Ride the Star Winds

by A Bertram Chandler

  “We have to see what’s wrong so we can fix it. Out with you, now!”

  “Oh, all right. All right.”

  The smaller of the two women ventured out into the night, picking just the wrong moment for her excursion. A shrieking gust eddied around the house so that even on its lee side there was little protection. Her weatherproof cloak was whipped up over and around her head, blinding her and trapping her arms. She staggered out blindly, her naked legs luminescent in the darkness. She blundered right into the arms of Shirl and Darleen. Her shriek as a hard fist connected with the nape of her neck was muffled by her enveloping garment. She fell to the sodden ground and lay there, face down, her bare rump exposed to the lashing of the driving rain. She would be visible from the open doorway; Grimes and his companions, in their dark clothing, would not.

  “Lalia!” the woman standing in the door was screaming. “Lalia! What’s wrong? Did you fall?”

  And then she had left the shelter of the house, was staggering out over the rough ground, buffeted by the wind, her flimsy robe shredded from her body as she made her unsteady way toward her fallen companion. Grimes and the others withdrew to one side, hoping that they would not be seen, and then, with him in the lead, ran toward the house, their stunguns out and ready. Once inside they slammed and barred the door. (Grimes felt a brief twinge of pity for those two near-naked females shut out in the storm.)

  The room in which they were standing was sparsely furnished—a rough table, a half-dozen equally rough chairs, a pressure lantern hanging from a rafter. Against the far wall a wooden staircase—more of a ladder really—led to the upper floor. In the side wall to the left was an open doorway.

  From it came a female voice.

  “Sounds like they’re back. Now, perhaps, we’ll be able to get this accursed transceiver working again.”

  “I’m sure that dear Ellena is waiting with bated breath for the rest of our weather report,” sneered another female voice.

  “Be that as it may, we’re still supposed to be in touch every six hours, on the hour, if only to let her know that his sexist lordship is doing as well as may be expected.” She raised her voice. “Lalia! Daphne! What’s keeping you? Is that aerial still standing?”

  Grimes and Maggie, stunguns in hand, advanced to the open door, the others behind them. They saw the four women, who were huddled over the large transceiver upon which they had been working, replacing power cells and printed circuits. One of them he recognized; it was the fat blonde with whom he had tangled on the occasion of the Archon’s abduction, although what had been brassy hair was now no more than a gray stubble. There must have been a discharge from the set when the lightning struck and she must have been in the way of it. She looked up from her work and stared at him.

  She jumped to her feet, screwdriver in hand.

  “You!” she snarled.

  “Yes, me,” agreed Grimes pleasantly as he shot her.

  Beside him Maggie’s stungun buzzed as she disposed of two of the other ladies and from behind him Fenella, determined not to be left out of things, loosed off a paralyzing blast at the redhead who was about to throw a spanner at the commodore.

  We should have left one of them awake, thought Grimes, to take us to where they have Brasidus. Not that it much mattered. This house, little more than a shack, was no castle. There would be very few rooms to search.

  They went back into the first room. Somebody was hammering on the door to outside and yelling, “Let us in! Let us in, damn you!”

  “Let them in,” Grimes whispered to Shirl.

  She obeyed.

  The two women who had gone to inspect the aerial stumbled in. In normal circumstances they might have been attractive, with what remained of their rain-soaked clothing clinging to quite shapely bodies, but Grimes thought they looked like two drowned rats. They screamed when they saw the intruders, screamed again when the two New Alicians grabbed them, one to each, held them with their arms twisted up painfully behind their backs. Still they stared defiantly at Grimes. One of them spat at him.

  “Ladies, ladies,” he admonished. Then, with the whipcrack of authority in his voice, “Where is the Archon?”

  “Why should we tell you?” growled the taller of the pair.

  Grimes raised his stungun in his right hand, with the fingers of his left adjusted the setting.

  “John, you’re not going to . . . ?” expostulated Maggie. “You said that there was to be no killing.”

  Grimes hoped that he had the setting right. There was one beam intensity the use of which was supposed to be illegal, against the rules of civilized warfare. It was a matter of very fine adjustment, a fraction of a degree above MAXIMUM STUN although less than LETHAL. Una Freeman, a Federation police officer whom he had once known, had taught him this nasty little trick, telling him that it might come in handy some day. “But be careful,” she had warned him. “Overdo it and you’ll finish up with a human vegetable who’d be better off dead.”

  “Where is the Archon?” he demanded again.

  “Get stuffed!” came the defiant reply.

  Grimes raised the bulky pistol.

  “That’s right,” sneered the woman. “Put me to sleep so I’ll never talk. D’you think I don’t know a stungun when I see one?”

  “Drop her!” Grimes barked to Darleen. “Get away from her!”

  For a moment the tall, black-haired woman stood there, then she started toward Grimes, clawlike fingers extended.

  Grimes pressed the firing stud.

  The weapon whined.

  The woman was cut down in mid-leap then fell to the floor, writhing in agony, the muzzle of the pistol still trained on her, still emitting its beam. She was making a shrill grunting noise through her closed mouth and, above this, could be heard the grinding of her teeth. Throughout her body muscle fought against muscle. She was on her back squirming in a ghastly parody of orgasm, and then only her heels and the back of her head were in contact with the floor. Blood trickled from the corners of her mouth.

  “Stop!” screamed Maggie.

  He released the pressure on the firing stud.

  His victim collapsed in a shuddering heap.

  “Where is the Archon?” repeated Grimes.

  She lifted her head to glare at him. She spat out blood and fragments of broken teeth.

  “Get . . . stuffed . . .”

  Hating himself, and hating her for being so stubborn, Grimes took aim again.

  “I’ll tell!” screamed the small, mousy blonde. “I’ll tell you! But don’t hurt her again!”

  “Gutless little bitch!” was all the thanks she got from her friend.

  But Grimes felt better when he discovered that his harsh interrogation had been necessary after all. There was a cellar, the trapdoor to which had been concealed by the heavy rug upon which the table had been standing, that could be opened only by pressing a stud, disguised as a nailhead—one among many—in the wooden floor. There was a rough wooden staircase down into the black depths.

  “Brasidus!” yelled Grimes into the opening.

  “Here!” came the reply from below. Then, “Who’s that?”

  “Grimes. We’ve come to get you out!”

  But there was something that had to be done first. Grimes set the control knob of his pistol to MEDIUM STUN. He pointed the weapon at the black-haired woman who was still sprawled on the floor, twitching and moaning. He said gently, “This will put you out. You’ll feel better when you recover.” (It was not quite a lie, although it would be days before the soreness left her overstrained muscles and she would require considerable dental work.)

  “Bastard!” she hissed viciously from her bleeding mouth. “Bastard!”

  And then she was silent and her body and limbs were no longer twitching.

  Darleen lifted the pressure lamp from its bracket, started toward the open trapdoor.

  “Hold it!” ordered Grimes. “Let her go first.” He hustled the small blonde toward the head of the stairway. “There ma
y be booby traps.”

  So they followed their prisoner down into what was more of a cellar than a real dungeon, smelling of the wine and the spicy foodstuffs stored therein, although in one corner there was a cage constructed from stout metal bars, its door secured by a heavy padlock. In this stood Brasidus. He was naked and his beard and hair were unkempt but otherwise he seemed in good enough condition.

  “John!” he cried. “Maggie! By all the gods, it’s good to see you!”

  “And good to see you!” said Grimes. He grabbed the small blonde by her shoulder. “Where’s the key to this cage?”

  “I . . . I don’t know . . . .”

  “Give her the same treatment that you gave the other bitch,” suggested Fenella viciously.

  But Maggie had returned her stungun to its holster, pulled out her laser pistol. An acrid stink of burning metal filled the air and incandescent, molten gobbets hissed and crackled as they fell to the floor.

  Free, Brasidus hugged the embarrassed Grimes in a bearlike embrace, then did the same to Maggie. (“Don’t I get a kiss?” complained Fenella.) And then, amazingly, he swept the small blonde into his arms, pressed his lips on hers. She did not resist, in fact cooperated quite willingly.

  “Might I ask,” inquired Fenella, “just what the hell is going on here?”

  Brasidus laughed. “It’s because of Lalia that I’m down in this hole. At first I enjoyed considerably more freedom. Lalia and I . . . Oh, well, you know how things are. Daphne caught us at it . . .”

  “Perhaps Daphne had the right to be jealous,” suggested Fenella.

  “It’s time that we were getting out of here,” said Grimes. “I’ve a ship waiting.”

  “Come, then,” said Brasidus. With his arm still about Lalia’s shoulders he started for the foot of the staircase.

  “You aren’t taking her with you,” stated rather than asked Fenella.

  “Why not? She was good to me.”

  And good to Daphne, thought Grimes, and, above all, good to herself.

  He said, “I’m sorry. She has to stay here.”

  Brasidus released the girl and shrugged.

  “Just as well, perhaps,” he muttered. “Probably Ellena wouldn’t approve if I brought her into the Palace.”

  And you’ve a lot to learn about Ellena, my poor friend, thought Grimes. But that can wait until we’re in the ship on the way back to Port Sparta.

  Maggie’s stungun buzzed as she ensured Lalia’s unconsciousness for at least half an hour.

  Chapter 28

  In the upstairs room they gave Brasidus the clothing that they had brought for him, the tough coveralls and the heavy boots. He dressed in sulky silence. They let themselves out of the house. The storm was abating although the rain was still as heavy as ever. There was no longer an almost continuous flare of lightning but laser pistols, set to low intensity, did duty as electric torches to illuminate their way.

  The stream whose course they had followed up to the village was now a wild torrent, bearing on its crest all manner of flotsam, uprooted bushes and small trees and the like. Audible even above the sound of rushing water was the grinding rumble of the boulders rolling downhill along the river bed.

  But where was Krait?

  Surely, thought Grimes, we should be seeing her by now.

  He set the beam of his laser to higher intensity, sent it probing ahead into the rain-lashed darkness. There was a very pretty rainbow effect but no reflection from gleaming metal. He began to feel a growing uneasiness. Surely the little bitch hadn’t lifted off by herself . . . Surely some freakish accident, a chance lightning bolt for example, had not caused actuation of the inertial drive machinery . . . .

  But that was fantasy.

  But where was the ship?

  Maggie cried out.

  Like Grimes, she had adjusted her laser pistol. Unlike him she was directing the beam only just above ground level. She was first to see the ship. Afterwards it was easy to work out what must have happened, what had happened—the almost-island on which Grimes had set her down had become a real island, an island whose banks were eroded, faster and faster, by the rushing water. With the once-solid ground below her vanes washed away she had toppled. The crash of her falling had just been part of the general tumult of the storm.

  Fenella voiced the thoughts of all of them.

  “That’s fucked it!” she stated.

  Too right, thought Grimes, but his mind was working busily. Suppose, just suppose, that the ship’s main machinery had not been too badly damaged . . . Then it would be possible, difficult but possible, to lift her on lateral thrust and then, when high enough from the ground, to turn her about a short axis to a normal attitude. In theory it could be done. In fact Grimes had heard of its being done, although he had never had to attempt such a maneuver himself; the nearest to it had been the righting of a destroyer, a much larger vessel. Then those in the ship had used lateral thrust while he, in control of operations, had employed a spaceyacht as a tug.

  But to do anything at all he had to get into the ship.

  Accompanied by the others he walked, so far as was possible, around the cigar-shaped hull. It formed a bridge over the river, with the nose on the bank upon which Grimes was standing, with the stern on what little remained of the island. And, Grimes saw by the light of the laser torches, she had fallen in such a way that the airlock was below her. He told Maggie and the others.

  “Can’t we burn a way in?” she asked. “The control room viewports should be a weak point . . .”

  And those viewports, thought Grimes glumly, were supposed to be able to withstand, at least for an appreciable time, the assault of a laser cannon . . . How long would it take hand lasers to make a hole? But it had to be tried.

  And so they stood there, the five of them who were armed, with Brasidus watching, aiming their pistols at the center of one of the viewports. Soon their target was obscured by steam as the intense heat vaporized the falling rain, soon the exposed skin of their faces felt as though it were being boiled.

  But they persisted.

  Then the intense beam of ruby light from Maggie’s weapon faded into the infrared, died. She caught the butt of the weapon a clout with her free hand but it did not help. “Power cell’s dead,” she muttered.

  “And mine . . .” said Fenella.

  The other lasers sputtered out. The steam dispersed. The eyes of the party became accustomed to the darkness—but, Grimes realized, it was no longer dark. The sun must now be up, somewhere behind the fast-scudding nimbus. He looked at the shallow depression in the thick transparency of the viewport, all that they had been able to achieve at the cost of their most effective weaponry.

  He flinched as something whipped past his head with a noise that was part whistle, part crack. A scar of bright metal appeared on the hide of Krait just below the viewports. A long time later—it seemed—came the report of a projectile firearm.

  “Take cover!” yelled Grimes. “Behind the ship!”

  He waited—like a fool, he told himself, like a fool—until the others had moved, looking toward where he thought the shot had come from, holding his pistol as though for instant use. He saw her, a pale form up the hillside. It was, he thought, the fat blonde. Her body bulk must have minimized the effects of the stungun blast. She had her rifle raised for another shot. It went wild and then she ducked behind a boulder.

  Grimes, still holding his useless laser pistol threateningly, walked carefully backward. Just before he joined the others a third shot threw up a fountain of mud by his right foot.

  Secure, for the time being, behind the bulk of the crippled courier he said, “There’s only one of them. That fat bitch . . . .”

  “Hephastia,” said Brasidus.

  “Thanks,” said Grimes. “That saves me the bother of being formally introduced to her. Luckily she doesn’t know that our lasers are dead. But when we fail to return her fire she’ll realize that they are, and come for us.”

  “We’ve the stunguns
,” said Maggie.

  “And what effective range do they have?” asked Grimes. “Little more than three meters, if that.”

  “But how much ammunition does she have?” said Fenella.

  “We don’t know,” Grimes told her. “If she’s any sort of a shot six rounds should be ample.”

  Very, very carefully he moved out from behind the protection of the ship, crawling in the mud, keeping head and buttocks well down. He was in time to see a flicker of movement as Hephastia changed positions, scurrying to the cover of another boulder, not appreciably decreasing the range but carrying out an outflanking operation. Even if she were not a member of the Amazon Guard she must have had military training on some world at some time.

  He raised his pistol as though about to fire from the prone position. Her retaliatory shot was in line but, luckily for him, over. Frantically he scurried forward, found a boulder of his own behind which to hide. It was by no means as large as he would have wished—and it was even smaller after a well-aimed bullet had reduced the top of it to dust and splinters. Another one reduced it in size still further.

  Grimes tried to burrow into the mud while still maintaining some kind of a lookout.

  From the corner of his eye he saw movement by the ship.

  It was Shirl, walking out calmly, something that gleamed, even in this dull, gray light, in her right hand. It was one of those sharpened discs. Hephastia did not see her. She must have had a one-track mind. With calm deliberation she was whittling away Grimes’s little boulder, shot after shot, using some kind of armor-piercing ammunition.

  Shirl’s right arm went back, snapped forward.

  The disc sailed up in what seemed lazy flight—too high, thought Grimes, watching, too high.

  Shirl stood there, making no attempt to throw a second one.

  Grimes’s boulder, under the impact of an armor-piercing bullet, split neatly down the middle, affording him a good view of what was happening. He saw the disc whir over Hephastia’s position and then turn, dipping sharply downward as it did so. It vanished from sight.

  There was one last shot, wildly aimed, which threw up a spray of mud between Grimes and the ship. There was a gurgling scream.