Hono had taken the lead, as befitted her role as master hunter and group leader, and dove on the four dark forms. The aliens suddenly shot up into the air and dispersed, then hovered in an obviously preplanned diamond formation that allowed each to come to the aid of the others. I had a pretty strong feeling that these were pros who had been through situations like this many tunes before. I didn’t like it at all. A strange idea popped into my head that these four, out here like this, were bait in a subtle trap as well as a discouragement to any mass movement to the sacred mountain.
Hono approached the lead alien, whose pressure suit, complete with some sort of backpack,, was now clearly visible. The alien didn’t let her get very close. The creatures looked really strange now, with just fifty centimeters of each of their ten tentacles showing. Those tentacles were three meters long and apparently independent of one another. Hono was coming at the hovering alien at great speed, but the alien never wavered, never even moved, until the great bird was almost upon it. Then, suddenly, the creature zipped a few carefully measured meters to one side, enough for Hono to miss and also to render her unable to break her forward momentum. Tentacles shot out not only from the target creature but from the next closest, and they hit home. Hono whirled in midair and great feathers flew off in all directions. Clearly she was totally off balance and she plunged like a stone, to the ground.
Quarl and Sitzter flew right behind her, and the other three behind them. Suddenly the sky was a mass of feathers, screams, and flying tentacles extended to full length, skillfully and independently wielded with expert skill.
I pulled up, seeing Ching following behind me, and tried to create a diversion for the others. It worked to an extent, pulling one alien’s attention off the furiously attacking great birds and allowing a gap in their tight tentacle-tip-to-tentacle-tip formation. But instead of using the opportunity to escape, Tyne and Sitzter went after the exposed alien. Tyne grabbed hold of a snaking tentacle with her talons and, while it wasn’t really clear who had whom, she managed to yank the alien off balance and whip it to one side. The alien let out one of those piercing screams, and fun time was over.
A dozen more suddenly shot up through the ice, and these bore small handlebar-shaped devices held between two forward tentacles. Energy shot from the nub of the “bars,” the newcomers being totally uncaring whether they hit their own or us.
That was enough. Tyne was down with her alien, and Sitzter and two others soon after. I decided there was nothing I could do and swooped up and away, toward the cloud bank overhead. Suddenly I heard Ching scream, “Tari! Watch out!” I immediately dropped, rolled, and sped off in another direction, but not before I saw Ching take the beam that had been meant for me and drop like the others to the sea floor. Then I suddenly made a complete upturn as a handy current came by and shot like a rocket up into the clouds.
I remained there for some time, trying to decide what to do next. Certainly the game had been over ever since Tyne had grabbed that one alien soldier, and they suddenly brought up their reinforcements with their equivalent of hand weapons. The indiscriminate way the gunners had used their weapons could indicate a callous disregard for individual lives, but somehow I didn’t think so. The beam seemed very wide field, and if it were a death weapon it would be better suited to large battles or simply to clean away all comers across the ice from fixed positions. No, it was almost certainly a stun weapon, which meant they were even now cleaning up on the ice below, checking unconscious bodies, both theirs and ours, for signs of life.
That they were killers was clear from their earlier actions, but I didn’t believe they were indiscriminate killers. Otherwise why give the prey what could only be seen as a sporting chance, provided that prey didn’t threaten the lives of one or more of them?
I knew I had to have one more look, perhaps several more, and I came out of the clouds cautiously, ever on the alert to duck back into them. A dozen or so aliens were on the ice below, as I expected, setting bodies out in a row and examining them. Three alien bodies were visible, along with our own people, who were, I noted, rapidly reverting to then1 human forms. They didn’t see me, and I didn’t drop down too close, getting back up into the cloud cover again and circling around.
I counted six half-bird, half-human bodies down there, which meant at least one other besides me had gotten away—but I had no real way of telling who. I was pretty certain, though, that Ching had been hit, and that was my main concern. I liked Hono and most of the others, but they had brought this upon themselves despite my best efforts and were in any event impossible to save. The only hope I had was that, after a while, perhaps near darkness, the aliens would relax enough so that I might try a dive-snatch-and-grab operation on Ching. I had no idea if she or any of the others were dead or alive, but I had to assume that they survived until evidence proved otherwise. My only practical question was how long I could maintain this form and this energy level.
Quick dips in and out of the clouds revealed to me that some, at least, were alive. They moved occasionally, and were quickly slapped down by fast tentacles or pushed back by one of the four scissorlike appendages growing from the trunk.
If one were alive that raised my hopes that all might be. With the great self-repair abilities we all had, almost any survival was as good as not being injured at all.
The aliens were very professional and very methodical about the whole thing, but they were, I thought, pretty casual with people who could change into something else, perhaps even into aliens. That would be what I would do if it were me down there. But over the next hour or two, the most any of the captives, now totally restored to human form, did was sit up. These weren’t like my fifty-five sheep back in the sewers, so it stood to reason that if they didn’t change and try and fight their way out they couldn’t. If the Warden organism was, as I suspected, an extension of some alien computer, then obviously the connection between the computer and the captives had either been switched off or turned way down. The real question was what the aliens were waiting for. If they were just going to kill the captives, they could have done that long before and been gone to wherever they were most comfortable. But if they meant to take the crew prisoners, for some sort of questioning, they showed no inclination either to bring up transport or move them to safer and more secure quarters. They seemed, in fact, to be waiting for something. As sentinels they were also pros, their weapons and stations positioned so I could make out Ching in the group below. But I had no prayer of reaching her and getting back out without being shot myself.
Still, I waited, just out of their sight, I hoped just out of their reach, unwilling to abandon Ching unless I was certain there was no chance I could help her. If she was the price of all this discovery, I told myself sincerely, then the price was too high.
Finally, what they were waiting for arrived, and it was not at all what I expected. A large transport copter, specially outfitted for extreme-cold-weather use, came rushing out of the south, green and red running lights blinking and two large headlights slanting down on the ice itself. With growing apprehension, I watched the vehicle approach. Then I saw TMS markings on its side. It set down near the group, hovering just a few centimeters above the surface that could not have supported its dead weight. Carefully, one at a time, four TMS monitors climbed out onto the ice, laser pistols in hand. They gave harldly a glance or nod at the alien sentries, but went straight to the prisoners who, one by one, were taken to the copter and rudely pushed inside.
Although the copter was large enough to hold all that weight, it would certainly have a far slower return than it did coming out from wherever it was. I hoped that I could either follow it or get a good idea of its destination before my energy gave out. The copter rose slowly from the alien camp, hovered at about forty meters, and, staying below the thick clouds, started off. I followed as cautiously as I could, but it quickly became clear that I could never really keep up or even catch them. At one point just before they applied full power, I managed to get
close enough to read the base city’s name around the TMS shield on both doors.
Centrum.
I had never been to Centrum, nor met anyone who had, but I had heard the stories about it. The map in my head showed that it was far to the south, almost on the equator itself, and on the west coast—a distance of more than ten thousand kilometers. It was ridiculous even to think that the copter had come from there—it would have taken days at its average speed—but Gray Basin was close indeed, by air, perhaps three hundred and fifty or four hundred kilometers south, or about two hours’ copter time with a full load.
Wearily, I turned and headed for Gray Basin, heading first due south so I could pick up some map landmarks. It would take me considerably longer than two hours to make the city, even with cooperative air currents and good weather, neither of which was a certainty. I still had no idea how much longer I could last.
A shape joined me in the darkness. I was already bone-tired and totally depressed, just going on sheer automatics, or I would have noticed it before it came close. When it did level out next to me, I was too weary even to take evasive measures, but, fortunately, it wasn’t necessary.
“Tari?”
“That you, Quarl?”
“Yeah. Uh—dammit, I’m sorry, Tari.”
“We’re all sorry. I’m sorry, you’re sorry, the rest of ’em are really sorry, it doesn’t make any difference. What is, is, Quarl. We go on from there.”
“We’ll never catch them, you know.”
I sighed. “I know. But I think I know where they’re going, and that’ll have to do. At least it’s a city I know backward and forward, so I may be able to slip in and out of it without much trouble.”
“You mean we. I’m going, too. They’re my friends, too, Tari.”
“No, Quart. It wouldn’t work. They’d pick you up in a second no matter what your powers. It’s a whole different world in there, a world that’s built to keep everybody in, to see what everybody’s doing all the time. I know that world, and I know how it works. You don’t. They’d have you in ten minutes.”
“Then I will make them pay dearly for those ten minutes!” she spat, “but I am going in.”
“I’d kill you first, Quarl, if I could, for the sake of the others.”
“Huh?”
“They wouldn’t kill you. They’d knock you out, knock you down like they did the others back there on the ice. Then they’d take you to a place that is truly hell, where men can steal your mind and soul and learn everything you know.”
“I can not be tortured so easily!”
I sighed. How do you explain a psych complex to a stone-age woman? “There’s no torture. No pain at all. You just can’t know what they can do. And when they get you, they’ll find out that I’m there and then they’ll get me. It’s no good, Quarl. I have to do this alone.”
“You sound strange. Tari. Not like a brave one going after his own, but more like one who has lost all hope.”
“No, I haven’t gone that far, Quarl, but you’re right First of all, I’m tired. I’m on my last energy reserves, and the dawn and the landmarks teu me that I’ve got at least two more hours to go. And, yes, I would rather go home.”
“But you go anyway. You do not seem surprised.”
“I’m not. Somehow, I knew that it would eventually end, that it would come down to this, a final chase, a final hunt. Just when I found what I really wanted and was ready to give it all up.” I chuckled dryly to myself. “It just wasn’t meant to be, Quarl. I could see happiness, hold it in my hands, “but I could not realize that I had what I wanted most in the world until it was no longer there.”
“Among my people, the Kuzmas, there is a strong belief in fate and destiny for all people,” Quarl told me. “Each of us is born to that destiny, but knows not what it is. So I can understand your feelings, my friend from the stars. But perhaps you will win, hey? Anything worth your life’s devotion is worth risking death for.”
Perhaps she was right, I thought. Those fifty-five back in the sewers—play revolutionaries, children daring the fire and kidding themselves—came down to their moment of truth. But the cause was proven not worth their miserable lives, even though they would suffer horribly. No risk, no gain.
But I had apparently impressed Quarl enough that she endangered the whole mission. “What do you wish me to do, Tari?” she asked.
“Go back to the citadel. Tell them what happened. Tell them that the demons are not demons but beings from the stars who work with the city people and have great weapons. Warn them of that. And tell them exactly what happened to all of us as far as you know it. Leave nothing out, make nothing look better or worse than it is. See Angi and Bura. Tell them—tell them that I love them both very much, and that if there is any way to do so I will return to them. See that they and my children are cared for.”
“Until you return.”
“Yes,” I responded in a litanous monotone, “until I return.”
Quarl saw me almost to Gray Basin, then flew off to the south and west. I saw the city in the distance, looking ugly in the late summer when no snow or ice covered it, leaving only that brutal gray roof and the stacks peering from it. It stretched out as far as the eye could see, and I hated every square meter of it.
Still, I settled down directly on that roof and found a place that didn’t look too uncomfortable. I let myself relax for the first time, allowing my skin, bones, every cell of my body, to revert to my old form. I was too damned tired to do anything, but I forced myself to sit and think for a moment.
The copter was from Centrum, yet it was undeniably headed here. Why? Why a Centrum copter, anyway—and what was it doing this far north? Medusan government business, most likely—unless they had a Centrum copter near all major cities to differentiate national from local authorities.
And if that was the case, then all of the prisoners would be in the hands of the central government, not the local TMS office. They would probably be shifted to Centrum for disposition. That made sense. They knew a lot about a lot of things, including the sacred mountain, the malleability trick and its possibilities. They also had experience with the aliens at close hand. These wouldn’t be things that Ypsir’s people would like a regional psych office or the usual TMS monitors to come across. Too many might get ideas of their own, and there’d be somebody around who would be from Outside as well, somebody who would equate those demons with alien creatures and draw some interesting conclusions. No, the prisoners would be taken directly to party headquarters at Centrum, a bastion of protection, and handled by people who already knew the terrible secrets these prisoners could spill.
How would they get them there? The train was out—too long and too public. And air traffic seemed limited to local practical vehicles like the copters, which would be too slow. That brought Gray Basin back into focus, for it had one thing several other cities and towns of relatively equal importance and distance did not have.
It had a spaceport.
I stood up wearily. I was just barely atop the city, and when I entered it, I would have to do so from below. The access points from the roof were among the most heavily monitored places of all, and I knew it. Still, I wasn’t so far gone that I couldn’t use the vantage point to some advantage. I climbed up a ladder atop a large and dormant stack and looked out in the direction of the spaceport. I could just barely see it, off in the distance: a small cluster of warehouses and a tiny terminal in an ovoid pattern around the landing pad that was otherwise in the middle of nothingness.
There definitely was no ship in.
How long I had I didn’t know, but I realized it would be better to lose them through sleeping than to lose them by rushing in as tired as I was. Ironically, I was going from the stone age back to my most nasty and sophisticated technological self for this mission, and, even then, I’d be taking risk after unacceptable risk. I had to rest and renew myself, so I went back and lay down as the sun rose high over the sealed city beneath and was soon asleep.
I hated going in yet again. I hated risking all, with the odds so totally stacked against me, knowing that even if I got away with anything myself the odds of saving Ching were very slim indeed.
But damn my filthy hide, I just couldn’t resist the challenge.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Into the Lion’s Den
I didn’t sleep nearly as long as I needed, but it was a good, solid sleep and just what I needed to restore my confidence and get my brain working again.
Entering the city wasn’t much of a problem, but once in, I wasn’t at all sure what I could do. The only thing certain was that my theory of breaking the system by transformation was about to get a real test. The trouble was, I would have to be slow and careful to’have any reasonable chance, and I just didn’t have the. time for that.
Having served in the city in Transportation proved invaluable. Of course, to enter I simply waited for a train to come up and stop, then I walked in with the train when they turned off the energy barriers to admit it. Once inside the entry tunnel, though, I was in the yards for the trains and had to make my way carefully to the passenger section. Having worked the station, I knew where the monitor cameras were located and where the inevitable “dead” zones were, although they were hardly conveniently located for my purposes. At this point, naked and hairless, I was an easy mark for a monitor and a sure flag, so getting into position without being observed was time-consuming.
I was counting on the Rochande passenger train, my old workhorse, to come in late. There were inevitably a number of TMS personnel on board, not for patrol but either coming back from some training mission or arriving after assignment to Gray Basin. It would still be a ticklish operation, requiring a lot of luck, but overall I’d had more than my share of that lately and had to trust that I’d get a bit more.
There was a spot between the passenger platform and the automatic baggage-handling section that was part of the freight operation which did not overlap two cameras. By a zigzag route I managed to make it across the yards and take a position behind a moving stair that was at the far end of the passenger section. For the first time it hit me that I would have to kill a few people if I went ahead with this; although I wouldn’t feel too badly about TMS or government personnel, an innocent or two would also be necessary. I didn’t really like doing that, but could only remember again the fifty-five who wouldn’t try to escape and who were, in many ways, typical not only of the people here but of the whole system I was fighting.
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