There was another bulkhead door at the end of this short corridor; at a few paces away from the outer hatch a ladder ascended to a closed trap. Her head turned constantly, until she regained a firmer control of herself, from one of those entrances to the other. They had only to wait to call her bluff—only to wait.
Yes! They had waited and they were—
The air about her was changing, there was a growing scent in it. Not unpleasant—but even a fine perfume would have seemed a stench from the dungheap when it reached her nostrils under these present conditions! Also the light which radiated from the jointure of the corridor roof and ceiling was altering. It had been that of a moderately sunlit day, now it was bluish. So under it her own brown skin took on an eerie look. She had lost her throw! Maybe, if she could open the hatch again, let in the outer air—
Tamisan tottered to the hatch, gripped the locking wheel and brought her strength to bear. Kas was writhing again, trying to break loose from his unwilling partner. But oddly enough the crewman lay limp, his head rolling when Kas’ heaving disturbed the lay of his body, but his eyes were closed. And, at the same time Tamisan braced against the wall, her full strength turned on the need for opening the door, she knew a flash of surprise. Was it her overvivid imagination alone which made her believe that she was in danger? When she rested to draw a deep breath—
Why—in her startlement she could have cried out aloud. She did utter a small sound. She was gaining strength, not losing it. Every lungful of that scented air she breathed in—and she was breathing deeper, more slowly as if her body desired such nourishment—was a restorative.
Kas, too? She turned to glance at him again. Where she breathed deeply, with lessening apprehension, he was gasping, his face ghastly in the change of light. And then, even as she watched, his struggles ended, his head fell back so that he lay as inert as the crewman he sprawled across.
So whatever change was in progress here, it affected Kas and the crewman—that latter faster than the former—but not her. And now her trained imagination took another leap. Perhaps she had not been so far wrong in threatening those on this ship with danger. Though she had no guess as to how it was done, this could be another strange weapon in the armament of the Over-Queen.
Hawarel? The spacemen had probably never intended to send him. Dared she go to seek him? Tamisan wavered, one hand on the hatch wheel, looking to the ladder and the other door. If all within this ship save she had reacted to the strange air, there would be none to stop her. But if she fled the ship, she would face the loss of the keys to her own world—Starrex and Kas. In addition, she might be met by some evil fate at the hands of the Over-Queen. She had broken prison, and—if they did not know of Kas—had left dead men behind her. As the Mouth of Olava, she shuddered from the judgment which would be rendered one deemed to have practiced wrongful supernatural acts.
Resolutely, Tamisan went to the door at the end of the corridor. It was really true that she had no choice at all. She must find Starrex, somehow bring him here, so that they three could be together and win a small space of time in which to arrange a dream breaking—or she was totally defeated.
She loosened her belt a little so she could draw up her robe through it, shortening the hampering length, leaving her legs freer. There was the tangler and Kas’ laser. In addition was this mounting feeling of strength and well being, though an inner warning suggested she not trust to overconfidence.
The door gave under her push and she looked out upon a scene which first startled and then reassured her. There were crewmen in the corridor. But they lay prone as if they had been caught while on their way to the hatch. Lasers—of a slightly different pattern than that Kas had brought—had fallen from their hands, and three of the four wore tanglers.
Tamisan picked her way carefully around them, gathering up all those weapons in a fold of her robe, as if she were some maiden in a field gathering an armload of spring flowers. The men were alive, she saw as she stooped closer, but they breathed evenly as if peacefully asleep.
She took one of the tanglers, discarding the one she had used, fearing its charge might be near exhaustion. As for the rest of the collection, she dropped them at the far end of the passageway and turned the beam of Kas’ weapon on them; she left behind a metal mass of no use to anyone.
Her idea of the geography of the ship was scanty. She would simply have to explore and keep exploring until she found Starrex. But she would start at the top and work down. So she found a level ladder, three times coming upon a sleeping crewman. Each time she made sure he was disarmed before she left him.
The blue shade of the light was growing deeper, giving a very weird cast to the faces of the sleepers. Making sure her robe was tightly kilted up, Tamisan began to climb. She had reached the third level when she heard the sound, the first she had noted in this too-silent ship since she had left the hatchway.
She stopped to listen, deciding it came from somewhere in the level into which she had just climbed. With laser in hand, she tried to use it as a guide, though it was misleading—and might have come from any one of the cabins. Each door she passed Tamisan pushed open. There were more sleepers—some stretched in bunks, others on the floors or seated at tables with their heads lying on those surfaces. But she did not halt now to collect weapons. The need to be about her task, free of this ship, built in her as sharp as might a slaver’s lash laid across her shrinking shoulders.
Suddenly the sound grew louder as she came to a last door and pushed it. Now she looked into a cabin not meant for living but perhaps for a kind of death. Two men in plain tunics were crumpled by the threshold. As if they had had some limited warning of danger to come and had tried to flee, but fallen before they could reach the corridor. Behind them was a table and on that a body, very much alive, struggling with dogged determination against confining straps.
Though his long hair had been clipped and the stubble of it shaven to expose the full nakedness of his entire scalp, there was no mistaking Hawarel. He not only fought against the clamps and straps which held him to the table, but in addition he jerked his head with sharp, short pulls, to dislodge disks fastened to his forehead, and from there, by wire, to a vast box of a machine which filled one-quarter of the cabin.
Tamisan stepped over the inert men, reached the side of the table and jerked the disks away from the prisoner’s head; perhaps his determined struggles had already loosened them somewhat. His mouth had opened and shut as she came to him as if he were forming words she could not hear, or he could not voice. But as the apparatus came away in her hands, he gave a cry of triumph.
“Get me loose!” he commanded. She was already examining the under part of the table for the locking mechanism of those straps and clamps. It was only seconds before she was able to obey his order.
He sat upright, bare to the waist, and she saw beneath, where his shoulders and the upper part of his spine had rested on the table, a complicated series of disks.
“Ah!” Before she could move he scooped up the laser she had laid on the edge of the table when she had freed him. And the gesture he made with it might not have been only to indicate the door and the need for hurry, but perhaps also was a warning that with a weapon in his hands he now thought he was in command of the situation.
“They sleep—everywhere,” she told him. “And Kas—he is a prisoner.”
“I thought you could not find him—he was not one of the crew.”
“He was not. But I have him now, and with him we can return.”
“How long will it take?” Starrex was down on one knee, searching the two men on the floor.
“I can not tell.” She gave him the truth. “But—how long will these sleep? Their unconsciousness is, I think, some trick of the Over-Queen’s.”
“It came unexpectedly for them,” Starrex agreed. “And you may be right that this is only preliminary to taking over the ship. I have learned this much, that their instruments and much of their equipment has been affected so they can not
trust them. Otherwise—” His Hawarel face was grim under its bluish, deadman’s coloring. “Otherwise I would not have survived this long as myself.”
“Let us go!” Now that she had miraculously—or so it seemed to her—succeeded, Tamisan was even more uneasy, wanting nothing to spoil their escape.
16
THEY found their way back to the corridor before the hatch while the ship still slept. Starrex knelt by Kas and then looked with astonishment at Tamisan. “But this is the real Kas!”
“It is Kas, real enough,” she agreed. “And there is a reason for that. But need we discuss it now? If the Over-Queen’s men come to take this ship—I tell you her greeting to us may be worse than any you have met here. I remember enough of the Tamisan who is the Mouth of Olava to know that.”
He nodded. “Can you break dream now?”
She looked around her a little wildly. Concentration—no, somehow she could not think so clearly. It was as if the exultation of fumes of that scented air had awakened in her was draining. And with that sapping went what she needed most.
“I—I fear not.”
“It is simple then.” He stopped again to examine the tangle cords. “We shall have to go to where you can.” She saw him set the laser on its lowest beam to burn through the cords which united Kas to the crewman, though he did not free his cousin from the rest of his bonds.
But what if they marched out of the hatch into a waiting party of the Over-Queen’s guards? They had the tangler, the laser, and perhaps—just perhaps—the half smile of fortune on their side. They would have to risk it.
Tamisan opened the inner door of the pressure chamber. The dead men lay there as they had fallen. Fighting nausea, she dragged one aside to make room for Starrex, who carried Kas over his shoulder, moving slowly under that burden, a fold of cloak well wrapped about the prisoner to prevent any contact between the cords and Starrex’s own flesh. The outer hatch was open and beyond—
A blast of icy rain, with the added bite of the wind which drove it, struck viciously at them. It had been dawn when Tamisan had entered the ship, but outside now the day was no lighter. The torches had been extinguished. Tamisan could see no lights. Shielding her eyes against the wind and the rain, she tried to make out the line of guards.
Perhaps the severe weather had driven them all away. She was sure no one was waiting at the foot of the ramp, unless they were under the fins of the ship, sheltering there. And that chance would have to be taken. She said as much and Starrex nodded.
“Where do we go?”
“Anywhere away from the city. Give me but a little shelter and time.”
“Vermer’s Hand over us and we can do it,” he returned. “Here—take this!”
He kicked an object across the metal plates of the deck and she saw it was one of the lasers used by the crewmen. She picked it up in one hand, the tangler in her other. Burdened as he was by Kas, Starrex could not lead the way. She must now play in real life such an action role as she had many times dreamed. But this held no amusement, only a wish to scuttle quickly into any form of safety wind and rain would allow her.
The ramp being at such a steep angle, she feared slipping on it and had to belt the tangler, hold on grimly with one hand and go much more slowly than her fast-beating heart demanded, anxious lest Starrex in turn might lose footing and slam into her, carrying them both on to disaster.
The strength of the storm was such that it was a battle to gain step after step, even though she reached the ground without mishap. Tamisan was not sure in which direction she must head now to avoid the Castle and the city. Her memory seemed befuddled by the storm and she could only guess. Also she was afraid of losing contact with Starrex; as slowly as she went, he dragged even more behind.
Then she stumbled against an upright stake. She put out her hand and fumbled along it enough to know that this was one of the rain-quenched torches. It heartened her a little to learn that they had reached the barrier and that no guards stood here. Perhaps the storm was a life saver for the three of them.
Tamisan lingered, waiting for Starrex to catch up. Now he caught at the torch, steadying himself as if he needed that support.
His voice came in wind-deadened gusts, labored. “I may have in this Hawarel a good body, but I am not a heavy duty android. We must find your shelter.”
There was a dark shadow to her left; it could be a coppice. Even trees or tall brush could give them some measure of relief.
“Over there.” She pointed, but did not know if, in this gloom, he could see it.
“Yes.” He straightened a little under the burden of Kas, staggering in the direction of the shadow.
They had to beat their way into the vegetation. Tamisan, having two arms free, broke the path for Starrex. She might have used the laser to cut, but the ever-present fear that they might need the charges for future protection kept her from a waste of their slender resources for defense.
At last, at the cost of branch-whipped and thorn-ripped weals in their flesh, they came into a space which was a little more open. Starrex allowed his burden to fall to the ground.
“Can you break dream now?” He squatted down beside Kas, as she dropped to sit panting near him.
“I can—”
But she got no farther. There was a sound which cut through even the tumult of the storm, and that part of them which was allied to this world knew it for what it was, the warning of a hunt. And—since they were able to hear it—they must be the hunted!
“The Itter Hounds!” He put their peril into words.
“And they run for us!” Mouth of Olava or not, when the Itter Hounds coursed on one’s track there was no defense, for they could not be controlled once they were loosed to chase.
“We can not fight them.”
“Do not be too sure of that,” he answered. “We have the lasers, weapons not of this world. The weapon which put the ship’s crew to sleep did not vanquish us; so might an off-world weapon react the other way here—”
“But Kas—” She thought she had found a weak point in his reasoning, much as she wanted to believe he had guessed rightly.
“Kas is in his own form, which is perhaps more akin to the crewmen now than to us. And, by the way, how is it that he is?”
She kept her tale terse, but told him of her dream within a dream and how she had found Kas. She heard him laugh.
“I was right then in thinking my dear cousin might well be at the center of this web! However, now he is as completely enmeshed as the rest of us. As a fellow victim he may be more cooperative.”
“Entirely so, my noble lord!” The voice out of the dark between them was composed.
“You are awake then, cousin. Well, we would be even more awake. There is a struggle here in progress between two sets of enemies who are both willing to make us a third. We had better travel swiftly elsewhere if we would save our skins. What of it, Tamisan?”
“I must have time.”
“What I can do to buy it for you, I will!” That carried the force of a sworn oath. “If the lasers act outside the laws of this world, it may be that they can even stop the Itter Hounds. But to get to it!”
She had no proper conductor, nothing but her will and the need. Putting out her hands she touched the bare, wet flesh of Starrex’s shoulder, was more cautious in seeking a hold on Kas, lest she encounter one of the tangle cords. Then she exerted her full will and looked far in, not out.
It was no use, her craft failed her. There was that momentary sensation of suspension between two worlds. Then she was back in the dark brush where the growing walls did not hold off the rain.
“I can not break the dream. There is no energy machine to step up the power.” But she did not add that perhaps she might have done it for herself alone.
Kas laughed then. “It would seem my sealer still works in spite of all your meddling, Tamisan. I fear, my noble lord, you will have to prove the effectiveness of your weapons after all. Though you might set me free and give me arms, n
ecessity making allies of us after all.”
“Tamisan!” Starrex’s voice was one to bring her out of the dull anguish of her failure. “This dream—remember, it may not be a usual dream after all. Could another world door be opened?”
“Which world?” At that moment her memories of reading and viewing tapes were a whirl in her head. And the voiceless call of the Itter Hounds to which this Tamisan was attuned made her whole body cringe and shiver, addled her thinking even more.
“Which world? Any one—think, girl, think! Take a single change if you must, but think!”
“I can not. The Hounds—aheee—they come—they come! We are meat for the fangs of those who course the Dark Runnels under moonless skies! We are lost!” The Tamisan who dreamed slipped into the Mouth of Olava, and the Mouth of Olava vanished in turn, and she was only a naked, defenseless thing crouching under the shadow of a death against which she could raise no shield. She was—
Her head rocked, the flesh of her cheeks stung as she swayed from the slaps dealt her by Starrex.
“You are a dreamer!” His voice was imperative. “Dream now then as you have never dreamed before! For there is that in you which can do this, if you will it.”
It was like the action of that strange scented air in the ship; her will was reborn, her mind steadied. Tamisan the dreamer pushed out that other weak Tamisan. But—what world? A point—give her but a decision point in history!
“Yaaaah—” the cry from Starrex’s throat was not now meant to arouse her. Perhaps it was the battle challenge of Hawarel.
There was a pallid snout, about which hung a dreadful sickening phosphorescence, thrust through the screen of brush. She sensed rather than saw Starrex fire the laser at it.
A decision—water beating in on her. Wind rising as if to claw them out of the poor refuge to be easy meat for the hunters. Drowning—sea—sea—the Sea Kings of Nath!