Corridor of the Suns

CHAPTER VII

Evers rolled on the floor of the cell, frantically trying to break the grip of his unhuman attacker. But two of the K’harn’s limbs pinioned his arms, and the other two hands were at his throat, strangling him. The big dark eyes blazed with a deadly rage, only inches from his own.

He could not breathe and he could not speak and the edges of things were beginning to darken. Evers knew he would be dead in a minute unless he broke that grip. His legs were free, and he brought his knees up in a battering smash at the weird torso.

The K’harn grunted, and the grip of his limbs on Evers relaxed for a brief second. Evers used his doubled-up legs as a lever, put all his strength into them, and thrust his spidery antagonist clear off him.

Instantly, with incredible quickness, the K’harn flashed in toward him again.

“Wait!” choked Evers in the K’harn language. “Friend — I—”

The terrible grip was on him again before he could say more, and he had done all he could and it wasn’t enough.

But the K’harn paused, holding him. His blazing eyes searched Evers’ face, and for the moment he did not tighten his grip.

That strange face so close to Evers, white and hairless, the eyes enormous, the nose rudimentary and the mouth small and lipless, was like a gargoyle-mask glaring down at him. Then the K’harn spoke for the first time, in his oddly-aspirated language.

“Where did you learn our speech?” he hissed. “Are there others of the K’harn prisoned here now?”

Evers could hardly speak at all with the hold still on his throat, but he forced out the syllables of that alien tongue in a husky whisper.

“I am a prisoner like yourself. There are no other K’harn here. I learned your speech from your own folk. I have stood on the worlds of Lah and Ameramm and Ky.”

The great, flaming eyes searched his face. “Ky?” whispered the K’harn. “You have been there?”

“I was there, and I saw the destruction and death that had been dealt there by the evil ones of my own race,” said Evers. “I and my two friends learned your language there, in the looted House of Knowledge.”

“What name has the Master of the House of Knowledge on Ky?” demanded the other.

Evers searched his memory frantically, and then said, “Janja is his name.”

For the first time, the grip relaxed. The K’harn drew back a little. He stood facing Evers, and there was still a menace in the tenseness of his four limbs, the poise of his head, the glare in his eyes.

“Yes,” he whispered. “That is his name. You could not have learned that had you been of the looters. For they only stayed long enough to kill, to seize the instruments of Knowledge, and to take them away and with them, two of us lesser Masters.”

Evers began to realize that this K’harn was half-mad, and he did not wonder at it. To see their peaceful city shattered by the sudden eruption of Schuyler’s ships from the sky, to have death strike from unfamiliar weapons, to be captured and brought on the nightmare traverse between galaxies, to be prisoned and questioned and threatened for weeks, maybe months — he thought he would have gone crazy himself.

“The men who hold us here are my enemies as they are yours,” Evers told him. He began to talk more rapidly, hesitating often as he tried to remember the unfamiliar phrases, telling how he and Lindeman and Straw had gone to Andromeda and of the terrible surprise that had awaited them on the fringe worlds there. He concluded, “We came back to stop what they are doing to your worlds. My people, our government, would stop it if they knew. But we had to prove it, and in trying we were discovered, and one of my friends is dead and one is senseless and I am in this cell with you.”

The K’harn had listened with feverish attention, and some of the tenseness and menace went out of his attitude. He began to walk back and forth in the narrow cell — the swift, gliding spidery walk of his race.

“And the evil goes on and the worlds of my people are ravaged, and I can do nothing!” he said. “If I had been slain like Oll, it would have been better. I thought you one of my enemies, and attacked you so that I would be slain.”

Evers said, “Oll? Schuyler said that he’d captured two of you K’harn scientists — and that one was killed trying to escape—”

The K’harn said, “That was Oll. I am Rrulu of Ky. We two were taken when they looted the House of Knowledge. They have kept me here — how long? They have tried to make me speak, and I would not.”

Evers nodded. “They want you to explain the workings of the instruments of Knowledge.”

“I guessed that,” said Rrulu. “I will die before I speak or tell them anything. They are murderers.”

Evers had learned enough of the K’harn temperament to understand the peculiar loathing that Rrulu put into that last word. The culture of the K’harn was a purely pacific one. Developing on the fringe worlds of Andromeda with no enemies and no lack of resources to cause fight between themselves, they had become a people to whom violence was a grotesque and horrible thing.

“We have never killed,” said Rrulu. “We thought that only beasts killed. And that was our weakness, when the robbers came. But we shall learn to kill!”

He came closer to Evers. The only light in the little cell was from one tiny bulb in the high ceiling, but it was light enough to show the terrible resolve on that unhuman face.

“I have thought much in the time I have been here,” said Rrulu. “In the past, we have only created. But the instruments that create can be altered so that they will destroy. If I ever get back to my people—”

He stopped, and Evers saw the hopelessness that came into his strange eyes.

“You can get back, Rrulu!” he exclaimed. “At least there is a chance, if you will do as I say.”

The K’harn looked at him. “How? The door is locked. There is always a guard in the corridor outside. I have tried more than once and could not break out. Oll was killed, trying.”

“Not that way,” said Evers. “We’ve got to use our wits. There will be ships of law arriving here ten hours or so from now. What we have to do is use our wits to stay alive till GC gets here.”

He went on to explain to Rrulu that Sharr was in hiding in the warehouse of loot, unsuspected by anyone, and that when the GC cruisers arrived, the Valloan girl could come out of hiding and tell the GC men everything.

Evers added, “We’ve got to stall until then. Schuyler put me in here because I speak your language. I am to offer you safe return to your own galaxy if you will explain the workings of the machines and instruments they brought from Andromeda.”

Rrulu stiffened. “Those things are the looted instruments of Knowledge from our worlds. I saw them taken, I saw K’harn shot down defending them. I will not help these killers. Not now, not ever.”

Evers said hastily, “I know. I don’t want you to. What I do want you to do is to bluff Schuyler along, make a pretense of being willing to explain all those gadgets.”

But it seemed that deception was as new and difficult a concept to the K’harn’s thinking, as violence had formerly been.

“I will tell them nothing,” he said.

Evers began to sweat. He feared now that the obsession of hatred which dominated Rrulu was going to cross out their only chance. He tried another approach.

“You say you’ve thought up a way by which your people could adapt their scientific instruments into weapons, to use against Schuyler’s ships?”

Rrulu’s eyes blazed. “Yes — by reversing our synthesizers. You do not understand our science. But we create metal, plastics, any element, by mechanisms that generate a force which causes free sub-atomic particles, free energy, to cohere into matter. The same mechanisms could be quickly reversed to de-cohere any chosen elements into energy again. We could utterly destroy invading ships!”

“Then if you could return to Ky, you could teach your people how to defend themselves,” Evers said. He added quickly, “But my way is the only way you can live to return — by pretending to yield to Schuyler.”

Slowly, the K’harn’s expression changed. He was silent for moments, and then said, “I will do as you say.”

“Good!” breathed Evers. “Now listen. They’ll be back soon to ask me what your answer is. I’ll say that you’re tired of imprisonment, and will explain the instruments and their powers, with me as interpreter.”

“But then they will demand that I do so at once,” objected Rrulu. “And they will at once find out that it is all deception, that I mean to tell them nothing.”

“I’m betting that they won’t ask you to start explaining things right away, but wait till later,” Evers said. “Don’t you see — the GC ships will be here before long. Schuyler has to keep you and I and Lindeman strictly under cover until the GC has come and gone. He’ll wait till after they’ve left, before starting to question you.”

Evers concluded grimly, “But he won’t get a chance. When GC gets here and Sharr comes out and blows the gaff on the whole thing, Schuyler is through right then.”

He could see that Rrulu was doubtful and uneasy about the whole plan. The K’harn, lacking the human capacity for intrigue, was poorly fitted for such a bluff. Evers anxiously drilled him over and over, warning him that he must appear beaten, not defiant.

Of a sudden, there was a sound at the door that brought Evers sharply around. It was the sound of the lock outside the door being turned.

“Here they are,” said Evers. “They didn’t give me as much time to persuade you as I’d expected. But remember, if we bluff them now, it’ll work.”

He could hear the lock turning this way and that, for what seemed to his tautly strung nerves an interminable time. Finally the door swung open.

In its opening stood Sharr.

The Valloan girl was silhouetted against the brightly lighted corridor outside. She had a gun in one hand, and her lithe body was tense as she peered into the comparatively dark cell.

Evers bounded forward. “Sharr! For God’s sake, how — what—”

Her hand grasped his sleeve and her green eyes were brilliant as she babbled up to him.

“I’ve found you! I was afraid they’d killed you! I found the other — Lindeman — but he’s stunned, sleeping. I—”

“But why did you leave the warehouse?” Evers demanded. “Did they find your hiding-place?”

“No!” said Sharr. “But I saw them taking you away. I had to try to reach you, before they tortured or killed you. I had the gun you’d given me, and I got through the darkness to this house, and slipped in a servant-door, and hid and watched. When I saw one of the men who had taken you come up from below, I came down here. There was another guard—”

Evers felt the death-knell of his hopes. Everything had depended on Sharr, whose presence on Arkar nobody suspected, remaining in hiding until the GC came and she could emerge and tell them the truth. Instead, she had come out and used the consummate skill of the hereditary thieves of Valloa to seek and find him.

His whole plan was in ruins, for it was still hours till the GC cruisers would arrive and he did not now think they were likely to live that long. Yet how could he reproach Sharr, when she had risked her own safety to find them?

“You shouldn’t have—”, he began, and then he stopped. Sharr’s face had gone white, and her eyes, looking over his shoulder into the shadowy cell behind him, were distended. Her mouth opened on a scream.

He knew instantly that she had seen Rrulu in the shadows back there, and that the totally unexpected sight of the big, spidery K’harn was the cause of her horror.

Evers’ hand clapped over her mouth, stifling the scream. He gripped her and spoke in her ear.

“He is a friend. A friend. One of the K’harn I told you about. A prisoner like myself.”

He did not trust her until her efforts to squirm loose and screech quieted down. Then he removed his hand from her mouth.

Sharr shivered, but kept quiet. Only her eyes never left the unhuman figure of the K’harn.

Evers felt the desperation of defeat. They might get out and hide for a little while but their escape would soon be discovered and they would be caught long before GC came, and Schuyler would win after all.

“Damn it, no!” he told himself. “There must be some way to beat him, even if we go under.”

Rrulu moved restlessly forward, and Sharr shivered. And of a sudden, Evers seized on a possibility. It might be a poor one, but it was the only one left.

He said swiftly to Rrulu, “You said you could adapt the instruments of Knowledge of the K’harn for destruction.”

“Yes!” said Rrulu, a somber flash lighting his eyes. “In all this time alone I have calculated the way to do that — something no K’harn ever thought of before.”

“There are many instruments looted from your Houses of Knowledge, in that warehouse,” Evers said. “Could you use them? How long would it take?”

“Not long, if the right instruments are there,” said the K’harn. “If there is a synthesizer there I could reverse the polarity of its forces and—”

Evers interrupted. “All right. We’ll try it. What I want you to do, if you can, is to cause as much destruction as possible here. Then, even if they get us, GC will surely investigate what’s going on here on Arkar.”

He told Sharr rapidly then, and added, “I think we’re gone geese anyway, but if Rrulu can do some spectacular damage, it’ll surely blow the lid off things here. Where’s Lindeman?”

“In the next room,” she whispered. “I did not know which you were in, I had to open them all. A six-year-old child of Valloa would laugh at such locks.” She added, “They didn’t hurt you?”

There was something in her face as she asked the last, and Evers bent forward and kissed her. He took the gun from her hand and went out into the bright corridor.

Rrulu had said there was always a guard on duty but there was no one in the corridor now. Evers hastened to the next door, with Sharr trailing close behind him and looking back fearfully at the K’harn following them.

The door was closed but not locked. He stepped inside and stopped, startled.

Lindeman lay on a cot, stirring and moaning a little as the effect of the stunner began to wear off.

On the floor with his face upward lay one of the tough-faced men.

“He was in the corridor when I came down,” Sharr said. “I shot him. I dragged him in here in case anyone came down.”

Evers thought to himself that Sharr was a true daughter of barbaric Valloa. She had given the man a full-strength beam. Remembering Straw, he could not be sorry.

He sprang forward and began to chafe Lindeman’s wrists and smack his cheeks, trying to bring him back to consciousness.

Lindeman moaned, “Damn you, Schuyler.” But he did not open his eyes.

“We can’t bring him around,” Evers said. “We’ll have to carry him, for we’ve got little time.”

Sharr suddenly turned her head sharply; and then ran to the door.

“There is no time at all,” she whispered. “Listen!”