John Rackham (8 page)

"So
many, Jasarl
And
such colors! I had not before known
that there were colors in the sky at night. Can you tell me which of these
stars we are going to?"

"Near
enough. See that stretched-out shape that looks something like a cup on the end
of a crooked arm? Well, it may look like all one group, from here, but it
isn't. Only three of those stars are at aU close together. And the Hi-lax
Command space station we're after hangs right in the middle."

Jack
suddenly had trouble with his sense of reality. "I see only stars,"
he confessed. "I believe what you tell me, when you speak of men up there,
and enemies and wars, but I cannot properly imagine it. Tell me, Sir Jasar: do
you fight for king and country, as we do?
Or for a
faith?"

"Something
like
that, yes. We all need a symbol of some kind to
beam in on, to crystallize our thinking. There are all sorts of empires in the
Salviar Federation. In over a thousand worlds we have kings and queens, emperors
and presidents, councils of the elect, elders
...
all sorts of state methods. And we have a High Council of Ten, which represents
in one way or
another the
wishes and interests of the
whole thing, grouped by Galactic Sectors. And we have a Supreme Councillor, a
woman. Her only function in cold fact is to call meetings, make speeches, and
cast a deciding vote whenever there's a deadlock. But she has managed to do
much more than that. Some people have the gift of being able to inspire
people. I've known one or two at close quarters. Our Supreme Councillor has
that gift. Ill
show
you her likeness." Again
Jasar reached across to hit a button, and the star-scene went away.

A face and shoulders came to fill the screen,
and Jack could find nothing to say for several careful breaths. Her forehead
was broad and smooth and high. Her eyes, like yellow gold, gleamed from the
shadows of deep sockets. Her nose, thin and hawk-like, dominated a mouth that
was straight and stern. Age told its tale in her neck and shoulders, part
softened by a collar of stones and golden wire-work. She was regal, even
imperious, and her hair stood high about her head in elaborate coiffure, but
that hair was richly violet, almost black in its shadows, and all her skin was
as green as copper in the smith's forge-flame. Jack let out a careful breath
and said, in a small voice, "I suppose she is very beautiful, in her own
way."

Jasar
laughed that deep-chest laugh of his. "Astera of Zaran would thank you for
that, if she knew. You are very good, Jack. You take alien things very well.
Better than most.
As I've said before, if I'm spared to do
it, I will report this planet to the Central Information Banks. If the rest of
your people are up to your caliber we have been neglecting you far too
long."

In
a vague way Jack understood what he meant, and had a question. "Would the
Hilax think that way about us, do you know?"

"I
don't know. I doubt it. You make good points, lad. Who am I to drag your
peaceful world untimely into our mess? But"—he shrugged in the
half-gloom—"we'll just have to wait and see. The problem probably will
never arise." Somewhere back there in the shadows a small silver-toned
bell started a steady ring-ring song, and Jasar grunted gently, made a quick
move. The bell sound stopped. "That," he said, "was one of my
machines telling me that I am trying to do something foolish and dangerous.
Which I already knew."

"All
that, from a bell?"

"No. The bell is an alarm. The pitch of
it tells me the degree of probability. The machine is called a computer. Among
other smart things, it can add up possibilities, dangers, chances, and risks,
and get an answer that is in fact a measure of how likely I am to succeed in
doing what I intend to do. A low note means good chances. The higher the note,
the slimmer the chances are."

"Just
what are you going to do?" Jack asked, his throat going dry as the
evidence grew on him that he was now utterly committed to something he only
vaguely understood.

"That's not so easy to explain."
Jasar half turned in his seat, the glow from his screen lining his cheek and
jaw, striking glints from his eyes. "The most honest answer is

that
I don't really know. I have to go by such
bits and snips of information our intelligence has been able to steal and pry,
and it's not all that much. You used the word fortress some time back. Imagine
a fortress close by a river."

"Castle Dudley
overhangs the river at one point!"

"All
right, then you know the picture. The fortress mounts a guard, is always alert
against attack,
has
its weapons ready and looking out.
The walls are strong. But now suppose someone with nerve came in a small boat,
at night, quietly down that river and in under the walls, therefore unseen. And
then, if he had a line with a hook on it, and lodged the hook in a cut, or gap
of some kind, and could climb up and get in, quickly, then what? He would be
inside, past the armor and the walls and the weapons. And if he was quick
enough, and cunning enough, and prepared, he would be able to do great damage
before they knew what was happening.
Maybe set fire to the
place.
You understand?"

Jack understood only too well. "This is
what you plan to do?"

"Something
like
that. Add on a trimming or two. It's a stormy
night and the river is boiling uneasily . . . but I now have someone I can
count on to sit tight in the boat and keep it safe so that I have a chance to
get back to it!"

Jack
liked that even less. To have to sit and wait, alone in this ship that he
barely understood, in a strange place, while Jasar went out alone, to do great
deeds
...
and possibly never to
return . . . that didn't sit well with him.

"I
want no part of that," he said loudly. "I said, and I remember it,
that I would guard your back.
But not like that.
To
sit here craven, while you go out to fight? Never! I will not do it!"

FOUR

Jasar sat still, without moving, for some
time. Then he shrugged and said, quietly, "You were the one who said, just
now, that you didn't mind not understanding. Just tell me what to do, you said.
Remember?"

"But
not to sit here and grow fearful waiting for you to return! A maid could do
that much. Jasar, I have a strong arm. I can fight, and watch, and warn,
alongside you. And what would I do," he added urgently, "should you
not come back? How would I know, and what would I do?"

"There
would be nothing at all to do, Jack. I've already thought of all that. There is
a time-switch that will automatically return the ship here, then to ground and
clear, and destruct the grid, all by itself
...
if I fail to get back inside the set period. You've only to sit still!"

"I
will not! I go with you. I fight by your side, die by your side if it comes to
that!"

"That
last bit will be only too easy to do. Very well, Jack; you put a burden on my
back that I would rather not have, and what your mother will say
...
but Til admit I would have been
disappointed had you said anything else." He started as a deep-throated
gong began beating. "That's the five minute alarm. We have no time left
for dispute now." He moved a switch and the ship
was
lit with a cruelly bright glare that made Jack squint painfully. "We will
have to equip you as best we can. Listen and learn." He groped in a
cupboard under the screen.
"This," he said,
"on your left wrist.
Just clasp it together. It does many things.
It will pass you through the ship's protective field, for one. And it will
point you back to the ship wherever you are, for another. Stretch out your arm
and it will tickle you when you are aiming right." Jack laid the black
leathery stuff around his wrist and it clung snug and tight

"This"—it
was a belt and harness like Jasar's own—"will deflect most, if not all,
the offensive energies that may be thrown at you, unless the Hilax have devised
something new to us, which is a possibility always to bear in mind. This thing
is a hand-beamer. You've seen a little of what it can do. Set this wheel here,
like that for a needle-thrust, and like this for a broader effect. It will
destroy anything it strikes. Use it only when you must. It kills. You lay
a
finger alongside it thus, to aim, and put a
thumb on that stud to make it talk." It was black, and gold, and copper,
and it went into his hand as if it belonged there. Jack hung it from the
harness belt with great care.

"And this."
Jasar handed over a helmet the twin of his own. "There is a lot
more to this than I have time to tell you now. What you need is this much. This
stud, with the fine cuts around it, activates the translator. Leave that on all
the time. You'll know what's being said. This one, with the spike in the
boss—you press and turn that if ever you wish to talk to me and we are
separated from each other. Got all that?"

Jack
nodded, dragging the helmet down over his thick hair. The deep gong kept
steadily on, shivering the air
...
and
then, suddenly, it yielded to a flat clack of a noise, and Jasar swung to face
front, counting, "Four, three, two, one, zero!"

Jack
felt himself die, dissolve apart to fill
all the
world, then rush together just as quickly, like a silent thunderclap
...
and all so quickly that it was a
dreadful memory before he could really feel it. The ship's lights were off,
but the interior was full of a bright warm light that came from outside. It was
a mellow glow that gave the strong sense of being somewhere out in the open, in
sunlight. Jack felt sinkingly certain something had gone amiss, until he saw
how Jasar was sitting tensely, holding his breath, glaring at his devices, at
last to relax and let out a quiet sigh.

"We did it," he said quietly but in
triumph. "We did it. Through the screens and down, right on the outside
edge
...
and never
so
much as tickled an alarm, not as far as I can see. Now, if I wrap us up really
tight, like that
...
and that . . .
and that! And we are arrived, lad. Comets and coronas, we did it!" Jack
stared uncomprehendingly at white-faced disks, at slow-throbbing colors, at
black fingers that shivered and sank and became motionless, then at Jasar. The
little scout grinned. "The gamble paid off. I don't know why, and I am not
going to worry about it too much. Maybe the Hilax discipline is really as slack
as we have heard; who knows? What concerns me, right now, is that we are inside
the station area, inside their screens, and they don't seem to know it. Not
yet, anyway." "This is what you call a station?"

"This
is it. Remember what I told you, that diagram and the size of it? We are right
out on one edge, in the environmental control section. Let's get ourselves a
look." He half lifted from his seat and Jack said, surprised:

"Not with your magic
eyes?"

"View
cameras, you mean? Not likely! Gadgetry has its uses, but it also has drawbacks
in that it uses power, and power has a way of broadcasting itself to those who
might be listening out for it. At this moment there isn't a thing running in
this ship except the main power-plant generator and the screen shield. We are
going to take a look the hard way, with eyeballs!"

The
scene that met his gaze as he shared an eight-sided aperture with Jasar
satisfied all Jack's requirements for an alien world. He had known Jasar only a
few short hours. He was very far from grasping the utter strangeness and
difference of the little man's ways and habits of thinking. But the concept of
difference was something he could get a firm
hold
on,
and this panorama fitted that completely. So far as he could see, the ship had
come down to rest on a vast carpet of green froth, pale, deep enough to half
submerge it. A closer and more critical look made him change that
"froth" to "grass," but
whoever
saw grass that curled and billowed in such string-thin masses? And that
stretched into the distance as far as the eye could reach, like a restless sea?
Raising his stare aloft was no more rewarding. All he saw was a pale
blueness—no sun—that was curiously bright, yet just not bright enough to
dazzle. Like some kind of wall. And the glare of it reminded him of that
ominous starkness of the sky just before a thunderstorm. But no sun, nor
stars, nor clouds, nothing!

"A roof of
light!" he muttered, and Jasar nodded.

"That's
what it is.
A luminescent bubble-roof, enclosing the station.
No need to worry about that. The twist-field passed us in, and it will yank us
out again, when we need it. That's the part we have to concentrate on,
there!"

Jack
followed his pointing, and saw a far distant tower, black against the blue. It
was difficult to estimate the distance with no mark to go by. "It looks
small from here," he said.

"But it isn't.
Remember that diagram again. This station is about two of your miles across. So
that command tower is all of a mile away. And it is anybody's guess just what
may be lurking in these weeds."

"Weeds?"
Jack echoed uneasily.

"Call
them that, for now. Ill
explain
as we go. Make sure
you have everything secure now, nothing likely to drop or get lost. Here we
go!" He hauled himself up and out of the orifice in a leap and disappeared
downward. Jack scrambled after him, poised on the edge, and leaped. It was a
drop of some ten feet or more, and he braced himself for a heavy landing, but
his feet drove down through a mighty tangle of weeds and onto a dampness that
yielded and sprang back against his weight with very little shock. One stagger
and he was steady, up to his armpits in the stringy weed. It smelled of rank
decay.

"Jasar?"
He swung around, peering.

"Right here!"
The weed thrashed and a helmet appeared by his elbow. "Watch what
I do now. I'm going to fix that door." He extended his wrist, set a button
on it, and the orifice disappeared. "Turn the other way and it opens.
Right?
Now
I’ ll
shut it again,
like that. And don't you forget it. You may have to operate it on your own,
coming back. Now we will check your finder-beacon. No switch, this time; it's a
constant. Stick your arm out. Turn very slowly. You should feel something when
you're pointing at the ship."

Jack
did as he was told, moving his arm steadily, and as it came near to aim a
tickle ran up his arm, faint at first but unmistakable when he was pointing
directly at it. A wondering thought came to mind. "You were already
prepared for a mission such as this, I think?"

"That's
so. We have been working out the details of this gadgetry for some time.
Top secret stuff.
One of the hardest things in this war,
lad, or in any other, I suppose, is keeping the opposition guessing, thus
baffled, never to know just what you're going to hit him with next. And the
fewer people know of a secret the safer it is. That's why there were only two
of us trained for this operation. The other man cracked out at the last minute.
We did a heavy-gee simulation run, and his harness failed on him. The report is
that he will very probably live. There was no time to train a replacement.
Operation Beanstalk has too many critical deadlines to meet as it is."

"Beanstalk?"

"Doesn't mean anything.
When you plan an operation you have to talk
about it to some extent, so it's our practice to call it something
meaningless. Then even if it does get repeated, and overheard by the wrong
ears, it won't hurt. But why are we standing here airing our teeth like this?
There's work to do. Can you see that tower?"

Jack's
wits seemed to grow needles under pressure. "If you can still alter your
weight, with your belt, Jasar
" he
suggested,
"would it now be wise to make yourself less heavy, and thus ride on my
shoulder?"

"And
see where I'm going!" Jasar growled. "I should have thought of that
myself. Hold hard a minute. There, try that. Give me your arm!"

Jack
bent a knee, offered his arm, and in another moment the little man was perched
on his left shoulder, no more weight than a sack of cabbages.

"Don't
strain yourself, Jack. Sing out when you get weary. And drop me fast if
anything the least unusual or dangerous happens; get it?"

Jack
set away, half wading, half striding through the tangled mass of the weed, not
too secure on his feet but managing, and keeping an eye on the distant tower.
It looked a wearisome long way off.

"What danger might
befall us here?" he asked.

"Well,
let me explain the weed stuff first. Straight down under your
feet is
all the machinery, pumps and filters and stuff, that
perform the environmental upkeep of this station.
Two things
at once.
They keep the air fresh and breatheable, free of noxious fumes,
and they irrigate and fertilize this weed as fodder for fresh meat. That machinery
space is under the floor you're walking on. That's right, a floor. It's full of
pipelines, and it is covered with a layer of sponge, porous foam that provides
rooting for the growth, and the pipelines provide water and nourishment.
So much for that.
Now
...
hup! Steady there; what have we here?"

Jasar
clung tight as Jack blundered unexpectedly into a clear space that proved to be
a long lane barely wide enough for him too stand in, with his shoulders
brushing the weed on either side. The floor of the lane was very slightly
cambered, and three inches deep in sluggish-flowing dirty water, patched here
and there with gray slime.

"Put
me down," Jasar ordered, and, disregarding his wet feet, stopped to sniff
at the slow flow.
"Just as I said.
Nutrients.
We can follow this. It's headed almost in the right
direction, and there'll be branch channels later."

He
strode off rapidly, leaving Jack to plod in his wake, not liking the squelch in
his open sandals but enduring h as there was no alternative. It was easier,
anyway, than shoving through the weedy jungle.

"You
spoke of fodder for fresh meat," he said. "
What.
. . ?" and forgot his question as he heard a heavy, hard-breathing,
crunching sound nearby.
Over there, on his right, from the
weed-mass.
Jasar heard it too, whipped around, and tilted his ear to
listen. At that moment the weed right by his arm parted to pass a glossy-wet
muzzle, followed by spine-stiff whiskers, and huge polished black eyes. The
massive muzzle took Jasar full in the ribs, knocking him aside in a helpless,
scrambling sprawl. The vast head twitched, black eyes focusing on the little
man's flailing arms and legs. There came a sharp snuff-snort of breath, skin
peeling back to reveal yellow incisors
...
and Jack has his bow in hand, an arrow nocked, drawn to his chin and on aim
without consciously willing any of it. He picked a soft-looking spot under the
jaw-angle, loosed, drew another, and was up on aim as the first struck, and
"plucked" into the dirty brown fur. That jaw
fell
open more, let out a screech. The head swung. Jack loosed again, the cloth yard
hissing on its way, and drew another . . . but there was no need, this time.
That second shaft drove true, plunged into the bulging black eye, and hot
yellow stuff burst out. The massive head jerked back and up spasmodically, then
fell. The still-open
jaws belched a gust of foul breath, a
groan, and then the thing, whatever it was, sagged and was
stilL

Jack
released his tension, flipped the third arrow back into his quiver, and shook
all over, feeling sick, needing to breathe hard. Jasar sat up, his feet only
inches away from that hideous snout, and stared first at the stuff that dribbled
from that ruined eye, then at Jack.

"That,"
he said, and swallowed, "answers your question, I think. Small beasts—this
one's some kind of rodent— that nibble at the weed and provide fresh protein
for the food-machines. It makes for better flavor, if you have the room for it.
The Dargoon do
themselves
well!"

Jack
fought off his quavers, slung his bow, and moved closer. As his nerves quieted
he realized that this thing was very like a rat, if one could accept that a rat
might be twice the size of a cow! The dirty gray-brown fur, the ears and the
teeth, were all very like those of a rat.

"Would
there be many of these things?" he asked, and Jasar made a dry chuckle as
he got to his feet and wriggled.