The Witches of Karres Page 22

  The vatch was intrigued by the situation and had watched the captain become involved in the game against the Worm World. It thought now he could be developed into the player who would bring about Moander's downfall.

  What could he do, the captain asked.

  Information was needed first, the vatch-voice told him. The means to act against the monster might be at hand, if they understood how to use it. And information could be obtained best from those who had most to tell about Moander—the Lyrd Hyrier confined in Manaret. The vatch could not reach them, and nothing material could be sent through the barriers maintained by Moander. But in his present form the captain lacked all material substance and could be projected directly into the one section of Manaret still held and defended by the Lyrd-Hyrier. There, by following the vatch's instructions, he would learn what he needed to know . . . .

  * * *

  There were advantages to being a ghost—a temporary ghost, the captain hoped.

  Fire from concealed energy guns had blazed through and about him the instant he arrived in the private chamber of the Lord Cheel, Prince of the Lyrd-Hyrier, the Great People, in a central section of Manaret. The guns hadn't caused the captain any discomfort. When, at some unseen signal, the firing ended, he was still there insubstantial but intact. The hostile reception was no surprise. Knowing nothing of vatch powers, the Lyrd-Hyrier would regard any intrusion here as being an attempted attack by Moander.

  So the captain was thinking expressions of polite greeting and friendly purpose at the Lord Cheel as he drifted down closer towards him. This was in line with the vatch's instructions.

  There was no immediate response to his greetings from Cheel, who was sitting up in a nest of rich robes on a wide couch near the center of the chamber, watching the approach of the wraith which had invaded his privacy, and apparently disturbed his slumber, with large, unblinking golden-green eyes. The vatch had told the captain that the Lyrd-Hyrier lord had a mind of great power, and that if he formulated his thoughts carefully and clearly, Cheel would understand them and think back at him. The captain began to wonder how well the plan was going to work. What the robes allowed to be seen of Cheel's person might have been sections of a purple-scaled reptile cast into very tall, attenuated human form. The neck was snaky. But the large round head at the end of it did suggest that it bulged with capable brains; and Cheel's whole attitude, at a moment which must have been rather startling to him, was that of a bold, arrogant, and resourceful being.

  About a third of the way down to the couch—the chamber had the dimensions of a spaceship hangar and the jeweled magnificence of a royal audience room—the captain encountered a highly charged force field. He realized what it was: any material object or inimical energy encountering that barrier should have been spattered against the walls. But the only feeling he had was one of moving, for a moment, through something rather sticky and resistive. Then he was past the force field. Cheel gave up on defensive measures. His long purple arm moved under the robes; and his thoughts now touched the captain's mind.

  "The inner barriers are turned off," they said. "It appears you are not Moander's tool. Are you then one of the friendly witch people?"

  The captain formulated the thought that he was an associate of the witch people and Moander's foe as they were, that he might be in a position to give assistance against the machine, and that he was in need of information to show him what he could do. Cheel seemed to understand all this well enough. "Ask your questions!" he responded. "Without aid, our situation here will soon be hopeless—"

  The exchange continued with only occasional difficulties. Manaret, at the time it appeared in the home-universe of humanity, had been under the control of a director machine called a synergizer, an all-important instrument unit which actuated and coordinated the many independent power systems required to maintain and drive the ship. The same near-disaster which hurled Manaret and the Lyrd-Hyrier out of their dimensional pattern of existence into this one also had temporarily incapacitated the synergizer. Moander, an emergency director of comparatively limited function, had become active in the synergizer's stead, as it was designed to do. Manaret was an experiment, a new type of Lyrd-Hyrier warship. There had been no previous opportunity to test out Moander under actual emergency conditions.

  Now it appeared there had been mistakes made in planning it. Alerted to substitute for the synergizer only until that unit resumed functioning, the emergency director had taken action to perpetuate the emergency which left it in charge. The synergizer was very nearly indestructible. But Moander had placed it in a torpedolike vehicle and set the vehicle on a course which should plunge it into a great star near the point where the giant ship had emerged here. Free of its more powerful rival, Moander could not be controlled by any method available to the Lyrd-Hyrier.

  "We know the synergizer was not destroyed at that time," Cheel's thoughts told the captain. "Apparently the vehicle was deflected from its course towards the star, presumably by the synergizer's own action. But it has not returned and we have never found out where it went. Recently, there was a report—"

  The thought halted. The captain was producing a mental image of Olimy's mysterious crystalloid . . . .

  "That is it!" Cheel's recognition of the object came almost as a shriek. "Where have you seen it?"

  His excitement jumbled communication briefly; then he steadied. The Lyrd Hyrier had received reports through a spy system they'd been able to maintain in various sections of Manaret that Moander's Nuris had picked up the long-lost trail of the synergizer. Only hours old was the information that a witch ship transporting the instrument had eluded an attempt to force it and its cargo into a sun, and had disappeared.

  The captain acknowledged the ship was his own. Temporarily the synergizer was safe.

  The alien golden-green eyes were smoky with agitation. A view of a great dim hall, walls tapestried with massed instrument banks, appeared in the captain's mind. "The central instrument room—it is under our control still. Once there, in its own place, the synergizer is all-powerful! Away from it, it can do little . . . ." The picture flicked out. Cheel's thoughts hurried on. A long time ago they had picked up fragmentary messages directed at Manaret by others of their kind from the dimensions of reality out of which they had been thrown. A vast machinery had been constructed there which would pluck the giant ship back from wherever it had gone the instant it was restored to operational condition under the synergizer's direction. All problems would be solved in that moment!

  But there was no method known to the Lyrd-Hyrier, Cheel admitted, of bringing a material object through Moander's outer defenses of Manaret. The synergizer was many things more than it appeared to be, but it was in part material. And Manaret's defenses were being strengthened constantly. "The Nuris again are weaving new patterns of energy among the dead suns which surround us here on all sides . . . ." Of late, Moander evidently had found means of disrupting mental exchanges between the Lyrd-Hyrier and some telepathic witches of Karres. They had recently become unable to establish contact with Karres.

  It seemed a large "But . . ." "Any chance your friends eventually might send something like a relief ship here which could handle Moander?" the captain inquired.

  "Impossible!" View of madly spinning blurs of energies, knotting and exploding . . . "There is no dimensional interface between us—there is a twisting plunge through chaos! We were there; we were here. In a million lifetimes that precise moment of whirling shift could not be deliberately duplicated. They cannot come here! They must draw the ship back there . . . and they can do that only when its total pattern of forces is intact and matches the pattern they have powered to attract it."

  Which required the synergizer . . .

  If they could get it to Karres—

  "How vulnerable is Moander to an outside attack?"

  "Its defenses are those of Manaret." Cheel, formidable individual though he appeared to be, was allowing discouragement to tinge his thoughts, now that his excitem
ent had abated somewhat. "Additionally . . ."

  View of a massive structure with down-sloping sides affixed to a flat surface of similarly massive look. "Moander's stronghold on the outer shell of Manaret," Cheel's thought said. "Every defense known both to the science of the Great People and to the science of your kind on the worlds the Nuris have studied appears incorporated in it. And deep within it is Moander. The monster, for all its powers, is wary. All active operating controls of the ship are linked through the stronghold, and from it Moander scans your universe through its Nuris."

  "It has us in a death-grip, and is preparing to close its grip on your kind. If we—and you—are to escape, then haste is very necessary! For the Nuris have built new breeding vats and are entering them in great numbers. It is their time . . . ."

  "Breeding vats?" interjected the captain.

  The Nuris—pliable and expendable slaves of whoever or whatever was in a position to command them—were bred at long intervals in the quantities required by their masters. Such a period had begun, and it was evident that Moander planned now to multiply the Nuri hordes at his disposal a hundredfold.

  "In themselves the Worm People are nothing," said Cheel's thought. "But they are Moander's instruments. As the swarms grow, so grows the enemy's power. If Moander is not defeated before the worms have bred, our defenses will be overwhelmed . . . and your worlds, too, will die in a great Nuri plague to come."

  "Restore the synergizer to its place in the central instrument room, or break Moander's stronghold and Moander—those are the only solutions now. And we cannot tell you how to do either—"

  The thought-flow was cut off as Cheel and the great chamber suddenly blurred and vanished. The captain's wraith-shape drifted again in featureless grayness.

  He relled vatch, faintly at first, then definitely.

  I HEARD ALL, the vatch-voice came roaring about him out of the grayness. A MOST BEAUTIFUL PROBLEM! . . . WAIT HERE A LITTLE NOW, GREAT PLAYER OF GREAT GAMES!

  Its presence faded. At least there was nothing to rell any more. The captain drifted, or the grayness drifted.

  A beautiful problem! Something new to entertain the vatch, from the vatch's point of view. . . . But a very terrible and urgent problem for everyone else concerned, if the Cheel creature had told the truth.

  What could he do about it? Nothing, of course, until the vatch returned to get him out of this whatever-it-was, and back into his body and the rest of it.

  And there probably would be very little he actually could do then, the captain thought. Because whatever he tried, the vatch would be looking over his shoulder, and the vatch definitely would want the game played its way. Which might happen to be a very bad way again for everyone else involved. There was no counting on the vatch.

  How could you act independently of an entity which not only was able to turn you inside out when it felt like it but was also continuously reading your mind? He thought of the Nuri lock Goth had taught him to construct . . . .

  If there were something like a vatch lock now—

  The thought checked. In the grayness before him there'd appeared a spark of bright fire. It stayed still for an instant, then quiveringly began to move, horizontally from left to right. It left a trail behind it—a twisted, flickering line of fire as bright as itself. It was—

  Awful fright shot through him. Stop that! he thought.

  The spark stopped. The line of fire remained where it was, quivering and brilliant. It looked very much like one of the linear sections of the patterns that had turned into the Nuri lock.

  But this was a far heavier line—not a line at all really but a bar of living fire! Klatha fire, he thought . . . It had stopped where it was only because he'd checked it.

  He hesitated then. If this, too, was part of a potential lock pattern, then that lock must be an enormously more powerful klatha device than the one which had shut the Nuris out of his mind!

  Well—

  "Are you certain," something inside him seemed to ask very earnestly, "that you want to try it?"

  He was, he decided. It seemed necessary.

  He did something he couldn't have described, even to himself. It released the klatha spark. The line of fire marched on. From above, a second line came trickling down on it—a third zigzagged up from below . . . .

  It was awesomely hot stuff! There was a moment when the universe seemed to stretch very tight. But the fire lines crossed, meshed, froze; there was a flash of silent light, and that was it. The pattern had completed itself and instantly disappeared. The ominous tightness went with it.

  It was not, the captain decided, the kind of pattern that needed to be practiced. It had to be done right once, or it would not be done at all. And it had been done right.

  He waited. After a while he relled vatch. That strengthened presently, grew fainter again, almost faded away. Then suddenly it became very strong. Old Windy was with him, close by.

  And silent for the moment! Possibly puzzled, the captain thought.

  Then the wind voice spoke. But not in its usual tumultuous fashion and not addressing him. The vatch seemed to be muttering to itself. He made out some of it.

  Hmmm? . . . BUT WHAT IS THIS? . . . MOST UNUSUAL . . . IT APPEARS UNDAMAGED, BUT—

  SMALL PERSON, the familiar bellowing came suddenly then, CAN YOU HEAR ME?

  "Yes!" the captain thought at it.

  HMMM? . . . COMPLETE BLOCK! BUT NO MATTER, the vatch decided. A MINOR HANDICAP! LET THE GAME GO ON—

  A momentary sense of rumbling through icy blackness, of vast distances collapsing to nothing ahead of him. Then the captain found himself lying face down on something cool, hard, and prickly. He opened his eyes, lifted his head. He had eyes to open and a head to lift again! He had everything back! He rolled over on rocky ground, sat up in a patch of withered brown grass, looked around in bright sunlight. A general awareness of windy autumn scenery, timbered hills about and snowcapped mountain ranges beyond them, came with the much more important discovery of the Venture standing some four hundred feet away, bow slanted towards him, forward lock open and ramp out. He scrambled to his feet, started towards it.

  "Captain!"

  He swung about, saw Goth running down the slope of the shallow depression in which he and the ship stood, shouted something and ran to meet her, relief so huge he seemed to be soaring over dips in the ground. Goth took off in a jump from eight feet away and landed on his chest, growling. The captain hugged her, kissed her, rumpled her hair, set her on her feet, and gave her a happy swat.

  "Patham!" gasped Goth. "Am I glad to see you! Where you been?"

  "Worm World," said the captain, grinning fatuously down at her.

  "Worm—HUH?"

  "That's right. Say, that crystal thing of Olimy's—it's still on the ship, isn't it?"

  "How'd I know?" Goth said. "Worm World!" She looked stunned. She shook her head, added, "Ship came just now, with you."

  "Just now?"

  "Minute ago. I was headed back to camp—"

  "Camp? Well, skip that. Hulik and Vezzarn are with you?"

  "Both. Not Olimy. I relled a vatch. Giant-vatch—you don't do things small, Captain! Turned around, and there the Venture was. Then you stood up—"

  "Come along," he said. "We've got to make sure it's on board! I know what it is now. Ever hear of a synergizer in connection with Manaret?"

  "Syner . . . no," said Goth, trotting beside him. "Important, huh?"

  "The most!" the captain assured her. "The most! Tell you later."

  They scrambled up the ramp and through the lock. The control section lighting was on, the heating system going full blast. The bulkheads felt icy to the touch. They took a moment to check the control desk, found everything but the general emergency switch and the automatic systems in off position, left things as they were and headed for the back of the ship. They paused briefly again at the first emergency wall. The Sheem Spider hadn't exactly burned out a hole in it; it had cut out a section big enough to let it throu
gh endwise along with its master and knocked the loose chunk of battle-steel into the next compartment, shattering fifteen feet of deck.

  "One tough robot!" remarked Goth, impressed, "Kind of sorry I slept through all that!"

  "So were we, child," the captain told her. "Come on . . . ."

  The lost synergizer of Manaret was in the strongbox in the vault, in its wrappings. They picked their way back out of the shattered vault, opened Olimy's locked stateroom next and saw him imprisoned but safe in his eternal disminded moment there, locked up the room and left the ship by the ramp.

  "Let's sit," said Goth. She settled down cross-legged in the grass. "The others are all right. What happened to you? How'd you get to the Worm World? What's that synergizer thing?"

  She listened without interrupting, face intent, as he related his experience up to the point where he'd decided to take a fling at constructing a vatch lock. For various reasons it didn't seem advisable to mention that at the moment. "The vatch seemed to say something about going on with the game," he concluded. "Next thing I knew I was here."

  Goth sighed. "That vatch!" she muttered. She rubbed her nose tip. "Looks sort of bad, doesn't it?"

  "Not too good at present," the captain admitted. "But we have the synergizer safe here. That's something. . . . We don't know what the vatch intends to do next, of course."

  "No."

  "But if it leaves us alone for a while . . . any idea of where we are here?"

  "Know exactly where we are," Goth told him. "Can't see that'll help much, though!" She patted the ground beside her. "This is Karres."

  "What!" He came to his feet. "But then—"

  "No," Goth said. "It's not that simple. This isn't Karres-now. It's Karres-then."

  "Huh?"

  She indicated the big yellow sun disk above the mountains. "Double star," she said. "Squint your eyes, you can see just a little bit of white sticking out behind it on the left. That's its twin. This is the Talsoe System where Karres was when witches found it—its own system. There's nobody here yet but us."