Walking quietly through the mud he came to the trail which led upward to the series of knolls where the trees were thinner and the ground a degree more solid. This time he was not tracking. He gave no heed to the ground, for he was within the role of the hunted, not that of the hunter. He knew with a clarity not born of reason that he would be found.
Along the crest of a small hill, looking out across the foggy depths of the forest, touched faintly by the gloomy sun, he walked and knew he could be seen against the sky. He stopped a little while and dispassionately regarded the forest tops again, noting for the first time that gray was not the color there as he had always supposed but drab green, rust red, dark blue and smoky yellow. It was a little thing to notice but it seemed important. He turned and walked slowly back along the crest, gun held in the crook of his arm, his body relaxed. From this end he could see the impression of the village, a vacant space in the trees, a small knoll itself, wrapped in blue yellow cotton batting which restively shifted pattern.
About him the clouds thickened blindingly and the lenses of his swamp mask fogged. For a brief instant terror was in him before he pressed it gently down, out of sight, and buried it somewhere within him once more. The clouds lifted and curved easily away. For a little while then the sun was almost bright and it was this time upon which he had counted. He could be seen for a kilometer or more against the sky, blackly etched, motionless, waiting.
The atmosphere thickened, darkened, grew soggier with spurts of rain; the sun and any trace of it vanished even to Ginger’s shadow. The time was here. He would walk slowly, leaving deep tracks, putting aside any impulse to step on stone and so break his trail. He knew it would follow.
He took his time, now and then pausing to arrange some imagined opening in his coat or his mask, occasionally pulling off the mask altogether and lighting his pipe, to sit on a rotten log until the tobacco was wholly burned.
He had no plan of walking save that he stayed in the trees where the great branches leaned out above him like grasping hands, only half seen in the gloom.
When the dark began to settle he did not return to the village, but kept upon his circuitous way, vaguely aware that the compound was somewhere upon his right, caring very little about it.
When he could no longer see clearly he groped to the base of a great tree; he could sit here now, waiting with dull patience for the thing to happen. From his pocket he took his pipe and pouch. From his face he pulled the swamp mask. Steadying his gun against the trunk beside him he proceeded to prepare his smoke.
It happened suddenly, silently, efficiently. The vine-woven net dropped soundlessly over his head, slithered to his feet and then with swift ferocity, yanked tight and brought him with a crash into the mud!
The vine-woven net dropped soundlessly over his head, slithered to his feet and then with swift ferocity, yanked tight and brought him with a crash into the mud!
There was a scurrying about him as though something leaped up and down, darted back and forth to swiftly study the situation so as to require a minimum of effort in the final kill.
Ginger’s right hand sought to grip the flame pistol at his thigh, but he could not bend his arm; his left hand clawed insensately at the net and a scream of terror welled up in his throat. He stilled the beating of the hand. He pressed back the scream. He reached to his belt and drew the knife with a deliberate swiftness and an economy of effort. The keen edge bit into the tough fibers of the vine, cleared it away from half his side, began to slice it off his ankles. And then the thing struck!
The foul animal smell of it assailed him, more acute than the bite of the claws which went through his jacket and into his side like a set of bayonets.
He sensed the downward drive of the other claws and caught a blurred glimpse of the thing. The slimy fur of the leg was in his fingers and the striking paw missed his face.
Ginger jabbed upward with the knife and felt it saw vainly into the thing. With a scream the beast twisted away and with it went the knife.
There was a brief interval before the next, more savage attack, and in that space Ginger cleared his feet of the net. When it struck him again, like a battering ram with force enough to smash in his ribs, he was able to come to his knees and fumble for his flame pistol while fending with his left arm. He had no more than drawn the gun when a scrambling kick sent it flying into the mud, far from reach.
A cold piece of metal banged Ginger in the mouth and he snatched hungrily for the haft of his flesh-imbedded knife. Slippery as his fingers were, he retained it, drew it forth. He kicked out with his feet and then drove the keen steel deep into the body of the thing!
With a shudder it fell back, a claw weakly seeking to strike again and then falling away. There was a threshing, rattling sound and Ginger drew away, trying to clear his sight, fumbling with the other hand for his gun which he knew had been at the base of the tree. He had the weapon in his hand before he could see. There was water in a footprint which his hand had touched and he quickly bathed his eyes.
The light was faint, too faint to show more than a dark blob stretched in the muck, a blob which didn’t move now. Ginger warily skirted it, keeping it covered, fumbling for a flash inside his waterproof coat.
The cold, impersonal beam played upon the object, raked it from end to end and then strayed uncertainly back to the head.
Ginger knelt and unfastened the straps of the frayed, worn, leatherlike suit that clothed the corpse and laboriously turned it over. Metal-tipped space gloves clicked as the arms flopped against each other. There was an almost illegible trace of lettering on the back, fouled with mud and blood, torn in spots. “SP——E SHII——” it said, before a gouge tore out the ship’s name. Below, “Spacepo——Lowry, U——A.”
It stank with dried and rotted blood and meat of long-gone kills, and the unwashed body of its occupant.
Ginger turned it back and looked again at the face. Identification was hopeless. The disastrous landing had gouged and torn the face half away; there was a deep dent in the forehead where the skull had been broken inward, and an angry, seamed and cross-seamed welt told of slow healing without the slightest rudiments of attention.
Ginger straightened slowly, gathered his things from the ground, and squelched off on his backtrail. Native bearers would have to carry that beast home. The beast some unknown and probably unknowable crash of a small tramp spacer had made from a man. A ruthless, pure animal—with all the cunning of human intelligence still left in the damaged brain.
Ginger swung along the trail in the long, easy strides of a huntsman of standing. There were bruises, and certain scratches that twinged a bit, but that sort of damage was of no importance. The great thing was—a thing Ginger now scarcely realized—that he had recaptured that quite intangible reality that had been stolen from him.
The Slaver
The Slaver
VORIS SHAPADIN heard the shot and lurched back in his chair in surprise, staring at the port and holding the leg of a chicken halfway between table and beard.
Somewhere in the Gaffgon footbeats pounded toward a gun. The insect-stained face of the intership communicator panel lit and the scarred visage of the navigator flickered there.
“Party returning to the ship, sir.”
Voris yanked the napkin from his fat neck and snatched up the rusty helmet which he wore in preference to a peaked cap. The helmet had ray burns on it and the strap was rotted half through with sweat; it made Voris feel important because it was an officer’s field helmet and he had never been higher than a feldcapal in the Outer War. When he stood up, bits of food rolled off his lap, bouncing from bulge to bulge and finally to the decayed spring carpet.
Voris took his belt gun and holster from the fever-flattened servant and went up the treacherously greasy ladder to the bridge.
Another shot racketed through the half-open dodger, and Voris prodded his way between his navigator and a quartermaster to a point of vantage in the wing.
“What the scatterb
rained hell is that all about out there?” demanded Voris without turning to his navigator.
“I dunno, sir. Doesn’t sound like our guns.” The navigator ventured this with timidity, although he was not timid in appearance. He had on a sweater striped horizontally and striped again with liquor stains, and over this he wore a jacket of battered green and threadbare lace; there were two ray scorches on the jacket. The navigator’s face was misshapen on one side where flame had left a ghastly splotch and had put out his eye. He wore no patch nor glass orb and left the socket dark and empty. He eyed his captain’s back with respect prompted by an evil man’s recognition of an even blacker personality.
Noisily, Voris sucked the shreds of chicken out of his spraddled teeth and spat the fragments over the side of the dodger. He wiped his mouth with a grease-slicked cuff and ranged his tiny white eyes over the scenery in growing impatience.
The Gaffgon was landed in a field of half-matured corn now cooked by the retarding blasts which had eased the old hulk down. She was a dreary pile of corrosion, the Gaffgon, for her propulsion was accomplished with the old vent principle, and the small jets which made her look like a scaled monster had also made her filthy with farillium soot. She presented a bad comparison with the cleanliness of this rural countryside.
A thick fringe of elms stood about this hilltop cornfield and barred much of the rolling country from view. The top of a steeple showed white and clean out of the valley, and a white road curved over the checkerboard horizon.
Voris Shapadin disliked this world intensely for its flatness, for he had been raised amid craggy peaks and ice rivers on Lurga, and the monotony of the present scenery combined with its heat to scratch his nerves.
He could hear men threshing about behind the screen of trees and knew from their far-off shouts that something was going wrong. It was very unusual to find any resistance in this place, and that alone had been its appeal, for one got his belly full of fighting in the outer lanes of Lurga, and men who could be trusted were too scarce to be risked in stupid skirmishes with stupid natives.
There was a sudden movement of shrubs and a small being burst out into the corn and ran several exhausted steps before he saw that he was heading for the Gaffgon. The footing was treacherous, and when he sought to halt in midrace he fell, flinging a black object away from him.
“Hold!” yelled a guard at the gangway. “Hold, there!”
The small being flipped to his feet and scooped up the black object. Voris could not make out the identity of the thing, but he felt it was a weapon of some sort.
A squad was running out through the corn from the Gaffgon, and sailors had broken from the trees to spread out and converge upon their quarry. The small being was trapped, but his attitude was one of frenzied defiance. He was doing something to the black object.
The two groups made a circle around him some thirty yards wide. The small being stood still for a moment and pointed at a sailor with the black object. There was a stab of thunder, and the sailor was thrown back in a jackknife.
“Shoot him!” howled Voris from his bridge. “Shoot the pig!”
A sailor had the small being from behind, but there was a blur of action and another crash of thunder, and the sailor, already dead, was dropped to earth. The small being tried madly to get away from the others. No one could fire at him, so thick was the press. And then, by crushing him to earth and beating at his head with gun butts, the sailors at last had him.
“The fools!” said Voris. “Two men dead! Maybe more! Is that worth the price of one man? He’ll bring less than twenty weights in the market, and two sailors— Vash! Wait until we get him aboard and in irons!”
Voris hastened down the ladder to the gangway to await the arrival of the group.
From another part of the fringe of trees a line of people was emerging, silent save for the clank of chains. To these, the bulk of his cargo, Voris gave no heed, for the sight was common enough to him.
The sailors, carrying their single captive, leaving their dead where they had fallen, reached the bottom of the gangway. Their faces were scarlet with exertion and their ragged white uniforms sodden with sweat. The bos’n in the lead halted when he saw Voris, and realized for the first time that the group was liable to punishment for having conducted the matter so badly. The bos’n squared his thick shoulders and put a blank expression upon his bearded face. He continued on up the gangway and gave Voris a doubtful salute.
Voris said nothing. He waited until the others had come into the ship and had thrown amid the refuse of the deck their hard-won game.
The captive was young, and though he was bloodied by the gun butts, he was seen to be of regular features. His body was slender, which was not a good sign, for he would not be able to stand up under a great deal of hard labor. He was blond. He was an aristocrat. He was, Voris decided instantly, no good whatever.
Voris started to speak, and then found that he had no words equal to this. He ranged his white eyes from face to face and cursed them all with a silence which was far more horrible than verbal blasts.
With a jerk of his head, dismissing the men into the ship, Voris swept them with the blackness of his contempt. Then he kicked the captive in the side with a heavy space boot, and when the man did not stir, kicked him in the face. The captive lay as one dead.
The silent column was now coming up the gangway, and Voris, with a final kick, stepped back to survey them.
There were about a hundred and fifty people in the line. About a quarter of them were women. These last had been selected for form and face, and though they were tear-stained and bedraggled now, they would bring a good enough price on Lurga. The rest were men in their twenties and thirties, most of them sullen, some of them beaten, none of them defiant. They were laborers and mechanics possessing toil-hardened hands and wind-darkened faces, selected because of strength or possible deftness with material.
One by one the chained captives stepped over the young man on the deck. A face here and there lighted for an instant in startled recognition, and then instantly went blank, as though afraid to be found knowing this one who had obviously put up a battle.
One by one the chained captives stepped over the young man on the deck. A face here and there lighted for an instant in startled recognition, and then instantly went blank, as though afraid to be found knowing this one who had obviously put up a battle.
Only one face in all that line contained any fire. Her eyes were an astonishing shade of blue, and her face and body contained strength as well as beauty. Her cheek was bruised where she had been struck, and the cotton garment was ripped away from her shoulder so that she had to hold it in place. When she saw Voris her ripe mouth curved down on one side and her attitude hardened into contempt. She was on the point of spitting at the commander when the presence of the young man on the floor caught her attention. She paused, startled, only to be yanked forward by the chain which connected her to the next captive. She was very careful not to step on the man, and then shot Voris a glare which was of withering violence.
Voris was suddenly cheerful. He momentarily forgot his loss of men. He looked after the woman and laughed quietly.
So amused was Voris Shapadin that he showed only slight annoyance to the spotting agent who came a few minutes later to collect his reward.
Deep in the reeking hold of the Gaffgon, where darkness and misery and stench caught in the throat to strangle, Kree Lorin of Falcon’s Nest came slowly to his senses and struggled to rise. But chains clanked to jeer his effort and pulled him down again. Stupidly he felt for his knife, then fumbled on the floor about him for his gun. The loss of the two served to speed returning sensibility.
He stared through the dimness and caught a hazy impression of the hold, of two tiers of captives, people felt rather than seen, for the only light came from three blue bulbs studding the upper bulkhead.
Here were at least three hundred human beings reduced to the last depths of degradation and despair, reduced even below the poi
nt of whimpering, as though they recognized already the finality of their fate, as though they knew that only two-thirds of them would reach Lurga alive and that half of those who remained would sweat out their lives in the factories and on the fields of that planet in the first two years of their captivity.
Kree Lorin’s head felt as though a grenade had burst in it. He was a dull stupidity floating above the red blur of pain which was his body. Searchingly he sought to piece together the why of his presence, but the facts were too final and damning to be reached. He could not believe that he was here.
In a little while he would get up and go home. He would dismount before the big gray gates of the stronghold and pass his reins into the hands of a groom and, grasping the partridges he had shot, would saunter across the court and into the big dining hall, where his father would meet him with a proud and stern face which yet could not hide gleaming fondness.
His homecoming would be a little unusual this time, for he would be twenty-one on the morrow, and there was preparation for a celebration to welcome him into manhood.
A lackey would strip off his spurs, would take the birds and gun. Another would appear with a tray of wine and sweetbread. And then he would relate to his father the chances of the hunt—
A captive screamed in the fetid gloom. Kree Lorin raised his head and stared, and all the dismal weight of this obscene place crushed its way into his heart. Suddenly he wanted to scream an answer back. He wanted to call the guards and batter them with his chains. He could not be here. He, Kree Lorin of Falcon’s Nest, could never be a slave!
So this was what it meant. To be robbed of hope forever. To be chained and herded against humanity in the airless dark of a spaceship hull. To be carried to some terrifying far place and there be sold among enemies!