The Fugitive Worlds (31 page)

"Well, Baten," he said dispiritedly, "I gave you ample
warning about what might happen."

Steenameert mustered a smile. "I have no complaints. I
am going to see sights the like of which I had never imagined,
and my life is in no danger."

"That's if we can believe what greyface said—he has
already lied to us."

"For a reason! This time he has nothing to gain by telling
us an untruth."

"I suppose you are right." Toller was reminded of the odd
wavering, the telepathic stains of guilt and self-reproach in
Divivvidiv's last communication, but he had no time to
pursue the line of thought. He and Steenameert swayed
against each other as the direction of their weight shifted.
There was a barely perceptible jolt as the vehicle came to
rest. A small hole appeared in the side and rippled outwards
in the dull metal to become a circular doorway.

Beyond it was a kind of short corridor which seemed
to be fashioned from a mottled glassy tube of elliptical cross-section. The material was blurrily streaked with grey,
yellow and orange, and was either lit from behind or was
giving off an even glow of its own. Toller looked to his left and right and saw that the near end of the tube met the outer
shell of the transporter in a curved seam so neat that it would
have been impossible to slide a strip of finest paper into it.
He transferred his attention to the far end of the corridor.
It terminated in an ovoidal wall at the center of which was a
small circular aperture which continuously opened and
shrank in a manner which for Toller, exhausted and emotion
ally drained though he was, had to have biological impli
cations.

"Is somebody trying to make us feel welcome?" he said
to Steenameert as he started forward, moving clumsily in his
voluminous skysuit, hands still tied behind his back. As he
and Steenameert reached the end of the corridor the aperture
in the wall rolled back to give them clear access to a large
and complicated enclosed space, a circular hall rimmed with
stairs and galleries. Imposing though the alien cathedral
might have been to Toller in his normal state of mind, its
architectural vistas now flowed outwards in his vision,
centering all of his attention on the small group of women
who were running in his direction.

And foremost among them was the Countess Vantara!

"Toller!" she screamed, her beautiful features transformed
into a mask of inhumanly enhanced desire. "Toller, my love!

You came, you came, you came
...
I should have known it
would be you!"

She hurled herself against him with such force that he was
almost driven backwards. Her arms went around his neck
and she kissed him with wet lips and urgently probing tongue.
Toller was both thrilled and gratified, senses overwhelmed to the extent that he scarcely noticed the stockier form of
Lieutenant Pertree moving behind him. The lieutenant began
to untie his hands, while the three remaining members of the
crew converged on Steenameert with similar intent. Vantara
pushed Toller back to arm's length, still clasping his neck,
and it was only then that her eyes began to take stock of the
true situation.

"You're a prisoner!" she accused. "You have been cap
tured, just like us!" She recoiled from Toller, her expression
changing to one of disappointment and anger. "Did your
ship also blunder into that strange reef?"

"No. I approached it in daylight and managed to get by.
On reaching Prad and being told that your ship had failed to
arrive, I immediately set out to find you."

"Where are your forces?"

Toller rubbed his newly freed wrists. "There are no forces
—Baten is my only companion."

Vantara's jaw sagged as she shot an incredulous glance to
her lieutenant. "You set out—a general commanding an
army of one—to challenge an invader!"

"At that time I had no way of knowing there was an enemy
presence," Toller said stiffly. "My only thought was of your
safety. Besides, two men or a thousand—what difference
would it have made?"

"Can this be the
real
Toller Maraquine who preaches defeatism, or is it an impostor conjured up by those foul beings who deny us our freedom?" Vantara turned away
before Toller could protest and walked quickly towards the
nearest stair.

First I'm too foolhardy
—
then Tm too timid,
Toller thought,
feeling both wounded and baffled. In his confusion he stared
at the three young women in ranker uniforms who were attending to Steenameert. They were helping him out of his
cumbersome skysuit, and at the same time—their welcome
to him apparently undiminished—were smiling and plying him with questions. Steenameert looked embarrassed but
gratified.

"You must excuse my aristocratic commander," Lieuten
ant Pertree said, gazing up at Toller with a wry glint in her
eye. "The terms of our detention here could hardly be described as onerous, but the countess—being of royal
blood, and therefore possessing an exquisite degree of sensitivity—finds the life much more harrowing than would a
commoner."

Toller was almost grateful for the flicker of anger which
brought reality into sharp focus. "I remember you, lieutenant, and I see that you are as insubordinate and disloyal as
ever."

Pertree sighed. "I remember you, captain, and I see that
you are as besotted and calf-eyed as ever."

"Lieutenant, I will not tolerate that kind of. . . ." Toller allowed the sentence to die, suddenly recalling that he had
only permitted Steenameert to accompany him into the un
known on condition that they discard all the stultifying appur
tenances of rank and class. He smiled apologetically and
began ridding himself of the stifling swaddles of his skysuit.

"I'm sorry," he said. "The old ways die hard. I have heard
your given name more than once, but confess to having
forgotten it. . . ."

"Jerene."

He smiled. "My name is Toller. May we pledge friendship
and in consequence present a united front against the com
mon enemy?" He had expected the sturdy lieutenant to
appear mollified to some extent, and therefore he was sur
prised when a look of alarm manifested itself on her rounded
features.

"It must be true," she breathed, suddenly losing her air of case-hardened composure. "You would never have spoken that way in normal circumstances. Tell me,
Toller,
have we been transported to another world? Are we lost forever? Is this prison on a strange planet millions of miles from Overland?"

"Yes." Toller saw that the three other women had begun listening intently to his words. "How could you fail to know such things?"

"Night came upon us when we were two hours below the datum plane," Jerene said in a small, reflective voice. "It was decided that we would continue at reduced speed through the hours of darkness and carry out the inversion maneuver at first light. ..."

She went on to describe how the crew, most of them sleeping, had been thrown into a panic by a great shuddering groan from the balloon. It had been accompanied by the sound of the four acceleration struts breaking and ripping into the material of the envelope. Almost at once choking billows of miglign gas had spewed downwards around the crew from the balloon mouth as the flimsy structure collapsed inwards. Finally, to add to the terror and confusion, the gondola had coasted into the writhing folds of the ruined envelope and had been swallowed by them.

It had taken fear-protracted minutes for the bewildered astronauts to fight clear of the wreckage. Enough light was being reflected from Land for them to make the incredible discovery that their ship had collided with a crystalline barricade which appeared to span the horizons like a dull-glowing frozen sea. And only furlongs away—wonder piled upon wonder—had been the outline of a fantastic castle, exotic and enigmatic, silhouetted against the silvered cosmos.

Somehow they had managed to retrieve enough personal propulsion units to enable them to fly to the castle. Somehow they had managed to locate a door in its metallic surface.

They had entered, and—
somehow
—had found themselves, with no perceptible lapse of time, prisoners in a grey-and-yellow cathedral. . . .

"It is much as I suspected," Toller said when the lieutenant had finished. "Something told me that she . . . that all of you were still alive."

"But what
happened
to us?"

"The Dussarrans employ a gas which quickly renders those who breathe it insensible. It must have—"

"We deduced that much for ourselves," Jerene interrupted, "but what happened after that? We have been told that we were magically transported to another world, but we have only the monsters' word for that. We believe we are somewhere inside the castle. It is true that we have normal weight—as though standing on solid ground—but that could be more magic."

Toller shook his head. "I'm sorry, but what you have been told is true. Our captors have the ability to travel through the space between the stars at the speed of thought. You have indeed been transported, in the blink of an eye, to their home world of Dussarra."

His words drew cries of mingled concern and disbelief from the listening women. A tall, snub-nosed blonde in the uniform of a skycorporal laughed and whispered something to the woman next to her. It came to Toller that the lessons in cosmology and galactic history that he and Steenameert had received from Divivvidiv had brought about fundamental changes in their inner selves, separating them from the rest of their kind. He got a slight but uncomfortable insight into how he, while steeped in ignorance, must have appeared to Divivvidiv.

"How do
you
know that all the humbug about being magicked through the heavens is true?" Jerene challenged. "You have to go by what you have been told, just like the rest of us."

"Far from it!" Toller replied, beginning to divest himself of his own skysuit. "When Baten and I entered the castle,

as you call it, we took its corpse-faced master prisoner at
swordpoint. And we brought him here as a hostage in a good
Kolcorronian ship—therefore we can testify that all of us, at
this very moment, are millions of miles away from Overland.
We are on the home planet of the invaders."

Jerene's eyes widened and as she gazed up at Toller her
face became tinged with pink. "You did all that for: . . ."
She glanced towards the stair by which Vantara had departed
the company. "You took one of those ancient ships from the
Defense Group . . . and flew it to another world
...
all
because. . . ."