The Chaos Weapon (16 page)

“The hull’s still sound, and we’ve sufficient air. But that’s about all. Most of the instruments are gone, and though the engines are intact we dare not operate them without the right controls. Also, the structural frame won’t take even a close approach to light speed without breaking up. In short, we’re in a precarious wreck that has seen its last battle. The most we can hope for is survival.”

“That’s not enough,” said Wildheit. “Which universe are we in?”

“The new one, to
judge from the star density. But in which galaxy, it’s impossible to say. From the angle at which we hit the boundary of the continuum, we could be anywhere in space.”

“So how do I get back to the Chaos Weapon?”

“You don’t. This is a point which hopefully marks the end of the careers of those who nurtured the hybrid colony of man. You limp in a broken ship to some habitable and preferably inhabited planet, then you live out the rest of your days in real-time, trying to organize the locals into some form of defense just in case the Ra should ever find you.”

“What’s hopeful about that?”

“The alternative is that you don’t reach a habitable planet, and you die in some forlorn corner of space either by the Ra’s hands or your own.”

“All of which assumes the battle is lost. That’s a point I can’t concede. Any ideas, Roamer?”

“I see no useful action we can take, nor do the patterns hint of any place of survival we can reach. Therefore I suggest we wait for the Ra. They’re the only ones who’ll be looking for us, and the only ones who have the capacity to find us.”

“Wait for the Ra?” Kasdeya was aghast. “Nothing would please them better than to find us in a crippled ship. They’d have us out of space in seconds.”

Roamer was adamant. “Not this time, I think. They’ve lost a lot of ships to Saraya’s catalysts. They’ll be curious. I think they’ll take us prisoner instead.”

“That’s even worse. Do you know how the Ra treat their prisoners? The Great Anger is as alive now as ever it was. I’ve not escaped them for seven thousand years just to let them have their final revenge now.”

“You don’t have any alternative.”

“Don’t I? I can run the power plant to critical and head out in one final blaze, taking any of the Ra who dare to come too close.”

“Which, in view of their number, is a very puny gesture,” said Wildheit. “Anyway, if the catalyst could be that easily removed from the Chaos reactions, they
wouldn’t have been so concerned with us in the first place. Roamer’s right. We wait for the Ra.”

“It’s all right for you to talk, Marshal. They’ve not spent seventy centuries nursing a grudge against you. We four are going to set out at the best speed we can make, and if they find us we’ll fight them in any way we can right through to the end. If you won’t join us, you can return to your lifecraft and wait right here for the Ra to come and find you.”

“Is this the great cooperation you were proposing?”

“Let’s be realistic. What good is the cooperation of dead men?”

“I’ve a job to do. I need to destroy the Chaos Weapon. Your ship isn’t going to get me back to its vicinity, and only a Ra ship can get through the continuum junction. So we wait for the Ra—and then play it by ear.”

“You two alone, Marshal. That’s final.”

“No, all of us.” Wildheit’s fingers hovered close to his projectors.

Kasdeya scowled, and a line above his brow displayed his speculation about challenging the marshal’s implied threat. He turned sullenly back to checking his instruments, then spread his hands in a gesture of defeat.

“Anyway, the point’s academic. The Ra are already here.”

The dim, half-functioning screen portraying the scene outside, told its own grim story. Fully a dozen of the great men of war were drawn in tight formation, and one even larger spacecraft was bearing so close that the construction details of its hull were plain to see.

Kasdeya looked at one of the weapons cockpits, but the failure of all the instrument indicators told the story of insufficient power. The event was followed by a long hiatus, in which the Ra ships moved into close station around them, but seemingly delayed any attack or attempted contact. Then through the flight-bridge dome a faint blue glow appeared and grew to form a complete encapsulation around Kasdeya’s ship.

“What do you
suppose they are doing?” Wildheit asked.

Penemue answered. “They’re creating a crash web—an energy shell. If you pick up a space wreck you never know if or when its power plant might blow, so you spin an energy web around it first to protect yourselves. Then you can sort out the pieces at your leisure. In this instance, they’re taking no chances at all. That’s a high-energy shell. Even a weapon blast couldn’t get through that.”

“When will they make contact?”

“Any time now, I should think. Since they’ve picked up the biggest prize of the century, they’ll almost certainly be planning most carefully how they should proceed.”

“What’s the big vessel?”

“I don’t know. For one of such size, it’s very lightly armed. A research ship of some sort, I should think. Anyway, we’ll soon find out …”

While Penemue was speaking, a ring of battleships suddenly sprouted bright-blue tractor beams, which gently but firmly gripped the small ship and began to move it toward the giant vessel. Here, a craft-lock easily able to contain Kasdeya’s entire ship opened its huge jaw. Then additional tractors from within reached out and guided the vessel into a vast dock area. At the exact moment of touchdown the crash-web disappeared, and Kasdeya looked speculatively at the power plant controls.

“Blowing the power plant wouldn’t work,” said Penemue from behind. “The entire dock is lined with collapsite. We’d destroy nobody but ourselves.”

They watched from the flight-bridge dome as a hatch finally opened and a group of uniformed figures came out into the dock area.

“Reception committee—or firing squad?” Asbeel was apprehensive.

“A committee of investigation,” said Kasdeya, and his voice was tense. “If they had intended to destroy
us quickly they could have done it all too easily out there.”

Something metallic was affixed to the outside of the hull with a loud clang, and a voice was induced through the hull itself. It spoke in a language Wildheit did not recognize.

“They’re telling us to come out naked and without weapons,” said Kasdeya. “We have two minutes. Then they’re going to fill the hull with corrosive nerve gas. Anyone who remains inside the hull will die in acute pain.”

“Nice people,” commented Wildheit.

“For the Ra, that is restrained behavior. Usually it is a touch of the gas first, and the warning afterward. That makes their prisoners run to them willingly. They have very persuasive ways, the Ra.”

“Then we’d better get down there,” said Wildheit. “It’s impolite to keep an anxious host waiting.”

At the hatch they all stripped, Roamer very unwillingly, but encouraged by Wildheit’s anxious frown. Kasdeya demonstrated the right attitude for surrender as they stepped out, walking with his arms outstretched and fingers wide open so that there could be no suspicion that he had a weapon concealed in his hands. When he reached the waiting reception party, a strong white yoke was passed behind his neck and across his shoulders to maintain his arms outstretched, each arm being fastened to the yoke at the wrist, elbow, and shoulder. They all, including Roamer, were similarly fastened on descent.

Orders were given, which Kasdeya translated.

“Now we march. Anyone who is not completely docile and compliant will be given lance.”

“What’s that?”

“I think, Marshal, you might call it malignant acupuncture. It’s done with hypodermic arrows, and they’re very good at it. The cruelty is in denying you the death for which you’re praying.”

Following a curt imperative, Kasdeya led the way through the dock and into a metal chamber beyond. Wildheit had momentarily
wondered why the prisoners were secured with yokes instead of simple limb-bindings or handcuffs, but at this point he understood. A metal frame was brought up under the yoke ends to raise them all clear of the deck and leave them hanging by their arms, with their heads at roughly uniform height. Then their captors retired from the chamber. The next instant stinging jets of some liquid almost too hot to bear, struck out from all the walls of the chamber and from the floor and ceiling, setting the unfortunate recipients swinging like dolls on the frame.

“What the hell is this?” Wildheit shouted above the shriek of the swirling sprays.

“Combined degradation, decontamination, and identification.” Kasdeya had difficulty shouting his answer back. “It gets interesting in a minute.”

Upon the cessation of the sprays, the chamber was rapidly flooded with pale straw fluid, the level of which rose rapidly, and the temperature of which was uncomfortably hot. The fluid had an organic, strongly aromatic smell which caught at the backs of their throats and made breathing a strain. Such was the speed of the pumping, that great reflected waves surged back and forth across the chamber and soon threatened to drown them as the level rose close to their throats.

Then with a great surge of the pumps, the level rose rapidly right over their heads and remained so for an interval in which each was convinced he would drown. Then, as rapidly, the fluid was withdrawn, and Kasdeya’s description of the process as identification became apparent. As Wildheit managed to clear his stinging eyes a gasp of amazement escaped him—for he and all his companions had been dyed a luminescent yellow-gold; and they hung like gilded statues, shining against the shadowed background.

There was more to follow then. Restrained always by the yoke across his arms and occasionally by clamps around his ankles, Wildheit found himself spun on a wheel before a battery of lamps, run through a series
of machines which he took to be medical diagnostic equipment. They were examined by a team of men who used a painfully agonizing probe to elicit responses from virtually every muscle in his body. Although separated from the rest, he periodically caught sight of the others undergoing the same treatment, and he felt particularly sorry that Roamer should be subjected to some of the less delicate aspects of the ordeal.

Finally the processing was ended. He was then taken to a small cell, given a brief yellow garment, and his yoke was fastened to a wall on a fixture prepared to receive it. The height of the fixture was adjusted so that he could take the weight from his arms only by standing uncomfortably on tiptoe. Kasdeya and Penemue, gilded and grave, were already racked alongside. Asbeel and Jequn were secured there shortly after. Roamer was brought in somewhat later, but of all of them she alone possessed a face which was confident and calm. She hung like a golden nymph before them, and her composure did much to quiet the continuing sense of panic that predominated their mood as they waited to find out what new things the Ra would do to them.

“Why did they dye us gold?” Wildheit asked Kasdeya.

“Primarily because it’s the one skin tone not native to the nations of the Ra. Historically it symbolizes degradation—a reference to legendary golden beasts in Ra prehistory that contributed the gross animal instincts to human nature. Psychologically, it’s used as a foil. A Ra feels no conscience about killing or ill-treating a golden victim. The fact that he first dyed his victim gold is a piece of double-thinking conveniently overlooked.”

“Give a dog a bad name and hang it,” Wildheit commented.

“Ah, you should be so lucky as to hang! The Ra never believe in making the way out easy for their enemies.”

DURING the next
hour the great ship began to make headway. From its ever-increasing engine song, which rose swiftly beyond the limits of audibility, Wildheit surmised they were going back through the trans-continuum junction. At least for this he was glad, because only the Ra possessed the means to get him back to the vicinity of the Chaos Weapon. Secured as he was, an absolute prisoner, he had no idea how he might accomplish his task. But the Ra’s reaction to the predicted catalytic effects of Roamer and himself appeared to show that they were destined to strike some great and decisive blow at the Ra, and he could imagine no act more potent than destroying the Chaos Weapon itself.

Before long, they began to experience the same peculiar sensation they had experienced on Kasdeya’s ship as it approached the light barrier. But this time they immediately experienced a far more intense effect as they penetrated the fabric of the luxon wall itself. Having to absorb these sensations in an uncomfortable tiptoe stance added greatly to the trials of the experience, so they were all relieved when the great ship finally slipped into the sensationless silence of the trans-continuum domain itself.

At this point, Jequn, Asbeel, Penemue, and Kasdeya were taken away by guards. They went as unwillingly as their bondage would permit.

Wildheit bit his lip. “What do you see in the patterns, Roamer?”

“The ultimate catastrophe. The mind can’t comprehend its magnitude. This is the disaster at which all other disasters end.”

“Does it arise
from destroying the Chaos Weapon?”

“It’s difficult to see, but I think not.”

“How can that be?”

“The patterns are too complex to be sure of anything. All I know is that it will happen.”

Somehow Wildheit slept.

He woke occasionally to find Roamer always awake and watching him with her accustomed calmness. He marveled at the inner strength that kept her functioning when the trials to his own supposedly superior physique had brought him to a pitch of exhaustion which overcame all discomfort. Once he was awakened by someone he presumed to be a medic. The man examined the shoulder on which Coul resided, then compared his findings with some white platelet records. Despite his probing he discovered nothing of significance, perhaps because his perception was too weak to enable him to see the god on Wildheit’s shoulder.

Later, Kasdeya was brought back, this time without the yoke on his shoulders. Although apparently physically unharmed, his eyes held a haunted look, as if his experience had destroyed much of the man he used to be.