Nothing happened. The tarath was silent. No bright ball ran out at the Toparr. The heavily set man halted his frantic skid, reached for his own tarath in its holster.
Craig dropped his weapons, caught the chains in his hands and swung. Those heavy metal links whip through the air as the Toparr lifted his tarath toward his middle.
It was a near thing, between them. The chains slammed down into flesh a moment before the Toparr commander could trigger his weapon. The links bit deep and the yellow man-thing grunted and fell forward. He hit the floor and bounced.
Beyond him, three Toparrs were running forward, yanking at their own guns. Craig went to his knees. The chains would be of no use against those taraths.
His hand scrabbled, caught and raised the Toparr commander's weapon.
His fingertip touched the stud. Now little pulsing balls of white fury ran swiftly from the muzzle, hit the foremost Toparr, hit the second Craig swiveled the muzzle, watched an energy ball leap to meet a third.
As those balls hit them, the yellow half-man disappeared in silent puffs of implosion. There was no dust, nothing but empty air. Craig shivered. The Toparrs had a pretty good weapon of their own, he thought. He stood a moment, dragging air into his lungs. The pain had not left him, it was a steady pulsing all through his body, and he realized how weak he was..
The chains were a terrible weight as he picked up the taraths he had dropped. The tarath which the Toparr commander carried had worked. Why had not his own Perhaps it was not loaded. He would have to ask Rolf about it when he got to the barracks.
He stumbled along the corridor through which the Toparrs had come. There was a door at its far end. With the flat of his hand he pushed at the door; it opened outward onto the street. It was still night, though there was a hint of dawn in the air. He must have hung in his chains for close to six, seven hours. Head down, grimly holding onto the taraths, he shambled through what was left of the night.
When he reached the compound door, he hammered on it.
The door opened and he fell inward.
Chapter Seven
A wetness moved across his face.
Craig dreamed that a giant worm crawled lazily across his cheek, his forehead, a worm that was gigantic and had the features of a maddened Toparr.
He tried to fight it, raised his hands to batter its white and hairy side with a fist. Something caught and held his hands.
"John! Johnny! Wake up! Wake up!”
Fiona was staring down at him, her face white and pinched. A damp cloth in her hand soothed his forehead. Beyond her was big Olsen and several of the other men beside whom he had worked in the temple. Craig rose on his elbow.
“They’ll be here,” he gasped.
“Who, Commander?" asked Rolf Olsen softly. They were looking at his wrists. The bleeding had stopped but the pain was still in them. A small man with a black bag in a hand came pushing his way between the crewmen.
“The doc'll fix you,” breathed big Rolf.
Craig said, "There's no time! You've got the taraths? Good! I can take you to a lot more of them.”
The doctor he had been a fleet surgeon, entitled to wear the golden caduceus on his epaulettes before his ship had vaned down into the Then on this nightmare world—knelt beside him. A tiny needle came out of the black bag. The doctor thrust that needle into a vial of liquid.
"Ease the pain,” he said. At the surprise on Craig's face he growled, "The Toparrs let me do what must be done to keep the men well. The healthier they are, the better they work. It's only reasonable. They get me the drugs and medicines I need.”
The needle went in. Craig jerked, then relaxed. In a few moments the pain would be gone. Somebody brought a file but the commander shook him off, shaking his chains impatiently.
"We have no time for that It'll be dawn soon. You've got to get weapons before daybreak. Oley, can you understand that?”
The big man nodded, gesturing toward two men almost as big as himself. These crewmen came, slipped shoulders under Craig's armpits, hoisted him into the air. One of them caught and held the weight of the chains.
"Barney and Rick will carry you, Commander. You just tell us where you want to go.”
"Their commander may still be there, Craig warned.
"Old pig—face? Ah, I hope he is." Olsen raised a hand, that held one of the taraths. Craig saw the other two in the hands of young crewmen. Olsen said, "They're crack shots. When they fire those things, they'll hit somebody.”
"Let's activate, then." In the cold dawn hours they made a strange, silent procession across the streets of this city without a name. The temple with its twin towers and massive transepts made a darker bulk against the lightening sky, but there was no other sign of Toparr or Toparr god. After a time, felt his strength surge back. The pain was gone, and he signaled the crewmen to let him down. A machinist ran up with a file and worked on the metal links as he trotted beside the major.
The door into the corridors and the arsenal was open. Olsen went first, the tarath up to fire. At his elbow, Craig said, "I'm not sure that one works. I couldn't fire it.”
Big Rolf grinned. "Turn the barrel?”
"The barrel? What's that got to do with it?”
The chief petty officer showed him. "It's like a safety catch. Turn the barrel this way and she won't fire, no matter what. Turn it the other and—whammo! It's Petey pass the praties!”
There was no one to demonstrate his newly activated weapon on. The Toparr commander—someone said that his name was Kofarpan—had fled.
"Probably gathering Toparrs to pick me up," Craig modded.
The crewmen were orderly as they stripped the arsenal of its many weapons. More than five hundred of the energy-ball guns came down off their pegs and were thrust into belts. The hangdog look of most of the crewmen disappeared at the feel of the weapons. They were slaves no longer, but fighting men.
"Alright, fan out,” Olsen growled.
They came onto the street, the armed men first, and they moved toward the compound that had been their prison quarters. The worker Toparrs would be coming for them soon, unsuspecting, unaware that this morning was to be vastly different from the others.
The unarmed ones went inside, where the women were. The others took up their positions in recessed doorways or boosted one another on shoulders and backs towards the deep sills of upper windows. There they crouched and waited, scarcely breathing.
The Toparrs came as they had always come for their workers during the years these crewmen of the lost Empire spaceships had spent in this Then—world.
They walked silently, looking neither to the right or left—at what was there to look besides themselves?—and they spoke no word, for they spoke only when they gave commands to their slaves.
The fury of the ambushcade caught them completely by surprise. The crewmen were silent, the white energy balls they fired just as quiet. There were no shouts, no pounding of running feet, no sound of weapons. The Toparrs crumpled inward and disappeared.
When there were no more yellow half-men to take them to the Temple, the crewmen came out of their recessed hiding places and marched in a body to the compound where they joined forces with their reserves.
“There must be other weapon arsenals,” Craig said to Big Rolf. “Fan out, start a search.”
"The fighter Toparrs will learn what's happened. They'll try to intercept us.”
“How can they learn? The workers are dead and they speak, they don't telepath."
Olsen shrugged. "Maybe their god tells them.”
"Their god, yes. Rhythane!” He thought of the abstraction of metal rods and plates and wires that stood above the Temple altar. Rhythane used that telepathic power to project his power and his thoughts, his will and his wishes, to the Toparrs. If they should destroy that, they might do at once what otherwise would take a long time.
"Suppose we attack the Temple?” said the major. "Suppose we destroy their god?”
The chief petty officer chuckled, "H
ard to do. He lives in the sky, according to the Toparrs.”
But he can activate that thing in the temple.” The heavily thewed Swede rubbed his jaw. "That's true. When he makes the materials for building the temple and fuels those power tools the boys use, he—or maybe a part of him—has to be inside that thing of rods and wires. We'll do it!”
They moved out in a body, with the armed men going first along the streets and more men with taraths following as a rear-guard. They were halfway to the temple when they sighted the first of the Toparrs coming at a run.
Olsen exclaimed, “The fools! They'll be cut down before—“
The crewmen in the van triggered their weapons. The white balls pulsed and flew, hit the yellow half-men, imploded them. Faint little pops of disappearing matter heralded their going. Half a dozen, a dozen, then a score, all went into nothingness.
“Why don't they retreat, form new lines” wondered the Swede.
"They were made—or trained—to fight. They rush into battle, hing by superiority of numbers to win over any attackers. There is no retreat, no surrender, in their makeup.”
Olsen grunted, "The Toparrs have other cities. They'll send more men, men by the thousands, maybe even the millions.” He drew a deep breath. "There's a story that the Toparrs defeated the race of Rhydd thousands of years ago—I mean, Fiona's ancestors and that after the great battle, many of the Toparrs were put away in vaults and hermetically sealed in against any future need.
"Well, that need is now. We have a few days to enjoy our freedom, then we've got to buckle down and fight it out.”
“And we'll be overwhelmed,” Craig nodded soberly.
Olsen flashed him an enigmatic look. “Unless you can destroy that god of theirs.”
Neither man spoke again until they were in sight of the square. The city was almost lifeless except for the sound of their marching feet. The temple doors were open; apparently the Toparrs had run out too swiftly last night in their pursuit of the major to bother about shutting them. Or they might be the jaws of a trap, waiting for the prey to enter before snapping shut.
Craig said, "Let's have a parley.” He was carrying the sack which held The Imp, The Halo and the black box which was a time field coordinator. He hefted it, thinking of those weapons, and whether they might slay a god.
"Some of us should be ready to fight in case the To come, he went on. "I'll go inside the temple, try and blast those rods and wires. Rolf, you stay outside, in charge of the others. At a sudden thought, he asked, "What of the other compounds, the other crewmen?”
"They'll stay behind locked doors until the Toparrs come for them.”
“We'd better send patrols in groups of twenty, all armed with taraths, to set them free. Have them out and search the city for more weapons. If here are millions of Toparrs, there must be millions of taraths hidden away.”
"I'd rather go inside the temple with you, but I'll do as you say. Go ahead, then. I'll send out the patrols, form a barricade here before the temple to stave off any attacks.”
Craig reached into the sack and lifted out The Imp. Then he beckoned to Fiona and when the girl ran to him, he handed her the sack.
"Stay close, pet,” he told her. She nodded, her eyes enormous with an inner excitement. To her the Toparrs were like deities themselves. Now to see their own weapons turned against them, to find herself surrounded by an army of fighting men eager for the kill, sent her barbarian blood pounding through her veins.
Fiona trotted beside him, the sack clutched in two hands, as Craig walked up the stone steps and into the cool interior of the building. The Imp was ready, but there seemed to be no danger.
His eyes touched the altar and the abstraction above it, then moved slowly all around the nave, the transepts and the apse. Nothing there. He walked forward.
When he was directly before the rods and wires he lifted The Imp and touched the activation stud. And —nothing happened.
He pressed the stud, harder. The Imp was dead. Wonderingly he lifted his eyes to what was the god Rhythane, or his dwelling place. Faintly he perceived between those juxtapositions of rods and plates and wires, a blue glowing. Ah, yes. The god was in his house.
Human—listen!
Until you came to this Beyond, there was peace in my world. My Toparrs governed for me, your people were my slaves. Now you seek to overthrow all that I have built over the centuries.
It shall not be permitted!
The faint blue glow was ripening to an intense brightness. Intuition touched John Craig in a corner of his mind, born of his years of assignments, of matching his wits and muscles against those of a dozen or more alien planets. His arm went around Fiona, drawing her close. His freehand dipped into the sack she held.
He lifted out the time-field box. The blueness was turning white now, blazing. Pallid fire ran along the wires and the rods until the inside of the temple was illumined by that eerie light.
Now, Johnny boy he told himself, and his forefinger stabbed at the red dot inset into the surface of the black box. A shimmer of something like water seen through glass leaped about him and the girl.
They were suspended in utter silence, in the future, the past, Craig could not know.
Yet he saw the bolt of blue fire that came at them from the geometric center of the wires and the rods. It was thin, needle-thin, that blue beam, and something inside Johnny Craig told him that if it hit them, they would have imploded as the Toparrs imploded when struck with the white energy balls.
The bluish flame ran all over time field in which they were suspended, blotting out everything for a few seconds. In that time, Commander Craig felt suspended from the universe, alone in infinity with Fiona pressed warm against his side, breathing harshly.
“Easy, easy,” he whispered. Her fingers pressed his hands as if to make acknowledgment of his words, her body moved closer to his animal warmth. They stood there, waiting.
Craig was never to know how long the blue flame played over the field; he judged it to be close to half an hour, but time is deceptive, and he had no experience within the time field. It might have lengthened or foreshortened Time itself.
The beam died away. Through the refractive walls of the field, he strained to see the interior of the abstraction. There was no blue energy anywhere inside the thing.
Cautiously he touched the blue button.
The Time walls went down. They stood again in the temple. The abstraction was dead, there was no brightness anywhere about it. Craig wondered if it had exhausted itself, or if it had gone away to decide what next to do against this human who had defied it.
Now he dropped the black-box into the sack and lifted out The Imp. He turned it toward the abstraction, activated it. Before the purple fire, the wires and the plates and the rods vanished, leaving only a rod cutoff and a bit of wire leaning limply into the air.
"The thing in there—the blue fire,” he said to Fiona,
"could blanket the power of The Imp, rendering it useless. It's gone and now The Imp will function.”
Rolf Olsen was standing in the doorway, staring. He called to Craig, “The Toparrs have raised their army. They're coming.”
He could hear them now, a faint hum of movement beyond the barricades the fleet crewmen had raised. With Fiona at his side, he went out into the bright sunlight and studied the defenses.
"Get the women inside the temple,” he said. "They'll be safe enough, now. The unarmed men should back up the others. If they are hit, let them get their taraths, if they can. Sometimes the taraths disappear too, when the Toparrs holding them are imploded.”
And you?” "I want to get to the old temple. You said Rhythane lives there.”
"He does, but his strength was weaker there than here, or so I heard. It was the reason why the Toparrs are building the new one. Rhythane will have more room to stretch him self or so I understand.
"If I can destroy Rhythane in his old temple, he won't have a handhold anywhere on the planet.”
Olsen grinn
ed, nodding.
Fiona, you stay here, he told her, but the girl only looked at him stubbornly, shaking her head until her unbound hair flew wildly. Fear widened her eyes. She had been through so much lately, she had seen marvel piled upon marvel and was close to the limit of her endurance. She would not let herself be parted from Craig, whom she had come to look upon as a god.
The commander grinned and hugged her. "All right, Fiona. Come with me, if you want. You'll be just as safe with me as with the others, I suppose.”
They moved out side by side toward an empty street at the opposite direction from which the marching Toparrs came. Craig knew that there were many Toparrs still in this city, just as there were many more scattered across the face of this Beyond world. Rhythane needed many servants, and kept them here and there on the cities of this planet which he owned. Craig wondered as he ran, if the Toparrs had ever revolt by their slaves before.
There was a sweet, clean Smell to this planet, Craig decided that he liked it. There were no exotic blossoms that cloyed the senses, as could be found on Chokann, no scent of a sprawling metropolis as filled the air of the vast city-world of Yarkanal with its garbage heaps and back alleys and narrow little streets where the dregs of the star planets came to wither out their lives. This was Duthandia before the empire had engulfed it, or early America when the only colonists on it were at Plymouth Rock and Jamestown.
Trees and grass and growing things, no more. The Toparrs left no marks, as men left their stamp on a land. They lived, they served their god, no more, There were not even any female Toparrs, or at least none that Craig had ever seen. It was a nightmare world to a man who had known only Earth; to the Empire sophisticate who prided himself on knowing the water world of Thoralas and the desert planet Akalaal, it was just one more faraway place.
He halted his run where a building made a black shadow against the single sun of the Enigma sector. He turned slowly, looking back, seeing the white flashes of the energy balls but hearing nothing of the battle that raged so fiercely in the Temple square. He desperately that he was right, that if he could kill Rhythane, or at worst destroy his means of living on this planet, the Toparrs themselves would die.
Beyond the Black Enigma Page 10