It was Jupiter's turn to look disconcerted.
"Why not?"
"Because—" she began and started to smile. "You won't like this, but you're too soft. Deep down on the inside you're too fine, too idealistic to pull a trick like that. Your conscience wouldn't let you.
"You've been hurt. Many times. When I looked inside your mind, I could see the scars. I could feel how you'd armored yourself with a harsh shell to hide your true feelings. You have a saying among your own people: 'Scratch a cynic and you'll find an idealist!'"
"Well, I'll be damned," said Jupiter. Then almost hesitantly, "But you'll help. I need someone I can trust." He wiped the sweat off his forehead. "Someone I can trust with my life to take the Anolyn from my own neck."
"You'll trust me," she said; "because you must. You're really not self-sufficient. No one is."
Jupiter regarded her silently, coldly. Then he picked up the hypodermic, sterilized it, filled the barrel with exsrocain.
"This is a damned ticklish trick. The needle must be inserted between the vertebrae so that it doesn't injure the spinal cord and yet—"
"Lie down," she interrupted. "I know as well as you how it must be done."
"But—"
"Don't be alarmed. I'm in possession of all your experience, just as you are of mine!"
Jupiter swallowed, laid face-down on the stained table. "For Heaven's sake, be careful!"
Tabak ran her fingertips along his backbone, locating the spot to insert the needle. It sent cold chills prickling through his skin.
"And you're sure you know exactly what to do?"
She laughed. "Of course, I know. Don't tell me you've forgotten the girl on Betelgeuse XI—the one you used to put into a state of suspended animation whenever you had to ship out so that she couldn't be unfaithful between voyages."
Jupiter made a choking sound. Before he could think of anything to say, he felt the needle prick his flesh. He winced, heard Tabak begin to count:
"One ... two...."
Slowly Jupiter became conscious of a smart in the nape of his neck like a bee sting. He opened his eyes, sat up, touched the base of his skull.
The hard little lump was gone.
Relief left him weak. He caught Tabak's eye, felt his face grow warm.
"About that girl on Betelgeuse XI—" he began uncomfortably.
"You don't need to explain. Under the circumstances you were entirely justified."
He swore under his breath, slid off the table, began to throw his equipment into the pack. "Have you any ideas about how we can get out of here?"
"Don't be angry, Jupiter. I was only teasing. I—"
Tabak's eyes suddenly widened.
She was staring beyond him, Jupiter realized. He twisted around, reaching instinctively for his carbine.
Not thirty feet behind them an adult Anolyn sprawled on the floor, tentacles exploring the air. Its soft brown eyes were regarding them intently. The gray doughy face was expressionless.
"Quick! Kill it!" Tabak screamed. "Kill it before it sends out a call for help!"
The creature was obviously puzzled, unable to understand why the two humans failed to respond to its control.
Jupiter shot it squarely between the eyes.
The hollow, pointed bullet, blew away the entire back of its head. It slumped into a quivering heap. A pool of thin, pinkish blood made an ever-widening stain on the floor.
"The cat's out of the bag now," he said in a tight voice.
Tabak nodded.
"There's a guard at the door. You'll have to kill him, Jupiter, before we can get out of here. I only hope you're as good as you think you are."
Jupiter took a short length of strong plastic cord from his pack, made a loop in it. His face looked older, grimmer. His vivid green eyes were dull.
"Where is he stationed?" he said.
The dissection laboratory occupied a long, hall-like room in one wing of the temple. The pool of water was at one end, the main entry at the other.
Tabak wound the black cloth about herself sarong-fashion, nodded towards the arched doorway.
"There's a—a lobby of sorts through there. The guard stays just outside on the street. He'll be a Nehogan, Jupiter. They're terrible men—"
Jupiter brushed past her. He reached the lobby, crossed it swiftly.
"Open the door," he said to Tabak who had followed him.
She looked suddenly frightened.
"I can't, Jupiter. Not without the Anolyn on the back of my neck to transmit my thought! We'll have to go back the way we came."
His eyes sought the door. The blank, solid panel mocked him. He ran his fingers over its surface, but could find no slightest protuberance anywhere.
"Look out!" Tabak suddenly whispered.
Jupiter sprang back like a startled cat.
The door was opening.
The thick, solid panel swung inexorably inward. He flattened himself against the wall, the carbine clubbed in his hands. His palms were sweaty.
Then an Anolyn appeared in the entrance, scuttled inside on its eight tentacles. Jupiter swung the carbine.
There was a dull crunch as the stock connected with the creature's head. Jupiter didn't give it a second glance, but sprang into the doorway.
A tall, coppery Nehogan warrior lounged just outside. With a flick of his wrist, he dropped the loop of plastic over the guard's head, yanked him backward through the door.
Any cry the Nehogan might have uttered was cut off at its source. He thrashed wildly, but Jupiter only tightened the noose, the muscles in his arms and shoulders bunching savagely.
Suddenly he got a look at the man's distorted face.
"Reiloc!" he cried and immediately slackened the cord.
Reiloc sprawled on the floor, gasping painfully.
"Are you crazy?" Tabak cried. "Kill him, Jupiter! Kill him before he can give the alarm." She suddenly snatched the carbine, aimed a blow at the prone warrior's head. Jupiter tore it out of her hands.
Reiloc pushed himself unsteadily to his feet. He looked from the dead Anolyn to Jupiter, his hand massaging his bruised throat.
"What are you?" he whispered painfully. "What manner of man are you who can kill the Anolyn in their own temple?"
Jupiter's hesitation didn't show on his face. In a cold voice of authority, he said:
"The Wanderer-from-Beyond!"
Reiloc's eyes widened. Doubt and hope struggled in his grim countenance. Then the savage Nehogan dropped to one knee, held his sword out to Jupiter, hilt first.
Jupiter sat beside the embrasure, staring out at the street below. Behind him Reiloc was pacing back and forth in the bare little cell like a caged wolf. The copper-skinned Nehogan was nervous, worried. Action was his only emotional release.
Tabak said: "Stop it, Reiloc! You're driving me crazy!"
Reiloc quit pacing, squatted on his heels. But he couldn't stay still. Rising to his feet again, he growled: "Wait, wait. Are we waiting for them to come drag us out of here and take us to the vivisection rooms?"
Tabak said: "Only for a little while longer."
The Earth man continued to stare morosely down at the street. Under Tabak's guidance the three of them had secreted themselves in this neglected cell just off the sanctum of the Radiant God.
When the city was new this chamber had been a part of the defenses of the temple in case of an uprising. But as the ages crept past without any threat from the human cattle, even its existence had gradually been forgotten.
Outside, the city by theDra Durwas in the grip of hysteria. The alarm had gone out and the street below was deserted except for occasional patrols of Nehogans.
Jupiter squinted at the angry orange sun. It seemed to rest on the rooftops. Only a minute or two and the ceremony should begin. He faced back into the room.
Tabak said: "I think it's crazy."
"Crazy or not, we need her," Jupiter said. "We can't hope to succeed without her."
He closed his eyes searching the memory patterns imprinted on his brain by Tabak.
The temple was built in the form of a hollow square with the breeding pens located in the main courtyard. Every day the human guinea pigs were driven up a back way into the sanctum of the Radiant God. There they were exposed to the hard radiations emitted by the statue.
No wonder the Anolyn could create endless mutations. The effects of hard radiation on the genes were known to every school child in the Galactic Federation.
He was still standing beside the window when the faint sound of cymbals broke the silence.
"Here they come!" Tabak whispered.
Reiloc stiffened, jerked out his sword. He put his hand to the back of his neck as if to reassure himself that the Anolyn was actually gone. Jupiter had removed it while they waited. Its absence seemed to give the Nehogan confidence.
"You both know what to do?" Jupiter asked.
"Yes."
He adjusted the pack over his shoulders, picked up his carbine, assured himself that a cartridge lay in the chamber. The clash of cymbals was louder, reinforced by the chant of voices.
He went to the door, followed by Reiloc and Tabak. There was a short dark passage beyond which ended abruptly in a solid wall. A well opened in the ceiling overhead, though, with a ladder bolted inside it.
He gave Tabak a boost up into the well, then Reiloc. In a moment they'd climbed out of sight.
Jupiter leaped upward, caught the bottom rung, pulled himself hand over hand up into the thick darkness.
The clash of cymbals, the chant of voices had a hollow, muffled quality. He heard Tabak pant, then whisper, "I've got it open!" The cymbals were suddenly louder.
He crawled out of the well on Reiloc's heels, replaced the cover.
They were inside the sanctum, he saw, where he'd been left when he had first been brought to the city by theDra Dur. The huge radioactive statue of the Anolyn was the only source of light. It shed a chill greenish pallor through the circular temple room.
The room itself was at least a hundred feet across, surrounded by pillared cloisters. They had come up behind the pillars where the feeble light from the idol scarcely reached.
The rhythmic chant came from the other side of the floor. Jupiter sucked in his breath. A procession of humans was filing out of the darkness.
A scrawny, naked Caligan was in the lead, making cabalistic signs with a phallic instrument resembling the Egyptian sistrum as he moved in front of the idol.
Behind him came the others, two by two—wild Kagans fresh from the jungle, a man with four arms, several with prehensile tails, some with fur and some hairless. They walked with the same dreamy preoccupied air of the humans that Jupiter had seen in the courtyard, and prostrated themselves before the glowing idol. They were possessed, dominated by the lone Anolyn who brought up the rear.
Lete was the fourth from the end.
The cymbals suddenly clashed and fell silent. The ritual was about to begin.
Jupiter brought the rifle to his shoulder, took careful aim at the purple-shelled octopod directing the ceremony, pulled the trigger.
VII
The shot reverberated in the chamber of horrors like a clap of thunder. The lone Anolyn slumped forward, half its head shot away.
With drawn sword, Reiloc leaped past Jupiter. He ran for the glowing idol, began to hack at one of ten tentacles with his sword. Tabak and Jupiter were right behind him. They grabbed Lete by either arm, hauled the bemused cave girl to her feet.
Some of the shock of the Anolyn's sudden death had been transmitted to the humans under its control. They stared at the profaners of the temple with pained uncomprehending eyes.
Reiloc snatched up the severed radioactive tentacle, dashed after Jupiter and Tabak who were half carrying Lete between them.
"This way!" Tabak cried. "This way!"
They burst out of the sanctum into a broad corridor, almost ran over another Anolyn. Jupiter shot it in its tracks.
No signs of pursuit had developed by the time they reached the ramp. Lete was recovering from her shock. She struggled wildly, cried:
"What's happening? What are you doing with me?"
"We're escaping," Jupiter grunted.
"But you can't. The first Anolyn we meet will stop us. I don't understand—"
"Be silent, foolish one," growled Reiloc, "he's the Wanderer!"
"But you're Edir!"
"We're Edir no longer. He's broken our bonds."
Lete seized Jupiter's hand. "Then youarethe Wanderer. You weren't laughing at me back there in the cages. But why—"
"No time now," Jupiter said and plunged onto the ramp.
They ran down it wildly, crazily, reached the canal at the bottom.
"We'll have to—" Jupiter began, when Lete screamed.
"I can feel them!" the cave girl cried. "They're trying to pull me back! Jupiter—"
She bit her lips, her cheeks suddenly bloodless. "They're gone," she said in a shaken voice. "They mustn't have guessed who I was."
Jupiter stared at her. Lete's yellow eyes were wide, frightened. She swallowed miserably.
"We'll have to get that Anolyn off your neck at the first opportunity," he said, turned to Tabak. "This canal leads to theDra Dur. Is that right?"
"Yes," said Tabak in a queer voice; "but Jupiter—"
"What are our chances of getting through now?" he interrupted.
She shrugged slim white shoulders. "Every second we waste here lessens them."
Without another word, he started along the ledge paralleling the canal.
At regular intervals of about a block ramps led down to the aquaduct from the surface above. They crossed the mouths of other canals on narrow bridges. A perfect labyrinth of underground waterways stretched beneath the city.
At the fifth ramp, Jupiter heard a twang. Something whistled past his head. He almost lost his footing as he glanced up and saw a dozen Nehogans on the ramp leading up to the street.
Lete spun around and tried to run, knocking Reiloc into the water with a splash. Tabak caught her, held the cave girl in spite of her terrified efforts to escape.
Jupiter dropped to one knee, changing the carbine to automatic, sent a burst of shots into the warriors above.
They didn't retreat, but with fierce yells charged straight into his gun. They were possessed, like Moros running amok. The last one was less than a yard away before he brought him down with a shot through the chest.
That had been close. He felt weak as he pulled Reiloc from the water.
"They know where we are," the giant Nehogan growled ominously, "our chances to—"
"Look out!" Tabak screamed.
Jupiter whirled around. He was just in time to see Lete run at him with Reiloc's sword. The cave girl had snatched it from the Nehogan's scabbard. Holding it like a lance, she flung herself on Jupiter, her face contorted with hate!
Jupiter jumped convulsively into the canal. His instinctive reaction was the only thing that saved him.
He broke water, saw that Reiloc had wrenched his sword away from the cave girl. He was holding her as she fought furiously to tear herself away, kicking, clawing at the Nehogan's face with her nails. She had gone utterly berserk. Jupiter was stunned.
Then he heard Tabak screaming: "Jupiter! Quick! It's the Anolyn! They've possession of her mind. Hurry!"
He scrambled desperately back on to the ledge.
"You've got to take that Anolyn from her neck! They know everything we do through her," Tabak cried wildly. "They've been in possession of her mind ever since we reached the canal. That's how they knew where to ambush us. Anywhere we go they'll be able to send men to intercept us."
Jupiter nodded grimly. As he prepared the hypodermic of exsrocain, the Caligan girl pitched in and helped Reiloc pin Lete face-down on the ledge.
Jupiter's fingers were shaking as he located a spot on Lete's naked back, plunged the needle between two of her vertebrae.
"One—two—three—four," he counted. Without bothering to test for consciousness he wrenched the little plum-colored shell from the cave girl's neck, smashed it against the wall of the aquaduct.
"Carry her!" he ordered Reiloc, and threw his instruments back into the pack, slipped a fresh drum of cartridges into the carbine. He could hear the thud of running feet on the ramp leading to the surface.
"Back!" he said tersely. "We'll have to try another way!"
For an hour they followed Tabak through the network of aquaducts, twisting, cutting down bisecting canals until Jupiter was exhausted. He and the big Nehogan had been carrying the unconscious wild girl by turns. Twice they saw Anolyn floating down to the sea like big purple squids, Jupiter shot them before they could telepath an alarm.
Tabak was in the lead when she stopped abruptly, put her hand to her mouth.
"What is it?" Jupiter hissed.
"The canal! Look!"
He raised his eyes. The tunnel came to a blind end just ahead. Then he saw that actually the roof dipped down beneath the surface.
"We've reached the seawall," Tabak said in a stricken voice. "I've never tried to leave the city by the canals, but I've heard that it was impossible. I'd forgotten—"
Jupiter seized her shoulders. "What do you mean?"
"They—they run entirely underwater for ever so far and come out beneath theDra Dur. The Anolyn built them that way in order to keep the humans from escaping through them."
Jupiter swore in Lingua Galactica. "Suppose we go back to the streets. Can we reach the top of the wall? Does the sea come right up to its base?"
"Yes," Tabak said with a shiver.
Reiloc had stretched Lete out on the shelf. She was returning to consciousness, Jupiter saw; and he stooped, splashing water from the canal into the cave girl's face. Her eyes opened groggily. She pushed herself to her elbows, stared about her with the quick, terrified look of a wild thing.
"You all right?" Jupiter asked.
She let her head drop. "Yes. I couldn't help it, Jupiter. I—"
"You'll do now," he said, not unkindly, and helped her to her feet. "Come on. We haven't any time to waste."
When they reached the surface, Jupiter saw that night had fallen, and with it a thick fog had rolled in from theDra Dur, choking the streets solid. It was like wet lamb's wool pressing against his eyeballs.
They held hands to keep from becoming separated. Voices reached them out of the fog. Footsteps passed and faded away. At length they found a stair leading to the top of the sea wall, felt their way upward.
It seemed like hours to Jupiter before they reached the top. He lay flat on his belly, felt for the edge. He could see nothing below, but a faint lap-lap of wavelets against the base of the wall came up to him.
"How deep is the water here?"
"D-deep enough," Tabak whispered in a frightened voice.
"All right, we'll jump."
Lete gasped. There was a startled, protesting growl from Reiloc.
"Jump blind, from here—from the top of the wall into the sea?" the Nehogan said. "Are you mad, Jupiter?"
"Can you think of any other way to escape?"
Tabak said in a queer, strained voice: "I'll jump. I'm not afraid—not too afraid."
Jupiter heard her move toward the edge of the wall. "No! Wait! I'll go first—"
But the Caligan girl had already leaped outward into the thick wet darkness.
Jupiter felt suddenly cold all over. He knew that he would never smell salt water again without recalling the horrible expectancy of that moment. Time stood still. Then far below they heard a splash!
"Tabak!" he called softly. He gave her time to rise to the surface. "Tabak!" He didn't dare lift his voice.
There was no answer. Just the monotonous lap of the water against the sea wall.
"God!" he thought. "She's hurt herself!" And he sprang outward into the encompassing blackness.
He seemed to fall for an eternity before he struck. It was like hitting a plank. The jar ran up his legs. He went down, down, half-dazed. Then he was clawing frantically to the surface.
He broke water. He could see nothing. It was like the bottom of a well.
"Tabak! Tabak! Where are you?"
His fingers touched something. It was the girl's shoulder. She was moving feebly, half-conscious. Treading water, he seized her, slid his arm across her chest, began to tow her away from the wall.
"Jump!" he called to Reiloc. "I've Tabak."
"By the Radiant God!" came the Nehogan's hoarse voice; "here I come!"
There was a splash, followed almost immediately by another, as the cave girl leaped also. The pair of them came up, blowing, unhurt.
"Which way?" Reiloc gasped.
"Follow the wall." Jupiter was trying to recall Tabak's memory patterns. "We're near the edge of the city, I think. There should be a beach just ahead."
They swam on, guiding themselves by the lap of water against the base of the wall. Jupiter, with his arm across Tabak's shoulder and breast, felt the girl shudder.
"Jupiter," she said weakly. "Jupiter, is that you?"
"Yes. Are you all right?"
"I—I think so. I can swim now."
All at once, he realized that the lapping of the water had changed to a faint, shushing sound.
"The beach!" he said.
Reiloc grunted. Lete didn't say anything. The wild girl swam like an otter, silent and alert. Jupiter touched bottom, helped Tabak up the beach, where they all flung themselves down in the warm sand.
A breeze had started up and was ripping the fog into wisps. A few stars glittered from the torn sky. The wall of the city loomed above them dark and threatening.
Tabak's fingers closed convulsively over Jupiter's hand.
"I'm afraid," she whispered. "It's so big and so empty out here. And there's no place where we can hide from them. They'll be after us in the morning with Nehogans and web-birds. They'll never let you go, Jupiter, never! They're afraid that you'll be able to unite the wild Kagans—"
"If we can only reach the ship," he muttered, and felt around in his pack for the metal tentacle that Reiloc had hacked from the Radiant God.
It was safe, thank the Lord, though it was only a fraction of the fuel he would need. The whole idol, that was what he must have. His eyes narrowed in the darkness.
The cave girl said in a nervous voice, "We must reach the jungle before daybreak."
He pulled himself to his feet. Lete took the lead, striking out for the invisible hills. She seemed to possess an instinct as unerring as a homing pigeon's. Every step, Jupiter realized, was taking him further and further from the source of his fuel.
During the next twelve days they dodged about the hills. Time after time they escaped discovery by the narrowest margin. Parties of Nehogans combed the jungle, while the web-birds wheeled back and forth in the sky like observation planes. Nothing but Lete's junglecraft saved them.
On the thirteenth day they ran into a party of hunters from Lete's colony. The cave men were strongly thewed brutes, armed with spears and clubs, dressed in the skins of animals.
They were suspicious at first. But when Lete explained that Jupiter was the Wanderer-from-Beyond, they grew excited as children.
Jupiter had to demonstrate his lightning stick. That night they had a feast, and the cave men left at dawn to spread the word that the Wanderer-from-Beyond had actually appeared.
Two days later they reached the ship.
As Jupiter parted the last screen of leaves and saw the familiar hull of the Mizar, he had to bottle up his emotions to keep from yelling and dancing a jig. He ran his hand fondly along the cool metal, caught Tabak watching him with a twinkle in her blue eyes. He took his hand away guiltily, started for the port.
It was then that Lete balked. The cave girl refused absolutely to enter the belly of the monster, as she put it. Nor did Reiloc look overjoyed at the prospect.
Jupiter was determined to drop like a fiery comet out of the night sky before the startled cave men. At length he consented to let Reiloc and Lete go ahead on foot to prepare the wild Kagans for his coming.
He and Tabak watched the pair disappear into the jungle, then he touched the button activating the lock.
Even as he did so there was a sudden swish overhead, and a shadow raced across the clearing. The Caligan girl screamed. From the corner of his eye, Jupiter saw a web-bird dropping out of the sky like a hawk!
He picked up Tabak, tossed her bodily through the port, tumbled in after her. He kicked the massive door shut not a second too soon. Racing up the ladder, he searched the sky through the transparent thermoplas blister.
It was an empty, hot blue bowl cupping the ship, the jungles and mountains. Then he saw the web-bird rise in sweeping spirals like an enormous buzzard.
A black speck appeared above the crest of a ridge. It was another of the ungainly creatures. It joined the first and the pair began to circle high in the sky above the ship. Three more flapped into his range of vision. They kept coming until at least fifty of the giant web-birds hung wheeling and dipping monotonously above the Mizar, but so far away they were little more than black specks.
VIII
He was still staring up at them when the Caligan girl climbed up into the control blister beside him.
"Can't you shoot them down?" she protested.
He shook his head.
"They stay out of range. I don't understand it. The way they act, you'd think they knew just how close they could come."
"Of course they know!" Tabak bit her lip. "Jupiter, they're directed telepathically by the Anolyn, and the Anolyn picked your brain clean!"
He said: "Damn!"
"They—they can't get at us in here," Tabak asked, "can they?"
He shook his head. "We're safe enough as long as we stay inside. We could fly away, I suppose, but as soon as we came back they'd pick us up again. And I haven't enough fuel to waste any of it."
The Caligan girl brightened.
"At least we're giving Reiloc and Lete a better chance to get through. We've drawn off all the birds for miles around."
Jupiter nodded, broke open his pack. Tabak's blue eyes were alive with curiosity as she watched him feed the radioactive tentacle into the fuel hoppers, reset the alarms and check the instruments.
Tabak poked into every corner of the ship, "Oh-ed" and "ah-ed" with delight. She wanted to know about everything. But before Jupiter could tell her she would say, "This is Briggs' cabin, isn't it?" Or, "This is the galley," and laugh at his expression.
"Jupiter," she said soberly, with one of her quick shifts of mood. "Are—are you very fond of Lete?"
He raised his sandy eyebrows. "What made you ask that?"
"I don't want to see you hurt, Jupiter." Tabak grew more and more confused under his level stare. "You don't know the Kagans. They—they're promiscuous like animals. Lete would never understand your morals. She couldn't—"
Jupiter slapped his leg, burst into laughter.
"Good heavens, I'm not in love with her. Why, I'll be leaving Yogol as soon as I can get enough fuel. I couldn't take her with me anyway."
"Oh," said Tabak.
Jupiter's eyes suddenly widened.
"You were speaking Lingua Galactica!"
"Why not? I know it as well as you." They were back in the control blister. She sank into an acceleration chair, smoothed the short black sarong over her legs, raised her eyes to his. A small frown drew her brows together.
"Jupiter, what is love?"
"What did you say?" he asked, not sure that he'd heard her aright.
"Love. There's no such emotion among Yogolians. Sexual attraction, but not love. What is it, Jupiter?"
He gave her a startled, baffled look.
"It—it's a romantic invention," he said, "to dress up the biological urge. It's something you feel for another person like hunger only not so tangible."
She nodded to herself. "That's what I thought, but I wasn't sure. Is it very strong, Jupiter?"
"It can be."
"What are the symptoms?"
He scratched his chin. "It hits different people different ways. You—you—Oh, hell," he said, "I don't know. What ever made you ask?"
"I've got it," she said in a stricken voice.
Jupiter sat bolt upright. "You mean you're in love?"
She nodded unhappily, stood up. "I think I want to be by myself." Averting her head, she walked quickly to the door and slipped out of sight down the ladder before Jupiter could recover from the shock.
"Hey!" he cried, springing to his feet; "where are you going?"
There was no answer. Then he heard the door of Briggs' cabin open and close. Suddenly his eyes widened. He dropped down the ladder, tried the door, but it was locked. "Tabak! Tabak!" he called, rapped on the panel. "Open up!"
"Go away," he heard her call in an unsteady voice; "please go away and leave me alone."
"Tabak, listen," he said. "You didn't mean me? You weren't talking about me when you said—" His voice trailed off. Confound it, that didn't sound at all the way he wanted it to.
There was something suspiciously like a sob from beyond the door.
"No!" Tabak said in a muffled voice. "Of course not!"
Jupiter felt suddenly very foolish. Without another word, he turned on his heel, strode from the passage.
Two days later the web-birds came—tiny black specks wheeling around and around in the sky like vultures drawn by carrion. Jupiter stood in the control blister and scowled up at them.
He was worried about Reiloc and the cave girl who should have returned yesterday. Maybe he'd better not wait any longer. He was turning away to call Tabak, when a wild clamor broke loose from stem to stern of the Mizar as the alarm bell began to ring. Jupiter's head jerked up! The black specks were plummeting Yogol-wards, diving like kingfishers.
Then he saw Lete break from the encircling jungle, sprint for the ship. The cave girl was alone. There was no sign of Reiloc anywhere.
Jupiter yelled down the tube to Tabak: "Open the port! Quick!"
He heard her gasp as he sprang for the keys that brought the needle gun into play.
It was a precision weapon, a fine, invisible ray of disruptive force. As the first of the web-birds dropped arrow-like into range, the ray touched it. The creature exploded like a fountain of spray. He got two more before the startled birds sheered off.
Snapping on the outside amplifiers, he yelled: "Lete!" His voice boomed through the loudspeaker—a giant's voice that stopped the cave girl dead in her tracks. "Lete! What's wrong?"
She stared upward in fright at the gleaming bullet-shaped monster.
"Quick, girl, speak up!"
"The Anolyn," she said in a small voice.
"What about them?"
"The Anolyn have sent a great army of Nehogans. Our men have seen them, less than a day's march from here."
"Get in the ship!" Jupiter commanded.
Lete began to tremble, but she was too frightened to disobey. She climbed meekly through the port. With a hollow "clang!" it shut behind her.
Jupiter blasted the starship off the ground with the jets. He couldn't use the inertialess stellar drive inside Yogol's gravitational field and the Mizar rocked sickeningly as it hurtled above the surface under rocket propulsion.
Lete cowered in the shock absorber where Jupiter had buckled her down against her will. Her yellow eyes were glazed. She was like a wild animal in a trap.
Tabak was pale, but she stared eagerly through the transparent rind of the blister. Jupiter shot her an approving glance. He'd never realized how blue the Caligan girl's eyes were—cerulean blue, alive, dancing like a little girl's with a new doll.
"Take the scanner," he said gruffly. "You should know how it operates."
"May I? I'll be ever so careful."
She found it unhesitatingly, turned it on. The surface of Yogol sprang on the screen in three dimensional reality. Tabak gasped.
"I'm almost afraid I might fall into it!" Then she stiffened. "There they are! There! Look, Jupiter!"
He glanced into the screen. The valley widened out below, and he could see a great army of men camped on the level ground. Thousands of the copper-skinned Nehogan warriors! They stood in excited clusters, staring upward, pointing at the Mizar with its comet tail of flame.
Jupiter could make out the striped tents of the Anolyn in the center of the encampment. He could see pink-skinned Caligans and stolid porters. He turned to the terrified cave girl.
"What happened to Reiloc?"
Lete only moaned.
"Answer me!" he snapped. "Where's Reiloc?"
"He—he stayed at the cliffs to organize my people into an army. The tribes have been coming in for days. Ever since the word spread that the Wanderer has appeared. Reiloc said to tell you that he was going to split his forces, attack from both ends of the valley."
Jupiter swore under his breath. "We're going down," he told Tabak. "Going down fast. Hang onto your hair."
He put the Mizar into a tight spiral, drove her down like a blazing meteor. The star ship must have presented an awe-inspiring sight, jets shooting streamers of flame, her nose pointed directly at the cluster of striped tents in the center of the army.
He drove her down like a blazing meteor.
He drove her down like a blazing meteor.
He drove her down like a blazing meteor.
Below him, the Nehogans scattered panic-stricken. The surface was rushing up at him like a gigantic expanding cannon ball. He cut in "George", buckled himself down frantically.
The Mizar seemed to explode as every available jet burst into life. A thunderous booming roar deafened him. Then the ship struck with a jar that almost shook loose his teeth.
He threw off the straps, dived for the control panel.
Ash covered the ground where the tents had been. At least half of the purple-shelled octopods had been consumed instantly by the jets. The Anolyn who remained alive were scuttling for the protection of the jungle. Jupiter swung the needle gun into action.
The Nehogans had outstripped their slow-moving masters, who crawled like a cluster of frightened tortoises across the bare, flat land. The sides of the valley were alive with humans; they had fled that far and had turned to watch in frightened silence.
Jupiter concentrated on the Anolyn, picking them off one by one. Only a few seconds actually had elapsed since the Mizar had appeared over the horizon, and already less than a dozen of the terrified creatures were left, crawling desperately for the hills.
A sudden whisper of wings sounded overhead. Something like the shadow of a cloud raced across the flat land toward the cluster of fleeing octopods.
"The web-birds!" Tabak cried.
Jupiter lifted his eyes, saw a flock of the ungainly creatures. There must have been nearly a hundred of them. They swooped down on their Anolyn masters, plucked the octopods from the ground with a furious beating of wings.
Jupiter's eyes widened in disbelief as the remaining Anolyn were borne to safety above the tree tops.
The Mizar was left all alone in the center of the valley.
Then to a man the frightened mob on the hillsides fell down on their faces, arms extended before them toward the ship below, and a great babbling cry arose:
"The Wanderer! The Wanderer-from-Beyond!"
Tabak whirled away from the plastic rind.
"Jupiter! There comes Reiloc now! He must be warned, Jupiter! He doesn't know that the Anolyn have fled. He'll attack!"
At the head of the valley a mass of half-naked cavemen were streaming from the trees. They were a wild, undisciplined lot like an army of soldier ants on the march. Even from this distance, Jupiter recognized the giant figure of Reiloc striding at their head.
He swore in Lingua Galactica. "I can't afford to leave the ship just yet. Not until we know how that crazy Anolyn army's going to behave. The ship's our ace in the hole."
"I'll go," Tabak said, and darted for the well.
Jupiter watched her disappear down the ladder with a vague feeling of uneasiness. Then he turned back to the transparent rind. He caught sight of her again, running across the level ground toward Reiloc, waving her arms—a slim, blonde figure in the sarong, barefooted and barelegged. He swallowed disconsolately.
So, he thought, it must be Reiloc that she's crazy about. Reiloc!
He could see the giant Nehogan leave the cavemen, hurry toward the girl. They met on the level valley floor between the ship and the wild Kagans who were still debouching from among the trees.
Jupiter's blood ran suddenly cold. A flock of web-birds had appeared over the crest of the hill.
He leaped for the keys of the needle gun.
"Reiloc!" he yelled through the P. A. "Tabak! Watch out! The birds!"
He got three of the ungainly flying webs with the needle ray. Then he couldn't shoot any more.
"Oh, hell," he said.
The web-birds had dropped onto the pair in the open. Jupiter could see neither Reiloc nor Tabak. Only the monstrous fluttering of the creature's wings. Then the flock lifted slowly into the air bearing the Nehogan and the Caligan girl aloft. Jupiter didn't dare fire for fear of hitting either the one or the other.
They rose higher, higher, then straight as wild bees they lined out for the distant city by theDra Dur.
Jupiter was beside himself with helpless rage and consternation. He couldn't chase them in the starship. It would be like attempting to follow a school of fish in an ocean liner.
He was stunned. He sank into an acceleration chair, while the web-birds with their human freight, became smaller and smaller in the distance.
During the days following the capture of Tabak and Reiloc, Jupiter was frantic. He couldn't rid his mind of the horrors that the fragile Caligan girl might be undergoing. The breeding stations, the biological laboratories, the inhuman orgies that took place in the city by theDra Dur. Reiloc would be no better off, except that they might kill him outright instead of by degrees. Every hour's delay multiplied their danger.
Jupiter drove himself unmercifully, but there weren't enough hours for him to cram in all the things that had to be done.
He allowed the Kagans to retain their loose tribal organization. More tribes joined the march on the city by theDra Durevery day. They were more like a migrating people than an army. They were bound together by only one common impulse—a desire to annihilate the Anolyn.
Lete was some help to Jupiter there. The cave girl acted as liaison officer between him and the Kagan chiefs. He was aware that she had risen to a position of eminence among her people—an Amazon chieftainess, a cave girl Joan of Arc.
Her rise to power suited him because it left him free to organize the Nehogan army.
They were his only trained body of men and they were useless so long as the parasites were fastened to their necks. The Anolyn could regain control of them, turn his own army against him.
Jupiter set himself to the impossible task of administering the exsrocain to the Nehogan soldiers, the Caligan advisers, even the green-skinned porters.
He made short hops in the star ship, setting up his camp ahead of the slow-moving army. As soon as they began to stream in, he set to administering the drug. He trained a staff of Caligans, who were more adept at such things. He synthesized gallons of the stuff and taught them how to synthesize it.
And all the time he lived in perpetual dread of the Anolyn's next move.
Overhead the web-birds wheeled and dipped, at first hundreds, then thousands of the creatures as they drew closer to the city. They were the eyes of the Anolyn, he sensed. They followed the army like gulls following a ship.
On the seventeenth day they reached the broad plains surrounding the city by theDra Dur, deployed before the towering walls and battlements.
The Nehogan general and Lete were closeted with Jupiter in the Mizar, laying their final plans, when a postern gate opened and a man left the city, made his way alone toward the lines of the invading army.
He was a Caligan in a living, yellow furred boj and sandals. His eyes were peculiar—a glazed blue like enamelware. He made no move to escape or defend himself when the pickets grabbed him.
He said that he had a message for the Wanderer-from-Beyond from the Anolyn.
He was turned over to a Nehogan officer and brought before Jupiter in the Mizar.
One look at the man told Jupiter that he was possessed—that he was merely a vehicle through which some Anolyn inside the city was seeing, hearing, speaking, acting—
In an undertone he cautioned Lete and the Nehogan general not to mention their plans, turned to the Caligan envoy.
"What message do the Anolyn send?"
The Caligan stood like a man in a cataleptic trance, regarded Jupiter with fixed, unwinking attention.
"I am to inform you that the girl, Tabak, and the man, Reiloc, are unharmed."
Jupiter realized suddenly that his forehead was covered with sweat. He didn't interrupt.
The Caligan continued in that flat, unemotional voice:
"Unless you disband your army and send them away, the girl will be turned over to the long-tailed Begans to play with. If she survives the animal-men, which is doubtful, she will be sent to the biological laboratories for vivisection. Reiloc, of course, will be operated on immediately."
The Caligan paused. The control blister was still.
"In the event you agree to the Anolyn terms," the emissary went on, "both Tabak and Reiloc will be set free outside the city gates. You are to take them aboard your ship and leave Yogol forever.
"Post-hypnotic commands have been implanted in both their minds. If you return or attempt treachery, of any kind, they will kill you.
"You have until sunup to give us your decision."
The Caligan stopped talking.
Jupiter let his breath run out between his teeth. The orange sun was sinking into theDra Dur. Lete's yellow eyes glittered. The Nehogan general opened his mouth to speak. But Jupiter silenced him with an imperative gesture.
"This is not something to be decided without thought," he told the unwinking emissary. "We'll give you our answer before daybreak." He turned to the guards. "Lock him in my cabin."
No sooner had the door closed on the Caligan envoy, than Lete sprang to her feet. She was clad in the fur of some jungle beast. A sword and dagger hung at her waist. She made Jupiter think of a savage Joan of Arc more than ever and he could feel his heart sink.
"There is but one answer," she flashed, "and that's to attack! Attack tonight before they can bring up reinforcements.
"This is the first time the Kagans have been united. Do they think we're foolish enough to throw away everything for the life of a man and a girl!"
Jupiter didn't say anything.
The Nehogan general shook his head. He looked somewhat like Reiloc except that he was older, heavier.
"After all," he said, "many men will die during the battle. Is that any reason to abandon the fight? What's the life of two people against the whole world? I don't understand it. The Anolyn must be very desperate to offer such terms. It is a trick, maybe."
"No," said Jupiter. "No, I don't think it's a trick." But he knew that it would be impossible to explain his feelings either to the cave girl or the Nehogan general. Such sentimentality was foreign to their natures. If he attempted to dissuade them from their purpose, they would go ahead in spite of him. And he couldn't blame them.
He said: "We'll attack at sunup."
"But why wait until then?" Lete demanded hotly, "When the Anolyn will be expecting us?"
"To give me time to get inside and open the gate," he told her.
"You can get inside the city?" the Nehogan general asked incredulously. "Undetected?"
"I think so. It's worth a try."
"Yes," said the general grimly, "if you can get the gate open it may mean the difference between victory and defeat. When will you start?"
Jupiter was staring at the spires and steeples of the city by theDra Dur, bathed in the angry orange rays of the setting sun.
"One hour after dark," he said.
IX
Jupiter dismounted the needle ray. It never had been intended to serve as a hand weapon. It was like carrying a fifty millimeter anti-aircraft gun, but on this planet of mild gravity he was able to handle it well enough.
He encased it carefully in waterproof wrappings. Then he broke out a spacesuit.
Sun up. The order was to attack at sun up! It didn't give him much time.
The Yogolians knew nothing about reducing a fortified city, but they had cut timbers for scaling ladders. The cavemen could run up them like monkeys. They should carry the walls by sheer numbers.
Lete and the Nehogan general watched him curiously as he donned the spacesuit. He picked up the unwieldy gun, started through the soft black night for the city.
They went along with him discussing their plans. He answered in grunts, his voice harshly metallic coming through the diaphragm. At the front lines he left them behind and went on alone across the level plain like a robot in the cumbersome suit.
The impulse to run was almost uncontrollable. Suppose the Anolyn were suspicious. They might have been bluffing, Tabak and Reiloc might already be dead. He began to sweat.
He plodded on steadily through soft, plowed land. He reached a pasture and a herd of the long-tailed Begans ran up sniffing him curiously. The black, hairy men followed him, grunting, among themselves, to the opposite fence where they stopped. They had been trained not to climb fences.
All at once he realized that he had come to the beach. The walls of the city loomed darkly massive above him. Stars twinkled in the velvet sky.
He waded out into the water. The stars vanished as theDra Durclosed above his helmet. He snapped on his torch.
The light drove a lance through water ahead, revealing the sandy bottom, strange submarine creatures. He struggled on and on, the pitch of the sea floor becoming steeper. It was like a fairyland of grottoes and trailing seaweed. Then the rays from his torch struck the gaping mouth of a cave.
Only it wasn't a cave at all. It was more like a tunnel—a tunnel that the ancients had driven through the mountains.
Jupiter felt his heart leap into his throat. It was what he had been searching for—the mouth of one of the canals leading beneath the city by theDra Dur.
He turned into it, his light revealing smooth composition walls, green and slick with algae. He must have gone a mile before he found a ramp leading to the surface.
As his helmet broke water, he saw that his luck was still holding. He was beneath the temple of the Radiant God. The ramp which continued on up into the temple proper was deserted.
He sat down, unwrapped the needle gun, then started up the ramp like some amphibious monster of the deep. Tabak and Reiloc, he was sure, were being confined in the temple. The breeding pens more than likely, since that was where most of the human guinea pigs were confined.
He didn't encounter a single Anolyn until he reached the central courtyard.
The courtyard was divided into runs like a dog kennel. It was dark with a pitch-like blackness. He hastily shut the air intake valve on the spacesuit. The stench was terrible. He could hear grunts, soft voices. Someplace in the darkness a girl was crying.
Jupiter was revolted to the depths of his being. When he thought of Tabak being shut up here, he could feel his blood run cold.
How was he going to find her in this mess? He didn't dare use the torch and time was running out.
Overhead the stars were paling. A light appeared diagonally across the courtyard. He flattened himself against the wall.
It was a torch, he saw, in the hand of a pink-skinned Caligan. A dozen grotesque Anolyn followed the torch bearer, then a company of Nehogans. Jupiter watched them make their way between the runs.
His eyes suddenly narrowed. They had stopped before a cage in which he could see a girl.
The door was opened, the girl dragged out, hustled toward a pen of long tailed Begans. The smoky light of the torch glared briefly on her face.
Tabak! They had taken away the girl's sarong, caged her like a wild animal.
Jupiter swung up the needle ray. He could see them leading Reiloc from the next cage.
He yelled: "Tabak! Reiloc! To me!" and flicked on the ray gun.
The disruptive beam of force touched one of the guards. There was a brief, brilliant flash. Then another and another as the ray fingered guard after guard.
The yard went from light to dark to light again, freezing the action. Jupiter saw Tabak break away, sprint toward him down the corridor between the runs. Reiloc was directly behind her. The giant Nehogan had snatched a sword from one of the guards whom Jupiter had rayed down. He brandished it over his head, yelled savagely.
More Nehogans poured into the courtyard, summoned telepathically by the Anolyn. Then Reiloc and Tabak were crowding beside him.
"The city gates!" Jupiter barked. "We've got to reach them before dawn!"
"This way," Tabak cried. She plunged into a passage leading from the court.
"Not so fast," Jupiter grunted. "I can't keep up in this damned suit."
The Caligan girl slowed down. Behind them the pandemonium from the breeding pens became fainter and died away. Reiloc, pounding along at Jupiter's elbow, said:
"Has the city been attacked?"
"No. Sun up. We've got to open the main gate."
They burst from the temple into the street. The guard at the entrance was caught flatfooted. Reiloc laid him out with a blow of his sword, and they ran on down a strangely deserted street.
"Where's everybody?" Jupiter panted.
Tabak said over her shoulder. "There's only a skeleton force in the city. Most of the Nehogans were in the army they sent after us."
Red was streaking the East, when they reached the gate. It was guarded by a lone Anolyn and a dozen Caligans.
Jupiter rayed the octopod and the Caligans scattered like frightened birds. Reiloc started the mechanism that rolled back the massive, circular gate. No one tried to stop them.
Jupiter continued to wait tensely, covering the street with the needle ray. He was still waiting when the advance body of the encircling Nehogan army poured through the entrance.
He stood there—a scowl on his lean brown face as the Nehogans continued to trot into the city. They were veterans. They fanned up the streets, searched the buildings as they went. There were a few sharp clashes, but that was all.
In less than an hour, the city by theDra Durhad fallen.
The Anolyn had retreated silently into the sea from whence they had arisen.
As the last chunk of the Radiant God went into the fuel hoppers aboard the Mizar, Jupiter realized that there was nothing left to hold him on the planet.
The Yogolians were busy organizing themselves into a cohesive people. Outside the city walls, the horde was camped. Lete was high in the council of chiefs and an expedition was being planned against a second town further up the coast.
They were a resilient race, these Yogolians. Now that they had the means to combat the Anolyn, it wouldn't be long before the last of the octopods were driven back into theDra Dur. They didn't need him any more.
Jupiter climbed the ladder to the control blister. It was night, the bluish pallor of the riding lights illuminating the instruments. All about him rose the dark spires of the city by theDra Dur.
He stared upward through the blister. The huge, dark nebula seemed to cut a hole in space.
He felt a tingle in his nerve ends. He was sure Earth lay on the other side of that hundred-and-twenty-light-year long stretch of blackness. A sudden wave of homesickness gripped him.
Why not blast off now—this minute?
He could feel his heart pump a little faster. The ship was fueled up, ready to go. He had told Reiloc only a little while ago that he might leave any time—tonight even.
He hadn't seen Tabak since the fall of the city. He had tried to find her, asking questions of everyone, but nobody seemed to know anything about her. The Caligan girl obviously was avoiding him.
Jupiter swore under his breath. His fingers touched the controls. Flame rumbled suddenly in the jets, rebounded in orange billows past the blister.
As soon as Jupiter was beyond Yogol's gravitational field, he switched to the inertialess stellar drive, turned the ship over to "George". He leaned back in his seat. It was good to feel the weightless buoyancy of deep space again.
Someone said: "Dinner is being served in the galley, sir!"
Jupiter shot out of his chair, banged his shoulder against the overhead, forgetting all about his lack of weight. He rebounded helplessly to the deck, squirmed around.
"Tabak!" he gasped.
The Caligan girl stood beside the ladder leading below. She was dressed in Brigg's olive-green uniform, her eyes dancing.
"But I thought you'd gone away!"
Her face softened. "I couldn't. It—it's too strong for me, Jupiter. I've been in Brigg's cabin all the time. I knew that was one place you'd never go."
He said: "Then it was me?" his eyes slowly kindling.
Tabak nodded.
Jupiter shoved off from the back of the shock absorber, grabbed the girl in his arms. "You're crazy," he said, "you didn't have to stow away."
"But you said you wouldn't take anybody with you when you left."
The tube began to buzz angrily; the red light winked on. Jupiter stiffened.
"Who'sthat?"
Then Reiloc's voice sounded in the communicator.
"Will you come down here and show me how to eat?" he demanded in an aggrieved voice. "My coffee is floating in a ball around the ceiling!"
Tabak giggled.
Jupiter couldn't believe it. He said, "Who else is aboard?"
"No one. Just Reiloc and me. You're not angry, are you? He was wild to come. I never could have stayed hidden if it hadn't been for him. He brought me food and—"
"You mean he knew where you were all the time?"
"Yes," she said meekly.
"Are you coming down?" Reiloc bellowed; "or must I starve?"
"Go ahead and starve," said Jupiter, "we're busy."