Starwolf (Omnibus)

by Edmond Hamilton

  He laughed. Good for the Starwolves! He centered the guidance hairs until they met exactly on the clustered drive-tube assembly of the undamaged cruiser.

  Dilullo's voice said, "I'll bet you a half-unit that you don't get off more than ten."

  Dilullo lost. Chane got off ten in such quick succession that the first laser didn't crack until he had turned from the bent and smoking tubes of the first cruiser to the already slightly battered ones of the second. The heavy laser beam began chewing its way along the crest... they didn't have him zeroed yet, but they would in a minute. Rock and sand erupted in smoke and thunder. Chane got off four more and the second laser unlimbered and blew the dune not thirty feet below him into an inferno. Then, all of a sudden, the lasers stopped and the launcher stopped and there wasn't any more sound of battle.

  And a great shadow passed overhead and blotted out the sun.

  XX

  Eerie quiet; eerie twilight. Chane crouched in the hollow, his neck hairs prickling. He tried the launcher mechanism and it was dead under his fingers, as though the power-pack operating the trigger assembly had gone out.

  The laser-pods on the cruisers remained dark and silent.

  "Bollard!" he said into the transceiver. "Dilullo! Anybody!"

  There was no answer.

  He tried his stunner and that was dead too.

  He looked skyward and he could not see anything, except that somewhere up there in the murk and dust and nebula-mist something hung between the planet and the sun.

  He fought his way out of the hollow and back over the crest to the other side, taking up his life-line as he went, swinging free for dreadful seconds as the wind took him around the corner and dropped him back into the place he had started from. He could see the Merc ship, the defense perimeter, and off to his left the men from the Vhollan cruisers fanned out into an attack formation with anti-personnel weapons. A couple of the Merc gas-shells had apparently burst among them a little before, because some of them were reeling around in the characteristic fashion and wisps of vapor were still shredding away on the wind. Other than that, everybody was just standing and staring at the sky or fiddling with weapons that had inexplicably stopped working.

  Chane went down the line hand-over-hand to the bottom of the cliff, and started running.

  Out on the plain, in the dusk of that great shadow, the Vhollans seemed to be smitten with a sudden panic desire for togetherness. Their outflung line receded, coiling in upon itself. It became a mob of frightened men, expecting attack from they knew not what and demoralized by the realization that they had been deprived of any means of defending themselves, beyond their bare hands and pocket knives. Chane could hear their voices clamoring, thin and far away under the wind.

  He knew how they felt. Stripped and naked, and worse than that... at the mercy of something or someone too powerful to fight, like tiny children with paper swords against a charge of militia. He didn't like it either. It made him scared, an emotion he was not accustomed to.

  He heard orders being shouted up and down the Merc line. They were beginning to fall back on the ship, hauling their useless weapons with them. But as he passed the domes, Chane met Dilullo and a couple of men.

  "The Krii rescue ship?" asked Chane.

  "It has to be," Dilullo answered. "Nothing else ..." He looked skyward, his face a bad color in the unnatural twilight. "The radar isn't working. Nothing's working. Not even the hand torches. I want to talk to Lab-dibdin."

  Chane went with them to the dunes. It was dark inside and sounds of near-panic could be heard. Rut-ledge had replaced Sekkinen as door-guard, and as soon as he saw Dilullo he ran toward him, demanding to know what was happening.

  "My stunner doesn't work and the transceiver ... I've been calling. ..."

  "I know," Dilullo said, and pointed to the door. "Let them out."

  Rutledge stared at him. "What about the Vhollans? What about the attack?"

  "I don't think there's going to be an attack now," said Dilullo, and added under his breath, "At least, I hope not." .

  Rutledge went back and unlocked the door. The Vhollans poured out in an untidy mass, and then paused. They too began looking up at the sky, and babbling. Their voices had become oddly hushed.

  Dilullo shouted for Labdibdin, and presently he came jostling through the crowd, with several more of the scientists on his heels.

  "It's the ship," said Labdibdin. "It must be. This force that has

  inhibited all power equipment... and all weapons, too, hasn't it..." "It has." "...is a purely defensive device, and the Krii were masters of

  non-violent means of defense. We were using weapons here, you see. I could hear the lasers up on the ridge. So they stopped us." "Yes," said Dilullo. "You're the expert on the Krii. What do you suggest we ought to do?" Labdibdin looked upward at the hovering shadow, and then

  at the great dark derelict that bulked so large on the sandy plain. "They don't take life," he said. "Are you sure of that, or just hoping?" "All the evidence ..." said Labdibdin, and stopped. He was awestricken before the might and the imminent nearness of the Krii ship.

  Chane said, "What difference does it make? We don't have anything left but our claws and teeth. It's up to them whether they kill us or not."

  "That being the case," said Dilullo, "what do you think, Labdibdin?"

  "I'm sure they don't take life," said Labdibdin. "I'm staking my own life on it. I think if we don't oppose or provoke them in any way, if we go back into our eh´w and ..." He made a helpless gesture, and Dilullo nodded.

  "And see what happens. All right. Will you take that message to your cruiser captains? Tell them that's what we're going to do, and urge upon them as strongly as you can the wisdom of doing likewise. It seems pretty obvious that this whole thing is out of our hands now, anyway."

  "Yes," said Labdibdin. "Only ..."

  "Only what?"

  "A few of us may come back ... to watch." He looked again at the mighty derelict, in whose dark belly the hundred Krii sat waiting. "Only to watch. And at a distance."

  The Vhollans streamed out over the plain toward the milling mob from the cruisers. Chane and Dilullo and the other Mercs hurried back to the Merc ship.

  "How did it go on the ridge?" Dilullo asked as they went.

  "Good," said Chane. "It'll take them a while to make repairs on those cruisers ... neither one's in shape to get off the ground." He smiled wryly. "Your plan worked just fine. We can take off any time now."

  "That's nice," said Dilullo. "Except we don't have any power."

  They both looked skyward.

  "I feel like a mouse," said Dilullo.

  Rutledge shivered. "Me, too. I hope your Vhollan friend is right and the cat isn't carnivorous."

  Dilullo turned to Chane. "Are you worried now?"

  Chane knew what he meant. Starwolves don't worry. He showed the edges of his teeth and said, "I'm worried."

  Starwolves are strong, and that's why they don't worry. The weak worry, and today I am weak, and I know it. For the first time in my life. I would like to claw their big ship out of the sky and break it, and I feel sick because they made me helpless. And it was no trouble to them to do it. They just pushed a button somewhere, a flick of one of those long stringy digits, and the animals were suppressed.

  He remembered the passionless faces of the Krii, and hated them.

  Dilullo said mildly, "I'm glad to know there's something that can get you down. Are you tired, Chane?"

  "No."

  "You're fast on your feet. Run ahead and get Thran-dirin and the generals out of the ship. Tell 'em to go to blazes with the rest of the Vhollans. If the Krii decide to let us have our power back sometime, I want to go, and I don't want to bother dropping our guests off at their home planet. I don't think it would be very heal-, thy."

  "I doubt it," said Chane, and took off running.

  And as he ran, he thought, Here I go again. Why didn't I just tell him I was tired? Pride, boy. And when you were a very littl
e boy your father used to tell you how it went before a fall.

  I guess he was right. It was pride in what I had done in that raid that made me fight with Ssander when he tried to cut in on my share of the loot.

  And here I am. Not a Starwolfany more, not really a Merc, either ... just living on their sufferance ... and at this moment I'm not even a man. Just an annoyance to the Krii. And if that isn't a fall...

  He reached the ship, fighting his way through the Mercs who were loading in the weapons and equipment, on the chance that it all might work some day again. It was pitch dark inside, the only light coming in through the open hatchways, which of course would not close now. He groped his way to the cabin where the three Vhollans were locked up, let them out and guided them down, and when they stood outside he watched their faces and smiled.

  "I don't understand," said Thrandirin. "What is it? I see our men going away without fighting, and the light is strange. ..."

  "That's right," said Chane, and pointed at the vast loom of the wrecked Krii ship. "Someone else has come looking for that. Someone bigger than us. 1 think you can kiss it goodbye." He gestured skyward. "For there's another just like it up there now."

  The Vhollans stared at him like three night-goggling birds in the weird dusk. "If I were you," said Chane, "I'd get going. You can talk the whole thing over with Labdibdin ... while we all wait."

  They went. Chane turned to help with the loading, which had all to be done by hand.

  They were concentrating on the most valuable items and they were working awfully fast, so they had a good part of the job done when there began to be a new sound in the sky, and Chane looked up and saw a big pale-gold egg sinking toward them out of the shadowy clouds.

  In a quiet voice Dilullo said, "Into the ship. Just put everything down and go."

  Only about a third of the men were working outside, passing the things through the cargo hatch along a kind of human belt that extended to the storage hold. They did what Dilullo told them, and Chane thought he had never seen an area cleared so quickly. He followed Dilullo and Bollard up the steps to the lock, moving in a more dignified fashion, perhaps, but not much more. Chane's heart was pounding in a way it had not done since he was a child waking from a nightmare, and there was a cold, unpleasant knot in his middle.

  The open and unshuttable lock chamber seemed dreadfully exposed.

  "Whole damn ship's open," Bollard muttered. There was sweat on his round moon face, and it looked cold. "They could just walk in...."

  "Can you think of anything we can do about it?" asked Dilullo.

  "Okay," said Bollard. "Okay."

  They stood and watched while the big gold egg came and settled gently onto the sand.

  It sat there for a time and did nothing, and they continued to watch it, and now Chane had a feeling it was watching them. They were in plain sight if anybody wanted to look real hard, though they were taking pains not to be conspicuous. It was probably dangerous, and they should go farther in. But that was no protection either since they couldn't close the hatches, and they might as well see what was going on. The Krii would know perfectly well they were here anyway.

  The Krii, when finally they did appear, seemed not to be interested one way or the other.

  There were six of them. They emerged one after another through a hatchway that opened low down in the side of the egg, extruding a narrow stairway. The last two carried between them a long thin object of unguessable purpose, shrouded in dark cloth.

  Very tall and slender, their seemingly jointless bodies swaying gracefully, they moved in single file toward the great ship. Their skins, Chane noted, were not quite so dark an amber as those of the Krii he had seen frozen in stasis. Their limbs were extremely supple, the long-digited hands looking almost like fronds stirring in the wind.

  They walk so tall, he thought, because they're not afraid of us. And if they're not afraid, it must be because they know we can't hurt them. Not won't hurt them. Can't hurt them.

  They did not even look at the Merc ship. They never turned those narrow high-domed heads to left or right to look at anything. They marched quietly to the entrance and went up the steps and disappeared inside the enormous wreck.

  They were in there a long time. The men got tired of standing in the lock and clawed their way in the darkness up to the bridge room, where they could be more comfortable and still watch.

  Bollard said, "So far, they're peaceful."

  "Yes," said Dilullo. "So far."

  The golden egg sat on the sand and waited, its long rows of ports gleaming dully in the dim light. It did not have the conventional drive-tube assembly, Chane noted, and there were no external signs at all of what kind of power was used. Whatever it was, it functioned in the inhibiting force-field where nothing else did. Naturally. A defensive device wasn't much good if it immobilized you along with your enemy.

  He saw movement in the entrance to the great wreck, and he said, "They're coming back."

  The six came out, and after them the hundred.

  In single file, forming a long swaying line, they marched out of the dark tomb where they had waited ... how long? Their garments fluttering, their large eyes wide in the dimness, they marched across the blowing sand and into the golden shuttle-craft that would take them to the rescue ship, which would take them home. Chane looked at their faces.

  "They're not human, all right," he said. "Not one of them is laughing, or crying, or dancing, or hugging someone. They all look as peaceful and harmonious as they did when they were ... I was going to say 'dead,' but you know what I mean."

  "No visceral emotions," said Dilullo. "And yet that other ship has made a tremendous long voyage to find them. That argues emotions of some sort."

  "Maybe they were more interested in saving the experience these Krii have had, than in saving the Krii themselves," said Chane.

  "I'm not interested either way," said Bollard. "I only want to know what they're going to do to us."

  They watched, and Chane knew that from the open lock and the cargo hatch the other Mercs were watching, waiting, and tasting the bitter taste of fear, just like he was.

  It wasn't that you minded dying so much, though you didn't look forward to it. It was that you minded the way you were going to die, Chane thought. If these long limber honey-skinned vegetables decided to finish you, they would do it coolly and efficiently, and so remotely that you wouldn't even know what hit you. Like gassing vermin in a burrow.

  The last of the hundred entered the shuttle-craft and its hatchway closed upon them. The golden egg hummed and rose up into the whirling dust and cloud and was gone.

  "Now maybe they'll let us go?" said Bollard.

  "I don't think so," said Dilullo. "Not just yet."

  Chane swore a short fierce oath in Varnan, the first slip of that kind he had made, but Bollard didn't notice it.

  He was too busy looking at the fleet of golden eggs that had appeared, dropping one after the other until there were nine neatly lined up on the sand.

  Dilullo said, "We might as well make ourselves comfortable. I believe we're going to have a long wait."

  And long it was. Just about the longest wait that Chane could ever remember, penned up in the little iron prison of the ship. They ate cold rations, lived in the dark, and looked hungrily at the open hatchways that mocked them. Toward the end Dilullo had to use all his powers of persuasion, including his fists, to keep the men inside.

  Presumably the officers of the Vhollan cruisers were having the same trouble, and presumably they succeeded, because the Vhollans kept clear. Once or twice Chane thought he saw figures moving the dust-whirls underneath the cliff. It might have been Labdibdin and some of the other technicians; probably was. If so, they did their watching from a discreet distance.

  There was one comfort. The Vhollans couldn't use this interval to repair their tubes. Not unless they did it with little hammers and their bare hands.

  Chane paced and prowled, and finally sat moping, sullen as a
caged tiger.

  Outside the Krii worked steadily, neither slow nor fast, keeping a methodical rhythm that rasoed the nerves just to watch it. They never once came near the Merc ship. As far as they were concerned, it seemed, the Merc ship did not exist.

  "Not very complimentary," said Dilullo, "but let's keep it that way. Maybe Labdibdin is perfectly right and they don't take life. That wouldn't stop them from having some highly effective method of suppressing people, the way they suppress machines, and their idea of the seriousness of resultant damage to the organism might not agree with ours. Lord knows what their metabolism is like, or their nervous systems. You can wreck a man pretty thoroughly and still leave him living. They simply might not understand what they were doing."

  Chane agreed with him. Still, it was hard to have to look at the irritatingly remote and lofty creatures day after day and not want to try rushing out and killing a few just to vary the monotony.

  The shuttle-craft came and went, disgorging various equipment, taking the Krii technicians back and forth. A considerable amount of work was being done inside the wreck, but of course there was no way of knowing what that was. Outside, the Krii were setting up a complex of transparent rods that gradually took the form of a tunnel. They built that out from the entrance of the ship to a distance of about thirty feet, and then at the end they erected a kind of lock-chamber. At the ship end, the tunnel-like structure was sealed to the opening by a collar; they left only a narrow aperture for the technicians to go and come.

  One day, light appeared suddenly through the rents in the ship's hull.

  "They've got the power on again," said Dilullo. "Or jury-rigged a replacement for it."

  "How do they run their generators when we can't?" Chane demanded. "They're in this inhibiting field too."

  "They developed the inhibiting field, and would know how to shield their own equipment against it. Or their power system may be so different from ours... I mean, they don't even have the same atomic table."