But first I have to get out of here alive, Laird Hammill thought grimly.
He felt as if he’d been running all night, but it had only been a little over an hour since his identity had accidentally been discovered by a drunken, over-familiar giant of an infantryman. Hammill had grabbed the first landcar in sight and had raced out into the bleak, rock-studded flatlands that separated Lombrosa from the reconnoiter-point where he had hidden his scoutship. His object had been to get off Denerix as fast as possible.
He’d had a ten-minute head start, no more. Alarms had wailed dismally in the whistling-cold night, and the pursuers had set out after him. And now—
He couldn’t run forever. The landcar had overloaded—he had not really known how to operate it—and its turbines had flared into a bright blue flash of radiance and choked off. Now he was on foot, with the hunters coming closer every moment.
Above, the Shanador system spread itself over the sky like a soft, lovely veil, a sprinkling of gold and blue and red and brilliant white. Under any other circumstances it might have been a really beautiful sight—but Hammill didn’t appreciate the grandeurs of the system just now. Gasping for breath, he raced onward, pulling one numbing leg after the other.
Suddenly, there was a deafening roar and the sky seemed to rain violet lightning. The endless plain was bright as day in the illumination of the flare.
“Stop running, Earthman,” a cold, dry voice said from behind him.
This was the end of the road, then. He couldn’t run any further. By the light of the flare, Hammill glanced ahead and saw that they had run him right into a pocket-ended valley that terminated in a closed rut which folded around him neatly. There wasn’t any place further to run to; they had bided their time, the devils, until they had him caught with nowhere to hide.
He drew his blaster and planted himself at the back end of the pocket, facing his antagonists.
“Come and get me!” he shouted defiantly.
There were seven of them, and three pursuit-robots. He caught a good glimpse of them in the dying light of the flare.
The men were Denerixians, all of them armed. One wore the dazzling cloak and tunic of the nobility, an outfit coruscating with encrusted gems and gleaming with the threads of platinum mesh sown in the cloth. The others wore the dull black uniforms of the Starlord’s private police.
The three pursuit-robots were hunkered down against the ground like chromium-snouted hogs, their sensitive olfactory antennae quivering disgustingly at his spoor. They looked uglier than the barrels of seven blasters that were pointed at him.
The nobleman spoke. “Come out of there, Earthman. Don’t try to fight.”
“Suppose you make me come out,” Hammill snapped. He squeezed the stud of his blaster and a rolling beam of fire spurted out, lighting up the sky the way the flare had done. He saw the charge splash in the air fruitlessly, three feet in front of the foremost of the radar-snouted robots.
“That was foolish, Hammill,” the cold voice said. “We’re screened against your little toy, so don’t waste your energy or our time.”
Without replying, Hammill fired, adjusting his aim for greater depth. The same thing happened again. They were screened after all. He was neatly penned in.
Cursing, he holstered the useless blaster and started to walk forward. Blackness was like a cloak around him, but he knew the sharp-eyed Denerixians could probably pick him out easily. Still, what did it matter?
He summoned what little strength he had left and started to run straight at them. They weren’t screened against him, and he wanted to vent some of his hatred before they gave him the inevitable coup-de-grace. Besides, a suicide charge like this might insure a quick death, instead of the lingering nightmare of the Starlord’s torture chambers.
They weren’t firing. He came close enough to see the gleaming butts of their blasters, and they didn’t fire. He reached the nearest pursuit-robot and launched a vicious kick at its quivering snout. It recoiled and scurried away.
“All right. Stop right there,” the noble ordered.
“I’m going to keep on coming,” Hammill yelled. “You’ll have to kill me.”
He leaped over the other two pursuit-robots and caught up with the foremost Denerixian, waiting for the flash of radiance that would leave him a charred hulk on the plain. It didn’t come.
“Guns down!” he heard the noble say. His fist crashed solidly into the first man’s stomach, and he followed with a roundhouse punch that knocked the man backward. Still no blast.
“What are you waiting for?” he demanded wildly. “Why don’t you shoot?”
He saw the level smile on the noble’s handsome, aristocratic face. “It’s messy,” he said. “Besides, we don’t want to kill you.”
Half-mad with rage, Hammill bunched his muscles for an assault on the grinning nobleman. But as he sprang, he saw the bejeweled dandy casually adjust his blaster to wide-beam stunning-force, and the bolt caught him in mid-leap.
The soft moist soil was like a warm bed as he fell face-first.
Hammill felt as though his head had been filled with lightning—lightning which seemed to flicker about inside his skull and strike with shattering force every few seconds.
As the noise within his mind seemed to diminish, he opened his eyes—just a little.
“Awake, Earthling?”
It was a soft voice, but it carried undertones of vicious threat.
It was the nobleman. Still playing dead, Hammill tried to recall what had happened. When it finally made sense, he thought: I’m still alive, then. Why?
It was, to say the least, unusual. The Starlords of Shanador, despite their seeming enmity towards each other, all abided by the same rules: Kill the enemy!
“Don’t be stubborn, Earthling,” said the arrogant voice. “I know you’re awake.”
“Shall I wake him, Lord Kleyne?” said a harsh voice.
“No. He’ll open his eyes.”
Hammill opened his eyes slowly. He was lying supine on a table—an operating table—with his arms and legs held tight by invisible force clamps. The rubbery feeling force fields held him tightly without cutting off circulation.
But he was still alive. And as long as he was alive, he had a chance.
He turned his head as far as the force clamps would allow and looked the Starlord in the face. “Well, my lord; you’ve become lax—or are you just a little late in killing me?”
The nobleman’s eyes narrowed; his shoulders moved a little, moving the jeweled robe slightly. A faint grin crossed his face. “I may—just may not kill you.”
Hammill flicked a suspicious glance at the noble. “What do you mean by that?”
Lord Kleyne smiled pleasantly, but ignored the question. He crossed the room, passing out of Hammill’s range of vision, and his voice drifted through the room in a low murmur, as he spoke to someone Hammill had not seen.
Beads of sweat rolled down Hammill’s face as he let his eyes rove over the room he was in. It was a high, vaulting chamber with clammy-looking stone walls and complex groining supporting the roof; a square-hewn window cut roughly into the rock allowed a single beam of light to enter, while glowing alpha-bulbs cast a grim illumination over the scene. It wasn’t a pleasant room.
Hammill could see three black-clad Denerixian guards standing impassively nearby, watching him without the faintest sign of interest. Hanging from one wall, there was a thick, spike-studded knout, along whose corded length ran a gleaming length of wire that indicated that it was electrified. It was the only torture implement in the room, but it was enough.
After a few moments, Lord Kleyne returned.
Hammill had made up his mind by then; if there was any way out, he’d take it. The Starlords hadn’t put off killing him for no reason at all, therefore, he wasn’t going to be killed—at least not immediately.
The question was: why had his life been spared? If the Starlord had any sense at all, he should have killed the Earthman long ago. But he hadn’t
; therefore—
The Starlord loomed over him, his bejeweled clothing glittering oddly in the glow from the alpha-bulbs. Again the queer smile crossed his face. “I have a use for you.” He glanced up at one of the guards. “Cut the lights.”
The guard reached out and touched a panel on the nearby wall. Instantly, the alpha-bulbs died into blackness, leaving Lord Kleyne illuminated only by the single lamp above the operating table.
Hammill knew what was coming and braced his mind for the onslaught.
The Starlord’s eyes seemed to glow in the semi-darkness. Hammill could feel the creeping, probing tentacles of alien thought creep into his own mind. For the first time, he realized that the Starlords who ruled a galaxy, although they looked like men, were not human!
Hammill had been trained in blocking off his mind against telepathic probing. He set up the block almost instantly, less than a millisecond after the Starlord had started to probe. But the block was like a wall made of paper; with a vicious stab, the Starlord’s mental probes lanced through Hammill’s mind block as though it had never been. There was a brilliant flare of thought energy in the infra-levels of the mind, and Hammill’s defenses collapsed.
Hammill wanted to scream, but he couldn’t. Lord Kleyne’s mind held his own in a grip of steel—and stronger than steel. There was no fighting that driving, searing beam of thought energy as it lanced through and through Hammill’s very being.
As the psychic pain built up, Hammill could stand it no longer.
Less than a tenth of a second after the Starlord had begun the mental onslaught of the Earthman’s mind, Hammill faded into unconsciousness…
Laird Hammill ran fingers smoothly over the control studs of the fast little speedster, his eyes watching the growing star in the forward plate. Within less than an hour, he would be on Rhodanas, after five days of ultra-fast travel across intergalactic emptiness.
Five days since he had left—
Left where?
For the first time in five days, he realized how foggy his mind had been. His brain seemed fuzzy, as though he had been doing things that—
Things that he didn’t want to do!
Acting almost instinctively, he slammed out one hand toward the control panel. His finger touched a stud, and the ship’s mass-time converter died, its power cut off. The ship, deprived of the supernal power that drove it at ultralight velocities across thousands of millions of light-years of empty space, stopped dead. The star in the forward plate ceased to grow.
Hammill rubbed his temples with his palms. What had happened? Where was he? What was he doing?
It was as though he had been drugged for five days and was only now coming out of it.
Think back! Back! What had happened?
Slowly, the fog seemed to lift from his memory. He began to remember what had happened.
The Earth fleet had suffered for nearly twenty years under the ruthless invasion of the Starlord’s Armada. The alien ships had come from somewhere—no one knew where—and had begun to blast Earth ships out of the sky. It had taken twenty years to trace the enemy to another galaxy—M-33 in Andromeda.
Every habitable planet in that Galaxy was ruled by one of the Starlords—near-human, but evilly alien beings who ruled their planets with an iron hand. And the Fleet had stationed itself outside the M-33 galaxy, floating in the dead, empty blackness of inter-galactic space, sending in spies to find a weak spot—a chink in the Starlords’ armor.
Hammill rubbed his fingertips over his eyes. He had landed on Denerix, one of the most powerful worlds of the M-33 galaxy, the galaxy which the Starlords called Shanador.
And then he’d been captured, and—And what?
He couldn’t remember.
He lifted his eyes to the viewplate. The star was still there, shining brightly against a sprinkling of dimmer stars. Rhodanas. That was the name of the star. But where had he heard it before? Why was he here? Nothing seemed to make any sense.
He remembered vaguely that someone—some thing—had invaded his mind. That was it! He hadn’t been able to resist the power of that mind, but he had been able to throw if off after five days of blindly following the orders he had been given.
But what those orders were, what he was supposed to do, eluded him.
He reached out and flicked on the astronomical plates. He was near a star called Rhodanas—but where was it? The last five days were so hazy he could not recall how he had arrived here. He tuned the astroplates into the computer banks. There was a faint hum as the computer figured his location, then the astroplates glowed with little letters which marked off the stars.
He was within a globular cluster of stars nearly a million light-years from Shanador! Smiling a little, Laird Hammill glanced admiringly at the ship he had come in. He didn’t know how he’d gotten the ship, but, brother, it could really travel!
And now, by Heaven, it was going to travel right back! He had no idea why he had been sent to a mysterious star called Rhodanas, but he was dead certain that he wasn’t going to stay there! He touched a control, and the ship began to pivot in space, turning her nose back toward the Shanador galaxy.
Then, without warning, the ship lurched, throwing him out of the pilot’s seat. He leaped to his feet almost instantly. The star of Rhodanas was getting brighter again!
Something was pulling him toward it!
Hammill jammed his finger down on the drive button. The mass-time converters should have come on, but they didn’t. None of the controls would function as they should.
He looked at the forward plate bleakly, knowing what had happened. Someone or something had trained a paramagnetic beam on the ship, and like a bit of iron being drawn toward a powerful magnet, he was being drawn helplessly toward Rhodanas!
Then he saw a planet. It was only a tiny speck at first, a glowing pinpoint of light. But as the ship approached it, it seemed to grow larger, until it was a perceptible disc. It kept on growing until it was a huge ball, filling and overflowing the edges of the viewplate.
And then he was dropping toward the surface of the green world. He could see great seas and broad continents covered by fleecy clouds. And then he was dropping through the clouds toward the ground beneath. Below him was a broad spaceport landing field surrounded by shining spires and towers, a magnificently beautiful city that gleamed in the bright sunlight.
The ship settled gently to the surface of the field.
Hammill balled his fists. He wasn’t going to be easy to take.
The airlock door slid slowly open.
A figure stepped into the ship. He was a tall, youthful-looking man clad only in a gleaming web of metallic mesh. Hammill poised himself on the catwalk and hurled himself downward toward the newcomer.
He struck and rebounded off. It was as if the man were made of chrome steel and he of soap-bubbles; he made no effect on the other whatsoever.
Hammill sprang to his feet and launched a blow at the silent, strange-looking man, who had yet to take any definite action. The blow landed solidly—but again, to no effect. The tall man only stared curiously at him, smiling warmly.
“Are you finished resisting, Hammill?” he asked suddenly, in a vibrant, resonant voice that seemed to fill the small spaceship.
“Who are you?” Hammill demanded.
“That does not matter. I have come to escort you.”
Hammill scowled and darted back away from the other. “Escort me where?”
The tall man smiled sadly. “We knew you would be troublesome, Laird Hammill.” He advanced, and at that moment three men of similar appearance stepped through the airlock.
Hammill swung wildly as they closed in on him, fighting with desperation born of the nightmarish-ness of the situation. But the fight was over in a moment. Each of the four laid a firm hand on him, and a sudden, wordless surge of power ran through him. Suddenly, he did not want to fight them anymore.
“Who are you?” he asked again—but this time his tone was no longer aggressive.
&nbs
p; “We are of the world of Rhodanas. At the moment, that is all that should concern you. Come with us, now.”
Unprotestingly, Hammill let them lead him through the airlock and out into the clean, fresh air of Rhodanas. A thousand unanswered questions flooded through his mind as he followed them through a rolling, wooded valley toward a high-vaulting rose-colored domed building that was visible beyond.
He was on Rhodanas—that much was definite. The Starlords had sent him to Rhodanas with some post-hypnotic command implanted in the subliminal levels of his mind. He was on some sort of mission for them—but what?
And had the Starlords figured on his being captured by these strange, invulnerable people? He had been snared like a small child, with hardly a struggle.
That meant he had fallen into the hands of an advanced race—a race millennia ahead of even Earth. Who were they? What did they want with him? Hammill shook his head puzzledly as his captors led him along. He was a pawn in some three-cornered galactic chess game involving the Earth Federation, the Starlords of Shanador, and these mysterious Rhodanans, and he didn’t care for his status at all.
As he walked with them, Laird Hammill studied the men of Rhodanas. They were handsome, tall, and well-built, but somehow they reminded Hammill of someone else—it was as though he had seen one of these men somewhere before, but he couldn’t recall where or when.
He shook his head, trying to clear it. It still seemed foggy. What the devil had happened to him?
He wanted to ask the men with him, but he knew they wouldn’t tell him anything until they were ready.
As they approached the great, iridescent, rose-colored dome, he saw that it was merely a part of the great city behind it. It was different from any city he had ever seen before; no Earth city had ever seemed so clean, so bright, so peaceful, so quiet. There were occasional murmurs of sound, like sweet strains of music that echoed hauntingly through the air and faded again, but there was no blare of horns, no rumble of heavy transportation, no roar of motors, no thunder of great rockets. He had never seen anything quite so beautiful.