High Sorcery (21 page)

Kas spit out a series of obscenities which were only a meaningless noise as far as Tamisan was concerned. Until he was released he was no more now than a well anchored bundle. But the crewman had importance.

Reaching the com before him, she gestured him on to it. She played the best piece she had in this desperate game.

“Where is Hawarel, the native who was brought on board?”

Me could lie, of course, and she would not know it. But it seemed he was willing to answer, probably because he thought that the truth would strike her worse than any lie.

“They have him in the lab—conditioning him.” He grinned at her with some of the malignancy she had seen in Kas.

She remembered the Captain's earlier threat to make of Hawarel a tool to use against the Over-queen and her forces. Was she too late? There was only one road to take and that was the one she had chosen in those few moments when she had taken up the tangler and used it.

She spoke as she might to one finding it difficult to understand her. “You will call, and you will say that Hawarel will be released and brought here.”

“Why?” the crewman returned with visible insolence. “What will you do? Kill me? Perhaps, but that will not defeat the Captain's plans; he will be willing to see half the crew burned—”

“That may be true,” she nodded. Not knowing the Captain she could not tell whether or not that was a bluff. “But will his sacrifice save his ship?”

“What can you do?” began the crewman, and then he paused. His grin was gone, now he looked at her speculatively. In her present guise she perhaps did not look formidable enough to threaten the ship, but he could not be sure. One thing she knew from her own time and place: a spaceman learned early to take nothing for granted on a new planet It might be that she did have command over some unknown force.

“What can I do? There is much.” She took quick advantage of that hesitation. “Have you been able to raise the ship?” She plunged on, hoping very desperately that her guess was right. “Have you been able to communicate with your other ship or ships in orbit?”

His expression was her answer, one which fanned her hope into a bright blaze of excitement. The ship
was
grounded, and there was some sort of a hold on it which they had not been able to break.

“The Captain won't listen.” He was sullen.

“I think he will. Tell him that we get Hawarel here, and himself, or else we shall truly show you what happened to that derelict across the field.”

Kas had fallen silent. He was watching her, not with quite the same wariness of the crewman, but with an emotion she was not able to read. Surprise? Did it mask some sly thought of taking over her bluff, captive though he was?

“Talk!” The need for hurry rode Tamisan now. By this time those above would wonder why their captives had not been brought before them. Also, outside, the Over-queen's men would certainly have reported that Tamisan and a guard had entered the ship; from both sides enemies might be closing in.

“I cannot set the com,” her prisoner answered.

“Tell me then.”

“The red button.”

But she thought she had seen a slight shift in his eyes. Tamisan raised her hand, to press the green button instead. Without accusing him of the treachery she was suree he had tried, she said again more fiercely,

“Talk!”

“Sannard here.” He put his lips close to the com. They, they have me; Rooso and Cambre are dead. They want the native—”

“In good condition,” hissed Tamisan, “and now!”

They want him now, in good condition,” Sannard repeated. They threaten the ship.”

There came no acknowledgment from the com in return. Had she indeed pressed the wrong button because she was overly suspicious? What was going to happen? She could not wait.

“Sannard.” The voice from the com was metallic, without human inflection or tone.

“Sir?”

But Tamisan gave the crewman a push which sent him sliding back along the wall until be bumped into Kas and the bonds of both men immediately united to make them one struggling package. Tamisan spoke into the com.

“Captain, I do not play any game. Send me your prisoner or look upon that derelict you see and say to yourself, ‘that will be my ship.’ For this is so, as true as I stand here now, with your man as my captive. Send Hawarel alone, and pray to whatever immortal powers you recognize that he
can so come! Time grows very short and there is that which will act if you do not, to a purpose you shall not relish!”

The crewman, whose tegs were still free, was trying to kick away from Kas. But his struggles instead sent them both to the floor in a heaving tangle. Tamisan's hand dropped to her side as she leaned against the wall, breathing heavily. With all her will she wanted to control action as she did in a dream, but only fate did that now.

VIII

Though she sagged against the wall Tamisan felt rigid, as if she were in a great encasement of susteel. As time moved at so slow a pace as not to be measured normally, that prisoning hold on her body and spirit grew. The crewman and Kas had ceased their struggles. She could not see the crewman's face, but that which Kas turned to her had a queer, distorted look. It was as if before her eyes, though not through any skill of hers, he was indeed changing and taking on the aspect of another man. Since her return to the sky tower in the second dream, she had known he was to be feared. In spite of the fact that his body was securely imprisoned, she found herself edging away, as if by the very intentness of that hostile stare he could aim a weapon to bring her down. But he said nothing and lay as broodingly quiet and impassive as though he had foreknowledge of utter failure for her.

She knew so little, Tamisan thought, she who had always taken pride in her learning, in the wealth of lore she had drawn upon to furnish her memory for action dreaming. The spacecrew might have some way of flooding this short corridor with a noxious gas, or using a hidden ray linked with a scanner to finish them. Tamisan found herself running her hands along the walls and studying the unbroken surface a little wildly, striving to find where death might enter quietly and unseen.

There was another bulkhead door at the end of the short corridor; at a few paces away from the outer hatch a ladder ascended to a closed trap. Her head turned constantly from one of those entrances to the other, until she regained a firmer control of herself.
They have only to wait to call my bluff-only to wait. . .

Yes! They have waited and they are ...

The air about her was changing; there was a growing
scent in it. It was nut unpleasant, but even a fine perfume would have seemed a stench when it reached her nostrils under present conditions. The light which radiated from the juncture of the corridor roof and ceiling was altering. It had been that of a moderately sunlit day; now it was bluish. Under it her own brown skin took on an eerie look.
I have lost my throw! Maybe, if I could open the hatch again, let in the outer air . . .

Tamisan tottered to the hatch, gripped the locking wheel and brought her strength to bear. Kas was writhing again, trying to break loose from his unwilling partner. Oddly enough, the crewman lay limp, his head rolling when Kas's heaving disturbed his body, but his eyes were closed. At the same time Tamisan, braced against the wall, her full strength turned on the need for opening the door, knew a flash of surprise. Was it her over-vivid imagination alone which made her believe that she was in danger? When she rested for a moment and drew a deep breath . . .

In her startlement she could have cried out aloud; she did utter a small sound. She was gaining strength, not losing it She breathed in every lungful of that scented air, and she was breathing deeper and more slowly, as if her body desired such nourishment. It was a restorative.

Kas, too?
She turned to glance at him again. Where she breathed deeply, with lessening apprehension, he was gasping, his face ghastly in the change of light. Then, even as she watched, his struggles ended and his head fell back so that he lay as inert as the crewman he sprawled across.

Whatever change was in progress here affected Kas and the crewman, the latter faster than the former, but not her. Now her trained imagination took another leap Perhaps she had nut been so far wrong in threatening those on this ship with danger. Though she had no guess as to how it was done, this could be another strange weapon in the armament of the Over-queen.

Hawarel?
The spacemen had probably never intended to send him.
Dare I go to seek him?
Tamisan wavered, one hand on the hatch wheel, looking to the ladder and the other door. If all within this ship had reacted to the strange air, there would be none to slop her. If she fled the ship she would face the loss of the keys to her own world and might be met by some evil fate at the hands of the Over-queen. She had broken prison, and she had left dead men behind her. As the Mouth of Olava she shuddered from the
judgment which would be rendered one deemed to have practiced wrongful supernatural acts.

Resolutely Tamisan went to the door at the end of the corridor. It was true that she had no choice at all. She must find Starrex and somehow bring him here, so that they three could be together. They must win a small space of time in which to arrange a dream breaking, or she was totally defeated.

She loosened her belt a little so she could draw up her robe through it, shortening its length and leaving her legs freer. There was the tangler and Kas's laser. In addition, there was the mounting feeling of strength and well being, though an inner warning suggested she beware of over-confidence.

The door gave under her push and she looked out upon a scene which first startled and then reassured her. There were crewmen in the corridor. But they lay prone as if they had been caught while on their way to the hatch. Lasers (a slightly different pattern than that Kas had brought) had fallen from their hands, and three of the four wore tanglers.

Tamisan picked her way carefully around them, gathering up all the weapons in a fold of her robe, as if she were some maiden in a field plucking an armful of spring flowers. The men were alive, she saw as she stooped closer, but they breathed evenly as if peacefully asleep.

She took one of the tanglers, discarding the one she had used, fearing its charge might be near exhaustion. As for the rest of the collection, she dropped them at the far end of the passageway and turned the beam of Kas's weapon on them, so she left behind a metal mass of no use to anyone.

Her idea of the geography of the ship was scanty. She would simply have to explore and keep exploring until she found Starrex. She would start at the top and work down. She found a level ladder and three times came upon sleeping crewmen. Each time she made sure they were disarmed before she left them.

The blue shade of light was growing deeper, giving a very weird cast to the faces of the sleepers. Making sure her robe was tightly kilted up, Tamisan began to climb. She had reached the third level when she heard a sound, the first she bad noted in this too silent ship since she had left the hatch-way.

She stopped to listen, deciding it came from somewhere in the level into which she had just climbed. With laser in
hand she tried to use it as a guide, though it was misleading —and might have come from any one of the cabins. Each door she passed Tamisan pushed upon. There were more sleepers: some stretched in bunks, others on the floors, seated at tables with their heads lying on them. But she did not halt now to collect weapons; the need to be about her task, free of this ship, built in her as sharp as might a slaver's lash laid across her shrinking shoulders.

Suddenly the sound grew louder as she came to a last door and pushed it Now she looked into a cabin not meant for living but perhaps for a kind of death. Two men in plain tunics were crumpled by the threshold as if they had had some limited warning of danger to come and had tried to flee and fell before they could reach the corridor. Behind them was a table and on that a body, very much alive, struggled with dogged determination against confining straps.

Though his long hair had been clipped and the stubble of it shaven to expose the full nakedness of his entire scalp, there was no mistaking Hawarel. He not only fought against the clamps and straps which held him to the table, but in addition he jerked his head with sharp, short pulls, to dislodge disks fastened to his forehead, which were connected to a vast box of a machine which filled one quarter of the cabin.

Tamisan stepped over the inert men, reached the side of the table, and jerked the disks away from the prisoner's head; perhaps his determined struggles had already loosened them somewhat. His mouth had opened and shut as she came to him as if he were forming words she could not hear, or could not voice. But as the apparatus came away in her hands he gave a cry of triumph.

“Get me loose!” he commanded. She was already examining the underpart of the table for the locking mechanism of the straps and clamps. It was only seconds before she was able to obey his order.

Bare to the waist, he sat upright, and she saw beneath, where his shoulders and the upper part of his spine had rested on the table, a complicated series of disks.

“Ah.” Before she could move, he scooped up the laser she had laid on the edge of the table when she had freed him. The gesture he made with it might not have been only to indicate the door and the need for hurry, but perhaps also was a warning that with a weapon in his hands he now thought he was in command of the situation.

“They sleep everywhere,” she told him. “And Kas—he is a prisoner—”

“I thought you could not find him; he was not one of the crew.”

“He was not. But I have him now, and, with him, we can return.”

“How long will it take?” Starrex was down on one knee, searching the two men on the floor. “What preparation will you need?”

“I cannot tell.” She gave him the truth. “But—how long will these sleep? Their unconsciousness is, I think, some trick of the Over-queen's.”

“It came unexpectedly for them,” Starrex agreed. “And you may be right that this is only preliminary to taking over the ship. I have learned this much: their instruments and much of their equipment has been affected so they cannot trust them.” Hawarel's Eace was grim under its bluish, deadman's coloring. “Otherwise, I would not have survived this long as myself.”