by E. C. Tubb
"So you don't think that similar precautions would work again? Or rather you cannot guarantee they would?" Gustav pursed his lips as Tamiras shook his head. "So it comes back to your fields. But how are you going to brace them against the thrust of moving masses of air?"
"It is all in my report. Towers must be set at regular intervals along the line of the foothills. They must be strongly braced and equipped with balancing fields in order to lock the entire installation into the planetary crust." China rattled as Tamiras, suddenly vibrant, pushed aside the table furnishing in order to clear a space. "See?" He set items on the cloth; knives, spoons, trails of salt, patches of spice. "Lock a field here and another here and we have a buttress which will withstand any storm threatening this area. Power could be supplied from installations built here and here with double compensators and automatic feedback relays." His finger rapped at the table. "By cross-linking we shall be able to utilize all generated energy at any one point as needed. Once built the installations will protect the crops against snow and hail and anything the mountains can develop. Yields will increase and we could even gain an extra planting a year."
"'But at a price." Gustav mused over the rough plans. "What if portable installations could be built? Massed rafts to bear the heavy equipment which could be sent out as the need became manifest? Power could also be supplied from mobile sources and would only be used to give protection when actually needed. At other times they could serve factories and remote areas. You see my point? It would be less expensive and more versatile."
"But less efficient."
"Only relatively so. If…"
Kathryn leaned back in her chair as the discussion continued. Her head ached a little and it was a relief to close her eyes but darkness brought no consolation. Against her lids she could see the pale beauty of Iduna, the Tau, the face of Dumarest now lying in an apparent coma.
Heard again the voice of the technician who attended him.
"No response as yet, my lady, but that is all to the good. As far as we can determine his normal processes are unimpaired." Then she'd added, spoiling it all, "Of course it's early to tell yet. For all we know his mind could have gone as did the others."
Damn the stupid bitch! Couldn't she at least have left her with hope? If Dumarest failed what else did she have?
Chapter Six
He sat on a rock in a plain of coarse, volcanic sand, black grains which stretched as far as he could see to a horizon limned with smouldering ruby. Flame which rose to cover the sky with swirling tendrils of somber red and darting, orange, strands and swaths of savage color edged with black, the black fading to scarlet, to crimson, to fill his eyes with the hue of blood.
A sky Dumarest had never seen before, a plain which was strange.
He moved, feeling the solidity of the stone beneath him, the grate of sand against his boots. He was dressed now, the knife snug in its sheath, warm and divorced from the need of food and water. Able to think and plan and review the situation.
He had run to the Tau as a child. As Iduna must have run to it to hold it close in infantile delight at a strange novelty. Luminosity had engulfed him and, suddenly, he had been elsewhere. In a nursery furnished as if for a giant fitted with walking, talking toys. But a child saw things in a different perspective and would think of normal furniture as being large. The dolls too-many a child had dolls as large as itself. Iduna had been spoiled and would have had such toys.
He had passed into a place fitted for the girl, one which to her would have been familiar, and then he had left it to relive again his own childhood. A portion of it-had there been more? Dumarest frowned, thinking, trying to remember. Had there been another woman who would have been kind to him? A man? He couldn't remember. Even the faces of the others who must have lived close in the settlement were nothing but blurs. Only the man had seemed real. The man he had killed and the woman he had left after taking her knife. And then?
The ship and the captain and, suddenly, this plain.
An area which could hold unexpected dangers. The volcanic sand would be loose and easy to shift and serve to provide burrows for lurking predators. The sky itself seemed to be flaring warnings and Dumarest felt his nerves tense with the old, familiar signal of impending danger. A tension which increased as he heard the faint rasp of shifting grains.
Sand moving when there was no wind!
He lunged forward, rising, his hand dropping, lifting with the weight of the knife as he turned to face horror.
It was big, looming against the sky, a thing of spined limbs and oozing palps, of mandilbles which snapped with the rattle of castanets, of eyes which glowed like jewels mounted in short, bristling hair. An insect, armored and armed with glistening plates of chitin, multi-eyed, multi-limbed. A thing three times the size of a man which reared from the sand in a rain of black granules to scuttle toward its prey.
Dumarest sprang to one side and felt his boot slip in the sand so that, thrown off balance, he swung beneath the sweep of a claw to fall, to roll desperately as serrated edges tore at the sand to leave long, ugly furrows. A moment in which the thing heaved itself totally from the black grains to rear in monstrous silhouette against the flame-shot sky, to turn as it fell, to land and lunge forward in one flickering movement.
Dumarest rose, diving to one side, blade lifted to ward off the slash of a spined limb, steel biting into chitin to release a gush of yellow ichor, to thrust at the membrane of a joint, to dig and twist and leave the thing with a crippled limb.
A minor wound which it ignored as, poised, it stood watching.
A thing which lurked beneath the sand, waiting for unguessable hours for prey to alert it to the possibility of food and moisture. Stimulated by his scent, the meat he carried, the fluid his skin contained.
And against it Dumarest had nothing but his knife. It wasn't enough and he'd known it from the first. The creature was too big, the blade too short to penetrate to a vital organ. The eyes he could attack but they were many and even if totally blinded the thing could trace him by scent. The limbs could be crippled but, again, there were too many. To destroy them all would be to leave it a helpless mass writhing in the sand but to do it would require speed and skill as well as judgment and luck. Too much luck.
But he had to try.
Stooping he snatched up sand in his left hand and darted forward as he threw it at the eyes of the creature. Even as the grains left his hand he lunged to the attack, knife a shimmer as he struck, slashed, twisted at joints and softer portions. A moment in which he seemed to be winning then again the thing reared, revealing an underside blotched and mottled with tufted hairs, legs scrabbling as it twisted, falling to smash against him, one leg numbing his arm with a blow which tore the knife from his fingers and sent it spinning to clash against the rock.
As the limb returned for another blow Dumarest caught it in both hands, threw his weight against it, strained until chitin yielded and the broken appendage flopped in streams of sickly yellow. A minor victory and possibly his last. Stars exploded in his skull as a living club slammed against his head and the twitch of the broken limb he held flung him up and away to land heavily in the sand.
To lie and die.
To rise and run and die.
To overcome his weakness, the dizziness, the stench of the insect, to return to the battle, to do what he could against impossible odds and, because they were impossible, to die.
Always it came to that.
Bare-handed he was helpless and even if he still had the knife the end would have been the same. He needed a laser, a heavy-duty weapon which would burn holes in the thing like a red hot wire in butter. A military-type Mark IV Ellman such as he had used before.
And, suddenly, he had it.
Dumarest rose as the thing charged, the gun cradled in his arms, finger closing on the release as a serrated claw moved to cut him in half. A claw which smoked and jerked and turned on the end of its limb to fall in a shower of yellow as the red guide-beam traced a sear
ing path over the natural armor. A ruby finger which lifted to turn jeweled eyes into patches of char. To send destruction in a swath between the gaping mandibles. To fry the soft inner tissues. To reach the main ganglion and caress it and turn it into ash with the heat of its passion.
To kill!
Dumarest lowered the gun as the creature fell, feeling the weight of it in his hands as thin limbs scrabbled at the sand, the creature threshing in reflex action, black grains rising to fall with whispering rustles. Rustles which were repeated on all sides. Mounting into a hideous chittering as the plain boiled with ferocious life.
The dead thing had not been alone.
Dumarest flung himself against the rock as they came scuttling toward him. A mass of insect-like things grotesquely huge, some like mutated spiders, others with the claws and stings of scorpions, more like racing ants, all objects of potential death.
Some met the ruby guide-beam of the laser and fell to be torn apart by others. Others, crippled, lurched away, fighting off those who would feed on their still-living flesh. The rest, uninjured, advanced like running horses over the sand. An endless stream of them which covered the area with shifting patterns of red and scarlet; the sky reflected in the sea of glistening chitin.
Against them the gun was useless.
Dumarest turned, fired, turned and fired again, turned and fired in a circle which ringed him with a mound of dead and smouldering flesh but still they came on filling the air with the rasp of their passage; the harsh clatter of mandibles the chittering of joints and antennae and lifted stings, the scrape of hooked and reaching feet.
One laser-he needed an army!
And, suddenly, he had it.
Men were all around him, grim figures in battle armor, tough mercenaries wearing familiar colors. They dropped into position and built a barrier of crossfire in which nothing living could survive. Darting flashes of laser beams weaving a tapestry of brilliance against the sky. A web of destructive energies directed with the skill of long training. Against such a barrage men would have retreated but the creatures on the plain were not men. With insensate ferocity they continued the attack.
And the red of human blood joined the yellow of spilled ichor.
A man screamed as a claw closed around his waist, lifting him high, closing to let him fall in two parts joined by a shower of crimson. Another tried to run and fell with twitching stumps where legs had been. A third, his face ripped from the bones of his skull, staggered, keening, hands lifted to the ghastly mask until a comrade gave him the mercy of a quick end.
Incidents which stood out among the rest but on all sides men cried out and fell and died beneath the weight of the ceaseless onslaught. Firing, Dumarest climbed on the rock, eyes narrowed as he scanned the distances, seeing yet more creatures and, among them, man-like shapes.
Figures which stood, watching, hands thrust into the wide sleeves of their robes. Robes which glowed scarlet beneath the sky. Cowls which hide the faces but, if the faces were hidden, the device marked in the breast of each robe was not.
The Cyclan-here?
Enigmatic figures which served as targets for the weapon Dumarest lifted to aim and fire. Shapes which wilted only to reappear elsewhere. And, all around, the noise and fury of combat.
Screams and chitterings and the hiss of ichor turned into steam. The near-inaudible hissing of laser fire turning airborne moisture into vapor. The grunts of men recognizing inevitability. The curses which accompanied the foreknowledge of death.
"Keep firing!" Dumarest shouted from his position on the rock. "Maintain positions and coordinate your action. Drop and shoot upward. Keep them back."
Back until, surely, there could be no more. Back until the air grew hot and the plain steamed with noxious vapors. Until guns ceased to fire as stored energies failed. Back until men died and lay where they had fallen with tormented faces turned to an alien sky. Until Dumarest, thrown to one side, knowing he was hit, realized he was dying.
His tunic had been ripped open and the chest beneath was a mass of blood and torn muscle, pulped tissue flecked with the white shards of shattered ribs. Breathing, he felt the rush of blood into laboring lungs and tasted its flavor. Trying to move, he sensed the shattered legs and felt agony jar his spine.
Still he tried to use the gun but now it was too heavy to lift. And his knife was gone. And the sky was darkening.
And he was small and alone and wanting, so desperately wanting, to be helped.
The miracle came in a bubble.
Dumarest watched as it came from over the horizon, a shimmering ball of rainbow colors to drift toward him, to settle and turn into a chamber fitted with a mass of medical equipment staffed by solemn-faced attendants. The plain too had changed; now it was an expanse of rolling sward dotted with brilliant flowers and the sky held the hues of spring, soft greens and delicate yellows tinged with cool violet and warming orange.
And he felt no pain.
Not when, suddenly, he was lying on the gleaming surface of a table with a golden-haired woman leaning over him, her face filled with admiration. Not when, somehow, she healed his wounds and he sat up, his clothing undamaged, the knife back in his boot.
And, as there had been no pain, now there were no corpses either of men or the things which had attacked him.
A thought and they had gone.
But the girl?
Dumarest looked at her as she stood as if waiting for him to speak. Tall, golden haired, her face round and impassive. A nurse or a physician-certainly she had healed him. Or at least he had been healed at the touch of her hands. Hands which, seemingly, had also repaired his clothing and replaced his knife.
Iduna?
She blinked as he asked and looked her astonishment.
"My lord I am Tarunda. To have served you is a pleasure I shall treasure for always."
Her voice was like the caress of a breeze on scented roses and her perfume sent fires running in his blood. A woman and one vaguely familiar. Where had he seen her before?
And why had he been attacked by giant insects?
They had come from the sand, boiling from the plain, too many to find food in such a place and too ferocious for things so large. They had come as if in a dream, a nightmare, and even when dead and dying they had held a sickening horror.
But he had met such forms before and had no fear of different forms of life. Sand and a red sky and creatures which had attacked without warning and, vaguely seen in the background, the watching figures of cybers.
They at least he could understand, the tall shapes dressed in scarlet represented a danger which had threatened him for too long now. They and the organization they served, the wide-flung and powerful Cyclan which manipulated men as if they were puppets.
But here?
The girl worried him with her vague familiarity and he stared at her trying to fit a place and background to the face and figure. The hospital on Shallah? No, he had not seen her there. In a tavern somewhere? There had been too many. Tarunda? He mentally spoke the name. Tarunda of… of… Tarunda!
And it was there before him.
The ring with the circle of watching faces, the smell, the avid gleam of watching eyes. The animal-stink of fear and oil and blood. The reek of anticipated pain. The knife gripped in his sweating palm, ten inches of honed and polished steel, a match to the one held by the man facing him. A tall, smiling, feral shape with the blotch of a tattoo smeared across his torso.
The shriek of a woman's voice.
"Get him, Spider! Slice him open and let's see the color of his guts!"
His first commercial fight.
Dumarest could feel the impact of the floor beneath his naked feet as he waited for the bell. Feel too the hunger gnawing at his stomach. Fight and be fed. Win and get a stake. Lose and what the hell has gone?
A young man, little more than a boy, still mourning the death of his only friend, now forced to fight in order to survive.
"Kill him!" screamed the woman again. "Kil
l him, Spider-and tonight you can crawl right into me!"
An invitation which sent slanted eyes flickering in her direction as the bell jarred its harsh note. A moment in which Dumarest acted, moving to the attack, cutting, drawing blood, backing-to feel the burn and rip as steel laced a ruby path over his ribs.
A mistake. He should have thrust and aimed for a vital point or, no, he should have cut and cut again and not given the man time to get in a blow of his own. But how to gain the experience of years in a few brief minutes? How to match such acquired skill?
How to live long enough to learn?
Dumarest dodged as the man attacked, steel flashing, seeming to vanish, to reappear again in an unexpected place. Speed alone saved him, the thin, vicious whip of slashed air casting a transient breeze against his side. A blow which if it had landed would have cut him deep to show his insides.
A momentary display of anger on his opponent's part. Confident in his skill, he wanted to extend the bout so as to gain a cheap reputation. The wound he had taken was a minor cut, blood making it seem worse than it was, and it would be better to give the crowd a spectacle rather than a quick kill. The savage cut was a mistake he would not repeat.
Instead he would dart in to cut sinew and nerve and tendon, to leave Dumarest maimed and crippled and a mass of shallow, gaping wounds. An eye ruined, perhaps, an ear removed, the nose converted into gaping orifices, the lips slashed.
The young bastard would pay for getting in first!
He weaved, lunged, blinked as his edge missed flesh, felt the burn of another wound, the wet warmth of flowing blood. Dumarest, backing, watched the interplay of muscle on his opponent's thighs and calves. The set of the feet which signaled an attack, the lift of the hand to position the knife, the flash which he confidently parried-to feel the shock, the pain, the sear of slicing metal as another bloody adornment was cut into his torso.
A cut which could have been a thrust which could have found his heart. Blood which flowed from his ribs but which even now could be spurting from his stomach. A mistake the man had made. He should have gone in for the kill while he had the chance. Now, grimly determined, Dumarest realized that to survive he must kill.