by Джеффри Лорд
It was also a relief to know that he was in Dimension X. He'd made it home from some weird places before, and it would be an unpleasant surprise if he couldn't make it home from Targa. Not from Kanan-he still wasn't sure the computer could reach across both Dimensions and light-years-but if he could somehow get back to Targa he should be all right.
Meanwhile he could help Kanan or refuse to help them without worrying about what they might do to Earth. Unless they got the whole Dimension X secret as well as their interstellar drive, Home Dimension Earth was as far beyond their reach as anything could be. He'd still have to guard the Dimension X secret, but that was a simpler proposition than what he'd been facing before.
Blade looked at the screen again. Before Riyannah dumped the power plant, it must have given the ship a terrific velocity. Targa was distinctly smaller than when he'd first seen it. The outlines of the continents were beginning to blur and the planet was turning into a cloud-flecked blue ball.
Riyannah was now strapped into her seat again, and from the regular rise and fall of her breasts Blade realized she was asleep. In sleep her face relaxed, all the strain and tension gone along with the warrior-goddess look.
She'd said the Kananites were peaceful, with no wars for a thousand years. Perhaps she was shading the truth. Or perhaps Riyannah was not quite typical of her people. Certainly there was a warrior in Riyannah, and not far below the surface either. She had courage, common sense, the ability to enjoy a good fight, and the ability to pick up technical details quickly.
That was enough to make a warrior and even a war leader. More than enough, considering how senseless and slow to learn some of history's «great captains» had been. If there were more Kananites like Riyannah, the Targans might not have an easy victory, or indeed any victory at all.
Blade yawned, tightened the straps to keep from floating around the cabin, and drifted off to sleep himself.
Chapter 12
Blade awoke to find Riyannah floating in the air in front of him. She was holding onto the arm of his seat with one hand and rubbing his thigh with a soft cloth held in the other. He saw that he was now naked, while Riyannah was wearing a loose coverall with a closing strip from throat to groin.
«Lie still a little more, Richard. You shouldn't have gone to sleep without looking at that wound. I had to do more to get out the infection than I should have. I'm not a doctor, you know.»
He patted her free hand. «I know. But I seem to remember a certain lady who also fell asleep as if she'd been hit on the head.»
Riyannah pulled a small black tube from a pouch at her belt and sprayed something cool and scented on Blade's thigh. Then she let go of the seat and sat cross-legged in midair in front of him.
«I did sleep. The drugs I used to fight the cold and get ready to fly the ship wouldn't last forever. If I tried to go on, I'd be sick, starting with my stomach. Have you ever taken a long trip in a spaceship with no gravity after someone has been sick to their stomach?»
Blade considered the idea and nodded. «I see what you mean.» He sat up and reached out to pull Riyannah toward him, but she kicked herself just out of reach. «No, Richard. Right now I think we eat.»
Blade realized that his stomach was too empty even to rumble and nodded again. «Yes. I'm going to enjoy something beside Targan emergency rations and half-raw meat for a change.»
Riyannah set an alarm so they'd be warned if the radar set picked up any other ships. «I think we're too far out for the Targans and too close to Targa for any of our own. But you never know.»
«What will we do without the power plant if a Targan ship does find us?»
«We should be moving too fast for it to even hit us. We can also shoot back a few times with the hurd-ray, using the emergency power cells. After that-«She shrugged, a motion which made her body twist sensuously in the zero gravity.
The meal was dried and frozen foods mixed with hot water or thawed in a small infrared oven. There was a meat that tasted like a cross between turkey and ham, something like mashed potatoes with a delicious nutty flavor, and three kinds of vegetables which looked and tasted like nothing Blade had ever imagined. Dessert was a crunchy blue-fleshed fruit, soaked in something like highly spiced honey. Riyannah prepared enough food for six people but there were no leftovers.
After dinner Riyannah opened the refrigerator and brought out three frost-covered green bottles. With a little suction pump she filled two plastic bulbs from one of the bottles, shoved a straw into each one, and handed one to Blade.
The drink that came out when Blade squeezed the bulb looked like turpentine but tasted like a rich, well-aged sweet wine. It was certainly powerful. By the time Blade was sure he had the knack of drinking from the bulbs, he was beginning to feel it.
Riyannah emptied one bulb in a few minutes, went through a second nearly as fast, and started on a third. By the time she'd finished that third, her speech was slurred, she giggled, she floated on her back with arms and legs trailing loosely. Blade could have believed she was simply getting happily drunk to celebrate their escape if he hadn't seen her face when she thought he wasn't looking at her.
There were too many memories for Riyannah in this cabin, memories of the last time she'd been in it, bound for Targa with her comrades. Had she been in love with one of them? Certainly they'd been on their way to Targa with high hopes of an alliance with the underground and victory over Loyun Chard.
Now she was returning in a crippled ship, leaving her friends dead on Targa. She was returning with a man of another race who'd become friend, lover, and trusted comrade in battle, but how much was he really worth? She was also returning without an alliance with the underground and with news of the deadly threat of Dark Warrior. She'd failed and she wanted to forget both the failure and her dead friends.
Riyannah pushed the empty bottle away from her. It clinked against the ceiling and drifted off as she reached for another. Before she could open the new bottle, Blade was beside her. He pressed one hand gently into the small of her back to hold her against him. With the other hand he opened her coveralls. Then his lips were on her breasts, kissing, stroking, drawing her nipples out into hard points. She sighed and her arms locked around his back, her hands pressing into his buttocks. Blade's lips moved down to the flat stomach, she moaned, her legs wrapped around his hips.
By the time they slept again, Riyannah's skin was covered with a gleaming layer of sweat. She lolled bonelessly in the air, eyes closed and all the lines gone from her face.
Blade hoped they'd stay away.
They quickly established a regular cycle of eating, sleeping, lovemaking, housekeeping, and conversation. Each complete cycle they called a «day,» since they had no other way of telling the time in the eternal sunlight of outer space.
Blade found that making love in zero gravity was even more complicated than he'd expected. There were certainly advantages to it. They could fall asleep still locked together, then wake without muscles cramped or arms and legs fallen asleep. They could also make love without worrying about whose weight would be on whom. This was important, considering that Blade weighed nearly twice as much as Riyannah.
On the other hand, there were certain problems. Some of them were rather exotic. For example, how do you handle the normal muscular contractions of orgasm, which will send both partners into a slow cartwheel around the cabin until they bump into something?
Solving this and other problems was amusing, but also sometimes a bit exhausting. Once after they'd bumped their heads on the ceiling for the third time in one day, Blade raised a question.
«Maybe we'd better strap ourselves down the next time?»
Riyannah frowned. «I suppose we could,» she said thoughtfully. «But would that be as much fun?»
«You're right.»
They spent several hours each day talking of their home worlds. Blade described a Home Dimension Earth a little more advanced scientifically and a good deal less divided and warlike. This saved him the trouble and risk
involved in making up everything as he went along.
The strain of spinning these tales sometimes gave Blade sleepless hours. He didn't want to lie to Riyannah. He was sure he wouldn't have to, if everything was up to the two of them. But neither of them was their own master. If he told Riyannah the truth, could he trust her not to tell other Kananites who might take advantage of the information? Probably not. Then what would happen to him if the Kananites decided they should try ripping the Dimension X secret out of him?
Blade had still another reason for leaving out some of the uglier details of Home Dimension Earth. Riyannah said that the Kananites had outlawed war a thousand years ago. What would she think of an account of World War II? She might understand why Blade was willing to help stop Loyun Chard, the Hitler of Targa. She might also think Blade came from a race of bloodthirsty maniacs. What would happen then?
On the tenth day they picked up a radio signal that Riyannah said came from a patrol ship. On the twelfth day they were able to reply and exchange messages. Two days after that a Menel-crewed patrol ship matched courses with them and took them aboard. There was no way to salvage their crippled ship, so she was allowed to continue on course. In time she would leave the Targan system entirely and become another derelict wandering endlessly through the freezing emptiness of interstellar space.
Three days more traveling brought them to the asteroid base.
Chapter 13
It took Blade quite a while to get used to the sights at the asteroid base.
The base took up most of the asteroid, an oval chunk of rock about twenty miles long and twelve miles thick. Most of it was a mass of workshops, spaceship hangars, laboratories and observatories, and living quarters. Everything was connected by a maze of tunnels and elevators. About two-thirds of the asteroid was strictly out of bounds to Blade.
In the very center of the asteroid was an artificial cave a mile and a half wide and a thousand feet high. The floor of the cave was a carefully tended park, with flowers, lawns, full-sized trees, and even a small lake.
Scattered through the park were dozens of buildings of as many different shapes, sizes, and uses. Blade saw buildings made of brick, metal, wood, and plastic. He saw a few whose walls weren't even solid matter, but shimmering golden force fields. He saw shops, restaurants, public baths, athletic fields, and secluded vine-grown pavilions for open-air lovemaking.
Everywhere he saw both Kananites and Menel moving about and mingling freely, with less strain than he'd seen between tourists and local people in Paris or London. Kananites drifted into Menel-owned shops and came out with small bottles of brown powder that Riyannah said were spices. Menel either stood at tables or lay on couches since they could not sit in Kananite-owned restaurants-using three-tined forks to demolish huge plates of fried vegetables and emptying copper steins of what looked like pink beer.
Eventually Blade got used to ducking flying claws when Menel got into particularly heated arguments. He got used to pointing out items on a menu to a waiter who looked like an eight-foot stalk of asparagus and held a computerized notepad in a foot-long claw like a lobster's. He even got used to telling when one of the Menel had drunk more than he could handle.
«It doesn't happen very often,» said Riyannah. «Their systems can absorb so much alcohol that they usually get indigestion before they get drunk. But sometimes one has a-a 'cast-iron stomach,' you call it?»
«Yes.»
«Then it-«
«It?»
«Yes. The Menel are neuter except when they want to reproduce, and they never do that except on their home planet.»
«Do they avoid sex when they're neuter?»
«Oh no, the external organs still function. They just have a different set of rituals and techniques.» Riyannah hesitated. «In fact, their organs are physically compatible with Kananite sex organs. Some of the more-curious-of both races have developed methods for sex with each other.»
Blade tried hard to imagine what that must look like and failed completely. He also hoped he wouldn't have to try interspecies sex in order to be accepted among either the Kananites or the Menel. He was a fairly broad-minded and experienced man, but he did have his limits.
«I think we were talking about liquor, not sex,» he said to Riyannah. «So the Menel sometimes get drunk. Then what happens?»
«Sometimes they just fall asleep. The rest of the time-if you ever see a Menel walking and holding himself absolutely straight and rigid, keep out of its way. When they drink they stop swaying.»
«Unlike my people, who start swaying when they've had too much to drink,» said Blade. They were sitting in an outdoor cafe, and he divided the last of a bottle of wine between his cup and Riyannah's.
«Kananites too,» said Riyannah, running her hand up his arm to his shoulder. «Shall we sway off somewhere together and find a nice quiet patch of grass?»
«Sounds like a damned good idea,» said Blade. That was the end of a serious conversation for several hours.
The Menel and the Kananites seemed to have worked out a fairly complete system of sign language, allowing for the physical differences between them. The Menel had no fingers, but they did have two extra arms. Blade saw entire meals ordered and large purchases made in shops without a single word or sound.
Every so often, though, Menel and Kananites wanted to conduct more detailed conversations, for business or pleasure or simple curiosity. Then they needed help.
Every hundred yards or so all over the central cave were clusters of red globes perched on green poles. Each globe had a set of dials and buttons on each side, as well as earplugs and microphones hung on hooks. When a Menel and a Kananite wanted to talk, they found a vacant globe, stepped up to opposite sides, and put on the earplugs and microphones. Then they would settle down for anything from a few minutes to a few hours, taking turns listening and talking.
Some of the globes stood alone. Most were in clusters of four to six, and in the shopping centers there were a few clusters with as many as fifteen or twenty globes. Blade saw one group of thirteen Menel and twelve Kananites take over one of the large clusters and settle down for a long conference. In fact, the conference went on so long that somebody eventually ordered dinner and a swarm of Menel and robot waiters brought out a dozen carts loaded with food and drink.
«That's the first dinner party I've ever seen where all the conversation has to go through a computerized translator,» said Blade. «It might be a good idea to apply back home to fight bores. Somebody gets drunk or tries to monopolize the conversation, you pull the plug, and that's the last of him for the rest of the evening!»
Riyannah laughed. «I've been tempted to do that a few times myself. Some of the Menel take themselves so seriously. The Goran of Scientists are about the worst. But it's considered very bad manners to cut somebody off unless they've actually gone to sleep, turned violet, or started making love.
«The content and structure of the two languages aren't too far apart,» Riyannah went on. «In fact they're amazingly close together, considering how physically different we and the Menel are.»
«I know what you mean,» Blade said. «Our own scientists have sometimes argued that two races from different worlds could only understand each other if they were physically alike. Perhaps that's why I found it so easy to learn Targan.»
«Perhaps,» said Riyannah. They were both silent for a moment, remembering that Blade's similarity to the Targans had already caused some trouble and might cause more.
«In any case, although we think very much alike, we cannot speak alike. We have lungs, tongues, lips, and vocal cords. They have a system of vibrating disks of bone and air tubes that can be shut off or opened. They can't make any of the sounds of our language and we can't make any of the sounds of theirs.»
«That must have caused trouble back when you'd just met the Menel.»
«It did. Fortunately both sides wanted to solve the problem. They called on their best linguists and their biggest computers. They used sign language a
nd pictures to work out a basic vocabulary. Then they put the vocabulary into the computer and designed Speakers to duplicate the sounds of either language. That was most of the work. We've just been adding to the vocabulary and building bigger computers ever since.»
«I see. Kananites and Menel can't talk to each other without the Speakers?»
«No.»
A good deal now fell into place for Blade. Kananites and Menel rode as passengers in each other's ships, but the crews were always all-Kananite or all-Menel. A spaceship crew had to have almost instant communication. Even if the ship's computer could run a Speaker, there would be too much of a delay. In combat it would be worse, and if the computer was damaged so that the crew couldn't talk to each other that would be the end of everything.
For the same reason Kananites and Menel each had their own half of the asteroid and kept pretty much to it. They mixed freely only in the central cave, the recreational area common to both races. The asteroid's computers could handle translating five or six hundred Kanan-Menel conversations but not five or six thousand. Kananites and Menel could get along quite well enough even when living and working apart most of the time.
Living and working, yes-but what about fighting? What was going to happen when Dark Warrior was finished and Loyun Chard sent her out to attack the asteroid? For the first time Menel and Kananite would be fighting literally side by side. What would happen to the base then, particularly if the computers were damaged and the Speakers started going out?
Blade decided he'd better find out what plans were being made to meet the coming Targan attack. Part of his decision was pure self-interest. He might still be on the asteroid when the attack came and he didn't want to be a helpless bystander.
Most of his decision was a desire to help. He was now certain that Riyannah was telling the truth about the Kananites and the Menel. Both races were better than the Targans as they would be under the rule of Loyun Chard. They deserved all the help he could give them.