The Witches of Karres

by James H. Schmiz

  Goth looked dubious. “Don’t think it’s big enough for that thing to climb into!”

  “Something with a body as large as that of a horse’s — no, I guess not. It was just a thought.” He pocketed the gun. “Let’s go find out what it is and what Yango thinks he’s doing with it.” He looked down at her. “This might get rough. We’ll sort of play it by ear.”

  Goth nodded, grinned briefly.

  “And I go no-shape, eh” ”

  “Plus the rest of it,” said the captain. “But don’t do anything to make Laes Yango think he’s arguing with a witch — unless it looks absolutely necessary.”

  “Saving that up.” Goth nodded.

  “Exactly. We might still have to pull a few real surprises of our own before this trip’s over. You’ll clear the doorlock as soon as we get there—”

  “Right,” said Goth and vanished. He kept his ears cocked for any indication of her presence on the way to Laes Yango’s stateroom, but caught nothing. The no sound effect seemed as complete as the visual blankout. As he came quietly up to the door, her fingers gave the side of his hand a quick ghostly squeeze and were gone.

  He stood listening, ear close to the panel. He heard no voice sounds, but there were other faint sounds. Footsteps crossed the stateroom twice from different directions — brisk human footsteps, not some animal tread. Yango was moving about. Then came a moderately heavy thump, a metallic clank. After a few moments, two more thumps… Then everything remained still.

  The captain waited a minute, activated the door speaker.

  He’d expected either a dead silence or some indication of startled, stealthy activity from the stateroom after the buzzer sounded. Instead, Laes Yango’s voice inquired calmly, “Yes? Who is it?”

  “Captain Aron,” replied the captain. “May I come in, Mr. Yango?”

  “Certainly, sir… One moment, please. I believe the door is locked.”

  Footsteps crossed the stateroom again, approaching the door. Yango hadn’t sounded in the least like a man who had something to hide. Those thumps? Thoughtfully, the captain moved back a little, slid a hand into his gun pocket, left it there.

  The door swung open, showing enough of the stateroom to make it immediately clear that no large, strange beast stood waiting inside. The trader smiled a small, cold smile at him from beyond the door. “Come in, sir. Come in!”

  The captain went in, drew the door shut behind him. A light was on over a table against the wall on the left; various papers lay about the table. The big packing crate rather crowded the far end of the room, but nothing approaching the bulk of a horse could possibly have been concealed in that. “I trust I’m not disturbing you,” the captain said.

  “Not at all, Captain Aron.” Laes Yango, nodded at the table, smiled deprecatingly. “Paper work!… It seems a businessman never quite catches up with that. What was on your mind, sir?”

  “A matter of ship security,” the captain told him, casually drawing the gun from his pocket, holding it pointed at the floor between them. The trader’s gaze shifted to the gun, then up to the captain’s face. He looked mildly puzzled, perhaps a little startled.

  “Ship security?” he repeated.

  “Yes,” said the captain. He lifted the gun muzzle an inch or two. “Would you hand me your gun, Mr. Yango? Carefully, please!”

  The trader stared at him a moment. Then his smile returned. “Ah, well,” he said softly. “You have the advantage of me, sir! The gun — of course, if you feel that’s necessary!” His hand went slowly under his jacket, slowly brought out a gun, barrel held between thumb and finger, extended it to the captain. “Here you are, sir!”

  The captain placed the gun in his left coat pocket.

  “Thank you,” he said. He indicated the packing crate. “You told me, I believe, Mr. Yango, that you had some very valuable and delicate hyperelectronic equipment in that box.”

  “That’s correct, sir.”

  “I see you have it locked,” said the captain. “I’ll have to take a look inside. Would you unlock it, please?”

  Laes Yango chewed his lip thoughtfully.

  “You insist on that?” he inquired.

  “I’m afraid I do,” said the captain.

  “Very well, sir. I know the law — on a risk run any question of ship security overrides all other considerations, at the captain’s discretion. I shall open the lock, though not without protest against this invasion of my business privacy.”

  “I’m sorry,” said the captain. “Open it, please.”

  He waited while the trader produced two sizable keys, inserted them in turn into a lock on the case, twisted them back and forth in a practiced series of motions and withdrew them. Then Yango stepped back from the case. Its top section was swinging slowly open, snapped into position, leaving the interior of the case exposed. The captain moved up, half his attention on the trader, until he could glance into it…

  It looked like a big, folded robe made of animal fur — long, coarse brown fur, streaked here and there with black tiger markings. The captain reached cautiously into the case, poked the fur, then grasped the hide through it and lifted. It came up with a kind of heavy, resilient looseness. He let it down again. The whole box might be filled with the stuff.

  “This,” he asked Yango, “is valuable hyperelectronic equipment?”

  Yango nodded. “Indeed it is, sir! Indeed, it is! Extremely valuable — almost priceless. Very old and in perfect condition. A disassembled Sheem robot… The great artist who created it died over three hundred years ago.”

  “A disassembled Sheem robot,” said the captain. “I see… Have you had it assembled recently, Mr. Yango?”

  “That is possible,” Yango said stiffly.

  The captain took hold of one end of the thick fold of furred material, drew it back -

  The head lay just beneath it, bedded in more brown fur.

  It didn’t appear to be a head so much as the flattened-out bristly mask of one. But the eyes looked alive. Hulik do Eldel had described them accurately — a row of five smallish, round eyes of fiery yellow. They stared up out of the case at the ceiling of the stateroom. Near the other end of the head was a wide dark mouth-slit. A double pair of curved black tusks was thrust out at the sides of the mouth. It was a big head — big enough to go with a horse-sized body. And a thoroughly hideous one.

  The captain pulled the folded fur back across it again.

  “The Sheem Spider!” Laes Yango said. “A unique item, Captain Aron. The Sheem Robots were modeled after living animals of various worlds, and the Spider is considered to have been the most perfect creation of them all. This is the last specimen still in existence. You asked whether I had assembled it recently… Yes, I have. It’s a most simple process. With your permission—”

  The captain swung the gun up, pointed it at Yango’s chest.

  “What are you hiding in your left hand?” he asked.

  “Why, the activating mechanism.” Yango frowned puzzledly. “I understood you wished to see it assembled. You see, the Sheem Robots assemble themselves when the signal to do it is registered by them.”

  The captain glanced aside into the case. The folded fur in there was shifting, sliding aside, beginning to heave up towards the top of the case.

  “You have,” he said, his voice fairly steady, “two seconds to deactivate it again! Then I’ll shoot — and not for the shoulder.”

  There was the faintest of clicks from Laes Yango’s closed left fist. The stirring mass in the case settled slowly back down into it, lay quiet. “It is deactivated, sir!” Yango said, eyeing the gun.

  “Then I’ll take that device,” the captain told him. “And after you’ve locked up the case, I’ll take the keys… And then perhaps you’ll let me know what this Sheem Robot is for, where you’re taking it — and why you had it assembled and walking around on this ship without warning anybody about it.”

  Yango’s expression had become surly but he offered no further protest. He relocked the
case, turned over the keys and the activating mechanism. He’d been commissioned, he said, to obtain the Sheem Robot for the prince consort of Swancee, a world to Galactic North of Emris. Wuesselen was the possessor of a fabulous mechanical menagerie, and the standing price he’d offered for a Sheem Spider was fabulous in keeping. How or where Yango had obtained the robot he declined to say; that was a business secret. Above and beyond the price, he’d been promised a bonus if he could deliver it in time to have it exhibited by Wuesselen at the next summer festivals of northern Swancee; and the bonus was large enough to have made it seem worthwhile to take his chances with the Chaladoor passage.

  “For obvious reasons,” he said, “I have not wanted any of this to become known. I do not intend to have my throat cut before I can reach Swancee with the Spider!”

  “Why did you assemble it here on the ship?” asked the captain.

  “I’ve guaranteed to deliver it in good operating condition. These Robots must be tested — exercised, you might say — at least every few weeks to prevent deterioration. I regret very much that my action caused an alarm on board, but I didn’t wish to reveal the facts of the matter. And no one was in danger. The Sheem Robots are perfectly harmless. They are simply enormously expensive toys!”

  The captain grunted. “How can you get as big a thing as that into your case when it’s disassembled?”

  Yango looked at him. “Because these robots are hyperelectronic, sir! Assembled, they consist in considerable part of an interacting pattern of energy fields, many of which manifest as solid matter. As they disassemble, those fields collapse. The remaining material sections take up relatively little space.”

  “I see,” nodded the captain. “Well, Mr. Yango, I feel you owe Miss do Eldel an explanation and an apology for the fright you gave her. After that’s done, I’ll bring the ship’s crane up here and we’ll move the robot’s case into the storage vault. It should have had all the exercise it needs on this trip, and it will be safe enough there to satisfy you…”

  Hulik do Eldel had to see the robot before she would believe what the two men were telling her. However, one glance at the great fanged head in the case was enough. “That’s it!” she agreed, paling. She shuddered delicately. “Close it up again, please — quickly!”

  When the case was locked, Laes Yango offered his apologies. Hulik looked at him a moment.

  “I pride myself on being a lady,” she said evenly then, “so I accept the apology, Mr. Yango. I will also blow your head off if you try another trick of any kind before we reach Emris!”

  Bad blood among the passengers couldn’t ordinarily be considered one of the more auspicious conditions for a space voyage. In this instance though, the captain reflected, some feuding between Laes Yango and the do Eldel might do no harm. It could help keep both of them out of his hair and generally hamper whatever sneaky maneuverings they’d be up to individually. He wondered whether Hulik would carry out her threat to blow off Laes Yango’s head, if things came to that point. She might, he decided. Yango, according to the reports he’d had from Goth, was prudently keeping to his stateroom most of the time now. Of course, the big trader was at a disadvantage… the captain had retained custody of his gun, on general suspicion.

  Neither Goth nor Vezzarn ever had heard anything at all of the antique Sheem Robots. Perhaps Yango’s hyperelectronic spider monster was as harmless as he claimed, but it was staying right there in its locked-up crate in the vault until the Venture was ready to discharge her cargo in port There’d been robots built that were far from harmless…

  About time for Hulik to create a tense situation on the ship next!

  Well, the trip to Emris wouldn’t take forever! They were nearly halfway through the Chaladoor by now -

  SMALL PERSON, said the vatch, YOU ARE MOST DIVERTING! I AM INCREASINGLY PLEASED TO HAVE FOUND YOU AMONG MY THOUGHTS.

  Eh? What was that? Surprised, the captain groped around mentally, paused. Out of nowhere that vast voice came booming and whirling about him again, like great, formlessly shifting gusts of wind.

  WHAT TROUBLES! WHAT PROBLEMS! exclaimed the vatch. HOW COMICALLY YOU STRUGGLE AMONG YOUR FELLOW-PHANTOMS! TINY CREATURE OF MY MIND, ARE YOU WORTHY OF CLOSER ATTENTION?

  Impression, suddenly, of a mountain of wavy, unstable blackness before him. From some point near its peak, two huge, green, slitted eyes stared down.

  SHALL WE MAKE THE GAME MORE INTERESTING, SMALL PERSON? SHOULD YOU BE TESTED FOR A GREATER ROLE? PERHAPS YOU WILL!… PERHAPS YOU WILL -

  The captain jerked upright, found himself sitting in the control chair. There was only the familiar room and its equipment about, with the Chaladoor gazing in through the viewscreens.

  Fallen asleep, he thought. Fallen asleep to dream of a preposterous vatch-thing, which had the notion it was dreaming him! His eyes went guiltily to the console chronometer. He’d nodded off for only a minute or two, apparently. But that was bad! It was still the early part of his watch.

  He got coffee, lit a cigarette, sat down again and sighed heavily. It had occurred to him that he might ask Miss do Eldel if she could spare some of her stay-awake pills, but he’d given up the thought at once. Accepting drugs of any kind from a suspected spy wouldn’t be the cleverest thing to do. He’d use all his next scheduled sleep period for sleep and nothing else, he promised himself. Standing watch half the time wasn’t the problem — if Goth could do it with no indications of droopiness, he could. But the complications created by the others, and the need to be alert for more trouble from them, had cut heavily into the time he should have kept free for rest. The sensible move might be to lock all three of them up in their respective cabins.

  And if there were any renewed indications of mischief, he decided, he’d do just that…

  Chapter EIGHT

  For a while, the passengers and the one-man crew seemed to be on their best behavior. The Chaladoor, however, was not. There were several abrupt alerts, and one hard run from something which blurred the detectors and appeared in the viewscreens’ visual magnification as a cloud of brown dust. It displayed extraordinary mobility for a dust cloud. An electric-blue charge crackled and snapped about the Venture’s hull for minutes as they raced ahead of it; then, gradually, they’d pulled away. Another encounter — when a great pale sphere of a ship came edging in swiftly on their course — was averted by warning snarls from the nova guns. The sphere remained parallel for a time, well beyond range, then swung off and departed.

  And finally there was Worm Weather in the viewscreens again…

  It was nothing like the previous occasion. One had to be alertly observant to catch them; and hours might pass without any sign at all. Then a tiny hazy glow would be there for a minute or two, moving distantly among the stars, and disappearing in the unexplained fashion of the Nuri globes. The lounge screens remained off — the captain had let it be known that the temporary malfunction was now permanent — so neither Vezzarn nor the passengers became aware of that particular phenomenon. But for the two responsible for the Venture’s safety, and for matters which might be unthinkably more important, it was a nerve-stretching thing. Sleep periods were cut short again.

  The captain, therefore, wasn’t too surprised when he discovered himself waking up in the control chair during a watch period once more. Nor — at the moment — was he too concerned. He’d rigged up a private alarm device guaranteed to jar him out of deepest slumber, which he left standing on the desk throughout his watches. It had to be reset manually every three minutes to keep it silent, and, even in the Chaladoor, there were few stretches where anything very serious was likely to develop without previous warning in three minutes. At the first suggestion of drowsiness he turned it on.

  But then came a disturbing recollection. This time he had not turned it on. He remembered a wave of heavy sleepiness, which had seemed to roll down on him suddenly, and must have literally blanked him out in an instant. It had been preceded by a momentary sense of something changing, something subtly wrong on the
ship. He hadn’t had time to analyze that…

  For an instant, his thoughts stopped in shock. Automatically, as he grew aware there’d been a lapse in wakefulness, he’d glanced over the detector system, found it inert, shifted attention to the ship’s screens.

  There was something very wrong there!

  The appearance of the route pattern ahead of the Venture had changed completely. Off to the left by a few degrees, hung a blue-white sundisk the size of his thumb nail, a patch of furious incandescence which certainly hadn’t been in view before! How long had he -

  Three hours plus, the console chronometer told him silently. A good three hours and twenty minutes! He flicked on Goth’s intercom buzzer, held it down, eyes still rapidly searching the screens for anything of significance the detectors had left unregistered. A dozen times over, in those three hours, some Chaladoor raider could have swept down on them and knocked them out of space… “Goth?”

  The intercom screen remained blank. No answer.

  Now fright surged through the captain. He half rose from the chair, felt sudden leaden pain buckling his left leg under him, and fell back heavily as Laes Yango’s sardonic voice said from somewhere behind him, “Don’t excite yourself, sir! The child hasn’t been hurt. In fact, she’s here in the room with us.”

  * * *

  Hulik do Eldel and Vezzarn were also in the control room with them. Goth sat on the couch between the two, leaning slumped against Hulik, head drooping. All three looked as if they had fallen asleep and settled into the limply flexed poses of complete relaxation. “What did you do?” the captain asked.

  Yango shrugged. “Traces of a mind drug in the ventilation system. If I named it, you wouldn’t know it. Quite harmless. But unless the antidote is given, it remains effective for twelve to fourteen hours. Which will be twice the time required here.”

  “Required for what?” Yango had put a small gun-like object on the armrest of the chair in which he sat as he was speaking. A paralysis-producing object, and the captain could testify to its effectiveness. He was barely able to feel his left leg now, let alone use it.