Return to the Stars

13

The ship flew at incredible speed through the Marches of Outer Space. Everywhere about it were suns, flaming suns and ashen, dying stars and dark cindery hulks, with their planets and moons and dangerous trailing shoals of drift. A cosmic jungle, far beyond the demesne of the great star-kingdoms; a jungle not to be invaded without due caution.

Yet the men inside the ship were not worried by their demented progress.

John Gordon, at the moment, was too shaken to be worried about anything. He stared out through the after view-screen, at the wilderness in which the orange sun of Aar had already vanished, still not believing their escape. He was only faintly aware that the chair he sat in was too small for his muscular, stocky frame, or that the ceiling curve of the control-room was much too close over his head. Or that the metal surfaces around him were of a sickly and unpleasant blue, like the skin of a drowned man.

After a while he turned from the view-screen to look at Shorr Kan, who looked back at him; the dark, well-remembered face with the lean bones and sardonic eyebrows. Shorr Kan grinned.

"Yes we did," he said. "We made it. Thanks to me."

Gordon let out a long breath and passed his hand over his own face, rubbing the angles of it like a sleeper waking. "Yes," he said, "I guess we did. Hull?"

Hull Burrel looked perfectly placid and content now, even though he was perched in that ridiculously small chair. "Coping," he said. "At least, for now."

It was only then that Gordon began to get the perspective. The control-room was like the inside of a polished egg, made to hold much smaller birds than these.

"Well," said Shorr Ran, "the H'Harn are a small race. No reason for them to build for our comfort."

Hull, who towered even over Shorr Kan, lifted his head, bumped it on some overhanging equipment, and retracted it, swearing. "They didn't have to overdo it," he said. "And I wish they hadn't been quite so damned cryptic about their controls." He continued to poke and prod cautiously at the unintelligible knobs and dials, marked with alien symbols. If Hull Burrel could figure those out, Gordon thought, he was even better than the best spaceman in the galaxy.

And he had better figure them out, Gordon thought, because all our precious necks depend on it.

Shorr Kan was watching the forward view-screen now, the sub-electronic mirror that converted mass impulses from the normal space they were tearing through, literally, at FTL+, into images the eye could see. He appeared fascinated by what was pictured there.

"At a guess," he said, "what would you estimate our speed to be?"

Gordon looked at the screen. The stars, dead and living, and the banks of drift, all the tumbled splendor of the Marches, seemed to him to be almost stationary.

"We don't seem to be moving at all," he said. "Or at least, not much."

But Hull was staring at the screen as well, his copper-colored face rapt. "We're moving all right," he said. "No ship in our galaxy can move as fast as this." He answered Shorr Kan's question. "No, I couldn't guess. I'd have to have another point of reference and..."

Shorr Kan said, "Is it safe, in this smother?"

The Antarian turned around, his eyes just a trifle vague. "Safe? Why, I suppose..."

Gordon felt suddenly very nervous. If Shorr Kan, that tough and seasoned veteran, was worried about their velocity, it was something to worry about.

"Hull," he said, "why don't you slow down?" And that, he thought, must be an all-time first; back-seat driving in a starship.

"Mm," said Hull, and scowled down at the child-sized controls. "I can't read these blasted things." His voice went up a notch. "How am I going to set a course out of the galaxy and all the way to the Magellanic Clouds," he demanded, "when I can't read the instruments?"

"Set a course 'where'?" said Gordon, astonished, "What are you talking about?"

Hull shook his head. "The Magellanic Clouds. Where the H'Harn come from. Weren't we going there to reconnoiter them?"

"This little ship reconnoiter a sub-galaxy?" exclaimed Gordon. He rose and went to Hull, looking at him anxiously. "Hull, are you dreaming?"

Shorr Kan joined them, stooping slightly under the ceiling. "That," he said, "is the most idiotic suggestion I ever heard."

Hull turned on him furiously, his eyes quite normal now. "Idiotic, is it? You were the one who proposed it! You said we'd go out to the Clouds and learn what the H'Harn are planning against the Empire!"

Shorr Kan's body suddenly stiffened, as though with shock. "That's ridiculous. But... but I did say that."

There were times when his dark face could get as hard and cold and keen as a sword blade. This was one of those times.

"Tell me, Hull," he said swiftly. "Why did you choose this H'Harn ship for our escape?"

Gordon said, "You chose it, Shorr Kan. You said it was faster."

"Ah," said Shorr Kan. "I did, didn't I? But how have you been able to fly the thing, Hull?"

Hull looked puzzled. "Why, I just guessed at the controls..."

"Guessed?" mocked Shorr Kan. "You took off like an expert, in a ship whose design is completely alien to you."

His black eyes flashed from Hull to Gordon. He dropped his voice.

"There's only one answer to the things we've been doing. We've been under alien influence. H'Harn influence."

A feeling of terrible cold swept though Gordon. "But you said the H'Harn couldn't use their mental power at any great distance!"

"And that's true," said Shorr Kan. He turned, his gaze going to a closed bulkhead door that was the way to the after part of the ship. "We haven't been back there yet, have we?" I

The implication hit Gordon squarely in the center of his being. There are different sorts of fear, and many degrees of fearing, but what he felt for the H'Harn was the ultimate in sheer sickening terror. He found difficulty in pronouncing his words.

"You think there was a H'Harn in this ship? That there is one in it now?"

He stared at the door, seeing the creature in his mind's eye... the small, oddly distorted, oddly boneless thing with its limber bobbing gait, a faceless, softly-hissing enigma veiled in gray, hiding a dreadful power...

"I think so," muttered Shorr Kan. "Lord knows how many of the little monsters are loose in our galaxy, although four was the number I heard. But I heard it from Cyn Cryver, and Cyn Cryver is a liar, because he told me there was only one at Aar."

Hull Burrel and Gordon looked at each other. It was still fresh in them, the horror they had felt when the H'Harn named Susurr had come toward them. Gordon said flatly, "Good God."

Then he turned to Shorr Kan to ask what they should do. And he was almost too late.

"If there's a H'Harn on this ship," Shorr Kan said, "there's only one thing to do. Find it and kill it."

With a decisive gesture, he drew the stunner from his belt.

Gordon lunged.

He brought Shorr Kan to the floor in a crashing tackle and grabbed the hand that held the stunner. He clung to it while Shorr Kan fought him like a tiger, and all the time Shorr Kan's face was blank as something carved from wood and his eyes were fixed and glazed and unseeing.

Gordon yelled, "Hull, help me!"

Hull was already leaping forward. "Then he is a traitor? I always knew we couldn't trust him..."

"Not that," said Gordon, panting for breath. "Look at his face. I've seen that before... he's under H'Harn control. Get that stunner out of his hand!"

Hull carefully peeled back Shorr Kan's fingers until he let go of the weapon, and as soon as it passed into the Antarian's hands Shorr Kan sagged and went limp. Like someone coming out of a faint he looked up at them and mumbled, "What happened? I felt..."

But Gordon had forgotten about him. He wrenched the stunner away from the startled Hull and disarmed it feverishly by withdrawing its charge-chamber. Then, just as quickly, he tossed the useless stunner back to Hull.

"You keep it. I'll keep the charge-chamber, and that way neither one of us can use it if the H'Harn takes control of..."

He never finished the sentence. A bolt as of black lightning, the cold paralyzing force that he had felt before at Teyn, exploded with terrifying silence in his brain. There was no shield against it, no possibility of struggle. It was like death. And simply, he died.

Just as simply and suddenly, he lived again. He was on the deck and his hands were around Shorr Kan's neck, throttling him, and Hull Burrel was pulling him away with such force that he could hear the sinews cracking in the Antarian's back and shoulders.

"Let go," Hull was snarling. "Let go or I'll have to knock you out..."

He let go. Shorr Kan rolled over and slid away, his mouth wide and his chest heaving. "All... all right, now," Gordon stammered. Feeling sick and shaken, he started to get up. But instead of releasing him, Hull's grip abruptly tightened. His knee slammed into Gordon's back and Gordon fell hard forward and his skull rang on the steel deck.

The H'Harn had shifted its attention once more. Glassy-eyed and blank as a statue, the Antarian left Gordon and flung himself on Shorr Kan and tried earnestly to kill him. Shorr Kan managed to fight him off until Gordon could collect his wits and help. Together they got Hull down and held him, and then between breaths he went flaccid and lay looking at them, his eyes wild but quite sane.

"Me, too?" he said, and Gordon nodded. Hull sat up and put his head in his hands. "Why doesn't it just kill us and get it over with?"

"It can't kill us," said Shorr Kan. "Not with mental force. It could destroy our minds, one by one, but I don't think it wants to be flying through the Marches with three mindless maniacs. It seems to be trying to get two of us to eliminate each other so it'll only have one left to control. I expect it needs someone to help it fly the ship."

He stared at the closed door aft. "If we try to get back at it we'll never make it..."

Gordon glanced up at the view-screen, where the thronging stars and shoals of drift crept with such deceptive slowness. This was one of the most crowded regions of the Marches, and Shorr Kan had worried about their velocity. Perhaps...

With desperate inspiration, so desperate that he did not pause a second to think about it, Gordon sprang to the control-board. He began at random to hit the enigmatic controls, punching, twisting, turning them this way and that.

The little ship went crazy. It flashed toward a great belt of drift, then veered wildly off toward a blue sun and its planets, then zoomed zenithward toward a double-double whose four suns yawned before them like great portals of flame. Hull Burrel and Shorr Kan were tumbled against the bulkheads, crying out their surprise.

The H'Harn hidden aft must have been startled, too startled for the moment to stop him.

Hull scrambled toward him. "You'll wreck us!" he cried. "Are you daft? Get your hand off those controls, for God's sake!"

Gordon shoved him aside. "It's our only chance to deal with that creature. Get it scared. Both of you, keep hitting the controls at random. If we all three do that, it can't stop all of us."

Hull stared at the view-screen and the dizzying whirl of suns and worlds and deadly drift. "But we'll crash. It's suicide!"

Shorr Kan had seen Gordon's point. "He's right, Hull. It's risking a crash, but it's the only way." He pushed Hull toward the control-board. "Do it!"

Dazed and only half-understanding, Hull obeyed. The three of them pushed and pulled at things like madmen. The ship corkscrewed, stood on its tail. The protective grav-stasis operating inside the ship shielded them from the worst accelerative effects, but the sheer insanity of flying in this mad fashion was terrifying.

"All right back there!" Gordon yelled. "You can read my mind, you know what I'm saying! If we crash and die, you die with us! Try to take control of any of us again and we will crash!"

He waited for the icy mental bolt to hit him, but it did not. And after a minute there came into his mind a telepathic feeler that was cold, alien, and... fearful.

"Stop!" thought the hidden H'Harn. "We cannot survive if you continue this. Stop it!"