‘It doesn’t look good. I tried to call them with no success. They raised their shield before we did.’ Radio waves could no more penetrate a forceshield than a heatray could. Their conversations would be private.
‘How shall we fire?’ asked Wilson from his position in the forward turret. ‘A broadside? Or should we try to pinpoint?’ ‘We’ll try to pinpoint first,’ said Tedric. ‘If he manoeuvres better than us and we can’t hold him, we’ll have to switch to a broadside and hope for the best.’
Yod nodded silently, concurring with Tedric’s choice of tactics. A broadside was really only effective when one ship outgunned the other by a considerable degree and could afford to try to wear down its opponent. Pinpoint firing did require superior manoeuvrability, but when a ship had it, it was the best and fastest way of penetrating an enemy shield. Yod didn’t know a great deal about the tactics of deep space warfare, even though he had watched numerous tridee serials as a boy, but what Tedric said seemed to make sense. He was beginning to feel slightly more confident himself. The bitter taste in his mouth didn’t go away, but he noticed it less.
The sudden burst of yellow light erupting from the enemy ship caught him by surprise. He fell back and his eye jerked away from the gun sight as the tug gave an abrupt lurch and seemed to dive. Grabbing for the gun sight, he pressed his eye against the lens, but he had lost his fix and saw nothing but N-space. He reduced the magnification and searched wildly for the enemy ship. The tug pitched and rolled, zigged and zagged, as Tedric manoeuvred to keep their shield as free as possible of enemy fire. Occasional excited voices crackled in his ears, but Yod didn’t bother trying to listen. The bitter taste in his mouth had vanished. He was tense but clearheaded. Forcing his hand to remain steady, he continued to try to find his target again.
There it was. The enemy ship streaked through the void. Oddly, all of its firepower seemed concentrated in the forward gun turret, burst following burst at split-second intervals, while the other gun stations remained dark. Keeping the ship in view, Yod increased the magnification and moved in closer. The bursts of yellow light emanating from the turret distracted him and he blinked to keep his vision from blurring. Infrequently, one burst splashed more broadly than the others, and Yod knew that the shield had been hit.
‘We’re holding up well,’ said the cool voice of the vemplar, Pal Galmain. ‘We’re outmanoeuvring him. He’s missing more often than he’s hitting.’
‘I’m going to try to get on top of him,’ Tedric said.
‘Be cautious,’ Galmain said. ‘He’s only using one turret. It could be a trick.’
‘If things get hot, we’ll beat a rapid retreat. Grab hold of your seats. Here we go.’
Giving a sudden lurch, the tug seemed to vault straight upwards. Since the enemy ship was the only point of reference in the void, it seemed to descend simultaneously until the tug hung neatly suspended above it. Tedric kept to a zigzag course even here, and the enemy heatray bursts struck home less than one time in ten.
‘It’s been thirty seconds since he opened fire,’ said Tedric, shocking Yod, for whom it had seemed more like thirty hours. ‘He can’t keep it up much longer. He’s going to have to reload.’
Through the gun sight, Yod could see that the forward turret was still the only one firing. With the tug hanging
-directly above the ship, he could think of no reason for the ship to attempt to conceal its firepower; it had already lured the tug in as close as it ever possibly could. Yod was beginning to feel a great deal more confident. They were going to win, damn it, they really were. This was starting to be almost fun.
Tedric seemed to have the same idea. ‘Yod, Juvi, Wilson, I want you to focus your fire on that forward turret. Ky-shan, I’m afraid you’ll have to aim somewhere at the middle. See if you can poke a hole through the hull. We’ll hit him from this angle. I’ll put us into a roll. Yod and Juvi, that way you’ll be able to fire in tandem. As soon as his shield goes up, be ready. We’ve got to hit him quick and hard. I don’t think we have sufficient energy resources for more than a ten or fifteen second barrage.’
Yod felt that he was ready. His thumb lay touching the trigger mechanism - almost too tightly. Without warning, the gun sight suddenly flashed blue. The enemy had ceased firing and raised their forceshield.
At the same instant, Tedric must have lowered their own.
Yod fired his first bolt. Tedric threw the tug into a gentle roll. As the enemy ship spun out of view, Yod kept his eye fixed to the gun sight. When he could see it again, he fired a second bolt. The flashes of yellow light, now that he knew they were his own, seemed even more brilliant than before. He blinked his eyes continuously to keep his vision clear. When he wasn’t firing, Juvi was. Wilson, from his strategic position in the from, was able to maintain a steady stream of heatray fire. Yod could see the effects of Ky-shan’s rear gun, too. The hull near the middle of the ship gleamed a dull red. That meant the shield had been penetrated there.
The enemy ship did nothing to evade their assault. It maintained its straight, unswerving course. Yod knew that every one of his bolts must be striking home and so undoubtedly were the others. They were not only winning the battle, it was fast becoming a rout.
Then the gun sight flared red. Immediately, Yod let go of the trigger and tried to relax. The ship righted itself and ceased spinning. It was only then, with the enemy ship directly underneath him, that Yod could survey the damage they had inflicted. The forceshield must have been penetrated almost at once, for the whole front end of the ship was nothing more than a blob of melted, twisted metal. A big jagged hole, Ky-shan’s work, gaped in the middle of the hull. It seemed to go clear through the ship and out the bottom side.
‘I think his shield’s permanently gone,’ Tedric said softly. ’There’s no reason to hit him any more.’
The cheering in his ears, mostly from Wilson and Juvi, sounded a little hollow even to Yod. Their victory had come too easily. Nonetheless, he couldn’t help himself. He joined in the celebration.
‘Shall we board her?’ asked Wilson, his old pirating instincts reasserting themselves.
‘I think we should try,’ Tedric said. ‘I’ll put our lock against that hole in the middle. Maintain battle stations until we do.’
Yod peered through the gun sight as Tedric manoeuvred the tug close to the wounded ship. When the two hulls touched and locked, cutting off any chance of a last desperate assault, he turned, opened the turret door, and crawled out. Juvi was already descending the ladder above.
‘We beat them,’ she said with a broad grin.
‘You sound like you weren’t sure all along.’
‘I wasn’t. I’ve always heard these Biomen were supposed to be supermen.’
’Then you must have heard it from Pal Galmain.’
He spoke in an undertone but one loud enough for her to hear. Politely, she pretended she hadn’t. In the cockpit, the two of them found Tedric, Wilson, and Gaimain waiting. Ky-shan joined them a few moments later. Tedric was wearing a bulky, airtight vacuum suit, the bubble helmet tucked under an arm. He motioned to Yod and Juvi. ‘You two will come with me. We’re going to check out our prize.’
Yod found a pair of vacuum suits in a wall locker and handed one to Juvi. He snuggled inside his suit, then helped juvi with her helmet. She helped him. He took a deep breath, activating the suit’s oxygen valve, and exhaled comfortably. He signalled to Tedric, who had also put his helmet on, that he was ready.
‘How about the radio?’ said Tedric’s voice in his helmet.
‘Mine’s fine,’ said Yod. He heard Juvi say the same,’
‘Got your guns?’
Yod and Juvi had both kept their heatguns free. Yod clutched his in his gloved hand.
’Then let’s go.’ Tedric led the way into the airlock. ‘I have no idea what we’ll find,’ he said as they waited for the outer door to open. ‘Pal Galmain seems to think the whole thing may still be a trap, but I can’t see any reason for it. Still, we ought
to be careful.’
The door opened. They found themselves standing in front of the big hole Ky-shan’s heatray had torn in the ship’s hull. It was necessary to reorientate their sense of direction since the hole was in the Bioman ship’s roof. There was also a second hole - in the floor of the ship - but it was a smaller one. The greyness of N-space showed through.
‘Let’s jump for the floor,’ said Tedric.
He leaped first. Yod followed. It was more like jumping ahead than down, but the ship’s grav-systems were still functioning, and when he hit the floor he stayed there on his hands and knees not far from the smaller hole. He slid slightly aside and a moment later Juvi landed beside him.
Yod looked around. They had landed in an enclosed cabin, the contents of which, whatever they might once have been, were now a mass of ash and rubble. There were steel doors at both ends of the cabin.
His heatgun extended in front of him, Tedric approached one of the doors. He burned a hole through the lock and kicked the door open.
The room on the opposite side had not been badly damaged. The wall panelling had been largely ripped out for some reason but a thick carpet and several big pillows covered the floor.
A suited figure lounged on one of the pillows.
As the three of them cautiously entered the cabin, their guns extended, the figure stood, holding its hands over its head. The figure was of normal height and looked like a man.
‘Don’t shoot,’ said a voice over the radio. ‘I surrender.’ Yod thought he recognised the voice. He wasn’t sure, though, until Tedric exclaimed: ‘Carey!’
‘Why, Tedric, old friend,’ said Matthew Carey, former Emperor of Man. He lumbered forward, his hands still extended above his helmeted head. ’Fancy running into you in a place like this.’
Chapter 9
A New Threat
After completing his inspection of the Bioman ship and finding no one else aboard, Tedric took Matthew Carey back to the tug and introduced him to Wilson and Pal Galmain. Carey’s eyes bulged with surprise when he learned the identity of the vemplar, but he volunteered nothing until Tedric sat him down beside the control panel console and said, ‘All right, Carey, how about an explanation?’
On the surface, Carey seemed as calm and at ease as ever, but there was a certain tenseness in the way he spoke that puzzled Tedric. Carey grinned and said, ’First of all, I want to thank you for having saved my life just now.’
‘I wasn’t aware that we had,’ said Tedric. The other members of the crew formed a curious half-circle around Carey. The two ships remained locked together in their firm embrace.
’Of course you did,’ said Carey. ‘Why do you think Fra Villion put me cm that ship?’
‘I was hoping you’d tell us that. Why did Villion send you here? What were you doing with him?’
‘Well, as you probably know, Villion escaped from the Iron Sphere and I must tell you how pleased 1 was about that. I may have been under his spell for a time - he’s a powerful personality - but I’m still a human being at heart, and I didn’t want to see the Earth I love wiped out by that mad fiend.’
Tedric withheld comment. He had been aboard the Iron Sphere in the days preceding Villion’s assault on Earth, and if Carey had in any way objected to his mentor’s plan of attack, Tedric had seen no evidence to indicate it. ‘Why don’t you just tell us about Fra Villion?’ he prodded.
‘AH right, I will. I just didn’t want you to misjudge me.’
‘I’m sure I haven’t,’ Tedric said drily.
Carey nodded and went on: ‘Well, when he escaped, Villion forced me to accompany him. I didn’t want to go -I was willing to surrender to Nolan and accept my just punishment - but Villion is a difficult man to resist. He worked some spell on my mind. I lost consciousness and when I awoke I was already in the Bioman Sphere.’
‘You remember nothing of your passage there?’
Carey shook his head. ‘No.’
‘Nothing of the red cloud?’
’The cloud? How does…?’
‘Villion apparently left the Empire by way of the red cloud.’
‘I remember nothing of that,’ said Carey. ‘I was aboard the Iron Sphere. The next thing I knew, I was in the Bioman Sphere.’
‘Where is the Sphere exactly?’ asked Pal Galmain. His eyes were cold and his manner suspicious.
‘A planet called Tavera. It’s an ugly place, the headquarters, I believe, of all the vemplars. I was kept in a castle known as Sanctuary, a most unpleasant place. The entire planet is, for that matter. It’s one vast cold desert. I can’t understand why anyone in his right mind would choose to live there willingly.’
’There are other aspects to life,’ said Pal Galmain, ’than easy comforts. But tell me, was Villion at Sanctuary too?’ ’Oh, yes. In fact, he seemed to be running the show. Not that I knew very much of what was going on. I was kept locked up in my room. Villion wouldn’t even see me. I was beginning to think I’d die in that hell.’
‘You appear to have come this far,’ Galmain said tightly, ‘alive.’
Carey’s face beamed a smile, as if he were oblivious to the vemplars hostility. ’That was Villion’s idea, not mine. I don’t know why you’re all here or what you’re after, though I suppose I could make a good guess if I wanted, but Villion knows about it too. He called me to his room one day and told me he was sending me into space to meet Tedric. At first I was delighted - I thought I might be rescued - but when I found out what he really intended, I was shocked. He’d equipped a robot ship to come here and attack you and he wanted me along for the ride.’
‘Why?’ asked Galmain bluntly. Tedric leaned back and let the vemplar take control of the interrogation. Galmain was clearly sceptical of Carey’s tale, and Tedric believed that was a wise viewpoint to hold.
‘He wanted me dead,’ Carey said. ’That’s the only thing I can assume. I guess he’d finally realised I wasn’t going to help him any more. The way I see it, he thought either you’d destroy the robot ship - and me with it - or else the ship would destroy you, in which case he’d still lose nothing. If you want the truth, I doubt if the ship was even programmed to return home. I think I would have been marooned in N-space forever. Now you can understand why I say you saved my life.’
‘But you came as Villion directed,’ Galmain said. ‘You’re here.’
‘Do you think that was my idea?’ For the first time, Carey’s voice carried a trace of real passion. ‘I told Villion to send one of his own people. I pleaded with him. He said I was the most expendable individual on Tavera. He laughed when he said that, and I realised by then how much he’d come to despise me.’
‘Villion would never despise a mere human being,’ Pal Galmain said. ‘He wouldn’t expend the effort.’
Carey shrugged. ‘AH I know is the way he acted towards me.’
‘But how could Villion be certain that what actually transpired would not occur, that you would survive and fall into our hands?’
’That was my doing,’ Carey said, with a clear note of pride. ‘I disengaged the gun turrets, ail except the one up front which I couldn’t reach.’
‘And Villion let you do that?’ Galmain frowned deeply. ‘He is not that great a fool.’
‘I never said he was. He locked me in a cabin. Tedric can confirm that - he had to burn a hole through the door to reach me. What Villion forgot, though, was that I know a good deal about the circuitry of robot ships. I studied for two years at the Corps Academy on Nexus. Tedric can tell you. The subject is pretty well covered there.’
Tedric nodded. That’s true enough. Carey would know about such ships.’
’Enough to realise that any circuitry connecting the main controls with the gun turrets would have to pass through the walls of my cabin. I simply took the panelling apart until I found what I was looking for. Then I tore out the wires with my bare hands. I had to be careful. I didn’t want to cut off my own heat or air or gravity.’
Tedric nodded thoughtfully. ‘He’s
telling the truth about that at least. The panelling in his room had been removed.’ ‘And could have been removed even before he left Tavera,’ said Pal Galmain.
‘Why would I want to do that?’ Carey said.
‘You didn’t. Fra Villion did.’
‘But why?’
’To place you among us. To lull our suspicions. To make you a spy.’
‘But if that was true, then why didn’t Villion disconnect ail the gun turrets? He could have put me in a different cabin - up front - and used the same story. After all, that one turret might well have been enough to destroy you. If that had happened, then what?’
‘If that one turret had not functioned, your plan would never have succeeded.’
‘I don’t understand,’ Carey said.
‘Nor do I,’ said Tedric.
‘It’s quite simple. If the robot ship had failed to open fire on us, we would have gone past. After all, were we seeking a battle? No. If the robot ship hadn’t given us one, we would not have stopped and found this spy to take into our midst.’ Carey looked bemused. ‘I never thought of that.’
‘No,’ said Galmain, ‘but I’m sure Fra Villion did.’
To his credit, Carey did not attempt to appear more innocent than he actually was. He fastened his gaze on Tedric and said,‘I’m telling the truth. I can’t force you to believe me, but, damn it, this time I am.’ As he spoke, that peculiar rigidity came over his voice again. Tedric wished he knew what it meant.
‘I, for one, do not believe you,’ Pal Galmain said. He faced Tedric. ‘My recommendation is that we dispose of this spy forthwith. Put him back aboard the robot ship, make certain the controls are properly destroyed, and set him adrift. If what you have told me of his past activities is true, it’s a just fate.’
Carey looked stunned, but it was Juvi who spoke: ’That’s horrible, Pal Galmain.’
’Execution is never pleasant, Juvi, only necessary. The man is not merely a spy, he’s worse: a traitor to his own kind.’
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