Tribesmen of Gor (50 page)

   
The Kur had held up a closed fist. There were no more days. I found myself struggling to keep up with the beast.

   
The slave runs had been stopped. Doubtless key operatives, particularly those, who spoke languages of Earth, had been evacuated from Gor. Others, ignorant of the horrifying, strategy of interplanetary warfare would remain. Even Ibn Saran, with all his brilliance, did not, I supposed, conjecture his role as dupe in this plan, precipitating tribal warfare, thus effectively, for almost all practical purposes, closing the desert to intruders, strangers, agents either of Priest-Kings or even of alternative Kurii parties. Kurii, I suspected, were as little united as men, for they, too, are jealous, proud, territorial beasts.

   
Gor, I understood, was to be destroyed. This would eliminate a world, but with it, Priest-Kings, and leave Earth unsheltered, vulnerable, to the attack fleets of the steel worlds. Better one world than none.

   
Though it was in the heat of the Tahari noon the beast did not pause. The Kur, like the great cats, hunts when hungry, but it is a beautifully night-adapted animal. Its night vision is perhaps a hundred times keener than that of humans. It can see even by starlight. It would be blind only in total darkness, as in a brine pit at Klima. The pupils of its eyes, like those of the cat, can shrink to pinpoints and expand to wide, dark, light-sensitive moons, capable of minute discriminations in what to a human being would seem pitch darkness. The Kur, commonly, emerges from its lair with the falling of darkness. It is then that its nostrils distend and its ears lift, listening, and that it begins its hunt. I had no doubt that the destruction of the world, as would seem fitting to a Kur, would occur with the coming of night. It is then that the Kur, commonly, chooses to hunt.

   
In the late afternoon the Kur cried out with rage. It stood on the crest of a dune, sand almost to its knees, sand sweeping about it. The wind had picked up. I saw its fur blown.

   
The wind had shifted again to the east.

   
Within moments the storm fell. The Kur pressed on, through the pelting sand. The sky was dark. I held to the fur at its arm, fighting to keep my balance. Suddenly the Kur stopped, and stood, leaning against the wind. I opened my eyes, and saw, briefly, before me, not more than a hundred yards away, in a fleeting gap in the storm, swiftly closed again by the hastened, stinging sand, crooked, leaning to one side, half buried in the sand, a cylinder of steel; it was perhaps twelve feet in diameter, perhaps forty feet of it exposed; at its apex I saw clustered thrust chambers; it was a ship; it had been crashed into the sand.

I felt the hand of the Kur close on my arm.

   
It is difficult to speak of what I then saw. The Kur, near me, removed his hand from my arm. With his right hand he took the ring on his left hand, that on his second finger, and turned the bezel inward, so that the silvered plate set in the gold faced inward. On the exposed side of the ring there was a circular switch, which he then depressed. For a moment in the sand, he seemed to shimmer and then I saw only the sand, the whipping, pelting sand. I was alone.

   
I knew then it hunted, in the vicinity of the tower. On my hands and knees I crawled a few yards in the direction of the ship. I saw it again, once, briefly, in a break in the storm. It seemed to me of primitive design. The thrust chambers suggested a liquid-propellant rocket. It was not disklike. I supposed it might have been an obsolete ship, perhaps a derelict, even an ancient ship, little more now than the fuselage for housing a bomb.

   
I shuddered when I thought of the power concealed in that casing of steel.

   
I wanted to run, into the storm, away from it. But I knew that nowhere on Gor would there be escape from that inert ship. "Beware the steel tower, " had been written on the rock. It was a weapon, pressed to the temple of a world, set to be discharged with the falling of darkness.

   
I thought I heard, wild. Though it was hard to tell in the wind, the screams of men. Then I heard the howling of a Kur, and four sudden, swift explosions.

   
Then I heard only the wind.

   
I waited, for more than a quarter of an Ahn. Then I sensed it near me. The air shimmered. It stood unsteadily. The Kur was before me. Its, paws were red. In its left thigh was one, and across its chest, were three holes, three quarters of an inch in diameter. Its eyes could not focus. It turned it’s back to me. In its back, where the force had burst loose of its body, were holes corresponding to those in his leg and chest. I smelled burned flesh. A white smoke, tiny, in wisps, like the smoke of dry ice, rose from the holes, then was whipped away by the wind. The Kur sank to the sand. I knelt over it. It opened its eyes. They focused on me.

    
"Is it accomplished?" I asked. "Is the work done?"

    
With its bloodied paw the ring from its finger. It thrust it toward me. It was covered with blood, that I assumed of men it had slain. The circle of the ring was not made for a human finger. It was an inch and a quarter in diameter. It pressed the ring into my hands. With a bit of leather string, from the wrappings on my feet, I tied it about my neck.

   
The beast lay in the sand. It bled slowly. I suppose it had little blood to bleed. Too, the force that had penetrated its body had, apparently, searing, half-sealed the wounds it inflicted. It was as though a hot poker, chemically active, had been thrust through the body. The sand beneath the beast grew red. I took wrappings from my feet, to thrust into the wounds. The beast pushed me away. He lifted his arm to where the sun must be, could it be seen.

   
I stood unsteadily beside it. Then, I started for the ship, through the storm.

   
Beside the ship I found the remains of a shelter of stones and tarpaulins. Scattered about were men. I did not think they were alive. I froze, as I saw, through the wind and sand, another Kur. It was armed. In its right paw it held a small device. It was hunched over, it peered through the storm.

   
I was startled that there would be a Kur at the ship. I think, too, the Kur with whom I had trekked had not anticipated this development. Kurii, no more than men, willfully commit themselves to destruction. Yet there was a Kur here, guarding the ship. I knew it would be a determined, desperate beast. It was willing to die, apparently, that the success of the plan of its superiors be fulfilled. I supposed many Kurii had competed for this honor. This Kur, of all, in the cruel selections of the steel ships, had survived. Kurii do not believe in immortality. They do believe, however, in glory. This Kur, of all, in the cruel selections of the steel ships, had survived. He would be the most dangerous of all. He turned toward me.

   
I saw the paw lift and I threw myself to the side. A large, square rock, near me, one of those which had held the tarpaulin, leaped upward, split in two, burnt black, and the slightest instant, almost simultaneous, afterward I heard the atmospheric concussion of the weapon.

   
I think the Kur was startled to see me. It did not expect to find a human at the ship. Perhaps it was this which, in his startled reflex, spoiled his aim. Then the sand closed between us. I crawled from the area of the shelter. I saw him, twice, through gaps in the sand. But he did not see me. The next time I saw him, he turned toward me, hunched down. I backed away. He approached, through the sand. He did not fire. He held the weapon outward from him, toward me. He tried to hold his balance. I conjectured that his weapon held a limited number of charges. It did not fire like a ray, but rather on the analogy of a cartridge weapon. Suddenly I felt the steel of the ship at my back. The beast emerged from the sand. I saw its lips draw back; it steadied the weapon in the whipping wind with both paws; I thrust at the circular switch on the ring about my neck. Suddenly I saw the Kur as though in red light, and the sand, too, darkly red to black. To my amazement, it seemed startled; it hesitated; I leapt to the side. A blast from the hand-held weapon struck the steel of the ship. In its side there was a blackened hole, as though drilled; metal ran in droplets down the side of the ship.

I suddenly realized, with elation, that the Kur could not see me.

The ring concealed a light-diversion device, encircling the orbit of its wearer with a field. We see in virtue of light waves reflected from variously textured surfaces, which waves impinge on the visual sensors. We see in virtue of the patterns of these waves. The field about me, I conjectured, diverted and reconstituted these waves in their original patterns; thus, a given wave of light in the normal visual spectrum which might strike me and be reflected to the visual sensor of another organism did not now strike me but was diverted; similarly patterns of light from objects behind me were diverted about my field

and reconstituted beyond it, to impinge, as though I were not there, on the visual sensor of an observing organism. The light in virtue of which I saw was shifted in its spectrum; it was, I suspect, originally in the nonvisible portion of the spectrum, perhaps in the infrared portion of the spectrum, which could penetrate the field, but was shifted in such a way by the diversion field that I, within the orbit of the field, experienced it in a range visible to myself. It was thus, I conjecture, that I could not be seen by those outside the field and yet that I, within the field, could experience the world visually which lay beyond it. Such a device would have been useless among Priest-kings, for they do not much depend on their visual sensors. Among Kurii I was not certain how effective it would be. Kurii, like men, are visually oriented organisms, but their hearing and their sense of smell is incomparably more acute.

I did not know how many charges the weapon of the Kur held. Further, I was unarmed. I slipped back into the whipping sand. I crouched down.

The howling of the wind screened the sounds of my movements; its swift, lacerating blasts must have torn the atmosphere of my scent to pieces, scattering it wildly about, affording the Kur only sudden, misleading, fleeting, confused sensations. He could not at the moment locate me. I saw him, red in the twisting, howling sand, moving about, weapon ready, hunting me.

I was puzzled that the Kur with whom I had trekked, who had worn the ring, had been hit four times, accurately, with the weapon of the Kur who stalked me. Furthermore, he had been struck, as nearly as I could determine, head-on. It was not as though the Kur with the weapon had located him at the throat of a man, and then fired.

It seemed likely then that the Kur must have been struck as it had framed itself, perhaps in an opening, the other Kur, smelling it, hearing it, firing when it bad tried to enter. The Kur with the weapon had then come out, hunting for it, to finish it.

He had not counted on there being an ally, and one who was human.

Similar thoughts must have coursed through the brain of the Kur and I, but I did not know the position or nature of the portal.

I saw him turn toward the ship, abandoning my bunt, recollecting his principal objective.

He thus led me to the portal. He reached it before I did. He scrambled, claws slipping on the leaning steel, and then crouched in it. The opening must once have been the outer opening of a lock; it was rectangular; the exterior hatch was missing; there was twisted metal at the side of the opening, as though it had been wrenched away from rusted hinges; the beast crouched in the lock, peering into the storm. Then it disappeared within.

My heart sank; time was on its side; it would soon be night; it needed only wait. I made my way to the stones and tarpaulin; there, feeling, about, I located one of the bodies, which was mostly whole. Some were missing arms and heads.

   
I carried the body toward the side of the ship. Though the Kur had not used them, there were cuts in the side of the ship, probably used by the humans in entering and leaving it. A steel ladder, twisted, fitted the rounded side of the ship. Given the attitude of the ship, however, the ladder was roughly at a twenty-degree angle to the ground, and some twenty feet from the sand: it was useless to me. I would use the cuts. I made no effort to conceal sound. I scraped the side of the steel. I made certain that the Kur within, if he could hear aught, would be able to tell that someone ascended the side of the ship, dragging an inert weight, presumably a body.

   
I knew the Kur must be cunning, if not brilliant. It could be no accident that this Kur and not another had received this dreadful assignment, to protect the device of a planet's destruction until its detonation.

   
But also it would be under stress. And in the storm it could not see clearly beyond the portal. It would assume that I would not relinquish the shield of the ring's invisibility. A diversion would be ineffective, for what could draw the Kur from his position? If the blood of the slaughtered humans about had not been sufficient to override his obedience to the dark imperative of the steel worlds, I did not think anything I might contrive could lure him forth. He had resisted blood; the will of this Kur, restraining its instincts of feasting and carnival, must be mighty indeed. He would assume, perhaps, I might attempt to draw fire with a decoy, thus slipping into the ship. The only likely object to use in such a plan would be the body of one of the humans about, victims of the Kur with whom I had shared the march in the desert. I made no attempt to conceal my wounds. I let it be clear that I was outside the portal, that I had ascended the side of the ship, that with me, dragged, was an inert weight, presumably a body.