Fugitive of the Stars

CHAPTER XI

Fife showed the edges of his sharp little teeth in what might have been a smile.

"I considered that possibility, Meeva,” he said, “and I decided the chances were against it. Frankly, I doubt whether the Vellae would go to all that trouble just for us. We're not that important."

"Still,” said one of the purple gargoyles, in halting Universal and a voice that sounded as though it came from three miles underground, “Meeva may be right. We are not good judges of how these humans think."

Fife nodded. “Right. Perfectly right."

"And,” said Meeva, her pointed ears quivering with malice and excitement, “see how quickly these humans came forward with their plan. ‘The tunnels must run all the way through.’ Oh, yes! And now we must run into Rillah itself. How? Through the tunnels!"

She sprang up, speaking passionately to the whole group. “What would the Vellae like better than to get us back into the tunnels? Back into the slave-pens and the dark galleries of the Project?"

Some of the aliens said, “That's true.” And they looked balefully with their strange eyes at the humans.

Meeva struck her breast dramatically. “I will not go back. I would rather stay here and die in the open air than to spend one more day in the tunnels. And I would rather kill myself here and now than trust the word of a human!"

She had a magnetic personality. Horne thought her speech was fairly corny but effective. At least, it was highly effective on her particular audience. He began to be afraid of her.

He stood up. “'You don't have to take my word for anything,” he said, “and you don't have to go anywhere, either. Just show us where the tunnels are and we'll go ourselves."

"Ali,” cried Meeva, whirling on him, “yes — then you could lead the Vellae here and kill us all!"

"Oh, hell,” said Horne disgustedly, “women are women no matter what, I guess.” He turned to Fife. “Who is she, anyway?"

Fife grinned maliciously, as though he had had trouble before with Meeva.

"She was a priestess where she came from,” he said. “She had a big temple built in beautiful stone with hordes of people to wait on her, and they came from all over the world to hear her oracles."

The two men of Meeva's race jumped up and cried, “That is true — every word!"

Fife said, “If it is, the people of your world are great fools. Sit down, Meeva."

She started to open her mouth, and he said again, in a certain tone, “Sit down, Meeva. We do not need any of your oracles."

Meeva shut her mouth and sat down. The two men assisted her, making a great show of her preciousness, Meeva thanked them graciously and then said to Fife, “Do as you will. But I stay here."

She folded her arms and retired from the argument, looking lofty. Horne felt easier. But then the purple gargoyle said in its subterranean voice, “Even charlatans can speak the truth."

"I know, I know,” said Fife. He looked impatiently around the circle. “You chose me your leader, didn't you?"

"Yes,” said the gargoyle.

"Why?"

"Because you were clever enough to find a way for us to escape the slave-pens."

"All right. Now do you think that I have become suddenly so stupid that I can't see what is obvious to everyone else?"

Fife looked up at Horne, and then from him to Ewan and the girl, and his eyes were bright, cruel and utterly without mercy. He had begun to seem almost human to them as they talked, but now in an instant that psuedo-humanness was gone and he was as alien as all the others and far more dangerous.

"I do not trust these humans, either,” said Fife. “But I weigh the chances. We are great gamblers in my home place, and since I left the egg I have been used to casting dice with both hands. So I say this: it is my thought that we should go into the tunnels and on to Rillah with them, by the ways we know. Those who wish to stay here with Meeva can stay. But I say this, too. The three humans go weaponless and each one with a guard, and if there is any treachery they will be the first to regret it."

Ewan sprang up. “No!” he said. “I'm not going up against the Vellae unarmed. Either you trust us or—"

"Ewan,” said Horne quietly. “Look around you. Figure how many you could kill before the rest would tear you to pieces. Then think a minute about Yso."

Ewan growled something under his breath. But there was no denying the truth of what Horne said. He took his gun from his belt and threw it down in front of Fife. Then he sat down again.

Horne said to Fife, “I'm a gambler, too. I'll wager everything I have left — my life — against a million-to-one chance of getting my hands on Ardric. If this is the way you want to play the hand that's the way it will have to be. But before you're through you may wish you'd let us keep our weapons.” He handed over his stunner.

"We'll be very careful of them,” Fife said, grinning. “They're the only ones we have."

He looked around. “Now, then. Who's going to go into Rillah?"

The aliens began to mutter and shift about, talking among themselves. Horne watched them anxiously, thinking in terms of strength and feeling hopelessly handicapped by his total ignorance of what traps and dangers might lie before them. But Yso, exhausted as she was, was thinking of something else. She leaned forward.

"Fife, you said, ‘behind the locked gates of the Great Project.’ She — Meeva — mentioned it too. What is it?"

Fife said speculatively, “Don't you know?"

"No.” She had forgotten her weariness in her excitement. “My father always believed that the Vellae were doing something so dangerous and forbidden that they didn't dare use Skereth labor, even the poor devils they practically conscript into some of their mines. He thought that that was why they secretly brought in the outworld slaves, like you."

Fife shrugged. “Your father would know the reasoning of his people better than I. I only know that we are taken in our sleep by armed men and drugged and brought in ships to Skereth, where we do not even see the daylight before we're unloaded in hidden hangars and taken into pits. There we dig. We dig endlessly, making galleries, chambers, and more galleries, running here, there, up and down. This is called the Great Project."

They looked at each other. Horne asked, “But what is it that these galleries are meant to hold?"

"From the talk of guards,” Fife said, “we gathered that the Vellae were creating a space for some great and secret scientific thing.” He added, with an edge of bitterness, “But what do ignorant humanoids know of science?"

The gargoyle said solemnly, “Whatever they are making, it is evil. Even the Vellae guards said that."

Yso gave Ewan a small glance of triumph. “Morivenn was right, though. There's no doubt about that."

"No,” said Ewan, “and I'm sorry. Not because I was wrong, but because the Vellae will be more watchful if they're guarding a great secret, and that'll make it harder for us."

In a little while the aliens sorted themselves into two groups. One, a small bunch of seven or eight, were clustered around Meeva and her men. The other one of about fifteen, including the gargoyle and Chell's people and the two hairy giants from Allamar, had moved over around Fife.

Lurgh said, “To go is dangerous. But we think that nothing will come of sitting here."

"Good,” said Fife. “Now we must think.” He rose and began to pace up and down, his eyes bright, the tip of his pointed tongue flicking back and forth over his lips. Suddenly he turned and pointed at Meeva.

"Since you won't risk your person, you can contribute your clothes. The humans must be dressed. The Vellae will know at first glance we're slaves, but the humans must be able to pass as masters."

"No!” cried Meeva. “Never!” But Fife nodded to Chell and Lurgh and the gargoyle. They moved in swiftly. Fife paced, never looking toward the angry shrieking.

"You two men will have to provide for yourselves,” he said. “Guard uniforms, first of all. And a cone would help a great deal if you could get hold of one."

'Cones?” said Horne. “In the tunnels?"

"Oh, yes. One-man cones that are adapted to their special functions. How else do you think the work could be supervised and the slaves ordered and controlled? Yes, a cone. That will be necessary. We can't hope to get all the way to Rillah without meeting someone, even in the older galleries. If we can make it look as though we're a regular work-party of guards and slaves…"

The purple gargoyle, whose name was D'quar, came back with Chell, holding a streamer of blue cloth. Fife took it and the strip of embroidery and tossed them to Yso.

"I hope you appreciate them,” he said maliciously. “Meeva used to work quite naked to save her costume, and even here she only put it on once in a while when she wanted to play priestess."

Yso looked unhappily toward Meeva and said, “I'm sorry…"

Meeva, held forcibly in the enormous hands of Lurgh, screamed a torrent of words, and Fife laughed.

"She never learned that kind of language in any temple. Shut her up, Lurgh."

Lurgh shook her, and she was quiet. So were the two men of her race, who were nursing bruises now.

"We'll sleep for six hours,” Fife said. His sharp eyes had been appraising the two men and the woman. “You're too worn out now to be any good to us. You'd never even make it to Rillah. Meanwhile, those who are not going with us can make a fair sharing of the food and fill the water flasks."

Horne, Ewan and Yso went over and stretched out at the farthest end of the big rock chamber. Despite his crushing weariness, Horne could not close his eyes at once. The spectacle in the big cavern fascinated him, a phantasmagoria of impossible shapes and weird, enormous shadows coming and going around the lantern. Shifting spheres that floated with their tentacles reaching, gargoyle faces looking solemnly through the gloom, the sharply unhuman silhouette that was Fife and the brown-furred looming bulk of the giant creatures from Allamar, arms and antennae, chitin, hide and feather, mixing and meeting and clacking and whispering in the light and darkness…

A sudden feeling of nightmare gripped Horne. What was he doing in this place — with these creatures so far removed from human? He thought, not for the first time, that men had gone too fast and far from Earth, that they weren't ready yet for this sort of thing. It seemed to him that he watched an unearthly Sabbat of diabolical celebrants, and he could almost hear Berlioz’ mocking, blasphemous music. He wanted to get out of here, to leave sleeping Yso and Ewan and their problems, to leave these children of nightmare, to get off the world and go home, go home…

A thought checked Horne's shuddery reaction. Alien and creepy as the shadowy horde were, they all wanted just the same thing as he. To go home. They had been dragged here by force, by the slavers of the Vellae. They had labored, endured and finally escaped, and their simple minds yearned for the mists of Chorann, and the sad forests of Allamar, and all the other wild Fringe worlds they came from, just as he longed for Earth. A hatred for the Vellae for doing this ruthless thing — a hatred that for the first time was not connected with his own wrongs — came to Horne. And why had the Vellae done it? What mysterious thing were they doing with the slaves that even their own men thought was so evil?

The strange silhouette of Fife came toward him, against the Light. The little alien had not missed the fact that Horne was wakeful. He came and looked down at him with his yellow eyes.

"You watch us,” he said, and there was suspicion in the statement.

Horne nodded. He said, “Yes, Fife. I watch you."

There was a silence. Whether Fife was partly telepathic or not, or whether he read Horne's changed feelings by some other means, Horne could not know. But when Fife spoke again it was in an altered tone.

"Sleep, human. There will be no rest for any of us on the way to Rillah."