Tschai - Complete Part 32

Zarfo returned to the saloon. "The ship is in order. But it's an unfamiliar model, as I feared."

"Can we take it up?"

"We'll have to make sure we know what we are doing. It may be minutes or hours."

"Then we can't let the w.a.n.kh go."

"Awkward," said Zarfo.

The w.a.n.kh thrust forward; Reith pushed it back and displayed his handgun. The w.a.n.kh uttered a loud chime. Zarfo made a chirping sound.

The w.a.n.kh drew back.

Reith asked: "What did you say?"

"I just gave the pidgin sound for 'danger.' It seems to understand well enough."

"I wish it would sit down; it makes me nervous standing there."

"w.a.n.kh almost never sit," said Zarfo and went to seal the entrance port.

Time pa.s.sed. From various locations about the ship came calls and exclamations from the Lokhars. At Reith's direction, Traz stood in the observation dome, watching over the field. The w.a.n.kh stood stolidly, apparently at a loss for action.

The ship shuddered; the lights flickered, went dim, came on bright once more. Zarfo looked into the saloon. "We've got the engines pumping. Now if Thadzei can figure out the control configurations-"

Traz called down: "The car is coming back. The floodlight has just gone on, to light the field."Thadzei ran through the saloon, jumped up to the control console. He peered this way and that, while Zarfo stood by his side urging him to haste.

Reith set Anacho to guarding the w.a.n.kh, Joined Traz in the observation dome. The car was slowing to a stop beside the ship.

Zarfo pointed here and there across the control panel; Thadzei nodded doubtfully, thrust at a set of pressure pads. The ship shuddered and heaved; Reith felt acceleration underfoot. He was departing Tschai!

Thadzei made adjustments; the ship pitched. Reith reached for a stanchion; the w.a.n.kh stumbled and fell upon the settee, where it remained. From elsewhere about the ship came full-throated Lokhar curses.

Reith made his way to the bridge, to stand beside Thadzei, who desperately worked the controls, testing first one pad, then another. Reith asked: "Is there an automatic pilot?"

"Bound to be, somewhere. I can't locate the engagement. These are by no means standard controls."

"Do you know what you are doing?"

"No."

Reith looked down at the dark face of Tschai. "So long as we are going up and not down, we're in good shape."

"If I had an hour, a single hour," moaned Thadzei, "I could trace out the circuits."

Jag Jaganig came into the saloon to make a querulous protest. Thadzei called back: "I'm doing the best I can!"

"It's not good enough! We'll crash!"

"Not yet," said Thadzei grimly. "I see a lever I haven't tried." He pulled the lever; the ship skidded alarmingly and thrust off at great speed to the east. Once more the Lokhars gave a series of anguished cries. Thadzei moved the lever back to its original position. The ship came to a trembling stasis. Thadzei gave a great tremulous sigh, peering back and forth across the panel. "Like none I have ever seen!"

Reith looked out the port but saw nothing but darkness. Zarfo spoke in a calm voice: "Our alt.i.tude is not quite a thousand feet ... Now it is nine hundred..."

Thadzei desperately worked the controls. Once again the ship lurched and fled eastward. "Up, up!" screamed Zarfo. "We're diving into the ground!"

Thadzei brought the ship back to a halt. "Well then, this toggle will surely activate the repulsors." He gave it a twitch. From aft came a sinister crackle, a m.u.f.fled explosion. The Lokhars yelled mournfully. Zarfo read the altimeter. "Five hundred ... Four hundred ... Three ... Two ... One..."

Contact: a splash, a bobbing and pitching, then silence. The ship was afloat, apparently undamaged, in an unknown body of water. The Parapan?The Schanizade? Reith threw up his hands in fatalistic despair. Back once more in Tschai.

Reith jumped down to the saloon. The w.a.n.kh stood like a statue.

Whatever its emotions, none were evident.

Reith went aft to the engine room, where Jag Jaganig and Belje looked disconsolately at a smoldering panel. "An overload," said Belje. "Circuits and nodes are certainly melted."

"Can we make repairs?"

Belje made a glum sound. "If tools and parts are aboard."

"If time is given to us," said Jag Jaganig.

Reith returned to the saloon. He threw himself down upon a settee and stared bleakly at the w.a.n.kh. The plan had succeeded ... almost. He leaned back, sodden with fatigue. The others must be feeling the same. No useful purpose could be served by going longer without rest. He got to his feet, called the group together. Two-man watches were set; the others slumped upon settees to sleep as best they could.

The night pa.s.sed. Az raced across the sky, followed by Braz. Dawn revealed a placid expanse which Zarfo identified as Lake Falas. "And never has it served a more useful purpose!"

Reith went out on the top surface of the hull, and searched the horizons through his scanscope. Hazy water stretched to south, east and west. To the north was a low sh.o.r.e toward which the ship was drifting, propelled by a gentle breeze from the south. Reith went back into the ship. The Lokhars had detached a panel and were unenthusiastically discussing the damage.

Their att.i.tudes gave Reith all the information he needed.

In the saloon he found Anacho and Traz gnawing on spheres of black paste encased in a hard white rind which they had taken from a locker.

Reith offered one of the spheres to the w.a.n.kh, who paid no heed. Reith ate the sphere himself, finding it similar to cheese. Zarfo presently joined him and verified what Reith already had guessed. "Repairs are not feasible. A whole bank of crystals is destroyed. There are no spares aboard."

Reith gave a gloomy nod. "As I expected."

"What next?" demanded Zarfo.

"As soon as the wind blows us ash.o.r.e we disembark and return to Ao Hidis for another try."

Zargo grunted. "What of the w.a.n.kh?"

"We'll have to let him go his own way. I certainly don't plan to murder him."

"A mistake," sniffed Anacho. "Best kill the repulsive beast."

"For your information," said Zarfo, "the main w.a.n.kh citadel Ao Khaha is situated on Lake Falas. It will not be far distant."

Reith went back out on the foredeck. The first tussocks of the sh.o.r.e were only half a mile distant; beyond lay quagmire. To ground at the edge ofsuch a mora.s.s would be highly inconvenient, and Reith was glad to see that the wind, shifting to the east, seemed to be moving the ship slowly to the west, perhaps aided by a sluggish current. Turning the scanscope along the sh.o.r.e Reith was able to distinguish a set of irregular juts and promontories far to the west.

From within came the sound of expostulation, followed by the thud of heavy footsteps. Out on the foredeck came the w.a.n.kh, followed by Anacho and Traz. The w.a.n.kh fixed Reith for half a second with its flicking vision, long enough to register an image, then turned by slow degrees to look around the horizon. Before Reith could prevent it, even were he able to do so, the w.a.n.kh stepped forward, ran with its peculiar lurching gait down the side of the ship and plunged into the water. Reith caught a glimpse of wet black hide, then the creature was gone into the depths.

Reith searched the surface for a period but saw no more of the w.a.n.kh.

An hour later, checking the progress of the vessel, he once more turned the scanscope on the western sh.o.r.e. To his cold dismay he saw that the shapes he had thought to be crags were the black gla.s.s towers of an extensive w.a.n.kh fortress city. Wordlessly Reith examined the swamp to the north with a new interest born of desperation.

Tussocks of white gra.s.s protruded like hairy wens from fields of black slime and stagnant ponds. Reith went below to seek material for a raft, but found nothing. The padding of the settee was welded to the structure and came away in shreds and chunks. There was no lifeboat aboard. Reith returned to the deck and wondered what his next move should be. The Lokhars joined him: disconsolate figures in wheatcolored smocks, wind blowing the white hair back from their craggy black faces.

Reith spoke to Zarfo: "Do you know the place yonder?"

"It must be Ao Khaha."

"If we are taken, what can we expect?"

"Death."

The morning pa.s.sed; the sun climbing toward noon dissolved the haze which shrouded the horizons, and the towers of Ao Khaha stood distinct.

The ship was noted. On the water under the city appeared a barge, which surged across the water leaving a ribbon of white wake. Reith studied it through the scanscope. w.a.n.khmen stood on the deck, perhaps a dozen, curiously alike; slender men with death-pale skins, saturnine or, in some instances, ascetic features. Reith considered resistance: perhaps a desperate attempt to seize the barge? He decided against such a trial, which almost certainly could not succeed.

The w.a.n.khmen scrambled aboard the ship. Ignoring Reith, Traz and Anacho, they addressed the Lokhars. "All down to the barge. Do you carry weapons?"

"No," grunted Zarfo."Quick then." Now they noticed Anacho. "What is this? A Dirdirman?"

And they gave chuckles of soft surprise. They inspected Reith. "And what sort is that one? A motley crew, to be sure! Now then, all down to the barge!"

The Lokhars went first, hulk-shouldered, knowing what lay ahead. Reith, Traz and Anacho followed.

"All! Stand on the deck, at the gunwales, in a neat line. Turn your backs."

And the w.a.n.khman brought out their handguns.

The Lokhars started to obey. Reith had not expected such casual and perfunctory slaughter. Furious that he had not resisted from the first he cried out: "Should we let them kill us so easily? Let's make a fight of it!"

The w.a.n.khmen gave sharp orders: "Unless you wish worse, quick! To the gunwales!"

Near the barge the water roiled. A black shape floated lazily to the surface and produced four plangent chimes. The w.a.n.khmen stiffened; their faces sagged into sneers of annoyance. They waved at their captives.

"Back then, into the c.o.c.kpit."

The barge returned to the great black fortress, the w.a.n.khmen muttering among themselves. It pa.s.sed behind a breakwater, magnetically clamped itself to a pier. The prisoners were marshaled ash.o.r.e and through a portal, into Ao Khaha.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN.

SURFACES OF BLACK gla.s.s, stark walls and areas of black concrete, angles, blocks, ma.s.ses: a negation of organic shape. Reith wondered at the architecture; it seemed remarkably abstract and severe. Into a cul-de-sac, walled on three sides with dark concrete, the captives were taken. "Halt!

Remain in place!" came the command.

The prisoners, with no choice, halted and stood in a surly line.

"Water yourselves at that spigot. Perform evacuation into that trough.

Make no noise or disturbance." The w.a.n.khmen departed, leaving the prisoners unguarded.

Reith said in a wondering voice, "We haven't even been searched! I still have my weapons."

"It's not far to the portal," said Traz. "Why should we wait here to be killed?"

"We'd never reach the portal," growled Zarfo.

"So we must stand here like docile animals?"

"That's what I plan to do," said Belje, with a bitter glance toward Reith.

"I'll never see Smargash more, but I may escape with my life."

Zorofim gave a rude laugh. "In the mines?"

"I know only rumor of the mines."

"Once a man goes underground he never emerges. There are ambushes and terrible tricks by Pnume and Pnumekin. If we are not executed out of hand we will go to the mines."

"All for avarice and mad folly!" lamented Belje. "Adam Reith, you have much to answer for!"

"Quiet, poltroon," said Zarfo without heat. "No one forced you to come.

The fault is your own. We should abase ourselves before Reith; he trusted our knowledge; we showed him inept.i.tude."

"All of us did our best," said Reith. "The operation was risky; we failed; it's as simple as that ... As for trying to escape from here-I can't believe that they'd leave us alone, unguarded, free to walk away."

Jag Jaganig snorted sadly. "Don't be too sure; to the w.a.n.khmen we are animals."

Reith turned to Traz, whose perceptions at times bewildered him. "Could you find your way to the portal?"

"I don't know. Not directly. There were many turns. The buildings confuse me."

"Then we had best remain here ... There's a bare chance that we can talk our way out of the situation."The afternoon pa.s.sed, then the long night, with Az and Braz creating fantasies of shapes and shadows. In the chill morning, cantankerous with stiff joints and hunger, and increasingly restless because of their captors'

inattention, even the most fearful of the Lokhars were peering out of the cul-de-sac and speculating as to the whereabouts of the portal through the black gla.s.s wall.

Reith still counseled patience. "We'd never make it. Our only hope as I see it is that the w.a.n.kh may decide to be lenient with us."

"Why should they be lenient?" sneered Thadzei. "Their justice is forthright: the same justice we use toward pests."