Fugitive of the Stars

CHAPTER X

It had been a quick and furtive sound, as though some creature scurried out of sight to lie in wait around the next bend of the crevice. Horne shook his head violently to clear the cobwebs out of it.

Ewan had his gun out. It was a much more formidable weapon than Horne's stunner, which he guessed was almost exhausted of its charge anyway.

"Stay here with Yso,” he said to Ewan. “I'll try and see what it is."

He started forward, one step at a time. He was very tired and curiously reluctant for any more fighting. He wanted to lie down and die, or sleep, he didn't much care which, so long as it was restful. But he went on toward the dark pillar of rock, dragging his feet.

A voice spoke to him. It was a very queer, creaking, rusty voice with long-drawn sibilants and a general sound as though human speech was a trial to it.

"Don't ssshoot,” it said. “Pleassse. I am friend."

Horne stopped, a quiver running down his backbone. “Friend, are you?” he said harshly. “Then why are you hiding?"

"People ssshoot,” said the voice. “Too quick. I have food and water for you. Pleassse?"

Horne laughed. “You do, huh? For us. That's fine. But it's kind of a silly lie. You couldn't possibly know anything about us."

The voice said, “Fife hass a radio. He heard the talk of the Vellae."

"Fife?"

"Our leader."

"But the Vellae thought we were dead."

"We were closer to the wreckage than they. There were no bodies in it. Fife sssaid you got away. We have been looking for you all this time."

"Who are you?” Horne said.

"I am Chell of Chorann."

Horne remembered Chorann. It was one of the remotest worlds of the Fringe, beyond even Allamar, far out on the rim of the galaxy. He had touched there just once, in a ship carrying machinery to a mine project that had been established there. The mine-clearing had been nothing but a pinpoint opening enclosed by the vast, glowering, grotesque forests of that world. The engineers at the mine had spoken of the mysterious form of life that drifted in those mighty forests, aloof, never showing itself in friendliness, glimpsed only as flitting shadows. The memory of that did not make Horne feel any great rush of confidence in the unseen creature who called himself Chell.

He said, “Yes, but who are you with? Where's your group? You said ‘we'."

Chell answered quietly, “We are those few who have escaped from the Vellae slave-pens."

Yso caught her breath and stood up. She came forward.

"Tell him to come out, Horne. I want to talk to him."

"Don't ssshoot?” said Chell.

"Not unless you do something you shouldn't,” Horne said.

There was the faint sound, louder and less furtive this time, but still in some way not human. A peculiar shadow moved out slowly from behind the rock, taking on bulk and solidity in the twilight gloom."

"Sssee?” said Chell, without rancor. “It is safer for usss of Chorann to ssspeak first."

Horne saw very well. He would have been likely to do exactly what Chell feared, to have shot first and wondered later what the devil it was he killed. The creature was round as a balloon, with an indefiniteness of outline that suggested fur or thick bristles. It was frighteningly big, four feet across at least. It seemed to half float in the air and half walk on four or five long tentacles that grew from its lower hemisphere. The fifth one was curled up holding a bundle. There was no head, no visible eyes, no face. Just a big round furry ball that talked.

Ewan said something that sounded like, “I'll be damned."

Yso shrank back a bit by Horne's shoulder, but after a moment she said firmly, “We're glad to meet you, Chell. We've known for a long time that the Vellae brought in slaves from other worlds, but you're the first one we've actually spoken to. Are there many of you who have escaped and are hiding here?"

"You will see.” He put down his bundle and tactfully drew back a little way. “Drink and eat now while I call the others. Then we will take you to Fife."

Ewan said suspiciously, “What others?"

"Searchers like myself.” With just a hint of impatience, Chell said, “If we had meant you harm, we would sssimply have not looked for you. You would all, I think, be dead before the next dawn. Thisss way you have been following leads to no water."

Horne shrugged. “That makes sense, I guess. All right, Chell, we'll trust you."

Horne picked up the bundle and opened it. There were two big plastic flasks of water and some smoked meat that Horne could not identify and did not particularly want to. He was in no mood to question anything in the way of food. They ate and drank, and Horne kept one eye on Chell, who had gone even farther away and was apparently not doing any thing.

"I thought you were going to call your friends,” he said.

"I am calling them. Our normal voices are too high for your hearing. That isss why we sound so funny when we ssspeak to you."

Yso said, “It's a pity we couldn't have known about you before. Everything might have been different. Morivenn might not have died, the Vellae might have been completely crushed. You said your leader has a radio. Couldn't you have got into touch with us somehow?"

She sounded almost hysterical about it. Reaction, Horne thought. Too much strain and violence, too many shocks, and then the hours of physical exhaustion.

Chell only said, “Remember that we know very little of your world. Fife heard from the talk of the Vellae that you were their enemies, and that it wasss important to them that you should all die. Ssso we wanted to keep that from happening. Otherwise…"

Horne could sense the shrug that was physically impossible but implied.

"Otherwise,” said Chell, “to usss the People of Skereth are all enemies."

Two more round shadowy shapes came skimming over the rim of rock against the skyline and dropped down with that curious half-floating glide into the crevice.

"Are you ready?” asked Chell politely. “Then we go."

He moved toward the humans and the other two round, furry shapes followed.

"Now wait a minute,” said Ewan, pulling back a little. “How are we going?"

"We carry you. Much easier than walking, especially at night. Don't fear. Chorann is a heavier world than this. Burdens are light for us here. That is why the Vellae find us so useful."

Horne felt tentacles like enormously strong wire cables wrap around him. Then the creature — he was not sure if it was Chell or one of the others — inflated itself even bigger, exactly like a balloon, and bobbed upward, holding him in carefully against a mat of thick warm fur and helping itself along with a free pair of tentacles outstretched to catch protecting points of rock.

"We are able,” said Chell, “to extract pure hydrogen from the air, as sea-creatures extract oxygen. Physically, we're mostly an air-sac. So do not fear to fall."

Horne abandoned himself to not fearing anything. It seemed that about all he could do right now was go along with what was happening. The fur against which he was so firmly pressed was incredibly soft and had a dry, faintly dusty, not at all unpleasant smell. The body underneath it was weirdly boneless and resilient. Very dimly, as though from far inside it, he could hear the sounds of life — the rhythmic heartbeat, the in-and-out sigh of breathing.

They traveled swiftly, skimming and gliding over the dark rock in the starless night, across the dry, winding gullies and bitter flats of the badlands, like swimmers under water. And after a time there was a fleck of light.

They went toward it and it grew into a gleam from some lantern, left out purposely for a cautious guide. Horne caught the glint of a narrow stream and the moist smell of it on the air. Then he was set on his feet in sparse grass and the lantern glow was directly ahead of him, beyond a narrow door of stone.

A figure was standing in front of the door, a sharp black silhouette against the light.

"This is Fife,” said Chell. “He is not what you could call human either."

Fife said, “None of us are human here.” His voice was high and piping, with a sly mocking note in it. “But we all look so queer to each other that you won't be out of place. Come in."

They came, Horne and Ewan stooping to pass the door, following him into a large chamber hollowed in the soft red sandstone. The lantern, a portable atom-battery type, was on the floor in the center. Fife picked it up and hung it from a hook in the ceiling and Chell, who was the last one through, dropped a curtain down over the door.

"The Vellae don't often come this way,” Fife said, “but it pays to be careful."

He turned and studied them. Horne tried to guess at what his world of origin might be, but he could not. Fife was small and lean, perhaps five feet high, completely hairless and marked rather beautifully over his gray skin with shadings of electric blue, banded with fine lines of black and yellow on his breast and back and along his limbs. His eyes were yellow too, all iris and very bright, and quite unreadable.

"These are the rest of us,” he said, gesturing with a thin four-fingered hand. “As you see, not many leave the Vellae."

Horne looked beyond him in the lantern light. There were perhaps twenty-four people in the rock chamber, only “people” was the wrong word. They were the most widely assorted crew Horne had ever seen.

His eyes fastened first on two of the crowd whose type he had seen not long before, two huge-eyed hairy things that were nine feet tall and had mild dejected faces.

"You're from Allamar,” said Horne, using the few words of their own language that he knew, and they brightened up like big dogs that were lost and heard a familiar voice.

"Yes,” rumbled the one. “Allamar. I am Lurgh."

Of the others there were three, a woman and two men, who were humanoid in size and shape. Only their fantastically long pointed ears and over-prominent teeth gave them away, together with a vestigial ridge of fur along the spine. Then there were Chell's folk — considerably smaller now and rolled companionably together in a corner, their fur showing a bright green in the lamplight, their tentacles bright red. Like Christmas ornaments, Horne thought hysterically, and then caught himself.

There were great gargoyle-like creatures, dull purple in color, with enormous clawed hands and ridiculous little wings. There were spidery-looking things with small bodies and too many long, thin arms, splendidly adapted for climbing, Horne thought, on rocky surfaces. He became dizzy with their crowded strangeness. There were odd ones, loners, who between them covered just about every size and shape and mutation of human, animal and insect you could imagine. They were all-powerful in their own way, capable of performing some particular function superlatively well.

He heard Ewan, behind him, swear and say, “The Vellae slavers have been busy, all right."

"Very busy,” said Fife, “and we are only part of the proof of that. But now, we are curious. Why did the Vellae want so badly to kill you people?"

They explained, Ewan and Yso talking in turns, acutely conscious all the time of the many eyes that watched them, shiveringly aware that they were not watched with any love. Horne understood that to these creatures now, all humans would appear as enemies. It dawned on him, not with any great shock of surprise, that they had been brought here on probation, as it were, and were quite likely to be killed if their story didn't stand up.

He challenged Fife with that, and the yellow-eyed man-thing nodded.

"I thought you might be of some use to us. We escaped the slave-pens, but we want to go farther than this. We want to go home. If we can, we want to free those others of our people who are held behind the locked gates of the Great Project. And especially we would like to kill as many of the Vellae as we can."

His eyes blazed with a most chilling human hatred.

"In any case, we can't hide forever here, crouching in a hole, half-starved, and always watching the sky for Vellae fliers. We'll die if we have to, but we want it to be to some purpose, something the Vellae won't forget."

A low muttering growl of agreement ran around the room.

Fife looked at the three humans. “You're of their own breed, and yet they hunted you. So for the present you live, because we need something we haven't got — a weapon, a piece of information, anything that will help us plan what we shall do. If you don't have it-” He shrugged expressively.

"Listen,” said Horne. “We've suffered as much from the Vellae as you have. Her father, my ship and my whole career, and now all three of us are fugitives like you."

Fife said, “I listen eagerly. I am not your enemy — yet. I am nothing. We have a purpose. So have you. Let us see how they run together."

Ewan said angrily, “Why damn it, Morivenn worked for years and finally gave his life fighting the Vellae, largely on your account. His daughter and I—"

Fife said, “In the tunnels under Skereth we heard very little of Morivenn, or you.” He turned to Horne. “Your story interests me. You are not of Skereth, you say?"

"No,” said Horne, “and like you I wish I'd never heard of it. I'm from Earth, a spaceman in the service of the Federation government."

Horne went on for the second time to explain exactly what had happened to him and how, and why he had come to Skereth.

"These people,” he said, indicating Yso and Ewan, “went to a lot of trouble to keep me from getting killed too soon. They lost three men and very nearly lost themselves doing it. I'm like you, Fife, I'm only interested in my own affairs, but I'm not so stupid as to throw away good allies. They want to overthrow the Vellae for political reasons. I don't think any of us will quarrel with them, either. I want one of the Vellae leaders, Ardric, so that I can prove he wrecked my ship. You want revenge and freedom. Good enough. They all work together."

He glanced around the place to see if he was getting home, but the huddled ring of alien faces baffled him completely. He couldn't tell what they thought. And Fife only said, “I am open to instruction. Go on."

"Ardric is the key to everything. If we can get him and make him talk, everything else comes automatically. The Federation legally can move in and smash the Vellae. The slaves illegally brought here will be freed and taken home. My name will be cleared, and Morivenn's party can bring Skereth into the Federation as a free world and not the private property of the Vellae."

Fife nodded slowly. “And how would we do this thing?"

"We know Ardric is in Rillah. We'd have to go there and get him."

"How?"

"There,” said Horne, “I thought you might supply some ideas."

"Let us sit down,” said Fife, “and discuss this matter."

They sat on the bare cool sandstone and the whole ring of weird unhuman forms moved in closer to hear. Horne sat beside Yso and kept his hand on hers. Ewan guarded her from the other side.

But it was Yso who said, “There are entrances to the pits in Rillah. You come from the pits, and yet you're on this side of the mountains. So the tunnels must run all the way through. Am I right?"

"You are,” said the humanoid woman with the pointed ears, speaking for the first time. She wore an incongruously splendid piece of metallic embroidery that covered, very scantily, her fine mammalian breasts and ran in a narrow strip down her front to supplement a sort of drapery of blue silk held loosely around her hips with a couple of big gold rings. If you didn't look any higher than her neck, and didn't mind the hackles, she was quite something. And she was looking with typical female interest at the dirty, bedraggled and half-naked Yso.

"I don't suppose,” she said to Fife, “it's possible these people are spies, and all that show the Vellae put on of shooting down their cone was only a show for our benefit?"