Fugitive of the Stars

CHAPTER XV

Horne had a brief glimpse of Ardric, startled, forming a name with his lips, reaching for his gun. Then he was toppling over among the astonished operators and Horne went with him, his hands, his knees, his whole body savagely engaged in paying Ardric some small part of what he owed him.

They rolled and thrashed in fierce silence on the floor, among the frantic legs of the operators and the leaping forms of the aliens who were subduing them. There was a frightful noise. Voices shouted metallically from the communicators, demanding to know what was happening.

D'quar picked up a microphone and roared in his hoarse, heavy voice, “We have the Center, that's what's happening. You're caught between us—” and he howled his triumph and his hate at the unseen guards who were fighting his fellow-slaves somewhere in the outer galleries.

Horne, only dimly aware of these extraneous things, thought that D'quar was exulting too soon. But he didn't care. All he cared about was that at last he had Ardric in the grip of his two hands.

Ardric was fighting back. Horne's mouth was full of blood and his face was cut and his body was bruised, but that was all right too. It was good. He had Ardric's neck finally in the bend of his forearm and was pressing back, pressing back—

Two enormous hairy hands opened Horne's grip as easily as if he had been a child. A second pair of hands extracted Ardric and held him, half-conscious, the skin of his cheeks already mottled blue.

Horne looked up a little dazedly into the face of Lurgh and his fellow giant, and Lurgh said, “You wanted this one alive. Remember?"

Horne staggered up, still dazed. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, see that he doesn't get away."

The communications center was a shambles. The operators were wounded, dead or escaped. About half the aliens were armed now and the others were searching the inner rooms for weapons. D'quar was still roaring his defiance, his gargoyle face unrecognizable now, and Horne made a frantic effort to quiet them down, to get them into some sort of order before the inevitable happened.

The guards outside began their counter-attack.

The great front window burst in a shower of glass. Instantly there was a scramble for cover. Red-uniformed shapes poured in, firing their weapons. Horne, behind part of the communications equipment, fired back and so did every alien who had a gun. Searing beams flashed and cracked. The room was filled in seconds with smoke and a smell of burning. The slaves who had been searching the inner rooms came back with guns and fired from the shelter of the doorways. But they were using unfamiliar weapons and the guards, trained fighting-men, outnumbered them.

Ardric, pinned down by the great bulk of the hairy alien from Allamar, said with vicious satisfaction, “My men will kill every damn one of you.” And Horne knew he was right.

Where were Ewan and Yso and the other slaves? What had happened in the outer galleries?

If they didn't come soon, they wouldn't need to come at all.

He fired at the red uniforms and choked on the smoke and the stench of the dying.

There came then a deep far sound like wind or the voice of the sea. It grew and grew swiftly, and the attacking guards heard it and became irresolute, and the fire slackened.

Half a dozen one-man cones and two larger ones spewed in a line out of the street to the left of the plaza. The guards who had been attacking Horne's force ran out to meet them, waving their arms. Then more men in red uniforms came running out of the street. Some of them were wounded. Others kept stopping every few feet to turn and fire and then run again. They mingled with the other guards and they all milled around for a moment and the cones hovered overhead. The two armed cones fired back also along the street.

A beam shot out from between the building and knocked one of the cones reeling back, its grav shields fused. There was burst of sporadic firing both in the air and on the ground. Then the red-uniformed men broke and ran and the cones followed them, and out from the street came the two-man cone with Yso at the controls, her yellow hair flying and Fife crouched beside her over the weapon-panel, firing like a demon and missing more often than not. After her came a string of wobbly cones manned by creatures of every sort sufficiently humanoid to fit them, and a flying cluster of green furry balls with weapons in their tentacles.

On the street below them came the army of the slaves, an outworld legion of incredible, beautiful, ugly, grotesque, laughable, horrifying beings, welded into a vast brotherhood by their common need for freedom and their hatred of the Vellae. From Fringe worlds far away they had been brought and driven like laboring beasts. Now the hour of their vengeance had come and there was no ruth or mercy in them. They were blood-mad and not even guns firing in their faces could stop them. Seeing this, the nerve of the guards gave way and they fell back, faster and faster.

The aliens poured into the plaza. They came like a flooding river that widened and surged and filled all the space there was and the red uniforms were swept away.

In the communications center there was now a strange quiet. Horne felt almost deafened by it. He stood still, shaking his head, swaying just a little with the swift weakness of relief. He did not believe it, but it was true. They had won.

This far, they had won.

He ran out into the square with his few remaining followers, and close beside him the nine-foot one carried Ardric with him, helpless in the grip of those mighty hands.

Chell came and dropped down over them. “Better take off that red suit, Horne,” he said. “These ones are in no mood to ask who's inside it before they kill you.” He looked around.

"Where's D'quar? It was his voice that turned the tide. Some of us could hear him bellowing over the guard's radios that you had taken the Administration Center, and the guards began to waver, and that did it."

The purple gargoyle raised his head, made even more hideous by burns and blood, and smiled ruefully.

"It wasn't exactly true,” he said.

"It worked though,” said Chell. He wrapped his tentacles joyously around Horne and the gargoyle. Then he remembered something and spoke to them sadly. “Ewan's dead. He brought down the first guard and got the rising started, but they killed him."

Ardric had not said a word since Lurgh had pulled Horne off of him. He spoke now, standing like a child in the grip of those mighty arms, his face white with fury and fear of the crowding unhuman bodies, furred and scaled, hairy and naked, and of the baleful unhuman eyes that looked at him hungering for his life.

"You've cheated me twice now, Horne,” he said. “You were supposed to die in the wreck, and when I heard you were on your way to Rillah, I even left the project to make sure you didn't get through."

Shedding the red coat, Horne barely looked at him. He did not trust himself to do so.

"This time you won't get away,” said Ardric. “None of you.” He raised his voice so that all those around him could hear. “The alarm is out. The Vellae are already on the way here with every man they can raise. They'll tear the guts out of you."

One of the aliens said, “I know this one.” It was a thin creature, yellowish in color and scaled all down its back with diamond-shaped scales. Its eyes were brilliant, catching the light on many facets, peering close at Ardric.

"This is the leader one,” it said, its voice high and clear, carrying with the soft insistence of a blowing wind, and the rough noise and babble began to subside as the people listened. “This is Ardric, the leader one, the leader one, the one who tells us when and how we die."

Its voice was almost a chant, repeating the phrase, “The leader one.” And now the crowd sound began again, deep and angry.

It began to move, a wall of grotesque masks and weird-shaped bodies, pressing in around Ardric.

Horne stepped in front of him. “Wait! This man must stay alive. He—"

"He came in the ship that took me from my world,” said another voice out of that mounting of voices. “I saw him in the village. He came from the ship and told the slavers how to take us."

So that, Horne thought, was where Ardric had gotten his experience at piloting — on the Vellae slave ships. Well, of course, it was a fleeting thought. The wall of bodies was pressing close now. He pulled his gun. “Wait!” he shouted, and fired a blast at the roof. They paused and stared at him, startled but not afraid, and he saw in their faces that they could just as easily include him in their thirst for revenge. He was human. The fact that he was also Jim Horne might be unknown to most of them at the moment, and he didn't think they would greatly care anyway.

Ardric was laughing. It was a strange kind of laughter, but genuine. “Think fast, Horne!"

"Get him back inside if you can,” said Horne to Lurgh. They started a backward movement, and Chell, who had been hovering nervously overhead, shot suddenly away.

"We will kill that one,” said the yellowish one with the scales, in his soft-carrying voice. And they came on again.

Ardric said maliciously, “Start shooting, Horne. Aren't you going to shoot? They'll kill me and you'll never get me into court."

Lurgh said, “Be careful, Horne. He would like you to do that. If you kill any of them the rest will…"

Chell came shooting back, crying shrilly. “Yso is coming! Morivenn's daughter!” He went up and down over the crowd shouting Yso's name, and Horne saw others of his race doing the same, and in a moment the crowd was looking for Yso, getting their attention away from Ardric as a wild ragged cheering broke out and grew louder and more continuous.

Lurgh took the opportunity to get Ardric back into the smashed communications center and out of sight. Yso's cone appeared overhead, unable to land in the mining crowd. The canopy was open. She shouted down at him, wild-eyed and half hysterical. “It's done, Horne!"

He shouted back at her, in a harsh voice that was intended to shock her out of it.

"Nothing's done yet, except that we've killed some guards and captured some others. The Vellae will be coming in force! Use your amplifier there and tell this mob to go and guard the entrances against the Vellae!"

She stared, and then obeyed him. The alien horde's excitement ebbed a little, but not their ferocious purpose.

"More Vellae to kill,” called one of the hairy giants. “Come, brothers!"

As the horde thinned away, hurrying to block the entrances, Yso was able to land her cone. She came to Horne, and all her emotion of triumph had left her.

"Do we have any chance of holding the Vellae back?” she asked.

He shook his head. “Not for long. We — the slaves — took the guards here by surprise, this time. We jumped them before they knew what was going on. But there'll be no more surprise. The humanoids are full of courage but how long will their courage stand up against the odds of numbers and weapons?"

Yso said after a moment, “Horne, if we do not get out of this, we do not. But the brain of the Vellae must be destroyed, whether we escape or not."

Horne nodded. “That's my thought too. But the question is… can we do it, in the limited time we have?"

"Surely, if we cut the nerve-cables and smash the relay switchboards—” she began, but Horne shook his head.

"How long do you think it would take the Vellae to repair any damage like that? A few days, a few weeks… and the thing would be functioning again."

"Then there is no way?"

"There may be a way,” said Fife. The little alien had remained with Horne and his yellow eyes were glowing like coals. “It will be a cruel blow we will deal the Vellae. Whether we die or not, their great creation will be destroyed by their slaves."

"But how?” said Horne. “You said you knew a way…

"Oh, no,” said Fife, “I did not say that for I do not know the human science, I would not know how to do it. But there is someone who does know, and could tell us."

"Who?"

And when Fife answered, Horne realized that the proposal was so uncanny that he would never have thought of it, whereas the little alien had.

"You have said that the brain has no will, is not alive, and holds its tremendous knowledge at the service of its human masters,” said Fife. “Ask the brain itself how we can destroy it!"