"What's that?" asked Pausert warily, feeling in his pockets.
"Their pet," said Hantis, with a perfectly straight face. "Ta'himmin and Lisol Aloorn-Taro have prevailed on their grandfather to enter a plea for its return. They say it is skilled in playing games, and good for defense. Besides all that, it helped to fix their nursebeast. So they want it back, even if it does eat a lot."
" 'It'? A toy! Huh! I'll fix them." She began to purse her lips. Hastily, the captain clamped his hand over her mouth.
Hantis shook her head "The demand will be denied, of course. This is just their grandfather's way of raising a public vote of gratitude to you, Leewit. He is a powerful sub-clan head. This is how you gave rise to your own name, you know, as well as saving two great ones among my people. Ta'himmin Aloorn-Taro is credited with much of the restoration. And his sister is remembered as Lisol the Healer."
Hantis smiled oddly. "It is a bit strange to see my own distant and famous ancestor as a very little girl-Sprite. As you know, the youngest daughter of my house is always called 'the Leewit.' Toll and Threbus asked me for a good name for you, so I offered them one of ours. I never knew where it came from, until now. Ta'himmin and Lisol never forgot you."
The latest of the universe's Leewits dissolved into tears. The captain decided it was safe to remove his hand. But he still did so a bit warily. With the Leewit . . .
You never knew.
CHAPTER 33
The power rooms of Aloorn were hidden deep within the stalk of the castle.
They were heavily guarded both by ordinary and klatha means, but with the High Lord at their side those barriers were passed. Arvin had walked slowly, talking to Hantis, both of them looking sad and serious. From what the captain could work out, it would be a grim time and hard tasks ahead for the young Sprite Lord, for which he'd get much blame and little credit.
Down here, underneath the huge humming turbines, the captain hoped that they would be invisible to the vatches. Silver-eyes certainly hadn't followed them. The captain fashioned his hooks of klatha force for the big creature, with heat like a kiss of the sun. He put barbs on them, and not threads of force but broad ropes of it. This vatch wasn't going to get away, if he could catch it at all.
They waited. The Sprites also had folk who could rell vatch, and while the party from the Venture had to "disappear" to make the creature of klatha force curious, they could "reappear" in a hurry if the vatch came calling.
And it did.
The signal came down.
"All right, everybody onto the hoist. Go, go, go!" yelled the captain. They tumbled onto the hoist and rushed upwards. As they rose the captain became aware of the big vatch. He flung those hooks of force, flung them around and over the huge shifting cloud of vatch. They hooked into the black energy swirls, they hauled and tightened. Tighten. More. As much as we need to immobilize this one. Pull in. Hold it. Hold hard.
The vatch yowled. Green slitted eyes peered fearfully at him. NOT AGAIN! MONSTER, LET ME GO!
Not unless you do what I say—or I'll tear you apart and short out your innards! Playing with us! Take us back to our ship and our time right now! No. Wait. Let's finish things here properly. Let me see where those Nanite-possessed ones fled to.
The towers that Hantis had pointed out as "fabled Delaron" sprang into view from the grayness that was vatchspace. And then the elegant, slim towers shrank and broadened. The captain blinked. There weren't twenty of them. Just one. This tower looked like the others had—only this looked like it could be built with bricks and mortar. It was impressive but not impossibly tall. And looking in—somehow as if he had X-ray vision, he saw a group of Sprites in an upper chamber. Once again his vision shifted as if he was now seeing into the Sprites, and he saw them as a seething mass of myriad tiny klatha black energy points . . . all but three of those present in the upper chamber. The Nanites were klatha or klatha-using creatures too, and this was apparently what they looked like to a vatch.
Pausert directed a bolt of dark energy, torn from the mass of the great roiling thing that was the vatch, at each of the Nanite-creatures. It absorbed the little sparks of klatha energy that were billions of Nanites, and consumed the bodies in gouts of incandescent heat. He saw the three noninfected ones flee, and then he finished the business with a explosive bolt of raw energy that simply vaporized the now empty upper stories of the tower. That would do as a parting present for the safety of ancient Nartheby, if not Arvin's reputation—since he'd be the one blamed for the destruction in the historical records.
Now take us all back to our ship, and then take the ship where I tell you. Pausert had already decided that if he caught the vatch, he'd have it take them to within a few hours of the Imperial Capital. To Great Patham's Seventh Hell with all this mucking about in Egger Space!
The grayness whirled and surged. Even by the vatch standards of non-distance this place was far off. And dark . . . and then tumbling. Finally, they were back in the Venture.
But not the Venture in the stillness of the void: the Venture on the expanding wild edge of matter. The Venture was being violently flung and rolled as a great tumbling tidal wave of energy and existence picked her up. The ship was on the verge of breaking up, torn between two states and sometimes existing in both. Her engines roared at full throttle, and then cut out and then roared again. Gravity surged in waves that almost made the captain black out as he reached for the drive controls. The engines cut again . . . then free lightnings danced through the ship. Sparks zipped and sizzled. The Venture vibrated like some giant jaw's-harp.
Nothing could survive the front-wave of singularity for long. Even the vatch was being battered and torn, and so were the cables of pure force and the klatha hooks.
Suddenly, they were out of there.
The control panels were alive with flashing lights and the air in the control room was thick with smoke and the sound of damage alarms.
Pausert fought with the controls, realizing as he did so that his grip on the vatch was literally being torn away. The vatch was so desperate to leave that it was willing to part with large pieces of itself in order to do so.
One of the control panels was actually on fire. Pausert just let the vatch go, and focused all his attention on the damaged Venture. Vezzarn had managed to get out of his acceleration couch and grab a fire extinguisher and spray the burning control panel. But the power systems were running on emergency auxiliary now. The lights dimmed and flickered. The Venture's main drive engines stuttered and hiccupped . . . and were still. Unfortunately, one auxiliary lateral rocket still fired—even though the automatic controls had it shut down—and it spun the Venture in a clumsy spiral. The lights cut completely as the captain managed to shut the lateral down with one of the manual override switches.
There was an eerie silence. A spaceship is never completely silent. There is always some machinery running. There is always some vibration, even at the subliminal level. Spacers became inured to the roar of the main drive to the point where they just didn't notice it. But when everything is still, the ship is dying or dead.
The Venture drifted like a derelict hulk. Inertia kept her on the slow spiral that the misfiring lateral had caused. Then the standby batteries cut in, lighting only the emergency glows and the instrument readouts. The air was thick with smoke, burning the captain's eyes—though not as much as the readouts from the instrument panel did.
Pausert knew sadness and despair. His ship was in no state to go anywhere. The old Venture would be lucky if it ever made another planetfall.
But he didn't let any of that show in his voice. "Vezzarn, better check the engine room. Give me a damage assessment as soon as possible. Goth, check the air recycler. Hantis, you and the Leewit start collecting suits, and get yourselves suited up. Then report back here." The captain was already examining the control panels. "A navigation readout would be good, too, if we've got anything still operating that will pick up beacons."
The captain himself had already taken the small at
omic powered lamp from the worktable, and started undogging the access hatches to the control panel's electronics boards. The circuitry there was mostly solid-state, but there were various plug-in spares he could try.
"Ow." He burned his hand and sucked his fingers while trying to work out what was going on. The smoke didn't help. He waved it away and continued to examine the boards. He moved one and was rewarded with a shower of sparks. At least there was still power, even if Patham himself didn't know what was shorting out what.
He took a deep breath, coughed, and let klatha guide his hands. He pulled out one of the units. Part of it was melted and Pausert dropped it hastily with a word he hoped the Leewit wasn't near enough to hear. He plugged the replacement unit from the spares compartment into the panel. Luckily it was a J-83 and that was one of the modules the Venture carried in case of emergencies. He was rewarded by a buzzing sound and a red-flickering in the darkened control room. Hastily pulling his head out of the control panel, the captain was relieved to see that the flickering was caused by a bank of telltales, flashing red. The buzzing was stilled by flicking a switch or two, and the telltales at least told him where to start looking. There was life in the boards, and that in itself was reassuring. What wasn't, was the sheer number of faults being registered.
There was a sudden comforting hum, a vibration of machinery somewhere in the deepspace-silence of the Venture. The intercom crackled to life. "Captain, I've got the number two auxiliary running on manual. We can draw power for the air recycler off that, and some lights."
"Well done, Vezzarn. What's the status of the rest of the engine room?"
"Not good, Captain." There was a pause. "We had a burnback. We've lost part of the aft tubes. The main drive . . . I don't know yet, Captain."
It was not what Pausert needed to hear. He studied the telltales, deciding what to do next.
Goth came in. "Got power to the air recycler again. They're working just fine, Captain. We'll at least have this smoke dealt with pretty soon." She went straight to the communicator and dialed the space beacon frequencies.
"Doesn't seem to be any life in the communicator system," she said.
"Hang on. You should have power now." Pausert pushed the module onto its pins and crossed his fingers. There were stars out there. The familiar river of light that was the Milky Way said that they were at least back in the right galaxy—but exactly where and when they were was another matter.
"The dials have lit up," announced Goth. "Still not getting anything, though."
"Try the general and Imperial ship-to-ship channels." The captain wrestled with a hot board that seemed to have soldered itself in place.
There was a vague crackly noise from the communicator. "Might almost have been someone saying something," said Goth.
The captain, more familiar with communicator problems, felt some relief. He'd definitely picked up a word there, in Universum. They were back in a familiar part of the galaxy, in human-occupied space. "I think we might also have lost our external aerials. It's a quick job to replace them."
"Uh-huh," said Goth. "Well, seeing as the Leewit's brought me a suit, I'll suit-up and see to it. You're busy and it's just plug-in, plug-out stuff." Since Goth had moved herself into the Venture, she'd taken on responsibility as naturally as a miffel grew winter fur to deal with the cold. The girl was a fair way to becoming a competent ship-handler, and her skill with navigation sometimes left the captain feeling embarrassed about his own ability.
"Anything else we can do, Captain?" asked the Leewit.
"A general check. Keep out of the engine room, but do a damage assessment of the rest."
* * *
The captain went back to his work. Some of the boards could be bypassed. Some could be replaced. It was a painstaking process that required him sticking his head under the console, and then getting out again, to check the readouts and displays.
" . . . proach on standard incoming lane three," squawked the communicator.
Goth must have replaced the aerials. And they had communications and they couldn't be too far from a planet or refuel space-station, with space traffic. That was a weight off his mind.
"Well, we've broken some furniture, and the electric butler's not working," said the Leewit. "Can't see any big damage so far though, Captain. And it's not so smoky any more."
Trust the Leewit to check out the electric butler first! That was the least of the captain's worries right now. The electric butler had always been a bit cranky and inclined to deliver ice cream when you asked for steak, and sometimes deliver it to the control room floor with a cackle, instead of to the small mess-room. He'd worry about starving to death once they'd reestablished control and engine function.
"Thanks. Try the communicators on the beacon channel again."
"What's the beam length?"
".02r00."
Less than half a minute later the captain heard the beep of the beacon signal. "You want the trans . . . transwatsisname, Captain?" asked the Leewit.
"Transcription. Yes, please. It's the green button on the right."
Two minutes later, the captain knew that he was back in his old stamping grounds. He could have been home in the stuffy Republic of Nikkeldepain within three weeks ship time. And the world of Porlumma, where he'd once rescued three witch-girls from slavery, lay just ahead.
Now the captain only had two problems. The first was simple enough to deal with. Certainly he, and probably Goth and the Leewit, were considered to be criminals on Porlumma, despite the fact that he'd sent Wansing's jewels back to him.
Well, the Venture could still travel under her Uldune-obtained false papers as the Evening Bird. He could go back to being Captain Aron of Mulm and Goth his niece, Dani. They could come up with a suitable alias for the Leewit and no papers would be needed, as long as she didn't leave the ship. But he wouldn't be surprised if there were "wanted" holovids all over the dock. He'd have to talk to Goth about doing a suitable light-shift, although he knew that was a tiring exercise to keep up.
The second problem was more immediate. Would the Venture make it to the surface of Porlumma at all? The captain got up and went to inspect the engines for himself. There was still several more hours work here on the control systems, but he needed some tools from the engine room to get into some of the panels. And besides, what was the use in fixing control and navigation systems if the engines weren't usable? At least they were within easy reach of Porlumma by lifeboat, if worse came to worst.
Down in the engine room the captain found Vezzarn hard at work on the main drive. "Might get three of her tubes functional, Captain. But they're none of them going to be calibrated right. I've adjusted the thrust settings as best I can for the situation. The main drive itself . . . well, she's working, but for how long I can't say. We'll be lucky if we get a light-year out of her, and I don't know if the damage can really be repaired at all. She'll need to be seen by the engineers. The tubes themselves are a write-off."
"Well," said the captain, comfortingly, "luckily enough we're within three light-hours of an Empire world. It's a backwater, but they'll have repair facilities. If I can get her down in this state, that is."
"Going to be tricky landing, Captain. But you'll pull it off." Vezzarn seemed more cheerful now that he knew there was an Empire world within reach.
"I'll do my best. Is there anything I can do for you down here? Otherwise, I need to get back to the navigation and control systems. There's a ton of work up there to make them operational, never mind fit to handle a dicey landing."
"I'll be fine, Captain. With respect, sir, I've probably worked on more tubes than you have. If you like you could send one of the girls down to pass me things. And it would make my day if I could have a cup of coffee with this job."
"The electric butler's on the fritz. But I'll ask the Leewit to come down here. I want Goth up there for navigation."
Vezzarn actually laughed, something that would have been unthinkable minutes before. "That electric butler is pr
obably the one bit of this ship I wouldn't mind seeing in the state that these engines are in. They didn't like those surges, Captain. That's not going to happen again, is it?" he asked warily.
"Not if I can help it!" The captain went back up to the control room.
After several grueling and often frustrating hours of peering at manuals and working in awkward, confined spaces, Pausert had repaired or replaced what he could of the control system, and jury-rigged as best as possible whatever couldn't be repaired. Then Vezzarn and he went through an extremely cautious test firing of the main drive. At a very reduced capacity, the drive could push the Venture onwards to Porlumma. She began the slow limp to port. What would have taken hours would take her the better part of a ship-day, and, the captain knew, he'd have as tricky a landing as he'd ever managed to pull off at the end of it. It was nearly enough to get him to consider the Egger Route again. Nearly.
The captain went off to shower and returned to find that the now inevitable poker school had taken over the navigation table again. He was glad that he had the excuse of wanting to keep an eye on the instruments and do some calculations for the landing. He already owed the Leewit too much candy to be good for her. Goth said that his problem with playing with the Leewit was that he didn't really want to win. Pausert knew it was true enough. But using klatha powers on the two young witches would seem unfair, even if he was sure that the Leewit had somehow marked the Agandar's cards.
CHAPTER 34
Wiping the sweat from his brow, the captain exhaled long and slowly. If he could bottle that landing, he could sell it as the perfect instant diet. Pausert thought that he'd probably lost fifteen pounds on the way down. At least ten of them had simply melted away when one of the remaining tubes lost half its liner seconds before setdown.
And yet . . . he'd managed it. Near to a textbook perfect landing, in fact. Now, so long as Porlumma's authorities didn't recognize them, all they had to do was get the Venture repaired and get back into space again. Once they were out of detector range, they'd have to make use of the Sheewash Drive to get to the Imperial Capital in time. But, according to the calendar of the customs official who was coming to give the "Evening Bird" the once-over, they still had ten days.
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