The Blood Red Game

FIVE

Renark flung over the ship's master-switch, bringing the whole complicated vessel to life.

He could not be satisfied with thoughts and theories now. He wanted decisive and constant action - dynamic action which would bring him to a source that would answer the questions crowding his mind.

As he charted his course to Thron, he remembered something and turned to Asquiol sitting moodily in the gunnery seat, staring at his instruments.

'Did you ever know of Mary the Maze before you came here?' he asked.

Silently Asquiol shook his head.

Renark shrugged. He felt badly for his friend, but couldn't afford to let his personal emotions influence his chosen course of action.

From what he had gathered, fewer laws than ever applied in the interplanetary space of the Shifter than on the planets themselves. Therefore he was going to have difficulty in simply navigating the comparatively small area of space between them and Thron.

He said without turning, 'Once in space I must not be disturbed, and am relying on you to perform all necessary functions other than the actual piloting of the spaceship. I have to anchor my mind to Thron, and must steer the ship through altering dimensions as well as space and time. Therefor, in the event of attack you must be ready, must meet it as best you can. But I will not be able to afford to know. Do you understand?'

'Let's get started, for God's sake,' he said impatiently.

'And don't be too ready with those anti-neutron cannon,' he said as he pressed the take-off button.

The ship throbbed spacewards.

And then they hit horror!

Chaos

It had no business to exist. It defied every instinctively accepted law that Renark knew.

Turmoil

It was fantastically beautiful. But, as far as he was concerned, it had to be ignored, mastered or destroyed, because it was wrong, evil - unlawful.

Agony

The ship coursed through the myriad, multi-dimensional currents that swirled and whirled and howled about it, that rent the sanity of the two brave men who battered at it, cursed it and, in controlling themselves, managed somehow to stave off the worst effects.

Terror

They had no business to exist here. They knew it, but they refused to compromise. They made the disorder of the tiny universe bend to their courage, to their strength and the wills, creating a pocket of order in the screaming wrongness of unchained creation.

Temptation

They had nothing but their pitiful knowledge that they were human beings - intelligent, reasoning beings capable of transcending the limits which the universe had striven to set upon them. They refused; they fought, they used their minds as they had never used them, found reserves of reason where none had previously been.

And, at last, because they were forced to, they used every resource of the human mind which had lain dormant since man had created 'human nature' as an excuse to let his animal nature order his life.

Now they rejected this and Renark steered the ship through the malevolent currents of the unnatural area of space and howled his challenge to it. And the three words 'I am human!' became his mental war-cry as he used his skill to control the metal vessel plunging on the random spatial and temporal currents and forcing its way through blazing horror towards the angry world of Thron.

All about him, Renark was aware of other dimensions which seemed to lie in wait for his ship, to trap it, to stop it from ever reaching its goal. But he avoided them and concentrated all his powers on keeping a course for Thron.

Four hours the two men fought against insanity, fought the craziness that had turned Mary the Maze into an idiot.

Then, at last, Thron appeared on the laser. Weak, trembling but exuberant, Renark coasted the spaceship into Thron's atmosphere and, although the brooding planet offered new dangers of a more tangible kind, it was with relief and hope that he arrived there.

They could not speak to one another just then. But both were conscious of the welding companionship which had come about during their journey.

They had been fused together, these two men, by mutually shared horror and victory.

Breathing deeply, Renark dropped the ship down and began a cautious reconnaissance of the planet.

Apart from one domed city at the Northern Pole, it appeared deserted. There were cities, certainly, but uninhabited. They picked up no signals, their scanners observed no obvious signs of life. Where were the ferocious Thron? Surely not all at the small city on the Northern Pole?

'The hell with it,' Renark said. 'Let's go right in and see what happens. I've staked everything so far on one throw, and haven't, as yet, lost by it. Are you willing?'

'I thought I was supposed to be reckless,' Asquiol smiled. 'Good. We can land in that big square we saw in the largest city.'

Renark nodded agreement, adjusted the controls of the ship and flew in over the big city. He brought it flaming down on the hard, rocky substance of the city square.

They landed to find only silence.

'Shall we disembark?' Asquiol asked.

'Yes. There's a locker over there, beside you. Open it, will you?'

Asquiol swung the door back and raised his eyebrows. There was a small armoury of handguns in the locker. Renark had never been known to carry or use any weapon designed to kill.

'Give me the anti-neutron beamer you see there,' Renark said.

Asquiol didn't question Renark but took the bolstered gun from the place and handed it over. Renark looked at it strangely.

'Desperate measures,' he said softly. 'I have little sympathy at the moment with the Thron, although they may have justifiable reasons for their seemingly unreasoning belligerence. But our mission transcends my moral code, much as I hate to admit such a thing possible, and our lives are, as far as the human race is concerned, important.'

'Let's go,' said Asquiol.

Renark sighed. They suited up and took the elevator to the airlock.

Although bizarre and obviously created by alien intelligence, Renark and Asquiol could work out the function of most of the buildings and machines they observed as they padded through the deserted streets of the apparently deserted city.

But they couldn't explain why the city was deserted, where the inhabitants had gone. Obviously they had not been gone for any length of time, for there were no signs of erosion or encroaching nature.

With his mind, Renark quested around, searching the buildings for life, but he could only sense peculiar disturbances in the temporal and spatial layers spreading out beyond the Shifter continuum.

Life hovered out there like a ghost, sometimes apparently close, sometimes further away. It was weird.

They toured the city and were just returning to the square where the ship reared when something happened.

'God, I feel sick…' Asquiol said, screwing up his eyes.

Renark felt the same. He had momentary double vision. He saw faint shadows flickering at the edge of the structures about them, shadows of the same shape, size and appearance as the more solid buildings and machines. These shadows seemed to merge with the material structures - and all at once the city was alive, inhabited.

The place was suddenly full of doglike, six-legged beings using four legs for motion and two as hands.

The Thron!

Shocked, they pulled their pistols from their holsters and backed towards the ship as the Thron saw the humans in their midst.

All was consternation.

Thron soldiers levelled weirdly curled tubes at the two men, levelled them - and fired. The humans were flung to the ground as their suit-screens absorbed or repelled the worst of the charges.

'Shoot back or we've had it!' Renark yelled.

They raised themselves on their bellies and fired their own dreadful weapons.

Beams of dancing anti-matter went spreading towards the Thron troops, met them, made contact and seethed into their bodies.

Those bodies imploded, crushing inwards and turning to minuscule specks of shattered matter before vanishing entirely. The backlash shivered against the humans' protective suits. And the beams waltzed on, fading slightly as they progressed, entered one group after another, destroying wherever they touched, whether organic or inanimate matter, until their power faded. Only a few Thron were left in the immediate area.

'They don't seem ready to talk,' Asquiol said sardonically over the suit radio. 'What now, Renark?'

'Back to the ship, for the meantime.'

Inside the control cabin their communications equipment was making all sorts of noises. Asquiol attempted to tune it in and eventually succeeded in getting a regular series of high-frequency signals which he could not quite interpret as being coded signals or actual speech. He brought the pitch down lower and realised with astonishment that he was listening to stilted Terran. Renark was busy keeping the scanners trained on the Thron, who were coming out into the open around the square again. But he listened.

'Beware the Thron… Beware the Thron… Beware the Thron

Whether it was a warning or a threat, he couldn't tell. Asquiol said, careful to adjust his outgoing signal to the frequency involved: 'Who are you? I am receiving you.'

'We are enemies of the Thron. We are the Shaarn, whose ancestors consigned the Thron to this existence. But they have machines which you are not equipped against - forces which will hurl you out of this system altogether and into Limbo. Take off immediately and head for the Northern Pole. We saw you pass over us but have not, until now, been able to discover your means of communication and the form it takes. We apologise.'

'How can we trust them?' Asquiol asked.

'The frying pan or the fire - it makes no difference,' Renark replied. 'I'm lifting off. Tell them we're coming.'

Asquiol relayed the message.

'You must hurry,' the Shaarn spokesman said, 'for we are small and have few defensive devices against the Thron. You must reach our city before they do, since we will have but a short time to spare to let you in and close our barrier again.'

'Have it ready - we're coming,' said Asquiol.

The ship soared upwards again, levelled off and headed at high speed for the polar region.

They made it in under a minute. They saw the dome flicker and fade, entered its confines as it closed over them again, and came down gently on a small landing field within the city. It was more a town, with few buildings taller than three stories, encompassing a small area compared with the expanse of the Thron cities. Overhead they observed the Thron ships come rushing over the polar city and were half blinded by the bolts of energy which sprayed the force-dome above them.

They stayed where they were and waited to be contacted.

Eventually the communications equipment spoke: 'I am pleased that we were successful. There is no point in waiting until the Throns have expended their rage. The force-shield will hold off their most ferocious attacks. We are sending out a vehicle for your assistance. Please take it to the city when you are ready to do so.'

A few moments later a small air-carriage, open-topped and made of thin, golden metal, floated up to the ship and hovered by its airlock.

'Well, let's see if these Shaarn are friendly or not,' said Renark.

They descended to the airlock, passed through it and entered the little airboat which turned on its axis and returned to the city at a more leisurely speed.

Renark felt fairly confident, from what Mary the Maze had said, that these people would be friendly.

They entered the city proper and the airboat cruised downwards, landing gently outside the entrance to a small, un-ornamented, unpretentious building.

Two figures came out. They were dog-like, having six appendages. Asquiol gasped and instinctively reached for his pistol in an unthinking response. Then he saw that these creatures, so like the Thron, were unarmed and he calmed himself.

The Shaarn, like the Thron, were extremely pleasing to the human eye - perhaps because they looked so alike to friendly dogs.

The two figures, with peaceful gestures, beckoned Renark and Asquiol to leave the airboat. They did so. They passed through a series of simply furnished rooms containing no recognisable equipment, and out into a courtyard which, like the city, was covered with an iridescent force-dome.

Here was a laser transceiver not unlike their own. One of the Shaarn went up to it and spoke into the transmitter. It took them several moments, to tune into the humans' suit wavelengths and, for an instant, before they adjusted their own controls, they were blasted with the high-pitched noises they had heard before.

Then the Shaarn spokesman said: 'We regret, sincerely, that our welcome could not have extended to the whole planet, but as you will have realised, we control little of it. I am Naro Nuis and this is my wife Zeni Ouis. You are Renark Jon and Asquiol of Pompeii, I believe.'

'That's so, but how did you know?' Renark replied.

'We were forced - and you must forgive us - to intrude on your minds in order to discover the means to build the communications equipment. We are telepaths, I am afraid…'

'Then why the need for the laser?'

'We had no idea how you would take telepathic interference in your minds, and it is against our code to intrude except in the direst emergencies.'

'I should have thought that's just what we were in,' Asquiol said somewhat rudely.

'I see,' said Renark. 'Well, as far as I am concerned, telepathic communication would be preferable. We have telepaths among our own race.'

'So be it,' Naro Nuis said.

'You have obviously some important reason for braving the dangers of Thron,' said a voice in Renark's skull, 'but' we avoided investigating it. Perhaps we can help?'

'Thank you,' Renark said. 'Firstly, I am curious to learn why the Throns are so belligerent; secondly, whether it is true that your race was the first to come to this system. Much hangs on what I learn from you.' He told the Shaarn how his race faced annihilation.

The alien appeared to deliberate. At length he 'pathed:

'Would you object if we intruded still further on your minds for a while by means of a telepathic link? By this method you will see something of the history of the Shaarn and will discover how this system originally took this somewhat unusual orbit through the multi-dimensional universe.'

'What do you say, Renark?' Asquiol's voice came over the suit-phone.

'I think the suggestion is excellent.'

They were led into a semi-darkened room where food and drink were served to them. They felt relaxed for the first time in ages.

This place is simply to aid your receptivity to what we are about to do.'

'And what is that?'

'We are going to reconstruct for you the history of the war between the Shaarn and the Thron. The history began many millennia ago, when our ancestors were completing their explorations of our own space-time galaxy…'

At Naro Nuis' request they blanked their minds, and the history began…