I did not know how many charges the weapon of the Kur held. Further, I was unarmed. I slipped back into the whipping sand. I crouched down.
The howling of the wind screened the sounds of my movements; its swift, lacerating blasts must have torn the atmosphere of my scent to pieces, scattering it wildly about, affording the Kur only sudden, misleading, fleeting, confused sensations. He could not at the moment locate me. I saw him, red in the twisting, howling sand, moving about, weapon ready, hunting me.
I was puzzled that the Kur with whom I had trekked, who had worn the ring, had been hit four times, accurately, with the weapon of the Kur who stalked me. Furthermore, he had been struck, as nearly as I could determine, head-on. It was not as though the Kur with the weapon had located him at the throat of a man, and then fired.
It seemed likely then that the Kur must have been struck as it had framed itself, perhaps in an opening, the other Kur, smelling it, hearing it, firing when it had tried to enter. The Kur with the weapon had then come out, hunting for it, to finish it.
He had not counted on there being an ally, and one who was human.
Similar thoughts must have coursed through the brain of the Kur and I, but I did not know the position or nature of the portal.
I saw him turn toward the ship, abandoning my hunt, recollecting his principal objective.
He thus led me to the portal. He reached it before I did. He scrambled, claws slipping on the leaning steel, and then crouched in it. The opening must once have been the outer opening of a lock; it was rectangular; the exterior hatch was missing; there was twisted metal at the side of the opening, as though it had been wrenched away from rusted hinges; the beast crouched in the lock, peering into the storm. Then it disappeared within.
My heart sank; time was on its side; it would soon be night; it need only wait.
I made my way to the stones and tarpaulin; there, feeling about, I located one of the bodies, which was mostly whole. Some were missing arms and heads.
I carried the body toward the side of the ship. Though the Kur had not used them, there were cuts in the side of the ship, probably used by the humans in entering and leaving it. A steel ladder, twisted, fitted the rounded side of the ship. Given the attitude of the ship, however, the ladder was roughly at a twenty-degree angle to the ground, and some twenty feet from the sand; it was useless to me. I would use the cuts. I made no effort to conceal sound. I scraped the side of the steel. I made certain that the Kur within, if he could hear aught, would be able to tell that someone ascended the side of the ship, dragging an inert weight, presumably a body.
I knew the Kur must be cunning, if not brilliant. It could be no accident that this Kur and not another had received this dreadful assignment, to protect the device of a planet’s destruction until its detonation.
But also it would be under stress. And in the storm it could not see clearly beyond the portal. It would assume that I would not relinquish the shield of the ring’s invisibility. A diversion would be ineffective, for what could draw the Kur from his position? If the blood of the slaughtered humans about had not been sufficient to override his obedience to the dark imperatives of the steel worlds, I did not think anything I might contrive could lure him forth. He had resisted blood; the will of this Kur, restraining its instincts of feasting and carnival, must be mighty indeed. He would assume, perhaps, I might attempt to draw fire with a decoy, thus slipping into the ship. The only likely object to use in such a plan would be the body of one of the humans about, victims of the Kur, with whom I had shared the march in the desert. I made no attempt to conceal my sounds. I let it be clear that I was outside the portal, that I had ascended the side of the ship, that with me, dragged, was an inert weight, presumably a body.
A likely plan, it seemed to me, would be to thrust the inert body into the portal, and draw the fire of the Kur within. Perhaps then, in the sudden moment of confusion, one might slip within, behind it, invisible.
It would be an elementary decoy strategy.
This was a likely plan. I did not adopt it. The Kur waited within. I did not think I played Kaissa with a fool.
But I would use a decoy strategy. Only I, myself, would be the decoy. Behind the decoy there would be nothing. One thing the Kur would not expect would be that I would surrender the shield of invisibility; one thing he would not expect would be that it would be I, myself, who would present myself to his weapon.
I clung to the side of the portal. I propped the body beside me, holding it that it not be swept from the side of the ship.
I counted slowly, five thousand Ihn, that the reflexes of the Kur within be drawn to a hair-trigger alertness, that the whole nervous might of the beast might be balanced on a razor’s edge of response, that every instinct and fiber in his body would scream to press the trigger at what first might move. But I counted, too, on its intelligence, its control, that it would not fire on what first might move, particularly if it were visible.
The wind howled and the sand swirled about the ship. I pressed the circular switch on the ring tied about my neck. I again saw in the normal range of the spectrum. I now realized I saw in the light of the moons; I broke out in a sweat; it was night. Limply, as though thrust from behind, I pushed myself, awkwardly, sagging, into the opening, and fell forward. Scarcely had I fallen into the lock than I heard, loud, over me, the concussions of the weapon, firing five times; almost simultaneously the Kur leaped from somewhere within, from a nest of piping, and scrambled past me; its foot pressed on my shoulder; it peered out into the storm; it spied the body below, which had slipped from the side of the ship when I had entered the ship, no longer holding it; it seemed momentarily puzzled; it fired into the body twice more; it scrambled from the opening, turning, slipping on the steel, and slid down to the sand at the side of the ship.
I came alive, crawling through the interior hatch, which was hanging back open, fastened back, so that the Kur could have his clean shot. I slipped inside, and nearly fell, my feet scraping for a hold. I found it. I heard the Kur outside howl with rage. I tried to swing the hatch shut, to lock it, but it hung crooked on its hinges and would not close. Perhaps it had been damaged in the crash of the ship. Perhaps the Kur with whom I had trekked had, with the frenzy of a Kur’s strength, wrenched it aside, before meeting the four charges of the other Kur’s weapon. I heard the Kur’s claws swift on the steel outside, scraping, climbing. I reached for the ring at my neck. It was gone! The bit of leather, brittle, worn from the sun, had separated. I heard the snap of the hand weapon. I looked up. It was not more than eighteen inches from my face. It snapped again. I dropped into the darkness of the ship. It was empty. The Kur howled with rage. I fell, dropping, striking objects, sliding for perhaps forty or fifty feet, until stopped by a compartment wall. I looked up. The interior of the ship was suddenly illuminated. In the cylinder above me, in the portal, his paw at the disk, stood the Kur. He looked down at me. His lips drew back. He had discarded the weapon. I looked about myself, wildly. The interior of the ship, given its attitude, seemed oddly askew. Beyond this it was not as compact as I would have expected, as filled with devices, panels and storage cabinets. It had been muchly stripped, apparently, presumably to lighten it. I saw the Kur easily, gracefully for its bulk, with its long arms, pipe to pipe, swing down toward me. When it reached my level I tried to climb upward, clinging to piping at the ship’s side. Its hand closed about my ankle and I felt myself torn from the piping. I was lifted in the air and hurled against the wall of the ship, and I fell back from the wall, falling some ten feet to the remains of a twisted, ruptured bulkhead, slipped from it and fell another five feet into a debris of scrap and wire. I crawled on my hands and knees. I heard the Kur approach. Under some pipes, below me, suddenly, I saw the ring. I fell to my stomach, my arm clawing downward. I could not reach it. I scrambled to my feet. The Kur looked down, he, too, seeing the ring. I backed away, stumbling a bit, back in the debris and wire. I looked upward, in the inclining cylinder of the ship. High abo
ve me, some sixty or seventy feet, I saw six dials. The Kur reached down with its long arm. I bent to the pile of debris and wire. The Kur’s arm was long enough to reach the ring, as mine was not, but the piping beneath which it had fallen was too closely set to accommodate the large arm of the Kur. I began to climb upward, on projections, on spaced piping, on the remains of sundered bulkheads, toward the dials. The Kur took the pipes in his hands, to bend them apart. He had separated them some five inches when he looked up. He saw me. He howled with rage. No longer did he concern himself with the ring. Instantly he began to climb toward me. He climbed swiftly, purposefully.
I crouched on a steel beam athwart the cylinder, opposite the six dials. The first four dials were motionless. The last two were still in motion. Each dial had a single sweep. Each dial was divided into twelve divisions. The sweeps in the first four dials were vertical. I could not read the numerals on the dials. I surmised the vertical position was equivalent to twelve or zero. It was the position, at any rate, it seemed clear, in which the devices stopped. The movement of the sweeps was counterclockwise.
The Kur was climbing toward me.
The first dial, I surmised, registered something equivalent to months, the second to weeks, the third to days, the fourth to hours. I did not know the rate of revolution of the Kurii’s original planet, nor the rate of its rotation. I had little doubt that these measurements, however, were calibrated on the movements of a world, presumably vanished, destroyed in their wars. They had destroyed one world; they now desired another.
With my teeth I tore the insulation from a part of the wire I had taken from the pile of debris and wire, coiled and, in my teeth, carried with me in my climb.
I looped the noose where the wire was naked. As the Kur climbed near me, his back to me. I caught its great shaggy head in the loop and drew it tight. It tore at the fine wire with its thick digits but they could not slip beneath it. I flung myself backward off the beam and the wire pulled the Kur from the side of the ship until it hung, struggling, I hanging a few feet below it. It flung out its paws but could grasp on nothing. It tried to hold the wire, and climb on it, or relieve the pressure on its throat, but its great paws slipped on the slender strand; then its weight began to pull me upward; I, hands knotted in the insulated portion of the wire, kicked the Kur back as it reached for me; then I was above it, being drawn by its weight to the height of the beam; the shoulders of the Kur were mantled in red; blood ran heavily from its throat, in throbbing, gigantic ebullitions; I braced myself, head down, feet pressed up against the beam, to hold the Kur in place; then, without warning, the wire parted; when the wire parted I was almost horizontal to the beam, trying to keep from being pulled over it, trying to hold the Kur; the force of my legs, relieved suddenly of the counter tension of the Kur’s weight, flung me back, almost to the other side of the ship, and I slid down a few feet and caught some piping. The Kur, striking four times, fell some sixty or seventy feet, to the lowest level of the ship, past the door, well below the level of the sand outside.
I looked to the dials. The fifth sweep, on the fifth dial, was almost vertical.
Outside I knew it was night. The storm still raged.
There was heavy glass over the faces of the dials. I climbed to the beam from whence I had snared the Kur. I could not reach the dials.
I cast about wildly. I could not stop them.
Below me, to my horror, I saw the Kur, a mass of blood, struggle to its feet. It was still bleeding, heavily, from the throat. I had little doubt that the great vessel of its throat had been opened, if not severed.
The beast seemed indomitable. Its strength was almost inconceivable.
It climbed slowly. I saw its uplifted face, its terrible eyes, the fangs, the ears laid back against its head. Hand over hand, not swiftly now, not easily, but foot by torturous foot, it climbed.
I seized a narrow pipe over my head, jerking at it. It contained wire. In a frenzy I tried to free it of the side of the ship. I could not loosen it.
The beast was nearer now, and still climbing. I saw its eyes. It moved another six inches toward me.
I tore loose the pipe. The sweep on the fifth dial, suddenly, stopped. The sweep on the sixth dial began to move toward the vertical, swiftly, counterclockwise. I did not think its journey would take more than a few seconds. I struck at the sixth dial with the pipe, again and again shattering the glass. I saw the Kur not a foot below me. It tried to lift its hand, to seize me. Blood no longer ran from its throat. It was dead. It tumbled back from the piping on the side of the ship, and fell to the lower level.
I jammed the thin pipe, like a spear from the beam, into the face of the dial. The sixth sweep, a moment later, struck against this obstacle, stopping short of the vertical mark.
I lay on the beam and wept, and feared that I would fall.
* * * *
When I dared to move, I left the ship. Outside the storm had abated. I found the Kur in the sand, with whom I had trekked.
“The task is accomplished,” I told him. “It is done.”
But he was already dead.
His lips were drawn back from his teeth, which, in the Kur, as I understand it, is analogous to a smile. I think he died not unhappily.
I returned to the ship, in which I found much food and water. In the next days, carefully, as I could, disconnecting them, I dismantled and destroyed components within the ship. In time, Priest-Kings would find the ship and more adequately disarm it. I buried the men who had died near the ship. Though I removed the one Kur from the ship, I did not bury either of them. I exposed them for the scavengers of the desert, for they were only beasts.
22
I Obtain Kaiila
I crouched between thrust chambers, some seventy feet from the ground, on the height of the tall ship, half buried in the Tahari sand. The chambers, facing the sky, were filled with sand. Between them I had rigged a shelter from the sun. I reached the height of the ship’s stern by a rope. I sipped water, watching the two riders approach. From the vantage of the ship’s height I could see several pasangs on all sides. The desert was clear.
As I had surmised, there was contact between the ship and the nearest agents of Kurii, the men of Abdul, Ibn Saran, the Salt Ubar. The food and water, the provisions, must have been brought in by kaiila. Presumably there would be routine provisionings or communications with Kurii agents, though not by radio or any similar device which might attract the attention of listening stations in the Sardar. The suppliers would have their schedules prepared weeks in advance. The schedules would have been designed to carry through and beyond the date set for the planet’s destruction, in order not to arouse curiosity or suspicion among the Kurii’s human agents. The men approaching, leading four pack kaiila, were ignorant. They approached slowly, in the leisurely fashion of the Tahari. There was nothing unusual as far as they knew, concerning their delivery or the date on which it was occurring. I smiled. The planet could have blown apart beneath their feet. Yet they came in placid caravan.
I was satisfied to see them. I had considered walking out of the desert. There was ample food and water at the ship. I could have rigged a flat travois with shoulder harness, to slip over the sand, loaded with water and food, and could have traveled at night, but I had decided against this. I did not know the distances nor directions to oases. I might have wandered in the desert for weeks, until even such large stores were exhausted. I might have encountered unfriendly riders. I would be afoot. I did not know how long the energy of the ring would last. I assumed it could generate its field for only a finite period. If I met several riders I might, with the ring, escape, but I might, too, lose the stores. I needed a kaiila; I needed direction. In a day on a kaiila, if it was well watered and strong, I might cover the ground which, afoot, might take weeks. Too, the kaiila, given its head, is excellent in locating water.
It seemed not improbable to me that there might be a recognition signal, to be given by the approaching riders in the vicinity of the ship, to b
e answered by a countersignal, before they would bring the kaiila in. Not receiving it I had little doubt that they would investigate most warily, or, possibly, simply withdraw. I did not know what their standing orders might be. I was not prepared to risk the second alternative. I threw the shelter which I had rigged down to the sand, behind the ship. I tossed the steel flask of water down, too. Then, on the rope, too behind the ship, I climbed down, slowly, handhold by handhold. I did not know how observant might be the riders. Even though I might stand, unseen, in the shelter of the ring’s field, the sand, disturbed, might reveal my movements, my presence. If I attacked one rider, invisible, the other, alarmed, might simply flee, panic-stricken and terrified. At the level, where the sand ringed the fuselage of the ship, I drank deeply, then I threw aside the flask. I then went into the desert.
* * * *
“Water!” I cried. “Water!”
The riders stopped, a hundred yards from me. I did not approach them from the direction of the ship.
“Water!” I cried. I stumbled toward them. I staggered, and fell, repeatedly.
They let me approach. I saw them exchange glances. I fell to one knee, again struggled to my feet. I extended my right hand to them. There was sand in my hair, on my body. I moved as though in pain, as though suffering from abdominal and muscular cramps, as though I were dizzy. I stood unsteadily. “Water!” I cried to them. “Please, water!” I stopped some fifty yards from them. I saw them loosen their lances.
I fell in the sand, on my stomach. I kept my head down. In the sand, I smiled. I knew these men. I had seen them ride. They were truly agents of Kurii, minions of Ibn Saran, Abdul, the Salt Ubar. They had been among the herders of the wretches on the chain to Klima.
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