by John Norman
Together the humans and the Priest-Kings of Misk made a remarkable effective fighting team. What sensory data might escape their antennae might well be discovered by the sharp-eyed human, and what subtle sent might escape the human senses would likely be easily picked up by the Priest-King in the group. And as they fought together they came, as creatures will, to respect one another and to rely on one another, becoming, incredibly enough, friends. Once a brave Priest-King of Misk’s forces was slain and the humans who had fought with him wept. Another time a Priest-King braved the fire of a dozen silver tubes to rescue one of the spidery Gur Carriers who had been injured.
Indeed in my opinion, the greatest mistake of Sarm in the War in the Nest was in his poor handling of the Muls.
As soon as it became clear to him that the Muls of the Fungus Chambers and pastures, and the Gur Carriers, were coming over to Misk he apparently assumed, for no good reason, that all Muls in the Nest were to be regarded as enemies. Accordingly he set about systematically exterminating those who fell within the ranges of his silvers tubes and this drove many Muls, who would undoubtedly have served him, and well, into Misk’s camp.
With these new Muls, not from the Fungus Chambers and the Pastures, but from the complexes of the Nest proper, came a new multitude of capacities and talents. Further, from reports of these incoming Muls, the food sources of the Priest-Kings of Sarm were not as extensive as we had supposed. Indeed, many of the canisters of fungus now in the stores of Sarm were canisters of simples Mul Fungus taken from the cases of Muls who had been killed or fled. Rumour had it that the only Muls whom Sarm had not ordered slain on sight were the implanted Ones, among whom would be such creatures as Parp, whom I had met long ago when first I entered the lair of the Priest-Kings.
One of the most marvellous ideas to further our cause was provided by Misk who introduced me to what I had only heard rumoured before, the Priest-Kings’ mastery of the pervasive phenomena of gravity.
“Would it not be useful at times,” he asked, “if the armoured transportation disk could fly?”
I thought he joked, but I said, “Yes, at times it would be very useful.”
“Then we shall do it,” said Misk, snapping his antennae.
“How?” I asked.
“Surely you have noted the unusual lightness of the transportation disk for its size?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said.
“It is,” he said, “built with a partially gravitationally resistant metal.”
I admit I laughed.
Misk looked at me with puzzlement.
“Why do you curl your antennae?” he asked.
“Because,” I said, “there is no such things as a gravitationally resistant metal.”
“But what of the transportations disk?” he asked.
I stopped laughing.
Yes, I asked myself, what of the transportation disk?
I looked at Misk. “Response to gravity,” I said to him, “is as much a characteristic of material objects as size and shape.”
“No,” said Misk.
“Therefore,” I said, “there is no such thing as a gravitationally resistant metal.”
“But there is the transportation disk,” he reminded me.
I thought Misk was most annoying. “Yes,” I said, “there is that.”
“On your old world,” said Misk, “gravity is still as unexplored a natural phenomenon as electricity and magnetism once were, and yet you have mastered to some extent those phenomena — and we Priest-Kings have to some extent mastered gravity.”
“Gravity is different,” I said.
“Yes, it is,” he said, “and that is why perhaps you have not yet mastered it. Your own work with gravity is still in the mathematical descriptive stage, not yet in the stage of control and manipulation.”
“You cannot control gravity,” I said, “the principles are different; it is pervasive; it is simply there to be reckoned with.”
“What is gravity?” asked Misk.
I thought for some time. “I don’t know.” I admitted.
“I do,” said Misk, “let us get to work.”
In the fourth week of the War in the Nest our ship was outfitted and armoured. I am afraid it was rather primitive, except that the principles on which it operated were far more advanced than anything now available to Earth’s, as I now understand, somewhat painfully rudimentary science. The ship was simply a transportation disk whose underside was coated with cage plastic and whose top was a transparent dome of the same material. There were controls in the forward portion of the ship and ports about the sides for silver tubes. There were no propellers or jets or rockets and I find it difficult to understand or explain the drive save that it used forces of gravity against themselves in such a way that the amount, if one may use so inept an expression for the gravitational primitive, remains constant though redistributed. I do not think force, or charge, or any of the other expressions which occur to one’s mind is a good translation for Ur, and I prefer to regard it as an expression best left untranslated, though perhaps on could say that Ur is whatever it was that satisfied the gravitational equations of Misk. Most briefly the combined drive and guidance system of the disk functioned by means of the focusing of gravitational sensors on material objects and using the gravitational attraction of these objects while in effect screening out the attraction of others. I would not have believed the ships was possible but I found it difficult to offer the arguments of my old world’s physics against the fact of Misk’s success.
Indeed, it is through the control of gravity that the Priest-Kings had, long ago, brought their world into our system, and engineering feat which might have been otherwise impossible without perhaps the draining of the gleaming Thassa itself for its hydrogen nuclei.
The flight of the disk itself is incredibly smooth and the effect is much as if the world and not yourself were moving. When one lifts the craft it seems the earth moves from beneath one; when one moves it forward it seems as through the horizon rushed toward on; if one should place it in reverse, it seems the horizon glides away. Perhaps one should not expatiate on this matter but the sensation tends to be an unsettling one, particularly at first. It is much as if one sat still in a room and the world whirled and sped about one. This is undoubtedly the effect of lacking the resistance of gravitational forces, which normally account for the sometimes unpleasant, but reassuring effects of acceleration and deceleration.
Needless to say, although ironically, the first transportation disk prepared for flight was a ship of war. It was manned by myself and Al-Ka and Ba-Ta. Misk would pilot the craft upon occasion but it was, in fact, rather cramped for him and he couldn’t not stand within it, a fact that bothered him no end for a Priest-King, for some reason, becomes extremely agitated when he cannot stand. I gathered it would be something like a man being forced to lie on his back when something of importance is talking place. To lie on one’s back is to feel exposed and vulnerable, helpless, and the nervousness we would feel in such a posture is undoubtedly due as much to ancient instinct as to rational awareness. On the other hand, since Misk did not construct the craft large enough for him to stand in, I suspect he did not really wish to take part in its adventures. To be sure, a smaller dome would make the craft more manoeuvrable in the tunnels, but I think Misk did not trust himself to do battle with his former brethren. He might intellectually recognize that he must slay but perhaps he simply could not have pressed the firing switch of the silver tube. Unfortunately Sarm’s cohorts and perhaps fortunately, most of Misk’s did not suffer from this perilous inhibition. To be so inhibited among a field of foes, none of whom suffered from the same inhibition, seemed to me a good way to get one’s head burned off.
When we had constructed the ship we felt that now we had what might prove to be, in this strange subterranean war, the decisive weapon. The fire of the silver tubes could damage and in time destroy the ship but yet its cage plastic offered considerable protection to its crew who might, with some
degree of safety, mete out destruction to all that crossed its path.
Accordingly it seemed to Misk, and I concurred, that an ultimatum should be issued to Sarm’s troops and that, if possible, the ship should not be used in battle. If we had used it immediately, decisively, we might have wrought great damage, but neither of us wished to take the enemy by devastating surprise if victory might be won without bloodshed.
We were considering this matter when suddenly without warning one wall of Misk’s compartment seemed suddenly to blur and lift and then silently vanish into powder, so light and fine that some of it drifted upward to be withdrawn through the ventilator shaft through which used air was drawn from the compartment.
Misk seized me and with the harrowing speed of the Priest-King leaped across the room, buffeting the case I had occupied ten yards across the chamber, bent down and flung up the trap and, carrying me, darted into the passage below.
My senses were reeling but now in the distance I could hear cries and shouts, the screaming of dying, the unutterably horrifying noises of the broken, the torn and maimed.
Misk clung to the wall below the trap door, holding me to his thorax.
“What is it?” I demanded.
“Gravitational disruptions,” said Misk. “It is forbidden even to Priest-Kings.”
His entire body shook with horror.
“Sarm could destroy the Nest,” said Misk, “even the planet.”
We listened to the screams and cries. We could hear no fall of buildings, no clatter of rubble. We heard only human sounds and the extent and fearfulness of these were our only index to the destruction being wrought above.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
ANETHESITIZATION
“SARM IS DESTROYING THE UR bonding,” said Misk.
“Lift me up!” I cried.
“You will be slain, “said Misk.
“Quickly!” I cried.
Misk obeyed and I crawled out of the trap and to my wonder gazed on the patterns of desolation that met my eyes. Misk’s compartment was gone, only powdery stains marking the place where the walls had been. Through the very stone of the tunnel which lay outside Misk’s compartment, now opened like a deep window, I could see the next large Nest complex which lay beyond. I ran across the flooring of the tunnel and through the swatch of nothingness that had been cut through the stone and looked on the complex. Over it hung ten ships, perhaps the sort used for surveillance on the surface, and in the nose of each of these ships was mounted a conelike projection.
I could see no beam extend from these projections but where they pointed I saw material objects seem to shake and shudder and then vanish in a fog of dust. Clouds of particles from this destruction hung in the air, gray under the energy bulbs. The cones were methodically cutting geometrical patterns through the complex. Here and there where a human or Priest-King would dart into the open the cone nearest to him would focus on him and the human of Priest-King, like the buildings and walls, would seem to break apart into powder.
I ran toward the workshop where Misk and I had left the ship we had fashioned from the transportation disk.
At one point I was faced with a ditch, cut by the disruption cones with geometrical precision in the very stone of the Nest. It lay across my path, perhaps thirty-five feet wide, perhaps forty feet deep.
I cried out with dismay but knew what I must do, and retraced my steps to try the ditch. Gor is somewhat smaller than the earth and, accordingly, its gravitational pull is less. If it were not for what I intended to hazard would possibly have been beyond human capacity. As it was I could not be sure that I could make the leap but I knew that I must try.
I took a long run and with a great bound cleared the ditch by perhaps two feet and was soon speeding on my way to Misk’s workshop.
I passed a group of huddled humans, crouched behind the remains of a wall which had been sheared away but two feet from the floor for a length of a hundred feet.
I saw one man who lacked an arm, lying on the floor groaning, the limb having been lost to the unseen beam of the ships above. “My fingers,” he cried, “my fingers hurt!” One of the humans by the wall, a girl, knelt by him, holding a cloth, trying to staunch the bleeding. It was Vika! I rushed to her side. “Quick, Cabot!” she cried, “I must make a tourniquet!” I seized the limb of the man and pressing the flesh together managed to retard the bleeding. Vika took the cloth from his wound and, ripping it and using a small steel bar from the sheared wall, quickly fashioned a tourniquet, wrapping it securely about the remains of the man’s arm. The physician’s daughter did the work swiftly, expertly. I rose to leave.
“I must go,” I said.
“May I come?” she asked.
“You are needed here,” I said.
“Yes, Cabot,” she said, “You are right.”
As I turned to go she lifted her hand to me. She did not ask where I was going nor did she ask again to accompany me, “Take care,” she said. “I will,” I said. There was another groan from the man and the girl turned to comfort him.
Had it truly been Vika of Treve?
I raced to the workshop of Misk and flung open the double doors and leaped into the ship and secured the hatch, and in a moment it seemed the floor dropped a foot beneath me and the doors rushed forward.
In less than a few Ihn I had brought the ship into the large nest complex where the ten ships of Sarm still followed their grim, precise, destructive pattern, as placidly and methodically as one might paint lines on a surface or mow a lawn.
I knew nothing of the armament of the ships of Sarm and I knew I had only the silver tube in my own craft, a weapon far outclassed in destructive potential by the gravitational disruptors mounted in the ships of Sarm. Moreover, I knew that the plastic with which my own ship was protected would be no more protection than tissue paper against Sarm’s weapons, the nature of which was not to pierce or melt but, from a given center, radiating outwards, to shatter material gravitationally, breaking it apart and scattering it.
I broke into the open and the floor of the complex shot away from beneath me and I hung near the energy bulbs at the very apex of the dome. None of the ships of Sarm had apparently noted me.
I took the lead ship into my sights and dropped toward it, narrowing the range to increase the effectiveness of the silver tube. I was within two hundred yards when I opened fire, attacking from the rear, away from the destructive cone in its bow.
To my joy I saw the metal blacken and burst apart like swollen tin as I passed beneath it and began to climb rapidly toward the belly of the second craft which I ripped open with a sizzling burst of fire. The first craft began to turn slowly, uncontrollably, in the air and then plunged toward the ground. I hoped Sarm himself might have been in that flagship. The second craft shot wildly toward the ceiling of the complex and shattered on the stone ceiling, falling back to the ground in a shower of wreckage.
The other eight craft suddenly stopped their destructive work and seemed to hover in indecision. I wondered if they were in communication with one another. I supposed so. Undoubtedly they had not expected to be met with opposition. They may not even have seen me. While they seemed to hang undecided in space, almost like puzzled cells in a droplet of water, I dove again, and the third ship broke apart as thought it were a toy beneath a falling cutlass of fire, and I climbed once more, the flame of the silver tube stabbing ahead of me hitting the fourth ship amidships and flinging it burning a hundred yards from my path.
Now the remaining six ships hovered closely together, disruptor cones radiating outward in different directions, but I was above them.
This time should I dive again, I knew it would be impossible to conceal my position from them, for they would then know I was below them and at least one of the ships would be almost certain to cover me with its weapon.
It would be but a moment before they would discover my position.
Even now two of the ships were moving their place, one to cover the area beneath the small fleet and the
other above. In a moment there would be no avenue of attack which would not mean sure death.
The ceiling of the complex leapt away from above me and I found myself in the very center of the six ships, surrounded on the four sides, and above and below.
I could see the scanners mounted in the noes of the ships probing about.
But I was nowhere to be found.
From the distance I could see hatches in the ships, on the top, and there was sufficient oxygen in the complex to permit exposed visual observation, but none of the Priest-Kings peered out of any of the hatches. Rather they continued to concentrate on their instruments. They must have been puzzled by the failure of the instrumentation to detect me.
Two hypotheses would seem most likely to explain this phenomenon to them, first that I had fled the complex, second that I was nestled among them, and I smiled to myself, for I was certain that the second hypothesis would never occur to a Priest-King, for it was too improbably and Priest-Kings were too rational a kind of creature.
For half a Gorean Ahn we hung there, none of us moving. Then for a full Gorean Ahn did we remain there, motionless above the complex? Again I smiled to myself. For once I was sure I could outwait a Priest-King.
Suddenly the ship beneath me seemed to quiver and then it blurred and disappeared.