Tower Of The Medusa

3. SPACE TRAP

Zha and Pelizon lay at opposite ends of the Wyvern Cluster, that group of several hundred suns that formed what was known as the Near Stars. Pelizon was a lonely little world on the further fringe, just beyond the Dragon Stars. Kirin commanded the ship to chart a course for Pelizon and settled down to study the blueprints of the Tower while the ship took care of everything else.

The ship was a superb example of the engineering miracles the Old Empire had been capable of. The New Empire was now building ships again, yes, and technology was on the rise, with new articles such as the rain-repelling weather-cloak Kirin had worn on Zha and his power gun. But even the technarchs of Valdamar could not create anything like Kirin’s ship.

Scarcely a hundred yards from prow to stern, it was as sleek and trim and swift a craft as ever plied the dark cold wastes between the stars. It was crammed with defensive and offensive equipment, remarkably well equipped for a small cruiser. Virtually a miniature fortress. And swift and nimble and elusive. At his command, it climbed above the complicated orbits of the nine moons of Zha and flashed out of the plane of the ecliptic—and vanished. Literally vanished.

For not only was the ship swift and strong, but in flight it could be rendered all but completely indetectible as well. A dense magnetic field could be built around the hull, a field whose lines of force were so powerful that they could bend even light rays around the ship, thus rather effectively making Kirin’s ship invisible to sight and to radar as well.

But there were other ways of detecting a ship in space. One was neutrino-emission; a star drive leaked neutrinos all over the place. Again, the Ancients had wrought cleverly and well. Kirin’s ship was fitted with a brace of neutrino-baffles that blocked heavy particle seepage to an irreducible minimum. In fact, about the only thing the ship could not disguise was its basic mass. Luckily, only naval warships of the Omega class carried mass detectors. They were not only immense and very heavy but delicate as well, and there were only a few Omega-class warships in the Near Stars.

So to all intents and purposes, when the ship lifted out of Zha’s solar system it vanished into thin air… thin space, rather.

Which made it all the more peculiar when the ship was attacked.

The first thing that happened was the brain went out of whack. The brain lost control of the ship. This was both remarkable, and alarming to boot—in fact, it was impossible.

The brain, a super-miniaturized computer robot of remarkable sophistication, supplied Kirin in lieu of a trained crew. It not only monitored the life support and power systems, but served as navigational computer and robot pilot as well, was programmed to interpret and act upon spoken commands and, lacking these, on its own judgment and the built-in Prime Directives.

They were several hours out of Zha, relaxing over a late supper and getting to know one another a little better. While Kirin nursed a steaming cup of kaff, Temujin puffed on a small black oily pipe and was engaged in giving the thief some background information on the mysterious leader of the Death Dwarves.

“Frankly, lad, we know little about him,” Temujin was saying. “He came out of nowhere to enter the ranks of the cult, and once in, rapidly climbed to a position of dominant power. But he’s no Pelizonese, that’s for certain. He’s nearly seven feet tall and gaunt as a skeleton.”

“Facial characteristics?” Kirin inquired.

“Space knows, lad! Goes masked behind a bit o’ cloth—probably to make himself seem more mysterious. Calls himself Zarlak. The assassins call him ‘the Veiled One’ and think he is a prophet sent by their gods to lead them to greatness and power. All very odd and mystifying…”

“Then it was Zarlak who gave the command to have me killed?”

“Most likely. But we think there’s a bit more to it beyond just wantin’ to keep you from stealing the gem. We think Zarlak is after it himself.”

“Hmm. Just what is this Medusa thing, anyway, Temujin? Is it just a jewel or something more.”

Temujin winked mysteriously and laid a finger alongside his bulbous nose. “Something more, much more,” he hissed in a conspiratorial tone. “A talisman of great power… very dangerous in the wrong hands. Trevelon has known about it for ages, but so long as it was guarded by the superstitious Death Dwarves and protected behind the magical safeguards of the Tower, we cared but little. But now that Zarlak the Veiled One has appeared on the scene, we have become a mite worried. We suspect that Zarlak knows the secret of the Medusa, and is on Pelizon for the sole purpose of getting his hands on it. Hence your assignment to steal the thing. Trevelon wants it primarily so that it may be destroyed and thus kept out of malevolent hands. It could be very dangerous if it fell into the possession of unscrupulous persons…”

“Kirin.”

The ship spoke softly. The voder was set to emit a quiet, gently modulated tone, but somehow urgency rasped in the ship’s mechanical voice.

“What is it?”

“I am being interfered with,” the ship said calmly. “Some external source of power is attempting to gain control of my circuits.”

The news was astonishing. Kirin almost spilled his kaff. He jumped up.

“What? But—that’s impossible!”

“I know,” the ship replied, “but that’s what’s happening.”

“Where are we, anyway?”

“Passing through the edge of the Dragon Stars at the moment. We are almost to Pelizon,” the ship replied. Its voice sounded a trifle slower and duller now.

“Where is the beam coming from—a ship?” Kirin demanded. Of course he was thinking of the two ships that had attacked him in orbit above Zha. But how could the Death Dwarves track him through interstellar space? It was impossible… but, come to think of it, no more impossible than for the ship to be detected in space at all.

“No, the beam is planet-based, I feel certain. From the background resonance I can sense a planetary magnetic field… I am trying to track the beam, but it is very difficult… Kirin. I have lost control of my navigational computer components. We are veering onto another course. We are heading for…”

And then the brain went silent.

And stayed silent.

Kirin groaned a curse and Temujin looked pale and grim. No longer under control, the ship hurtled off on a wild tangent which carried it far off course. But—where was it headed?

Kirin dialed the forward visors and stared into a glittering sea of stars. He could make no sense out of the groupings. A planet-bound observer learns to identify stars by the shape of the constellations. But in deep space, constellations change beyond all recognition when viewed from different angles, and space travelers find visual memory of as little use as a signpost. With the brain inoperative and the navigational computers under exterior control, Kirin had no way of telling where he was or where he was going, except for the one valid set of interstellar signposts, the spectra of the stars themselves. For while very many of the suns of space fall into certain common spectral types, there are a few prominent stars of very unusual spectrum, and a lost spacefarer can sometimes chart his course by spectroscopic analysis alone.

Luckily, the spectroscope was under manual controls, so Kirin unlimbered it and took a look around. As would commonly be the case in any given portion of the galactic spiral, there were a preponderance of Main Sequence stars of common spectra: B5’s like Achernar, K5 Red Giants like Aldebaran, and a sprinkling of G2 stars like Sol. He moved the ‘scope around and before long located a very unusual three-component multiple star. The brightest of the three was a B8, the second was a yellow-white GO star, and the third, very dim, was an F5. The first two stars revolved around a common center of gravity, and the third of the group revolved about the other two with a period of what Kirin roughly estimated with the ‘scope calculator to be some twenty-one months.

He had found Algol. No other triple sun remotely like this was to be found in the Near Stars. Now he needed one more reference point.

He found two without any trouble: Ross 614, a binary star composed of two Red Dwarves, and the unmistakable superbeacon of S Doradus in the Core Stars of the Greater Magellanic Cloud. Although outside of the galaxy proper, S Doradus was visible in the ‘scope due to its extraordinary nature. This eclipsing binary, made up of two Blue Giants, was one of the most unusual stars known to man. Each of the two suns which made up the binary system were hundreds of thousands of times more bright than Sol. In fact, the first component, S Doradus A was a good half a million times brighter than an ordinary Main Sequence star and was the intrinsically brightest star known to man. There was no mistaking S Doradus…

With these three reference points to work from, it was not long before Kirin had formed a good idea of their location and the direction in which they were traveling. They were in the Dragon Stars, headed off Rim-wards virtually at a right angle to their original course. Every moment took them further from Pelizon. If they continued on their present path, they would head completely out of the Near Stars and be in unknown regions.

But since they were helpless to alter the ship’s direction, or to regain control, there was nothing they could do about it.

After a time they slept. The small cabin had two bunks built into opposite walls. Kirin took his usual bunk and fat old Temujin stretched out in the other. While they slept, the ship surged on its mysterious course, penetrating deeper and deeper into the Dragon Stars.

After several hours, it emerged from the Interplenum—that paradoxical artificial universe wherein a ship may travel at enormous multiples of the speed of light without any increase of mass—and re-entered normal space. A huge world loomed ahead of them, vast and dreary, with continent-wide deserts of ochre sand, and twelve moons lighting its velvet skies.

Although Kirin did not know it, this was Zangrimar, lone planet of the star Solphis in the Dragon Stars. A barren wilderness world, a jumble of broken rock in the highlands, else a vast dying world of bitter sands scoured by howling winds. Naught dwelt in the wide wastes but sluggish lizards that fed upon purple moss.

The surge of power, when the ship passed into normal space, awoke Kirin. The drone of the drive was lower and thicker now, and he knew they were on planetary power. Awaking the snoring doctor, he sprinted to the forward visors and snapped them on. Zangrimar was a dull glowing crescent, rising into their vision even as he watched. His jaw tightened grimly.

“Well, we’re here,” he growled. “Wherever ‘here’ may be!”

Without a hand at the controls, fully under the power of the strange force trap that had seized them in mid-flight, the ship dropped through the thin atmosphere of the desert world. Kirin could see a weird metal city built on a high plateau. Sunfire flashed from angles, planes and mirror-bright surfaces.

He wondered if yet a third party was interested in the Medusa…

The ship landed gently in a hollow cradle. Power died. Eyeing the atmospheric analysis dials beside the lock, he discovered the air outside was thin, cold, but breathable.

So he went outside to wait for the reception committee. There was nothing else he could do… for the moment…

He did not have long to wait. But it was Temujin who saw them first. Wheezing at the exertion, the red-faced little thaumaturge clambered out of the lock to stand beside him on the gleaming metallic surface of the space field. He stared around, blinking owlishly at the strange metal buildings. They were built to fantastic designs, weird pagodas, terraced pyramids and soaring ziggurats of glittering steel. Colossal steel masks glowered down at them from tower-tops, the sides of domes, the architraves of long arcades. Eyes of red fire blazed from the cruel metal masks.

The clank of metal striking on metal came to their ears. Across the space field came a blurred group of towering figures. Temujin spotted them and yelped.

“Robots!” he shrilled.

An unearthly chill crawled up Kirin’s spine. He looked at the metal colossi that came stalking up to them. Their heads were like the enormous casques of helmeted warriors. Long jointed arms ended in cruel steel claws. Nine feet from toe to crown the steel giants towered. They looked like mailed warriors out of nightmares.

Across the field in a straight file they came directly for the two men. With a sinking heart, Kirin realized they had no hope of defending themselves. They were prisoners, on an unknown world…