The Witches of Karres Read online

  Laes Yango, Vezzarn, and Hulik nodded earnestly. Whatever Hulik had thought when she turned on a light in Olimy's stateroom, she seemed to accept the captain's explanations. She was looking both relieved and very much embarrassed as he went off to relock the stateroom and passage doors . . . not that locking things up on the ship seemed to make much difference at present—

  "If I could see you in the control section, Miss do Eldel," he said when he came back. "Vezzarn, you'd better stay at the viewscreens till Dani and I take over up front . . . ."

  In the control room he asked Hulik to be seated. Goth already was at the console. But the detector system had remained reassuringly quiet, and the Megair Cluster was dropping behind them. The captain switched on the intercom, called Vezzarn off the lounge screens. Then he turned back to the passenger.

  "I really must apologize, Captain Aron!" Hulik told him contritely. "I don't know what possessed me. I assure you I don't make it a practice to pry into matters that are not my business."

  "What I'd like to know," the captain said, "is how you were able to unlock the passage door and the one to the stateroom."

  Hulik looked startled.

  "But I didn't!" she said. "Neither door was locked and the one to the passage stood open. That's why it occurred to me to look inside. . . . Couldn't Vezzarn—no, you hadn't told Vezzarn about this either, had you?"

  "No, I hadn't," said the captain.

  "You're the only one who has keys to the door?"

  He nodded. "Supposedly."

  "Then I don't understand it. I swear I'm telling the truth!" Hulik's dark eyes gazed at him in candid puzzlement. Then their expression changed. "Or could the—the unfortunate person in there have revived enough to have opened the doors from within?" Her face said she didn't like that idea at all.

  The captain told her he doubted it. And from what Goth knew of the disminded condition, it was in fact impossible that Olimy's shape could have moved by itself, let alone begun unlocking doors. Otherwise, it seemed the incident hadn't told them anything about the shipboard prowlers they didn't already know. Hulik do Eldel looked as though she were telling the truth. But then an experienced lady spy would look as if she were telling the truth, particularly when she was lying . . . .

  He'd had an alarm device set up in the control desk which would go off if anyone tampered with the strongbox containing Olimy's crystalloid in the storage vault. He was glad now he had taken that precaution, though it still did seem almost unnecessary—the time lock on the strongbox was supposed to be tamper-proof; and the storage vault itself had been installed on the ship by the same firm of master craftsmen who'd designed the vaults for the Daal's Bank.

  * * *

  Most of the next ship-day passed quietly—or in relative quiet. They did, in fact, have their first real attack alert, but it was not too serious a matter. A round dozen black needle-shapes registered suddenly in the screens against the purple glare of a star. Stellar radiation boiling through space outside had concealed the blips till then . . . and not by accident; it was a common attack gambit and they'd been on the watch for it whenever their course took them too near a sun. The black ships moved at high speed along an interception course with the Venture. They looked wicked and competent.

  The buzzer roused Goth in her sleep cabin. Thirty seconds later one of the desk screens lit up and her face looked out at the captain. "Ready!" her voice told him. She raked sleep-tousled brown hair back from her forehead. "Now?"

  "Not yet." Sneaking through the sun system, he hadn't pushed the Venture; they still had speed in reserve. "We might outrun them. We'll see. . . . Switch your screen to starboard—"

  The ship's intercom pealed a signal. The passenger lounge. The captain cut it in. "Yes?" he said.

  "Are you aware, sir," Laes Yango's voice inquired, "that we are about to be waylaid?"

  The captain thanked him, told him he was, and that he was prepared to handle the situation. The trader switched off, apparently satisfied. He must have excellent nerves; the voice had sounded composed, no more than moderately interested. And sharp eyes, the captain thought—the lounge screens couldn't have picked up the black ships until almost the instant before Yango called.

  It was too bad though that he was in the lounge at the moment. If the Sheewash Drive had to be used, the captain would slap an emergency button first, which, among other things, blanked out the lounge screens. Nevertheless, that in itself was likely to give Yango some food for thought . . . .

  But perhaps it wouldn't be necessary. The captain watched the calculated interception point in the instruments creep up. Still three minutes away. The black ships maintained an even speed. Four of them were turning off from the others, to cut in more sharply, come up again from behind. . . . He shoved the drive thrust regulator slowly flat to the desk. The drives howled monstrous thunder. A minute and a half later, they flashed through the interception point with a comfortably sixty seconds to spare. The black ships had poured on power at the last moment, too. but the Venture was simply faster.

  His watch ended, and Goth's began. He slept, ate, came on watch again . . . .

  Chapter SEVEN

  It was time to rouse Goth once more . . . past time by twenty minutes or so. But let her sleep a little longer, the captain thought. This alternate-watch arrangement would get to be a grind before the Chaladoor run was over! If he could only trust one of the others on board . . . .

  Well, he couldn't.

  He sniffed. For a moment he'd fancied a delicate suggestion of perfume in the air. Imagination. Hulik do Eldel used perfume, but it was over twenty-four hours since she'd been in the control room. Besides she didn't use this kind.

  Something stirred in his memory. Who did use this kind of perfume? Wasn't it—

  "Do you have a few minutes to spare for me, Captain Aron?" somebody purred throatily behind him. He started, spun about in the chair.

  Red-headed Sunnat leaned with lazy, leggy grace against the far wall of the control room, eyes half shut, smiling at him. Her costume was the one which most of all had set the captain's pulses leaping rapidly, when she'd slid off her cloak and revealed it to him, back in Zergandol.

  He started again, but less violently.

  "Not bad!" he remarked. He cleared his throat. "You were off on the voice though and pretty far off, I'd say, on the perfume."

  Sunnat stared at him a moment, smile fading. "Hm!" she said coldly. She turned, swayed into Goth's cabin. Goth came out a moment later, half frowning, half grinning.

  "Thought I was her pretty good!" she stated. "Voice, too!"

  "You were, really!" the captain admitted. "And just what, may I ask, was the idea?"

  Goth hitched herself up on the communicator table and dangled her legs. "Got to practice," she explained. "There's a lot to it. Not easy to hold the whole thing together either!"

  "Light waves, sound waves, and scents, eh? No, I imagine it wouldn't be. That's all you do?"

  "Right now it's all," nodded Goth.

  The captain reflected. "Another thing—if you saw that costume of hers, you were doing some underhanded snooping-around in Zergandol!"

  "Looked like you might need help," Goth said darkly.

  "Well, I didn't!"

  "No." She grinned. "Couldn't know that, though. Want me to do Hulik? I got her down just right."

  "Another time." The captain climbed out of the chair, adjusted the seat for her. "I'd better get some sleep. And you'd better forget about practicing and keep your eyes pinned to those screens! There've been a few flickers again."

  "Don't worry!" She slipped down from the table, started over to him. Then they both froze.

  There were short, screeching whistles, a flickering line of red on the console. An alarm—

  "Strongbox!" hissed Goth.

  * * *

  They raced through the silent ship to the storage. The lounge was deserted, its lights dim. It had been ship-night for two hours.

  The big storage door was shut, seemed
locked, but swung open at the captain's touch. The automatic lighting inside was on—somebody there! Cargo packed the compartment to the ship's curved hull above. The captain brought out his gun as they went quickly down the one narrow aisle still open along the length of the storage, then came in sight of the vault at the far end to the left. The vault door—that massive, burglar-proof slab—stood half open.

  Vezzarn lay face down in the door opening, legs within the vault as if he had stumbled and fallen in the act of emerging from it. He didn't move as they scrambled past him. The interior of the vault hummed like a hive of disturbed giant insects. The strongbox stood against one wall, its top section tilted up. A number of unfamiliar tools lay on the floor about it. The humming poured up out of the box.

  It was like wading knee-deep through thick, sucking mud to get to it! The captain's head reeled in waves of dizziness. The humming deepened savagely. He heard Goth shout something behind him. Then he was bending over the opened box. Gray light glared out of it; cold fire stabbed—he seemed to be dropping forward, headlong into cold, gray distances, as his hands groped frantically about, found the tough, flexible plastic wrapping which had been pulled away from the crystal's surface, wrenched, tugged it back into place.

  In seconds they had it covered again, the plastic ends twisted tightly together; they stood gasping and staring at each other as the angry humming subsided. It was as if something that had been coming awake had gone back to sleep.

  "Just in time here—maybe!" panted the captain. "Let's hurry!"

  They couldn't get the strongbox closed all the way, left it as it was—top pulled down, a gap showing beneath it. They hauled Vezzarn clear of the vault door, shoved the door shut, spun its triple locks till they clicked back into position. The captain wrestled Vezzarn up to his shoulder. The old spacer might be dead or merely unconscious; in any case, he was a loose, floppy weight, difficult to keep a grasp on.

  They got the storage door locked. Then Goth was off, darting back to the control section, the captain hurrying and stumbling after her with Vezzarn. There was still no sign of the two passengers—but that didn't necessarily mean they were asleep in their staterooms.

  He let Vezzarn slide to the control room floor and joined Goth at the instruments. The glittering dark of the Chaladoor swam about them but nothing of immediate importance was registering. Most particularly, nothing which suggested the far-off Worm World knew Olimy's crystal had been uncovered again on a ship thundering along its solitary course through space. They exchanged glances.

  "Might have been lucky!" the captain said. "If there're no Nuris anywhere around here—" He drew in a long breath, looked back at Vezzarn. "Let's try to get that character awake!"

  Spluttering, swallowing, coughing, Vezzarn woke up a few minutes later. The captain pulled back the flask of strong ship brandy he'd been holding to the little spacer's mouth, recapped it and set it on the floor. "Can you hear me, Vezzarn?" he asked loudly.

  "Aaa-eeh," sighed Vezzarn. He looked around and his face seemed to crumple. He blinked up at the captain, started to lift a hand to wipe his tear-filled eyes, and discovered handcuffs on his wrists. "Ah?" he muttered, frightened, then tried to meet the captain's gaze again and failed. He cleared his throat. "Uh—what's happened, skipper?"

  "You're going to tell us," said the captain coldly. "Look over there, Vezzarn!"

  Vezzarn turned his head in the indicated direction, saw the inner port of the control section lock yawning open, looked back apprehensively at the captain.

  "Dani," said the captain, nodding at Goth who sat sideways to them at the communicator table, an instrument case with dials on it before her, "is playing around with a little lie detector of ours over there! The detector is focused on you. Now—"

  "I wouldn't lie to you, skipper!" Vezzarn interrupted earnestly. "I just wouldn't Anything you want to know I'll—"

  "We'll see. If the detector says you're lying—" the captain jerked his thumb at the lock. "You go out, Vezzarn! That way. I won't listen to explanations. Out into the Chaladoor, as you are!" He moved back a step, put his hands on his hips, gave Vezzarn a glare for good measure. "Start talking!"

  Vezzarn didn't wait to ask what he should talk about. Hurriedly he began spilling everything he could think of about what had been told him of Captain Aron's mystery drive, the voice who employed him, the change in assignment, his own plans, and events on the ship. "Now I've, uh, seen your drive, sir," he concluded, voice quivering reminiscently, "I wouldn't want the hellish thing! Not as a gift from you. I wouldn't want to come anywhere near it again. I'm playing it honest. I'm your man, sir, until we're through the Chaladoor and berthed safe on Emris. Believe me!"

  The captain moved to the desk, turned down a switch. The lock sealed itself with a sharp snap. Vezzarn started, then exhaled in heavy relief.

  "We seem to have a passenger on board who's interested in the same thing," the captain remarked. It wouldn't hurt if Vezzarn believed the crystalloid was the mystery drive. That he wasn't going near it again if he could help it was obvious. Apparently he'd fainted in sheer fright as he was trying to scramble out of the vault. "Which of them?"

  "Both of them, I'd say," Vezzarn told him, speaking a little more easily. "Couldn't prove it—but they've both been moving around where they shouldn't be."

  The captain studied him a moment. "I was assured," he said then, "that short of a beam that could melt battle-steel, nobody would be able to force a way into that vault or to open that box until the time lock opened it—"

  Vezzarn cleared his throat, produced a small, modest smile.

  "Well, sir," he said, "it's possible you could find two men on Uldune who're better safecrackers than I am. I'm not saying you would. It's possible. But I'll guarantee you couldn't find three. . . . I guess that explains it, sir!"

  "I guess it does," the captain agreed. He considered. Hulik do Eldel and Laes Yango weren't at all likely to be in the same lofty safecracking class, but—"Could you fix the vault and the strongbox so you couldn't get in again?" he asked.

  "Huh?" Vezzarn looked reflective for a moment. "Yeah," he said slowly, "that could be done . . . ."

  "Fine," said the captain. "Get up. We'll go do it right now."

  Vezzarn paled. "Skipper," he stated uncomfortably, "I'd really rather not go anywhere near . . ."

  "The forward lock over there," warned the captain, "can be opened awfully quick again!"

  Vezzarn climbed awkwardly out of the chair. "I'll go, sir," he said.

  Worm Weather appeared in the screens seven hours later . . . .

  It was very far away, but it was there—fuzzily rounded specks of yellowness drifting across the stars. They picked up five or six of the distant dots almost simultaneously, not grouped but scattered about the area. There seemed to be no pattern to their motion, either in relation to one another or to the Venture.

  Within another half-hour there might have been nearly fifty in the screens at a time, to all sides of the ship. It was difficult to keep count. They moved with seeming aimlessness, dwindled unnaturally, were gone in distance. Others appeared. . . . Goth had set up the Drive, and came back to join the captain. The lounge screens had been cut off from the beginning. Laes Yango called on intercom to report the fact, was told of a malfunction which would presently be corrected.

  And still the Nuri globes came no closer. The encounter might have been a coincidence, but the probability remained that Vezzarn's exposure of the crystal in the strongbox had drawn the swarms towards this area of space. They seemed to have no method of determining the Venture's moment-to-moment position more exactly. But sheer chance might bring one near enough to reveal the ship to them—

  "You scared?" Goth inquired by and by in a subdued voice.

  "Well, yes. . . . You?"

  "Uh-huh. Bit."

  "The Drive will get us out of it if necessary," he said.

  "Uh-huh."

  In another while there seemed fewer of the globes around. The captain waited s
ome minutes to be sure, then commented on it. Goth had noticed it, too. Their number dwindled farther. At last only one or two doubtful specks remained in space, now far behind the ship. But neither of them felt like leaving the screens.

  "Being a witch," sighed the captain, "can get to be quite a job!"

  "Sometimes," Goth agreed.

  He reflected. "Well, maybe things will quiet down for a spell. . . . Almost everything that could happen on board has happened by now!" He considered again, chuckled. "Unless one of those—what did you call them?—vatches joins the party!"

  Goth cleared her throat carefully. "Well, about that, Captain—"

  He gave her a quick, startled look.

  "Can't say there's one around," Goth said. "Can't say there isn't though, either."

  "One around! I thought you'd know!"

  "They come close enough, I do. This one doesn't. If it's a vatch. Just get a feeling there's been something watching." She waved a hand at the Chaladoor in the screens. "From a ways off."

  "It could be a vatch?"

  "Could be," Goth acknowledged. "Wouldn't worry about it. If it's your vatch, he's probably just been curious about what you were doing. They get curious about people."

  The captain grunted. "Since when have you had that feeling?"

  "Off and on," Goth said. "On the ship . . . once or twice in Zergandol."

  He shook his head helplessly.

  "Might fade off after a while," Goth concluded. "He starts making himself at home around here, I'll let you know."