The Seventh Science Fiction MEGAPACK ®. Robert Silverberg
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turned her back. The wind blew a thin hissing veil of dry snow across her ankles. A wounded man suddenly screamed out there in the dark.
How does it feel, Donovan? You made her trust you and then betrayed her for a thing that isn’t even human. How does it feel to be a Judas?
“Never mind recriminations,” said Takahashi. “This isn’t the time to hold trials. We’ve got to decide what to do.”
“They have a city on this planet,” said Donovan. “Drogobych, they call it, and the planet’s name is Arzun. It lies somewhere near the equator, they told me once. If they meant us to make our own way to it—and it would be like them—then it may well be due south. We can march that way, assuming that the sun set in the west.”
“Nothing to lose,” shrugged the Terran. “But we haven’t many weapons, a few assorted sidearms is all, and they aren’t much use against these creatures anyway.”
Something howled out in the darkness. The ground quivered, ever so faintly, to the pounding of heavy feet.
“Wild animals yet!” Cohen grinned humorlessly. “Better sound battle stations, Captain.”
“Yes, yes, I suppose so.” She blew her whistle, a thin shrilling in the windy dark. As she turned around, Donovan saw a gleam running along her cheek. Tears?
The noise came closer. They heard the rattle of claws on stone. The Terrans moved together, guns in front, clubs and rocks and bare hands behind. They have guts, thought Donovan. God, but they have guts!
“Food would be scarce on a barren planet like this,” said Ensign Chundra Dass. “We seem to be elected.”
The hollow roar sounded, echoing between the hills and caught up by the thin harrying wind. “Hold fire,” said Helena. Her voice was clear and steady. “Don’t waste charges. Wait—”
The thing leaped out of darkness, a ten-meter length of gaunt scaled body and steel-hard claws and whipping tail, soaring through the snow-streaked air and caught in the vague uneasy firelight, Helena’s blaster crashed, a lightning bolt sizzled against the armored head.
The monster screamed. Its body tumbled shatteringly among the humans, it seized a man in its jaws and shook him and trampled another underfoot. Takahashi stepped forward and shot again at its dripping wound. The blaster bolt zigzagged wildly off the muzzle of his gun.
Even the animals can do it—!
“I’ll get him, boss!” Wocha reared on his hind legs, came down again with a thud, and charged. Stones flew from beneath his feet. The monster’s tail swept out, a man tumbled before it with his ribs caved in, and Wocha staggered as he caught the blow. Still he rushed in, clutching the barbed end of the tail to his breast. The monster writhed, bellowing. Another blaster bolt hit it from the rear. It turned, and a shot at its eyes veered away.
Wocha hit it with all the furious momentum he had. He rammed its spearlike tail down the open jaws and blood spurted. “Ho, Donovan!” he shouted. As the thing screamed and snapped at him, he caught its jaws in his hands.
“Wocha!” yelled Donovan. “Wocha!” He ran wildly toward the fight.
The Donarrian’s great back arched with strain. It was as if they could hear his muscles crack. Slowly, slowly, he forced the jaws wider. The monster lashed its body, pulling him to his knees, dragging him over the ground, and still he fought.
“Damn you,” he roared in the whirling dust and snow, “hold still!”
The jaws broke. And the monster screamed once more, and then it wasn’t there. Wocha tumbled over.
Donovan fell across him, sobbing, laughing, cursing. Wocha picked him up. “You all right, boss?” he asked. “You well?”
“Yes—yes—oh, you blind bloody fool! You stupid, blundering ass!” Donovan hugged him.
“Gone,” said Helena. “It vanished.”
They picked up their dead and wounded and returned to the fires. The cold bit deep. Something else hooted out in the night.
It was a long time before Takahashi spoke. “You might expect it,” he said. “These parapsychical powers don’t come from nowhere. The intelligent race, our enemies of Drogobych, simply have them highly developed; the animals do to a lesser extent. I think it’s a matter of life being linked to the primary atomic probabilities, the psi functions which give the continuous-field distribution of matter-energy in space-time. In a word, control of external matter and energy by conscious will acting through the unified field which is space-time. Telekinesis.”
“Uh-huh,” said Dass wearily. “Even some humans have a slight para power. Control dice or electron beams or what have you. But why aren’t the—what did you call them?—Arzunians overrunning the Galaxy?”
“They can only operate over a certain range, which happens to be about the distance to the fringe stars,” said Donovan. “Beyond that distance, dispersion limits them, plus the fact that differences of potential energy must be made up from their own metabolism. The animals, of course, have very limited range, a few kilometers perhaps. The Arzunians use telekinesis to control matter and energy, and the same subspatial principles as our ships to go faster than light. Only since they aren’t lugging around a lot of hull and passengers and assorted machinery—just themselves and a little air and maybe an armful of sacrificial goods from a fringe planet, they don’t need atomic engines.
“They aren’t interested in conquering the Galaxy. Why should they be? They can get all their needs and luxuries from the peoples to whom they are gods. An old race, very old, decadent if you will. But they don’t like interference.”
Takahashi looked at him sharply. “I glimpsed one of them on the ship,” he said. “He carried a spear.”
“Yeah. Another reason why they aren’t conquerors. They have no sense for mechanics at all. Never had any reason to evolve one when they could manipulate matter directly without more than the simplest tools. They’re probably more intelligent than humans in an all-around way, but they don’t have the type of brain and the concentration needed to learn physics and chemistry. Aren’t interested, either.”
“So, swords against guns—We may have a chance!”
“They can turn your missiles, remember. Guns are little use, you have to distract them so they don’t notice your shot till too late. But they can’t control you. They aren’t telepaths and their type of matter-control is heterodyned by living nerve currents. You could kill one of them with a sword where a gun would most likely kill you.”
“I—see—” Helena looked strangely at him. “You’re becoming very vocal all of a sudden.”
Donovan rubbed his eyes and shivered in the cold. “What of it? You wanted the truth. You’re getting it.”
Why am I telling them? Why am I not just leading them to the slaughter as Valduma wanted? Is it that I can’t stand the thought of Helena being hunted like a beast?
Whose side am I on? he thought wildly.
Takahashi gestured and his voice came eager. “That’s it. That’s it! The ship scattered assorted metal and plastic over twenty hectares as she fell. Safe for us to gather up tomorrow. We can use our blaster flames to shape weapons. Swords, axes, spears. By the Galaxy, we’ll arm ourselves and then we’ll march on Drogobych!”
5
It was a strange little army, thought Donovan, as strange as any the Galaxy had ever seen.
He looked back. The old ruined highway went down a narrow valley between sheer cliffs of eroded black stone reaching up toward the deep purplish heaven. The sun was wheeling westerly, a dull red ember throwing light like clotted blood on the dreariness of rock and ice and gaunt gray trees; a few snowflakes, borne on a thin dull wind, drifted across the path of march. A lonely bird, cruel-beaked and watchful, hovered on great black wings far overhead,