The Overlords of War

Chapter 3

Details of the ship emerged from a blur of nothing. A lance of light stabbed down from its black, shiny hull and raked the thicket where Corson was hiding. The Princes of Uria must then have such confidence in themselves that they did not even bother to use a black-light projector. Reflexively Corson trained his gun on the lamp. The underside of the ship was sleek and polished like the surface of a jewel. Its builder had taken esthetic advantage of the geodesics, along which leaves of metal had been attached. This craft did not look in the least like a war machine.

Corson braced himself against a gun bolt, a blast of gas, or the shock of a steel cable around his shoulders. He anticipated the chirping cry of a Urian soldier. But the beam merely focused on him and remained there. The craft descended further, then halted so close that he could have touched its side without getting up. Big ports shone around its circumference. Corson could have tried to break one with his gun. But he didn’t do it. He was trembling, yet at the same time he was more puzzled than frightened by the odd and unmilitary behavior of the craft’s commander.

Doubled over, he walked around the circular hull. He tried to catch a glimpse of the interior through the ports, but they dazzled him, and the only impression he gained of the equipment within was distorted and vague. He did fancy he discerned a humanoid silhouette, but that was not surprising. From a distance the natives could pass for humanoid enough.

Startled by bright light, he shut his eyes for a moment. A brilliantly illuminated doorway was opening in the ship’s side above a flight of steps suspended on nothing. Corson hesitated, then rushed up them. The door closed again silently as soon as he had passed through, but he had been prepared for that.

“Come in, Corson,” said a voice—a young girl’s voice. ‘There’s no reason to stand about in the corridor.”

That was a human voice! Not an imitation! The Urians would not have been able to fake one so convincingly. A machine might have managed it, but Corson doubted whether his enemies would have added such a finishing touch to a trap he had already fallen into. People at war seldom gave invaders the tourist treatment.

Corson obeyed. He pushed at a half-open door nearby, and it slid back into the wall. He saw a wide room, at the far end of which was a gigantic viewport. He could clearly make out the dark mass of the forest they were flying over and, sparkling at the horizon, a brighter line which he reasoned must be an ocean with the sunrise glinting on it.

He swung around. A girl was looking at him. A sort of veil, or mist, was all she wore. Fair hair framed her smiling face. He could detect no enmity in her gray eyes. She seemed remarkably at ease. It had been five years since Corson had seen anything remotely like a woman apart from the issue plastoids with which you had to make do aboard a ship of war. The ability to reproduce was too critical a resource for women of breeding age to be risked in space. And this one, moreover, was beautiful.

He regained his breath, swiftly reviewed the situation, and allowed his combat reflexes to gain control. It was as though a secondary personality took him over. He snapped, “How did you know I’m called Corson?”

At once the girl’s expression betrayed astonishment mingled with fear. He had put his finger on the crux of the matter. The fact that she used his name might imply that the Princes of Uria knew about the mission of the Archimedes, right down to the identities of the crew. On the other hand the girl was definitely human, body and voice, and her presence on Uria was in itself a total mystery. No surgeon could make a Urian look like that; no operation could replace a homy beak with soft lips like those. If the girl had been fully clad he might have felt reservations. As it was, every detail of her figure proclaimed her origin. He could clearly see her navel, something which Urians—hatched from eggs—did not possess. And plastoids were never built to a standard that could deceive a man.

“But you’ve just told me!” she exclaimed.

“No, you called me by name first of all,” he said, feeling as though he were spinning round and round. His brain was working frantically, but in vain. He felt a strong impulse to kill the girl and make off with the ship, but surely she could not be alone on board, and he must know more before he acted. Perhaps he might not in fact have to kill her.

He had never heard any report of humans going over to the Urian side. In a war whose main and perhaps sole basis lay in a fundamental biological difference combined with the ability to inhabit similar planets, there was no future for the traitor’s trade. And—he realized suddenly—he had not noticed the characteristic Urian smell when he came aboard. He was certain he could have detected the tang of chlorine instantly. Even so…

“Are you a prisoner?”

He wasn’t hoping that she would admit it, but she might let fall a clue.

“What funny questions you ask!” She opened her eyes wide and her lips started to tremble. “You’re a stranger! I thought—Why should I be a prisoner? Are women kept prisoner on your planet?”

Her expression changed suddenly. He read intense terror in her gaze.

“No!”

She cried out and flinched away, casting around for something to use as a weapon. Then he knew what he had to do. He strode across the room, brushed aside the feeble blow she aimed at him, planted a palm on her mouth and caught her in a wrestling hold. His thumb and forefinger sought the pressure points in her throat. She slumped. A trifle harder and she would have died. He was content to knock her out. He wanted to give himself time to think.

He searched the ship and convinced himself they were alone on board. Fantastic! That a young girl in a pleasure boat—he couldn’t find a single weapon—should be cruising cheerfully over the forests of an enemy planet: it defied belief. He located the instrument panel, but the controls meant nothing to him. A red spot which must represent the ship was moving across a wall map. He recognized neither the continents nor the oceans of Uria. Had the commander of the Archimedes brought them to the wrong planet? Out of the question. The vegetation, the solar spectrum, the composition of the air, were enough to identify Uria, and the attack they had suffered wiped away the final doubt.

He glanced out of a viewport. They were flying at about three thousand meters, and as nearly as he could judge at about four hundred k.p.h. In ten minutes at most they would be over the ocean.

He returned to the first cabin and sat down on an ornate chair, staring at the girl. He had laid her on the floor and put a cushion under her head. One seldom finds cushions aboard a warship—embroidered ones, at any rate. He struggled to recall precisely what had happened since he set foot in the ship.

She had called him by name.

Before he had opened his mouth.

She had seemed terrified.

Before he had thought of attacking her.

Partly, it had been the fear he could read in her eyes which drove him to action.

Telepathic?

If so, she knew his name and his mission and knew about the Monster, too. So she would have to disappear, especially if she was in the pay of the Princes of Uria.

But she had retreated even before he thought of overpowering her…

She was stirring. He set about tying her up, tearing long strips of cloth from a tapestry. One doesn’t find tapestries aboard a warship. He bound her wrists and ankles, but did not gag her. Also he tried to determine the nature of the garment she had on. It was neither woven fabric nor a gas, but something more like a gleaming mist, so light that it was hard to see. Only at the comer of his eye could he clearly discern its contours. A sort of energy field? Certainly not a force field, anyhow.

The language she had addressed him in was pure Pangal, but that meant nothing. Urians spoke it as well as Terrestrials. Corson had even tried to teach the rudiments of Pangal—that language which proudly claimed to embody the common factors of all intelligence—to the Monster, but without success. As usual.

But it was thinking about the Monster which gave him the key to the puzzle.

This girl must have at least one talent in common with the Monster. She must be capable of foreseeing the future, within limits. She had been aware, the moment he entered the ship, that he would ask her, “How do you know I’m called Corson?” The fact that her terror had decided him to attack her made no odds, merely posed the problem of proximate cause. As did most temporal paradoxes. Those who came in contact with Monsters learned something about temporal paradoxes, generally the hard way. So he could assess the girl’s precognitive range at about two minutes. She was doing better than the Monster, then.

Not that that shed any light on her presence on Uria.