"No such luck, evidently," Dane whispered back.
"The prisoners will be silent," one of the Mekhars said unemotionally.
Dane looked around the room where he found himself, his attention immediately gripped by what looked like an enormous vision-screen. Reception was wavy and ridden with what, on Earth-type TV, would have been called "ghosts," but it was evidently a live transmission. The picture on the screen was nothing very startling, for none of the other captives gave it even a second glance, far less watching it closely; but to Dane it was an incredible marvel. It was neither more nor less than a planet, seen from out in space, vaguely brick-red, with blue-green areas which looked like oceans and dull brown spots which might have been mountain ranges or deserts. In the sky behind it—or, more properly, in the dark star-flecked space behind it—hung a huge moon, or satellite, fully half the size of the parent planet, and partially eclipsed by it.
One of the Mekhars in uniform was seated before a prosaic-looking console and was talking into it, in a low voice, just monotonous background noise, too low for Dane's translator to function. This went on for some time; the planet, and its half-eclipsed satellite, grew larger and more definite in the viewing screen. Evidently they were approaching some planet. Were they going to land on it, Dane wondered, and was it the Mekhars' home world? And what was going to happen to them there? The extreme caution with which they had been treated seemed like a good sign—they evidently weren't going to be killed out of hand—but were they going to have to stand trial for something or other? For killing a Mekhar, perhaps?
Abruptly the monotonous undertone of the Mekhar speaking into the console stopped—interrupted by a series of soft, but high-pitched beeps, clicks, and mutterings from the console. The Mekhar seated there moved various dials and levers. A speaker on the console came to life, and a curiously low, steady voice—almost, Dane thought, a mechanical voice—remarked:
"Central Station, Second Continent, speaking to the Mekhar ship. We acknowledge your message and stand ready to receive your offer."
The Mekhar at the console said—his voice was now amplified, for evidently he had thrown some control which made it come over the speaker as well, "We have five for you, Hunters. They are special prime dangerous ones, and we will not sell them cheaply."
The mechanical voice retorted, with its curious expressionless quality, "You Mekhars have done business with us before, and you know our requirements. Have these been pretested?"
"They have," said the Mekhar. "They are the four survivors of six ringleaders of the usual test escape mechanism—the ones who were intelligent and resourceful enough to see a very small loophole left for escape, brave enough to take it in the face of nerve-guns, and strong enough to keep fighting after we showed them that we were aware of the plot. You will not be disappointed in them. We had hoped to have all six for you, but we were forced to kill two others before they could be subdued."
The mechanical voice said, "You spoke of five Quarry for us."
"The fifth is one of our own," the Mekhar captain said. "He allowed the prisoners to disarm him and to seize his weapon. The other guard, when given the usual choice, chose to commit suicide rather than face his trial on Mekhar. This one exercised the other option—to sell himself as Quarry to the Hunters. His price will be given to his surviving relatives on Mekhar, so that he is free of obligations and can legally take this single chance of survival."
"We are always glad to accept a Mekhar as Quarry," the mechanical voice said. "We repeat the offer we have made before this, to accept your desperate criminals as Quarry at any time."
"And we repeat," the Mekhar at the console-communicator said, "that our people's honor will not allow us to be represented in the Hunt by criminals, but the guard was bested in an honorable duel, since we deliberately left a chance for the prisoners to escape; he has the legal option to choose his own death, and he has the right to choose to die at your hands if he so wishes, honorably."
"We bow to your rules of honor," said the mechanical voice. "We suggest a bonus of ten percent over our usual price; if this is acceptable to you, you may land the prisoners at once."
"That is acceptable to us," the Mekhar confirmed, but Dane's attention was drawn to Rianna, who had drawn in a great gasping sob.
"The Hunters," she whispered. "Then they're not just a legend! A chance for escape—yes, a chance—but oh, Gods, what a chance!"
Dane twisted in his seat, but before he could say another word to her, the Mekhar captain approached them.
"Prisoners," he said quietly. "Your chance of escape, or honorable death, is upon you. You have proven that you are too brave, too courageous, to be sold as slaves; it is, therefore, our honor and our pleasure to provide you this alternative. Do not be afraid. You are about to be given a small dose of a mild anesthetic gas, which will have no lasting side effects, so that you need not be harmed by struggling in the transit to the Hunters' World. Let me congratulate you, and wish you all an honorable escape, or a bloody and honorable death."
CHAPTER SIX
When the mists of the anesthetic gas began to clear from Dane's mind, he found himself lying on a low, soft bed, with a silky-smooth covering. Rianna lay unconscious beside him, Dallith on a similar couch nearby. Aratak was stretched on the floor; as Dane sat up the great grayish lizard-man stretched painfully, yawned, and sat up too. He looked around him and his eyes met Dane's.
"About one thing, at least, our captors told the truth," he said quietly. "We have not been harmed. How is it with the women?"
Dane leaned over Rianna; her breast was rising and falling naturally, as with sleep. Dallith began to stretch sleepily; sat up, looking around in quick panic; saw them and relaxed, smiling.
"So here we all are again," Dane said.
The room in which they lay was very large, with high ceilings and pillars and columns, and had at one time been painted a sort of terra-cotta color; but the paint seemed faded and old, and there were spiderwebs and dust in the high corners, though the place seemed clean enough otherwise. Long windows, unglazed but partially shuttered with narrow bamboo-like slats, admitted a strange reddish sunlight. Outside the arched windows there were voices and sounds of falling water. Dane got up and walked to the windows, peering through the slats.
Outside was a wilderness of garden; flowering bushes, long stony paths, low trees with golden-colored cones or long red seed-pods; everywhere the pervasive green, although no single tree looked familiar to him.
Unearthly, he thought, and that is a very exact description. The sky was lowering and reddish, with great grayish masses of sunset cloud, and in the sky the huge moon he had seen from space hung low, glowing reddish and seeming to cast its own fiery-red light over the trees, the paths, the flowers, and the fountains of falling water which seemed to flow and gurgle everywhere in the enormous garden.
There were people on the paths. People, as Dane had begun to think of them from his days on the Mekhar slave ship; not a mixture of people and strange animals, just different kinds of people. They were all dressed in tunics of the same terra-cotta red as the walls of the room; human and nonhuman alike. There were people who seemed to Dane all but human, human as he was himself; there were some who reminded him vaguely of the Mekhars; there was at least one covered with fine woolly hair who looked like a taller, more alert gibbon or ape; there were too many to see and classify all at once. Another slave mart? No, the Mekhar had said, at last, that they were "too brave and courageous for slaves," whatever that meant. But the uniform brick-red tunics, and the close enclosure of the garden, told him that they had not yet reached freedom.
The variety of beings in the garden reminded him that when they left the ship their number had been five; and he looked about for the Mekhar who had, at the last, been imprisoned with them. He found him curled up, his head hidden between his hands, on another of the soft silken couches, evidently still sleeping.
"The gas wears off quickest on my kind," said Aratak from where he
squatted before the window. "I was conscious again even before the small shuttle-ship landed us here. I repaid them by not resisting; I did not want to be separated from you, my companions. Now you are waking; and the Mekhar still sleeps. Evidently their metabolism differs from ours in some way. I hope he is not dead. Perhaps we should examine him and see—"
"I don't care if he's dead or not," Rianna said, "but probably no such luck; the Mekhars must know what dosage of anesthetic would work on their own kind."
"Anyway, he's breathing," Dallith said. Dane walked a step or two toward the sleeping cat-form. He was not only sleeping—he was purring in his sleep. If it had not been so incongruous, Dane would have laughed; the great fierce Mekhar, purring like a child's pet kitten.
"Well, he'll either wake up or he won't," Dane said. "Let's hope he doesn't start his new day trying to get revenge on us for landing him here! I'm going to keep an eye on him, anyway. Meanwhile, here we are, but where's here? Rianna, before we left the ship you acted as if you knew something about the Hunters. Suppose you tell us."
Rianna sat up, swung her bare legs over the edge of the couch, and came toward the window. The reddish light made her flame-tinged hair and sultry skin glow. She said, "Most people think they're a legend. When I was doing research I found out that they weren't. They call themselves by a name which means, simply, Hunters; and they think of themselves, evidently, that way. They've refused to join the Unity—not that the Unity would let them in as they are, of course; but they've preferred staying outside the Unity to changing their ways."
Dallith came straight to the heart of the matter. "Why are they called Hunters? What do they hunt?"
Rianna said bluntly, "Us."
Aratak raised himself to his full height. "I had begun to suspect this. We were sold to them, then, for their hunting pleasure?"
Rianna nodded. "From all I have heard, and seen, in the libraries of the Unity—and it's not a great deal, for they have refused to let any outsiders land—hunting has become their one diversion, their one pleasure—their religion. They never stop seeking for some Prey which can give them a fair fight. For hundreds of years, I understand, they have had no dealings with anyone from off their world except for this—they will buy Quarry for their Hunts."
Dane said, watching the sleeping Mekhar out of the corner of his eye, "I had a funny feeling that it was almost too easy; that for some reason they wanted us to try to escape. And evidently that's how they weed out the slaves from the ones they might be able to sell to the Hunters!"
Rianna gave a mirthless little laugh. "Their test doesn't work very well, then. Brave is the one thing I'm not."
Dallith said quietly, "Perhaps what they want is not so much the brave as the desperate."
"This explains why they spoke of a chance for escape, then," Dane said. "But what chance is that?"
The sleeping Mekhar suddenly stretched, with a great yawn, and sprang instantly upright; when he saw the four gathered near the windows, he came into a wary crouch. Dane tensed for attack. But the Mekhar took a step backward.
"We would not be allowed to fight here." His voice was a deep, purring rumble. "Our skill and strength now belong to the Hunters. Very well, we have been enemies, we may be enemies again. But for the moment I ask a truce."
Dane glanced at Aratak; the giant lizard-man relaxed, with something like a bow. He said, "We are, at least, companions in misfortune; a truce it shall be. If you will, I swear by the Divine Egg that so long as our truce lasts I will not harm you waking or sleeping; will you give the same oath?"
The Mekhar growled, "Oaths are for those who can envision breaking their word; I say I will not harm you without taking my word back, nor any of you who give me a like undertaking. But if there is any who will not give me that word, I will fight him—or her—here and now, with or without weapons, to death or to surrender."
Rianna and Dallith glanced at Dane. He said, "I'll speak for all of us. We're all in too much trouble to fight among ourselves. I have no quarrel with you. Your people had no right to steal any of us from our home worlds, but fighting you won't put that right. Your own people seem to have played you a dirty trick, anyway—putting you in the same category with us!"
"Don't dare to say that," the Mekhar said. "I chose to redeem my honor this way of my own free will!" His long curved fingernails, like claws, contracted and retracted with rage.
Dane said hastily, "Well, be that as it may, I won't debate points of honor with you, since you and I probably use different meanings for the word." He thought to himself that anyone whose code of honor permitted the stealing of slaves probably couldn't have a meaningful discussion with him on the subject anyway, translator or no translator. "Anyway, if you let us alone, we'll let you alone; and I speak for the women too."
The Mekhar eyed them warily, his yellow eyes narrowed to slits; then he relaxed and dropped on the floor. "Be it so; while our word runs we hold a truce. Since you are no longer slaves but have proven your courage, I accept your word as good."
Rianna said, "I know very little about the Hunters; your race evidently deals with them. Can you tell us what they're like?"
The Mekhar stretched his lips in what could have been anger or irony. "You know as much as I; they do not let themselves be seen by outsiders," he said. "The Hunter is seen only by the Quarry he is about to kill."
Rianna shivered. Dallith came close to Dane and slipped her hand into his. Even Aratak seemed momentarily taken aback. "Does that mean they're invisible?"
"Visible or invisible, I know not," said the Mekhar. "I know only that no one I know of has seen one, and lived to tell."
He fell silent for a moment, and Dane thought about frying pans and fires. He was off the Mekhar slave ship, but it seemed he had escaped slavery only for what sounded like certain death at the hands of terrible, unknown Hunters. He thought, even the man who said, "Give me Liberty or give me Death," had had the kindness to preface it by saying that he knew not what course others might take. Besides, Dane hadn't been given the choice between liberty and death, but between slavery and what sounded like certain death anyway.
Dallith, her now-familiar trick of reading his mood, said angrily, "Why, then, did the Mekhar captain speak of honorable escape as an alternate to honorable and bloody death?"
The Mekhar looked startled. "I thought you knew," he said. "Surely you did not think we would condemn any brave creatures to a certain death! The Hunt—as all those who know of the Hunters should know—runs from Eclipse to Eclipse of the Red Moon. Those who still live when the Eclipse comes again—go free. Free, and with a great prize, and great honor. Why else would I be here?"
The Mekhar turned his back on them, whiskers twitching, and Dane stood watching him, trying to take this in.
A chance for escape—but from fierce people, so fierce that they had no other name than Hunters, feared even by the Mekhars. An enemy no one had seen except in the moment of being killed by them. So that they must fight, or flee, or somehow escape them, for the period of Eclipse—however long that was—never knowing what form their enemy would take, or if he might come, invisible, out of the air.
For a moment, ignobly, he wished he were back on the slave ship. He'd been looking for adventure all his life, but a journey across the Galaxy, even as a slave, was enough adventure for one lifetime!
Then, for no good reason at all, he found himself more cheerful. If the Hunters made a quasi-religious ritual out of the Hunt, part of their fun would probably be in the risk involved. Hunters on Earth didn't get all excited about going out to shoot rabbits. Fox-hunters made a big thing about not shooting the fox. The real mystique about hunting, for those who got involved in it, even on Earth, seemed to be the stalk, the danger, the thrill of running a risk. Therefore, the humans involved—or whatever races their Quarry might be—would somehow be given something like a fair chance.
I've gone soft, Dane thought, I'm out of condition. I used to be in fair fighting trim—those lessons in Japan in aikid
o and karate, the strenuous night-and-day hard work of solo sailing—but three weeks of complete inactivity have softened me up. Aratak might make it; he's huge and tough. The women—well, if it was physical strength that counted, Dallith at least would have to be protected—although she'd been fierce enough, fighting the Mekhar, to scare him! But the Mekhars hadn't tested them for physical strength, Dane realized. The Mekhars had tested them for desperation, courage, willingness to take risks, and the ability to think out the loophole left for escape. So these must be the qualities the Hunters wanted in their Quarry, to give them a good fight. He said aloud, "Maybe we've got a chance, after all. Not a good one. But a chance."
Dallith gasped and clutched his arm, for the door at the far end of the long room was sliding open; Dane turned, wondering if they were to see the first of the mysterious Hunters. Instead what he saw was a tall, narrow metal column, which seemed to glide forward as if on invisible wheels. It had small slits covered with metal mesh, and small blinking lights or lenses, and after a moment Dane decided that it must be some sort of robot, even before it began to speak in the same sort of mechanical voice he had heard from the Mekhar ship's console.
"Welcome to this House of the Sacred Prey," it said, in that flat, metallic voice. "Food will be brought to you of whatever kind you desire, if you will state your preferred nutritional requirements. We have also for you"—the metal column whirred, turned slightly, and extruded a long metal arm—"garments suitable to the sacredness of your condition. Please to bathe in one of the pools or fountains, as you desire and as your custom suggests to your mind, and clothe yourselves in them." The clothing extended on the metal arm was of the same brick-red color that Dane had seen on the others in the great garden. Then they, too, were among the—what was that word the robot had used—the Sacred Prey? All of them? Dane suddenly wondered if the Hunters would hunt them down singly, or all together?
The Mekhar turned on the robot and snarled, "You metal nothing, it is not the custom of my people to wear any garments other than our own!"
Hunters of the Red Moon Page 6