The Chaos Weapon (8 page)

“In what way?”

“I see a
great and sudden leap in entropy. An explosion …”

Wildheit slowed the crawler to a halt, prepared to argue that what she was reading was probably the imminent future firing of the take-off engines. To allay her fears he patiently began explaining this theory when the
Gegenschein
abruptly burst into a flaming incandescence which lit the desert as bright as day and threw out such heat that the crawler’s occupants would have been burned alive had the vehicle not been built for radiation safety. Though the conflagration died as suddenly as it had blossomed, Wildheit knew he no longer had a ship. Another realization came also. From far out in the surrounding darkness came the sound of sticks on sticks …

Clickety … Clickety …

… overlaying the subnotes of a deep and reverberant horn …

…
Clickety …

Great gouts of violet-scented perfume washed around them, and Wildheit found his senses start to swim. His immediate reaction was to cut off the external ventilation fans and switch the crawler over to its own internal atmosphere. The idea worked, and the suffocating scent of violets was swiftly removed by the activated-carbon filters. Then he brought the motors up to a thunderous scream and engaged the torque converter. The vehicle leaped forward like a startled animal and roared away across the desert past the molten remains of what had recently been the patrol-ship.

Curiously, even the great engine noise inside the cabin failed to prevent their perception of the clicking sticks; and behind and beyond the engine’s roar, the baying of the great horn slipped inexorably down below the lowest registers of the human auditory threshold. The slow throb of its pulse seemed alternately to attract and repel them, so that they began to sway like grasses in a wind.

With a strong oath, Wildheit switched on the
crawler’s powerful searchlights and swept them over the desert scene. The scanning beam revealed nothing of note, so he armed the automatic cannon and put a complete circle of close-spaced super-high explosive charges round them at minimum range. The clicking sticks became silent, and the vast horn choked in mid-utterance and was dead. To complete the certainty of their deliverance, the marshal then put out a second circle of explosive death pitched at a slightly greater range. When he was certain that nothing within the span of his fire could be alive, he slowed the crawler back to cruising speed.

“That’s for Dabria,” he said disgustedly. “I should have guessed he’d lay ambush. Letting us escape wasn’t the only way he could keep control. Killing us would have been more effective. Nor would the Federation have bothered to send another marshal once the Chaos Seer was dead. What I don’t figure is how they had access to a device that could destroy a parked patrol-ship.”

“They wouldn’t need a device,” said Roamer. “Nor need it have been Dabria’s work. There are seers who can mentally trigger any source of potential energy.”

Now the beam of the searchlight began to pick up the blast craters, and near them he could see occasional bodies clad in the black tunic-dress of the Guardians. Several white sticks lay in the path, and farther out a buckled device of hoops and canvas was all that was left of the great subsonic horn.

“It’s a pity they had to learn the hard way,” said Wildheit seriously.

“What do we do now?” asked Roamer. Her relief at their escape from the ambush was evident, but a lingering fear still haunted her.

“We have to find another route off-world—and quickly. How far is the nearest spaceport?”

“There isn’t one. When Mayo was declared off-limits, all the spaceports were dismantled and all the ships destroyed. That’s how they made the prohibition absolute.”

Wildheit brought the
crawler to a halt, then let the engines die.

“Coul, I wish to speak with Marshal Hover. Can you enter communion with Talloth?”

“I see no great evidence of need,” Coul said archly. “Have I not told you the purpose of communion is other than to circumvent your pedestrian communications system. Why not use your FTL transmitter?”

“Because the crawler’s FTL set isn’t powerful enough to reach Terra direct, and it could take days to attract the attention of a relay station. Anyway, the local sun broadcasts so much sub-etheric noise we’d never get any intelligence through the channel.”

“Then, because you love me, I’ll communicate with Talloth. If he’s of like mind, we may grant your wish.”

Wildheit relaxed and tried to be patient, knowing there was no way he could force the issue. Despite their careful mimicry of human conversation, the gods spoke to each other by unknown means across a whole spectrum of dimensions and with a complexity of thought a human mind was never likely to comprehend. At some instant of quantized time and in some alter-universe the two gods neared each other—perhaps shared a finite fraction of a second of composite identity. They were reluctant to use their powers of communion for the purpose of human communication, but the rare occasions when the request was granted frequently justified the presence of the gods on the marshals’ shoulders.

“Breathe,” said Coul finally.

“Hullo, Jym! This is Hover. What’s on your mind?”

“I’m still on Mayo, Cass. I’ve got the Chaos Seer, but lost the patrol-ship. At the moment we’re sitting it out in the crawler, but the local constabulary has elevated unfriendliness to the status of a fine art. What can you do about getting us off?”

“Hold a second while I check the shipping updates.
Mmm!
Not good. Space Force detected a mass alien breakthrough and put every ship they had about twenty kilo-parsecs out in the galactic drift. Even if they could
spare a cruiser, it couldn’t get to you inside of six days. There’s nothing commercial anywhere near your edge of the Rim. Our best bet is a patrol-craft out from Terra, but that could take ten days. Can you hold out that long?

“No chance! Without the patrol-ship I can’t even refuel the crawler—leaving aside the niceties of food and rest.”

“Leave it to me, Jym. I’ll put out an all-service priority call. There’s bound to be some experimental craft around, or a random patrol-scout which isn’t on the updates. Whatever you do, reserve enough power for the radio-beacon, so you can be located from space. How’s he taking all this—the seer?”

“He’s not a he, he’s a she. Name of Roamer.”

“Aren’t you overdoing this running-low-on-fuel bit?”

“Knock it off, Cass. She’s about sixteen.”

“But she is a Chaos reader?”

“Pure and natural. I’d have been fried goose if she hadn’t predicted that the patrol-ship was going to blow.”

“Then clear all lines,” said Hover. “We need that talent fast. The Chaos Weapon just struck at Gannen, and we lost the relativity research ship and some of the best scientific brains in the galaxy.”

Wildheit added another fifty kilometers to their distance from the city before he decided to stop for the night. In the desert sand, the crawler left broad and easily followed tracks, so he reasoned that only distance could give them relative security from surprise attack. He then closed down all non-essential systems to conserve their dwindling fuel and activated the radio beacon in case Hover’s estimate had been unduly pessimistic.

Just before dawn, the soft bleep of the beacon’s return signal threw him sharply awake.

“What’s the matter?” Roamer asked.

“Spacecraft in the stratosphere. Very likely trying for a landing. I think we’re about to get lucky.”

He switched on the detectors and watched a spot of
light falling across the screen, while the figures on the digital readout chased each other back and forth like agitated snakes.

“Landing for sure, but that’s no Service craft. I’ve seldom seen such a haphazard approach mode. At a guess he’s without instruments, blind drunk, and operating the controls with his feet.”

“Is that bad?” Roamer asked gravely.

“Well, there’s only one group in space who can be that bad and still survive—and that’s the Rhaqui.”

“The Rhaqui?”

“Space gypsies. There’s three or four tribes of them. They wander around in several old spacecraft salvaged from breaking yards. A finer gang of outright villains you’ll never meet. Nobody will give them planet-space, and they’re too lazy to develop a world of their own.”

From the path of its final trajectory they could tell that the descending spacecraft was nominally homing on their radio beacon. So crazy was the approach mode that Wildheit cancelled the beacon and drove a kilometer or so out of position lest the craft descend on top of them. Finally the huge hulk loomed down out of the sky and made an incredibly prolonged and untidy touchdown on the desert sands.

“That’s the Rhaqui for sure,” said Wildheit. “We’ll give them till sun-up then go over. It’ll take that long for the ground to cool.”

At the sight of the first edge of the sun, Wildheit maneuvered the crawler back into the vicinity of the antiquated and space-stained hull. Almost immediately a hatch opened and an outlandishly garbed and grinning figure wearing a huge tricorne hat climbed out and came swaggering across the sand to meet them.

“Kes-kes Saltzeim,” Wildheit said to Roamer. “The biggest rogue of them all.”

“Hola, Marshal Jym! What coincidence to meet you here!”

“It would have been coincidence, if you hadn’t been illegally monitoring the Service FTL transmissions and picked up an all-service priority call.”

Saltzeim grinned broadly. “Marshal, to
you everything’s illegal. Smuggling, breaking quarantine, piracy, theft, rape—everything that gives life some spice. Not, of course, that I indulge in such things. But I can read, you understand?”

“I understand well enough,” said Wildheit.

“Like the story I was reading telling of a space-marshal engaged in a kidnap that went wrong. I think to myself I have ship and he doesn’t and if this was true and not story I could perhaps arrange trade.”

“You thought wrong, Kes-kes. I’m requisitioning your ship. Galactic Override Authority.”

“I see your lips move, but I hear no sense. Then I suppose to myself what the marshal’s enemies would pay me to leave him here. Pure supposition, you understand?”

“I understand. What’s your price, Kes-kes?”

During the conversation about twenty more gypsies, an assortment of male and female, old and young, had descended from the spacecraft and were forming an interested circle around the negotiators. Saltzeim made a mock attempt to scan the skies.

“There are rumors of some unprincipled characters wandering this sector. That always puts a premium on freight rates and virginity. Under the circumstances I couldn’t get you off-world for less than a Marshal’s Credit Note for six million stellars …”

“Space-worms have eaten your mind!”

“… and the crawler …”

“Federation property, not for sale.”

“… and the girl.”

“That’s not even negotiable. You know, I’d be doing the galaxy a favor if I returned to my cannon and blasted this rat-hulk and all your family out of existence.”

“But you won’t do that, Marshal Jym. My scanners tell me more than thousand riders approach across the desert. Do we have trade?”

“I’ll offer you three million stellars. That’s about a
thousand times what your whole stinking outfit’s worth.”

“And the crawler?”

“I’ll abandon it on the desert. If you load it, you do so at your own risk. There’s a death penalty attached to its unlawful acquisition.”

“And the girl?”

“Completely out of the question. The first man who touches her is dead.”

Saltzeim appeared to give the matter careful consideration.

“You drive hard bargain, Marshal Jym. But we have trade. Please accept the hospitality of our ship. We’ll be space-borne as soon as we’ve swept our traces from the dust.”

Wildheit shrugged. He knew that Saltzeim had no intention of leaving the crawler in the desert. He was comforted by the fact that all the ammunition and spares were deliberately non-standard and of such complexity that inept operation was as likely to be as dangerous to the operator as to those attacked. His own duty should have been to activate the crawler’s radio-linked self-destruct mechanism, but he was considering a balance of risks. During the progress of the bargaining one of the onlookers had used the phrase
amindumi.
Knowing something of the customs of space gypsies, Wildheit considered it wise to have extra armaments to hand. Unwittingly the Rhaqui were busily engaged loading the vehicle containing these armaments into their own hold.

The interior of the Rhaqui ship was indescribably dirty and unsafe. The hull, largely by virtue of its extreme thickness, was mainly sound and unpatched; but the bulkheads, engines and life-support mechanisms were a frightening hodgepodge of old and adapted parts scrounged from shipyards at all corners of the galaxy. It said much for the ingenuity of the Rhaqui space-tinkers that such an ill-suited assortment of pieces could be made to function in any way at all. It said even more for the desperate thirsting for independence which drove
the gypsies to accept such an inherently dangerous habitat as part of their way of life.

The flight-bridge was the center of the community. Here, dangerously degraded instrument panels vied for place with wooden trestles, stone drinking vessels, and a bewildering assortment of junk including castoff clothing which appeared to have been dropped at random wherever the former wearer fancied. To complete the confusion, numerous small animals and birds from several worlds fed from trays placed about the floor and chased each other around the navigation consoles.

Saltzeim’s superior status was indicated by his possession of a private cabin, which was reasonably tidy except, ludicrously, for the presence of a bathtub full of antique books. He shepherded Wildheit and Roamer into the cabin and waited pensively while the marshal drafted the irrevocable Credit Note. Then he folded the note with due ceremony and placed it in the lining of his outlandish tricorn hat.

“Thank you, Marshal Jym. This cabin shall be yours for the duration of the journey. The woman shall be found sleepspace elsewhere.”

“Not while I breathe,” said Wildheit. “The girl stays at all times within my sight. Remember, I shall kill anyone who attempts to approach her.”