Doomstar. Part 18

Kettrick shouted, "Ghnak will lead us! Kill! Kill!" He began to climb again as quickly as he could.

The Krinn howled and swarmed upward, their tails lashing. Boker shouted something but Kettrick could not hear what it was. Boker and Glevan came on. Only Hurth remained where he was. Rather incredibly, it seemed, he had grown tired of the battle and curled up to sleep between the rocks. Kettrick saw him and called to him twice before he realized that Hurth was dead.

The mesa rim was close above him now. The first wave of the Krinn went over it. There were more whiplash noises, and screams mingled with the war cries. Kettrick hauled himself over the edge, lying as flat as he could, and a dead Krinn gave him shelter.

The men who had fired from the edge had now withdrawn toward a structure erected on the flat top of the mesa. It was a moment before Kettrick's sun-dazzled eyes could distinguish its outline, even though he knew what it had to be. Then he understood why the lifeboat had been able to pa.s.s over it repeatedly at a low alt.i.tude without seeing it until the actual firing of the missile gave it away.

The top of the mesa was black with the old lava that gave it its name. The launcher was all black, the entire a.s.sembly, even the missiles in the slotted track of the loader. Every-thing was black, with no singleglint of bright metal, and overhead a black camouflage net covered the whole a.s.sembly except for the firing tube, so that not even a too-regular or too-solid ma.s.s of blackness should reveal its outline.

Beyond the launcher, at a distance dictated by the force of its landing jets, a lifeboat stood erect on its tripod gear. At first Kettrick thought it must be the one from the cruiser, but then he saw the difference in its size and shape and knew that it was from Silverwing, and that the vanish-ing of the yacht in jump had been only a deceptive maneu-ver. And now he was quite sure what had happened to the cruiser's boat.

The seven surviving men formed a wall between the at-tackers and the launcher. Behind them the carrier track of the loading mechanism moved with a heavy, measured clicking sound as inexorable as the ticking of a clock, bear-ing another missile toward the tube. In front of them, far in front, the first wave of Krinn lay dead or dying, the few survivors dropping back desperately over the edge.

The body that was giving Kettrick a little shelter was the body of Ghnak. The necklace of heart-stones burned and shimmered about the neck. Otherwise Kettrick would not have known. But the Krinn knew, and the men of Ghnak's tribe were wavering. Kettrick reached to unloose the collar.

Beside him Chai gave a sudden whimpering cry, and then she was gone.

He saw her running, stooped low and running like the wind. The Krinn who saw her cried out in astonishment and surged forward over the edge, and perhaps that distracted the man for a second or two, or perhaps it was simply the shock of seeing her there alive and rushing toward him like a gray vengeance. She was already in midspring when he fired. She screamed, a high, terrible cry, but her clawed hands, outstretched, did not waver. They struck down, and the man fell beneath her and was hidden by her body.

Kettrick yelled, as hoa.r.s.e and wild a cry as any animal might make. He stood up with the necklace of heartstones in his hand and held them up like a banner and rushed for-ward, firing, too wild with hate and grief to think of death. There were other weapons firing beside him. He saw two of the men fall, and then the others wavered and the Krinn rolled over them like a wave.

Kettrick did not see the very last of it. He was holding Chai in his arms. She said, "Not kill, Johnn-ee." She had not. Seri still lived, though her claws had torn him cruelly. She moved her head against Kettrick's shoulder, the old affectionate thrust, and started to say his name, and never finished it.

The launcher still had two missiles in its carrier track, one of them only six minutes from firing, when Boker and Glevan shut off the power supply and stopped the steady clicking march of the Doomstar.

25.

It was late at night and two of the planet's three small moons were shining when Kettrick climbed the steep path up the scarp from the village that had once been Ghnak's. The Krinn came with him, men and women both, their tailed forms crowding around him. There were two chiefs now in the village, Hrach and Djunn, and Djunn wore a chief's collar around his neck. It had only eighteen heart-stones in it because he had given two to the G.o.d in mem-ory of his brother Ghnak, who had saved the sun.

The fires still burned in the; village and the drums of the chief-making still talked, telling the People of the River that Djunn was going home. Djunn was drunk and he should have been happy, happy that he was chief because of his victory over the sun-slayers. But he was not happy. He missed the gray shadow that had followed for so long behind his shoulder, and now was there no more.

At the top of the scarp he stopped and said goodbye to his brothers, promising to return. Then he walked alone across the desert to where the cruiser stood with her lights all blazing, finishing the lastchecks before takeoff.

Silverwing had escaped her, on the day they stopped the Doomstar. Kettrick remembered how they had succeeded in raising the cruiser on the radio of Silverwing's lifeboat. She came swiftly, but the yacht had vanished for the second time and this time it was no deceptive maneuver. She was on her way back to Kirnanoc with the news of defeat.

Sekma had got the full story, not from Seri but from the other survivor, the wounded man who had fled to safety in the boat. And Kettrick remembered all too clearly how Sekma had told it to them when he and Boker and Glevan came back from building the two cairns that were now in the desert below the Black Hill.

"We were closer behind them than we thought," Sekma said. "We actually almost caught them on the ground. Silverwing sent that message hoping to frighten us into put-ting all our energies into escaping, and then went into jump, but only long enough to carry her out of radar range. Then she sneaked back to check on us, and of course our radio conversations told her exactly what we were doing. She hung there all day, listening, with one of the moons as a shield, using her lifeboat as a relay station and auxiliary.

Once our pattern of sweeps was established, the boat could keep out of our way and still effectively watch the vital area.

"Their boat carried two light missiles. They used them when it became obvious that our boat had sighted the launcher."

The wreckage of the lifeboat had been spotted in one of the craters near the Black Hill. They had not tried to bring out the bodies.

"Seri knew by then that you were trying to make it on foot, and they came down on the mesa to defend the launcher in case you should make it. They were so close, so desperately close!"

Kettrick thought of how Seri had looked at him, still lying where Chai had struck him down, and how he had said, "If you had only come back a day sooner, I'd have had time to make sure of you with my own hand. You and that wretched beast. Or a day later, and I'd have been gone. If you had to come back at all, d.a.m.n you, oh d.a.m.n you, Johnny..."

He was in a locked cabin of the cruiser now, with Larith to tend his hurts. The other man was alone and much more ready to talk. Sekma was drawing up an astonishing col-lection of names.

"A lot of them will slip away," he said, "but we'll have an end to the Doomstar."

As he approached the ship, Kettrick saw that he was not the only one walking in the desert. Boker was there with Glevan, looking off across the moonlit sand toward the Many Hills. He knew what was in their minds. It was heavy also in his.

n.o.body thought to mention the collar of heartstones. It was not important.

Boker sighed, and then he looked at Kettrick. "Anyway, Johnny," he said, "this is one place we can come back to."

The three of them went together into the ship.

The warning hooter sounded. The cruiser rose skyward, riding a plume of flame.

Down in the sink the Krinn heard the thunder and scream of her going.

And presently the sun came up.

THE END.