landed on the floor. With her hands tied behind her back and her feet bound together it was an effort to twist herself into a more comfortable position. Nevertheless, she did it, and finally lay still, facing the bonfire that surrounded the central pillar, panting from the struggle. She gazed into the leaping flames and cursed fate.

  "May the god of these horrid beings dislike the sacrifice they plan to offer and send disease and pestilence among them," she muttered fiercely. "Or may the Confederation Government colonize this planet and the settlers hunt the devils to extinction for their fur!"

  "Or," and a forlorn tear rolled down her cheek, "may I just get out of here alive, and make it back to the Beth! That's really all I want."

  Now that she was safely bound up and deposited among their other - precious? – objects, the humanoids paid no more attention to her. They flitted around the fire, performing tasks or rites that she did not understand. Sometimes one or two would jump off the platform, their robes flowing, and disappear among the unclothed creatures and the bonfires on the cavern floor. Soon they would return, sometimes carrying something, sometimes not. Sarah watched the comings and goings with no real interest, and listened to the continual high-pitched whistling around her, not caring that none of it made any sense at all to her. The sound was a drug, the leaping flames were hypnotic, and she was weary with despair. At some point she fell asleep.

  *****

  She dreamed that she was a child again, in Laurentia. She and Cam were on an expedition in a Nature Preserve, just the two of them, unaccompanied by adults. They were climbing up a rocky outcrop; Cam led and she followed him. He was climbing up the cliff easily, carelessly, while she came behind him fearfully, anxiously testing handholds and footholds before trusting her weight to them. She was terribly afraid that at any moment a hand or foot might slip, and cause her to lose her balance, sending her sliding all the way back down.

  Every now and then Cam would turn around and call encouraging words to her, but he was advancing so fast, while her progress was so slow, that already it was hard for her to hear him. She climbed doggedly on, determined to catch up to him, yet desperately wondering if it was possible at all.

  Then, as often happens in dreams, the scene changed. Or, rather, the terrain beneath her changed. The steep incline that she had been scaling turned into a perpendicular rock wall and she was standing on a narrow ledge, clinging, horrified, to smooth stone. Behind her was empty space, and above her only the rock wall, but with other narrow ledges jutting out at regular intervals. She understood with that certainty that is common in dreams, that had she been a mountain climber she could have made her way up the cliff from one ledge to another. But she was only a child and knew nothing about mountain climbing!

  She looked up and could see very high above her, at the very top of the cliff, Cam waving to her. "Sarah!" he yelled. "You can do it, Sarah! Come on! It's not impossible!"

  She leaned against the wall, clutching at it; pressed her face against it. She was desperate, afraid, defeated. No, she could not do it. There was no way she could climb up to where Cam was, nor could she possibly scale the wall downwards to where she had started from. Tears ran down her cheeks; she felt completely helpless. There was nothing that she could do.

  "Sarah! It's not impossible!"

  She woke up, Cam's words still ringing in her ears, her face damp with tears. She was still bound up, and stiff and sore from lying for so long in one position. She began the wearying process of shifting her body into a more comfortable situation. As she moved, something ground painfully into her hip. She swore and rolled over so that she was lying face down - that was worse. Drawing in a long breath, she tensed her muscles and rolled again, this time onto the other hip. That was better. At least the floor underneath felt reasonably smooth. With a sigh, she pulled herself into a semi-fetal position and tried to relax.

  Her eyes wandered over the rubbish that she had been lying on earlier. There were pebbles scattered about – she grimaced to see them. No wonder her hip had hurt so much when she had moved. The little stones had been digging into it!

  If only there was something that she could do to help herself! Lying on the floor, bound and helpless, was immensely frustrating. To wait acquiescently for whatever fate the caped aliens had planned for her - no, that was not her way! She wanted to fight, to get out of this place, do something other than lie motionless! She strained at the bindings around her wrists and ankles but that was a waste of energy: the ropes held.

  "Sarah, you can do it! You can! It's not impossible!"

  Cam's words from the dream! She listened as they echoed inside her head, strained to believe what they were telling her, mouthed them. It's not impossible! You can!

  Glassy-eyed, she stared at the oval pebbles that lay before her on the floor and chanted Cam's words out loud: "It's not impossible! It's not impossible!” She willed the words to be true. They had to be true! There must be a way out of the predicament! There must!

  A spark of fire ignited inside the nearest pebble. She gazed at it, hypnotized. It grew. Another spark came into being in the next stone. And another in the one closest to it.

  Awed, Sarah watched as one after another the dull pebbles caught the fire and transformed themselves into glorious green crystals filled with golden fire right in front of her eyes.

  "What?" She whispered the word. And even as she did, she understood. She had found the Witches' Stones! And somehow they had become keyed while she had been staring at them!

  Something else was happening, too! As she stared at the gold fire snaking through the Witches’ Stones, she could feel herself move, rise up off the rock floor. She was floating in the air! And her hands and feet were free of their bonds; she could move them at will!

  Thrilled with this new freedom she floated up high, above the platform fire and the caped humanoids who went about their business, oblivious to what was happening. She turned to look down at them, at the bonfire and also the witch-fire which blazed green and golden next to the real one.

  And she looked down on herself on the floor, huddled on her side uncomfortably, wrists and ankles bound with strong twine. She gasped! The prisoner had not escaped! Only the prisoner's mind had escaped!

  Even as she watched her own pitiful form lying on the rock, the recognition of what had happened came to her. Somehow, she had lucked into the power of the Witches’ Stones! She had used their extraordinary properties to propel her mind out of her body and up into the air above! Had she, in some manner that she could not understand, keyed them, too? Did that mean that she was stone-sensitive?

  If that was so, then perhaps she could use the power of the stones to free her body from its bonds, and to escape from the cavern and the tunnels back into open air. She floated back towards the platform floor, and studied the knots binding the wrists and the ankles of her body. No, it was useless. Maybe a real Witch could have loosened the ropes with nothing but mind power at her command, but a real Witch she was not. She had not the faintest idea of how to approach the problem.

  As a free-floating mind could she not get someone, or something, else to do the untying? Perhaps she could get inside someone else's brain and persuade him to do her will? She could certainly try. One of the eyeless humanoids would have to do, since there was no one else around.

  After scouting about for a few momen
ts, she chose as her target a half-grown alien, reasoning that adolescents were more open to being influenced than adults were. She approached the creature, willed herself inside its skull and reached for its thoughts, planning somehow to plant the necessary suggestion among them.

  She made contact - then recoiled from the mental touch, shocked and repelled! The creature's mind was utterly alien! She could make no sense of its thought patterns; there was nothing there that she could grasp! If the humanoids were intelligent, their intelligence was beyond her understanding!

  "It must be because they have no eyes," she explained to herself quite sensibly, returning to the central fire. "Since they have no eyes they must organize knowledge in a way that doesn't make any sense to me."

  She would have to try something different. But what? "It's not impossible!" Cam's words echoed within her once more. No, it's not impossible, she agreed. Nothing was impossible! She was the floating proof of that!

  What about mindtravelling out of the cave and to the Beth? She ought to be able to make mind contact with her own kind! If she could inform the Explorers of her plight they would be sure to try to rescue her, especially since she had found the amartos that they were searching for! Of course, by the time they reached the cavern her body might well have been cast into the fire. But that was a possibility that she did not care to dwell on.

  How was mindtravelling done? She had no idea. However, she had better find out fast.

  "Imagination is the tool."

  Where had the words come from? There was no time to worry about that; she had better just follow the advice. It made perfectly good sense, of course. Imagine as clearly as possible the place where she wanted to go, then will herself to be there.

  She thought about the inside of the Beth, then narrowed her focus to a particular corner of the lounge. Carefully she built up an image of herself sitting on a chair in that corner, meticulously surrounding herself with all the details that she could remember from the last time she had been there. The table by which she had sat, had a scratched top, and the next chair had a small rip in the upholstering of the seat. The wall she would have been looking at was painted a pleasant cream colour and the carpet beneath her feet would be an institutional grey.