Space Prison Page 4

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  PART 4

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  John Humbolt, leader, stood on the wide stockade wall and watched thelowering sun touch the western horizon--far south of where it had setwhen he was a child. Big Summer was over and now, in the year twohundred, they were already three years into Big Fall. The Craigs hadbeen impassable with snow for five years and the country at the northend of the plateau, where the iron had been found, had been buried undernever-melting snow and growing glaciers for twenty years.

  There came the soft tinkling of ceramic bells as the herd of milk goatscame down off the hills. Two children were following and six prowlerswalked with them, to protect them from wild unicorns.

  There were not many of the goats. Each year the winters were longer,requiring the stocking of a larger supply of hay. The time would comewhen the summers would be so short and the winters so long that theycould not keep goats at all. And by then, when Big Winter had closed inon them, the summer seasons would be too short for the growing of theorange corn. They would have nothing left but the hunting.

  They had, he knew, reached and passed the zenith of the development oftheir environment. From a low of forty-nine men, women and children indark caves they had risen to a town of six thousand. For a few yearsthey had had a way of life that was almost a civilization but theinevitable decline was already under way. The years of frozen sterilityof Big Winter were coming and no amount of determination or ingenuitycould alter them. Six thousand would have to live by hunting--and onehundred, in the first Big Winter, had found barely enough game.

  They would have to migrate in one of two different ways: they could goto the south as nomad hunters--or they could go to other, fairer, worldsin ships they took from the Gerns.

  The choice was very easy to make and they were almost ready.

  In the workshop at the farther edge of town the hyperspace transmitterwas nearing completion. The little smelter was waiting to receive thelathe and other iron and steel and turn them into the castings for thegenerator. Their weapons were ready, the mockers were trained, theprowlers were waiting. And in the massive corral beyond town fortyhalf-tame unicorns trampled the ground and hated the world, wanting tokill something. They had learned to be afraid of Ragnarok men but theywould not be afraid to kill Gerns....

  The children with the goats reached the stockade and two of theprowlers, Fenrir and Sigyn, turned to see him standing on the wall. Hemade a little motion with his hand and they came running, to leap upbeside him on the ten-foot-high wall.

  "So you've been checking up on how well the young ones guard thechildren?" he asked.

  Sigyn lolled out her tongue and her white teeth grinned at him inanswer. Fenrir, always the grimmer of the two, made a sound in histhroat in reply.

  Prowlers developed something like a telepathic rapport with theirmasters and could sense their thoughts and understand relatively complexinstructions. Their intelligence was greater, and of a far more matureorder, than that of the little mockers but their vocal cords were notcapable of making the sounds necessary for speech.

  He rested his hands on their shoulders, where their ebony fur wasfrosted with gray. Age had not yet affected their quick, flowingmovement but they were getting old--they were only a few weeks short ofhis own age. He could not remember when they had not been with him....

  Sometimes it seemed to him he could remember those hungry days when heand Fenrir and Sigyn shared together in his mother's lap--but it wasprobably only his imagination from having heard the story told so often.But he could remember for certain when he was learning to walk andFenrir and Sigyn, full grown then, walked tall and black beside him. Hecould remember playing with Sigyn's pups and he could remember Sigynwatching over them all, sometimes giving her pups a bath and his face awashing with equal disregard for their and his protests. Above all hecould remember the times when he was almost grown; the wild, free dayswhen he and Fenrir and Sigyn had roamed the mountains together. With abow and a knife and two prowlers beside him he had felt that there wasnothing on Ragnarok that they could not conquer; that there was nothingin the universe they could not defy together....

  * * * * *

  There was a flicker of black movement and a young messenger prowler camerunning from the direction of the council hall, a speckle-faced mockerclinging to its back. It leaped up on the wall beside him and themocker, one that had been trained to remember and repeat messagesverbatim, took a breath so deep that its cheeks bulged out. It spoke, ina quick rush like a child that is afraid it might forget some of thewords:

  "You will please come to the council hall to lead the discussionregarding the last preparations for the meeting with the Gerns. Thetransmitter is completed."

  * * * * *

  The lathe was torn down the next day and the smelter began to roar withits forced draft. Excitement and anticipation ran through the town likea fever. It would take perhaps twenty days to build the generator,working day and night so that not an hour of time would be lost, fortydays for the signal to reach Athena, and forty days for the Gern cruiserto reach Ragnarok----

  In one hundred days the Gerns would be there!

  The men who would engage in the fight for the cruiser quit trimmingtheir beards. Later, when it was time for the Gerns to appear, theywould discard their woolen garments for ones of goat skin. The Gernswould regard them as primitive inferiors at best and it might be ofadvantage to heighten the impression. It would make the awakening of theGerns a little more shocking.

  An underground passage, leading from the town to the concealment of thewoods in the distance, had long ago been dug. Through it the women andchildren would go when the Gerns arrived.

  There was a level area of ground, just beyond the south wall of town,where the cruiser would be almost certain to land. The town had beenbuilt with that thought in mind. Woods were not far from both sides ofthe landing site and unicorn corrals were hidden in them. From thecorrals would come the rear flanking attack against the Gerns.

  The prowlers, of course, would be scattered among all the forces.

  * * * * *

  The generator was completed and installed on the nineteenth night.Charley Craig, a giant of a man whose red beard gave him a geniallymurderous appearance, opened the valve of the water pipe. The new woodenturbine stirred and belts and pulleys began to spin. The generatorhummed, the needles of the dials climbed, flickered, and steadied.

  Norman Lake looked from them to Humbolt, his pale gray eyes coldlysatisfied. "Full output," he said. "We have the power we need thistime."

  Jim Chiara was at the transmitter and they waited while he threwswitches and studied dials. Every component of the transmitter had beentested but they had not had the power to test the complete assembly.

  "That's it," he said at last, looking up at them. "She's ready, afteralmost two hundred years of wanting her."

  Humbolt wondered what the signal should be and saw no reason why itshould not be the same one that had been sent out with such hope ahundred and sixty-five years ago.

  "All right, Jim," he said. "Let the Gerns know we're waiting forthem--make it 'Ragnarok calling' again."

  The transmitter key rattled and the all-wave signal that the Gernscould not fail to receive went out at a velocity of five light-years aday:

  _Ragnarok calling--Ragnarok calling--Ragnarok calling--_

  It was the longest summer Humbolt had ever experienced. He was not alonein his impatience--among all of them the restlessness flamed higher asthe slow days dragged by, making it almost impossible to go about theirroutine duties. The gentle mockers sensed the anticipation of theirmasters for the coming battle and they became nervous and apprehensive.The prowlers sensed it and they paced about the town in the dark ofnight; watching, listening, on ceaseless guard against the mysteriousenemy their masters waited for. Even the unicorns seemed to
sense whatwas coming and they rumbled and squealed in their corrals at night,red-eyed with the lust for blood and sometimes attacking the log wallswith blows that shook the ground.

  The interminable days went their slow succession and summer gave way tofall. The hundredth day dawned, cold and gray with the approach ofwinter; the day of the Gerns.

  But no cruiser came that day, nor the next. He stood again on thestockade wall in the evening of the third day, Fenrir and Sigyn besidehim. He listened for the first dim, distant sound of the Gern cruiserand heard only the moaning of the wind around him.

  Winter was coming. Always, on Ragnarok, winter was coming or the browndeath of summer. Ragnarok was a harsh and barren prison, and no amountof desire could ever make it otherwise. Only the coming of a Gerncruiser could ever offer them the bloody, violent opportunity to regaintheir freedom.

  But what if the cruiser never came?

  It was a thought too dark and hopeless to be held. They were not askinga large favor of fate, after two hundred years of striving for it; onlythe chance to challenge the Gern Empire with bows and knives....

  Fenrir stiffened, the fur lifting on his shoulders and a muted growlcoming from him. Then Humbolt heard the first whisper of sound; a faint,faraway roaring that was not the wind.

  He watched and listened and the sound came swiftly nearer, rising inpitch and swelling in volume. Then it broke through the clouds, tall andblack and beautifully deadly. It rode down on its rockets of flame,filling the valley with its thunder, and his heart hammered withexultation.

  It had come--the cruiser had come!

  He turned and dropped the ten feet to the ground inside the stockade.The warning signal was being sounded from the center of town; a unicornhorn that gave out the call they had used in the practice alarms.Already the women and children would be hurrying along the tunnels thatled to the temporary safety of the woods beyond town. The Gerns mightuse their turret blasters to destroy the town and all in it before thenight was over. There was no way of knowing what might happen before itended. But whatever it was, it would be the action they had all beenwanting.

  He ran to where the others would be gathering, Fenrir and Sigyn lopingbeside him and the horn ringing wild and savage and triumphant as itannounced the end of two centuries of waiting.

  * * * * *

  The cruiser settled to earth in the area where it had been expected toland, towering high above the town with its turret blasters looking downupon the houses.

  Charley Craig and Norman Lake were waiting for him on the high steps ofhis own house in the center of town where the elevation gave them a goodview of the ship yet where the fringes of the canopy would conceal themfrom the ship's scanners. They were heavily armed, their prowlers besidethem and their mockers on their shoulders.

  Elsewhere, under the connected rows of concealing canopies, armed menwere hurrying to their prearranged stations. Most of them wereaccompanied by prowlers, bristling and snarling as they looked at thealien ship. A few men were deliberately making themselves visible notfar away, going about unimportant tasks with only occasional andcarefully disinterested glances toward the ship. They were the bait, tolure the first detachment into the center of town....

  "Well?" Norman Lake asked, his pale eyes restless with his hunger forviolence. "There's our ship--when do we take her?"

  "Just as soon as we get them outside it," he said. "We'll use the planwe first had--wait until they send a full force to rescue the firstdetachment and then hit them with everything we have."

  His black, white-nosed mocker was standing in the open doorway andwatching the hurrying men and prowlers with worried interest: Tip, thegreat-great-great-great grandson of the mocker that had died with HowardLake north of the plateau. He reached down to pick him up and set him onhis shoulder, and said:

  "Jim?"

  "The longbows are ready," Tip's treble imitation of Jim Chiara's voiceanswered. "We'll black out their searchlights when the time comes."

  "Andy?" he asked.

  "The last of us for this section are coming in now," Andy Tayloranswered.

  He made his check of all the subleaders, then looked up to the roof toask, "All set, Jimmy?"

  Jimmy Stevens' grinning face appeared over the edge. "Ten crossbows arecocked and waiting up here. Bring us our targets."

  They waited, while the evening deepened into near-dusk. Then the airlockof the cruiser slid open and thirteen Gerns emerged, the one leadingthem wearing the resplendent uniform of a subcommander.

  "There they come," he said to Lake and Craig. "It looks like we'll beable to trap them in here and force the commander to send out afull-sized force. We'll all attack at the sound of the horn and if youcan hit their rear flanks hard enough with the unicorns to give us achance to split them from this end some of us should make it to the shipbefore they realize up in the control room that they should close theairlocks.

  "Now"--he looked at the Gerns who were coming straight toward thestockade wall, ignoring the gate to their right--"you'd better be onyour way. We'll meet again before long in the ship."

  Fenrir and Sigyn looked from the advancing Gerns to him with question intheir eyes after Lake and Craig were gone, Fenrir growling restlessly.

  "Pretty soon," he said to them. "Right now it would be better if theydidn't see you. Wait inside, both of you." They went reluctantly inside,to merge with the darkness of the interior. Only an occasional yellowgleam of their eyes showed that they were crouched to spring just insidethe doorway.

  He called to the nearest unarmed man, not loud enough to be heard by theGerns:

  "Cliff--you and Sam Anders come here. Tell the rest to fade out of sightand get armed."

  Cliff Schroeder passed the command along and he and Sam Andersapproached. He looked back at the Gerns and saw they were within ahundred feet of the--for them--unscalable wall of the stockade. Theywere coming without hesitation----

  A pale blue beam lashed down from one of the cruiser's turrets and afifty foot section of the wall erupted into dust with a sound likethunder. The wind swept the dust aside in a gigantic cloud and the Gernscame through the gap, looking neither to right nor left.

  "That, I suppose," Sam Anders said from beside him, "was Lesson NumberOne for degenerate savages like us: Gerns, like gods, are not to behindered by man-made barriers."

  The Gerns walked with a peculiar gait that puzzled him until he saw whatit was. They were trying to come with the arrogant military strideaffected by the Gerns and in the 1.5 gravity they were succeeding inachieving only a heavy clumping.

  They advanced steadily and as they drew closer he saw that in the righthand of each Gern soldier was a blaster while in the left hand of eachcould be seen the metallic glitter of chains.

  Schroeder smiled thinly. "It looks like they want to subject about adozen of us to some painful questioning."

  No one else was any longer in sight and the Gerns came straight towardthe three on the steps. They stopped forty feet away at a word ofcommand from the officer and Gerns and Ragnarok men exchanged silentstares; the faces of the Ragnarok men bearded and expressionless, thefaces of the Gerns hairless and reflecting a contemptuous curiosity.

  "Narth!" The communicator on the Gern officer's belt spoke with metallicauthority. "What do they look like? Did we come two hundred light-yearsto view some animated vegetables?"

  "No, Commander," Narth answered. "I think the discard of the Rejects twohundred years ago has produced for us an unexpected reward. There arethree natives under the canopy before me and their physical perfectionand complete adaptation to this hellish gravity is astonishing."

  "They could be used to replace expensive machines on some of the outerworld mines," the commander said, "providing their intelligence isn'ttoo abysmally low. What about that?"

  "They can surely be taught to perform simple manual labor," Narthanswered.

  "Get on with your job," the commander said. "Try to pick some of themost intelligent looking ones for questionin
g--I can't believe thesecattle sent that message and they're going to tell us who did. And picksome young, strong ones for the medical staff to examine--ones thatwon't curl up and die after the first few cuts of the knife."

  "We'll chain these three first," Narth said. He lifted his hand in animperious gesture to Humbolt and the other two and ordered in accentedTerran: "Come here!"

  No one moved and he said again, sharply, _"Come here!"_

  Again no one moved and the minor officer beside Narth said, "Apparentlythey can't even understand Terran now."

  "Then we'll give them some action they can understand," Narth snapped,his face flushing with irritation. "We'll drag them out by their heels!"

  The Gerns advanced purposefully, three of them holstering their blastersto make their chains ready. When they had passed under the canopy andcould not be seen from the ship Humbolt spoke:

  "All right, Jimmy."

  The Gerns froze in midstride, suspicion flashing across their faces.

  "Look up on the roof," he said in Gern.

  They looked, and the suspicion became gaping dismay.

  "You can be our prisoners or you can be corpses," he said. "We don'tcare which."

  The urgent hiss of Narth's command broke their indecision:

  _"Kill them!"_

  Six of them tried to obey, bringing up their blasters in movements thatseemed curiously heavy and slow, as though the gravity of Ragnarok hadturned their arms to wood. Three of them almost lifted their blastershigh enough to fire at the steps in front of them before arrows wentthrough their throats. The other three did not get that far.

  Narth and the remaining six went rigidly motionless and he said to them:

  "Drop your blasters--quick!"

  Their blasters thumped to the ground and Jimmy Stevens and his bowmenslid off the roof. Within a minute the Gerns were bound with their ownchains, but for the officer, and the blasters were in the hands of theRagnarok men.

  Jimmy looked down the row of Gerns and shook his head. "So these areGerns?" he said. "It was like trapping a band of woods goats."

  "Young ones," Schroeder amended. "And almost as dangerous."

  Narth's face flushed at the words and his eyes went to the ship. Thesight of it seemed to restore his courage and his lips drew back in asnarl.

  "You fools--you stupid, megalomaniac dung-heaps--do you think you cankill Gerns and live to boast about it?"

  "Keep quiet," Humbolt ordered, studying him with curiosity. Narth, likeall the Gerns, was different from what they had expected. It was truethe Gerns had strode into their town with an attempt at arrogance butthey were harmless in appearance, soft of face and belly, and thesnarling of the red-faced Narth was like the bluster of a corneredscavenger-rodent.

  "I promise you this," Narth was saying viciously, "if you don't releaseus and return our weapons this instant I'll personally oversee theextermination of you and every savage in this village with the mostpainful death science can contrive and I'll----"

  Humbolt reached out his hand and flicked Narth under the chin. Narth'steeth cracked loudly together and his face twisted with the pain of abitten tongue.

  "Tie him up, Jess," he said to a man near him. "If he opens his mouthagain, shove your foot in it."

  He spoke to Schroeder. "We'll keep three of the blasters and send two toeach of the other front groups. Have that done."

  Dusk was deepening into darkness and he called Chiara again. "They'llturn on their searchlights any minute and make the town as light asday," he said. "If you can keep them blacked out until some of us havereached the ship, I think we'll have won."

  "They'll be kept blacked out," Chiara said. "With some flint-headedarrows left over for the Gerns."

  He called Lake and Craig, to be told they were ready and waiting.

  "But we're having hell keeping the unicorns quiet," Craig said. "Theywant to get to killing something."

  He pressed the switch of the communicator but it was dead. They had, ofcourse, transferred to some other wave length so he could not hear thecommands. It was something he had already anticipated....

  Fenrir and Sigyn were still obediently inside the doorway, almostfrantic with desire to rejoin him. He spoke to them and they boundedout, snarling at three Gerns in passing and causing them to blanch to adead-white color.

  He set Tip on Sigyn's shoulders and said, "Sigyn, there's a job for youand Tip to do. A dangerous job. Listen--both of you...."

  The yellow eyes of Sigyn and the dark eyes of the little mocker lookedinto his as he spoke to them and accompanied his words with thestrongest, clearest mental images he could project:

  "Sigyn, take Tip to the not-men thing. Leave him hidden in the grass toone side of the big hole in it. Tip, you wait there. When the not-mencome out you listen, and tell what they say.

  "Now, do you both understand?"

  Sigyn made a sound that meant she did but Tip clutched at his wrist withlittle paws suddenly gone cold and wailed, "_No!_ Scared--scared----"

  "You have to go, Tip," he said, gently disengaging his wrist. "And Sigynwill hide near to you and watch over you." He spoke to Sigyn. "When thehorn calls you run back with him."

  Again she made the sound signifying understanding and he touched themboth in what he hoped would not be the last farewell.

  "All right, Sigyn--go now."

  She vanished into the gloom of coming night, Tip hanging tightly to her.Fenrir stood with the fur lifted on his shoulders and a half snarl onhis face as he watched her go and watched the place where the not-menwould appear.

  "Where's Freckles?" he asked Jimmy.

  "Here," someone said, and came forward with Tip's mate.

  He set Freckles on his shoulder and the first searchlight came on,shining down from high up on the cruiser. It lighted up the area aroundthem in harsh white brilliance, its reflection revealing the blackshadow that was Sigyn just vanishing behind the ship.

  Two more searchlights came on, to illuminate the town. Then the Gernscame.

  They poured out through the airlock and down the ramp, there to form incolumns that marched forward as still more Gerns hurried down the rampbehind them. The searchlights gleamed on their battle helmets and on theblades of the bayonets affixed to their rifle-like long range blasters.Hand blasters and grenades hung from their belts, together with stubbyflame guns.

  They were a solid mass reaching halfway to the stockade before the lastof them, the commanding officers, appeared. One of them stopped at thefoot of the ramp to watch the advance of the punitive force and give thefrightened but faithful Tip the first words to transmit to Freckles:

  "The full force is on its way, Commander."

  A reply came, in Freckles' simulation of the metallic tones of acommunicator:

  "The key numbers of the confiscated blasters have been checked and thedisturbance rays of the master integrator set. You'll probably have fewnatives left alive to take as prisoners after those thirteen chargesexplode but continue with a mopping up job that the survivors will neverforget."

  _So the Gerns could, by remote control, set the total charges of stolenblasters to explode upon touching the firing stud?_ It was something newsince the days of the Old Ones....

  He called Chiara and the other groups, quickly, to tell them what he hadlearned. "We'll get more blasters--ones they can't know the numbersof--when we attack," he finished.

  He took the blaster from his belt and laid it on the ground. The frontranks of the Gerns were almost to the wall by then, a column wider thanthe gap that had been blasted through it, coming with silentpurposefulness.

  Two blaster beams lanced down from the turrets, to smash at the wall.Dust billowed and thunder rumbled as they swept along. A full threehundred feet of the wall had been destroyed when they stopped and thedust hid the ship and made dim glows of the searchlights.

  It had no doubt been intended to impress them with the might of theGerns but in doing so it hid the Ragnarok forces from the advancingGerns for a few seconds.

  "Jim-
-black out their lights before the dust clears," he called."Joe--the horn! We attack now!"

  The first longbow arrow struck a searchlight and its glow grew dimmer asthe arrow's burden--a thin tube of thick lance tree ink--splatteredagainst it. Another followed----

  Then the horn rang out, harsh and commanding, and in the distance aunicorn screamed in answer. The savage cry of a prowler came, like asound to match, and the attack was on.

  He ran with Fenrir beside him and to his left and right ran the otherswith their prowlers. The lead groups converged as they went through thewide gap in the wall. They ran on, into the dust cloud, and the shadowyforms of the Gerns were suddenly before them.

  A blaster beam cut into them and a Gern shouted, _"The natives!"_ Otherbeams sprang into life, winking like pale blue eyes through the dust andkilling all they touched. The beams dropped as the first volley ofarrows tore through the massed front ranks, to be replaced by others.

  They charged on, into the blue winking of the blasters and the redlances of the flame guns with the crossbows rattling and strumming inanswer. The prowlers lunged and fought beside them and ahead of them;black hell-creatures that struck the Gerns too swiftly for blasters tofind before throats were torn out; the sound of battle turned into aconfusion of raging snarls, frantic shouts and dying screams.

  A prowler shot past him to join Fenrir--Sigyn--and he felt Tip dart upto his shoulder. She made a sound of greeting in passing, a sound thatwas gone as her jaws closed on a Gern.

  The dust cloud cleared a little and the searchlights looked down on thescene; no longer brilliantly white but shining through the red-blacklance tree ink as a blood red glow. A searchlight turret slid shut andopened a moment later, the light wiped clean. The longbows immediatelytransformed it into a red glow.

  The beam of one of the turret blasters stabbed down, to blaze a trail ofdeath through the battle. It ceased as its own light revealed to theGern commander that the Ragnarok forces were so intermixed with the Gernforces that he was killing more Gerns than Ragnarok men.

  By then the fighting was so hand to hand that knives were better thancrossbows. The Gerns fell like harvested corn; too slow and awkward touse their bayonets against the faster Ragnarok men and killing as manyof one another as men when they tried to use their blasters and flameguns. From the rear there came the command of a Gern officer, shoutedhigh and thin above the sound of battle:

  "Back to the ship--leave the natives for the ship's blasters to kill!"

  The unicorns arrived then, to cut off their retreat.

  They came twenty from the east and twenty from the west in a thunder ofhooves, squealing and screaming in their blood lust, with prowlers ablack wave going before them. They struck the Gerns; the prowlersslashing lanes through them while the unicorns charged behind, tramplingthem, ripping into them with their horns and smashing them down withtheir hooves as they vented the pent up rage of their years ofconfinement. On the back of each was a rider whose long spear flickedand stabbed into the throats and bellies of Gerns.

  The retreat was halted and transformed into milling confusion. He ledhis own groups in the final charge, the prearranged wedge attack, andthey split the Gern force in two.

  The ship was suddenly just beyond them.

  He gave the last command to Lake and Craig: "_Now_--into the ship!"

  He scooped up a blaster from beside a fallen Gern and ran toward it. AGern officer was already in the airlock, his face pale and strained ashe looked back and his hand on the closing switch. He shot him and ranup the ramp as the officer's body rolled down it.

  Unicorn hooves pounded behind him and twenty of them swept past, theirriders leaping from their backs to the ramp. Twenty men and fifteenprowlers charged up the ramp as a warning siren shrieked somewhereinside the ship. At the same time the airlocks, operated from thecontrol room, began to slide swiftly shut.

  He was through first, with Fenrir and Sigyn. Lake and Craig, togetherwith six men and four prowlers, squeezed through barely in time. Thenthe airlocks were closed and they were sealed in the ship.

  Alarm bells added their sound to the shrieking of the siren and from themultiple-compartments shafts came the whir of elevators dropping withGern forces to kill the humans trapped inside the ship.

  They ran past the elevator shafts without pausing, light and swift inthe artificial gravity that was only two-thirds that of Ragnarok. Theysplit forces as long ago planned; three men and four prowlers going withCharley Craig in the attempt to take the drive room, Lake and the otherthree men going with him in the attempt to take the control room.

  They found the manway ladder and began to climb, Fenrir and Sigynimpatiently crowding their heels.

  There was nothing on the control room level and they ran down the shortcorridor that their maps had showed. They turned left, into the corridorthat had the control room at its end, and into the concentrated fire ofnine waiting Gerns.

  Fenrir and Sigyn went into the Gerns, under their fire before they coulddrop the muzzles of their blasters, with an attack so vicious andunexpected that what would have been a certain and lethal trap for thehumans was suddenly a fighting chance.

  The corridor became an inferno of blaster beams that cracked and hissedas they met and crossed, throwing little chips of metal from the wallswith snapping sounds and going through flesh with sounds like softtappings. It was over within seconds, the last Gern down and one manstill standing beside him, the blond and nerveless Lake.

  Thomsen and Barber were dead and Billy West was bracing himself againstthe wall with a blaster hole through his stomach, trying to saysomething and sliding to the floor before it was ever spoken.

  And Sigyn was down, blood welling and bubbling from a wound in herchest, while Fenrir stood over her with his snarling a raging scream ashe swung his head in search of a still-living Gern.

  Humbolt and Lake ran on, Fenrir raging beside them, and into the controlroom.

  Six officers, one wearing the uniform of a commander, were gaping inastonishment and bringing up their blasters in the way that seemed socuriously slow to Humbolt. Fenrir, in his fury, killed two of them asLake's blaster and his own killed three more.

  The commander was suddenly alone, his blaster half lifted. Fenrir leapedat his throat and Humbolt shouted the quick command: _"Disarm!"_

  It was something the prowlers had been taught in their training andFenrir's teeth clicked short of the commander's throat while his pawsent the blaster spinning across the room.

  The commander stared at them with his swarthy face a dark gray and hismouth still gaping.

  "How--how did you do it?" he asked in heavily accented Terran. "Only twoof you----"

  "Don't talk until you're asked a question," Lake said.

  "Only two of you...." The thought seemed to restore his courage, assight of the ship had restored Narth's that night, and his tone becamethreatening. "There are only two of you and more guards will be here tokill you within a minute. Surrender to me and I'll let you go free----"

  Lake slapped him across the mouth with a backhanded blow that snappedhis head back on his shoulders and split his lip.

  "Don't talk," he ordered again. "And never lie to us."

  The commander spit out a tooth and held his hand to his bleeding mouth.He did not speak again.

  Tip and Freckles were holding tightly to his shoulder and each other,the racing of their hearts like a vibration, and he touched themreassuringly.

  "All right now--all safe now," he said.

  He called Charley Craig. "Charley--did you make it?"

  "We made it to the drive room--two of us and one prowler," Charleyanswered. "What about you?"

  "Norman and I have the control room. Cut their drives, to play safe.I'll let you know as soon as the entire ship is ours."

  He went to the viewscreen and saw that the battle was over. Chiara wasletting the searchlight burn again and prowlers were being used to driveback the unicorns from the surrendering Gerns.

  "I guess we won," he said to La
ke.

  But there was no feeling of victory, none of the elation he had thoughthe would have. Sigyn was dying alone in the alien corridor outside.Sigyn, who had nursed beside him and fought beside him and laid down herlife for him....

  "I want to look at her," he said to Lake.

  Fenrir went with him. She was still alive, waiting for them to come backto her. She lifted her head and touched his hand with her tongue as heexamined the wound.

  It was not fatal--it need not be fatal. He worked swiftly, gently, tostop the bleeding that had been draining her life away. She would haveto lie quietly for weeks but she would recover.

  When he was done he pressed her head back to the floor and said, "Liestill, Sigyn girl, until we can come to move you. Wait for us and Fenrirwill stay here with you."

  She obeyed and he left them, the feeling of victory and elation comingto him in full then.

  Lake looked at him questioningly as he entered the control room and hesaid, "She'll live."

  He turned to the Gern commander. "First, I want to know how the war isgoing?"

  "I----" The commander looked uncertainly at Lake.

  "Just tell the truth," Lake said. "Whether you think we'll like it ornot."

  "We have all the planets but Earth, itself," the commander said. "We'llhave it, soon."

  "And the Terrans on Athena?"

  "They're still--working for us there."

  "Now," he said, "you will order every Gern in this ship to go to hissleeping quarters. They will leave their weapons in the corridorsoutside and they will not resist the men who will come to take charge ofthe ship."

  The commander made an effort toward defiance:

  _"And if I refuse?"_

  Lake answered, smiling at him with the smile of his that was no morethan a quick showing of teeth and with the savage eagerness in his eyes.

  "If you refuse I'll start with your fingers and break every bone toyour shoulders. If that isn't enough I'll start with your toes and go toyour hips. And then I'll break your back."

  The commander hesitated, sweat filming his face as he looked at them.Then he reached out to switch on the all-stations communicator and sayinto it:

  "Attention, all personnel: You will return to your quarters at once,leaving your weapons in the corridors. You are ordered to make noresistance when the natives come...."

  There was a silence when he had finished and Humbolt and Lake looked ateach other, bearded and clad in animal skins but standing at last in thecontrol room of a ship that was theirs: in a ship that could take themto Athena, to Earth, to the ends of the galaxy.

  The commander watched them, on his face the blankness of unwillingnessto believe.

  "The airlocks--" he said. "We didn't close them in time. We neverthought you would dare try to take the ship--not savages in animalskins."

  "I know," Humbolt answered. "We were counting on you to think that way."

  "No one expected any of you to survive here." The commander wiped at hisswollen lips, wincing, and an almost child-like petulance came into histone. "You weren't supposed to survive."

  "I know," he said again. "We've made it a point to remember that."

  "The gravity, the heat and cold and fever, the animals--why didn't theykill you?"

  "They tried," he said. "But we fought back. And we had a goal--to meetyou Gerns again. You left us on a world that had no resources. Onlyenemies who would kill us--the gravity, the prowlers, the unicorns. Sowe made them our resources. We adapted to the gravity that was supposedto kill us and became stronger and quicker than Gerns. We made allies ofthe prowlers and unicorns who were supposed to be our executioners andused them tonight to help us kill Gerns. So now we have your ship."

  "Yes ... you have our ship." Through the unwillingness to believe on thecommander's face and the petulance there came the triumph of vindictiveanticipation. "The savages of Ragnarok have a Gern cruiser--but what canthey do with it?"

  "What can we do with it?" he asked, almost kindly. "We've planned fortwo hundred years what we can do with it. We have the cruiser and sixtydays from now we'll have Athena. That will be only the beginning and youGerns are going to help us do it."

  * * * * *

  For six days the ship was a scene of ceaseless activity. Men crowded it,asking questions of the Gern officers and crew and calmly breaking thebones of those who refused to answer or who gave answers that were nottrue. Prowlers stalked the corridors, their cold yellow eyes watchingevery move the Gerns made. The little mockers began roaming the ship atwill, unable any longer to restrain their curiosity and confident thatthe men and prowlers would not let the Gerns harm them.

  One mocker was killed then; the speckle-faced mocker that could repeatmessages verbatim. It wandered into a storage cubicle where a Gern wasworking alone and gave him the opportunity to safely vent his hatred ofeverything associated with the men of Ragnarok. He broke its back with asteel bar and threw it, screaming, into the disposal chute that led tothe matter converter. A prowler heard the scream and an instant laterthe Gern screamed; a sound that died in its making as the prowler torehis throat out. No more mockers were harmed.

  One Ragnarok boy was killed. Three fanatical Gern officers stole knivesfrom the galley and held the boy as hostage for their freedom. Whentheir demands were refused they cut his heart out. Lake cornered them afew minutes later and, without touching his blaster, disemboweled themwith their own knives. He smiled down upon them as they writhed andmoaned on the floor and their moans were heard for a long time by theother Gerns in the ship before they died. No more humans were harmed.

  They discovered that operation of the cruiser was relatively simple,basically similar to the operation of Terran ships as described in thetext book the original Lake had written. Most of the operations wereperformed by robot mechanisms and the manual operations, geared to theslower reflexes of the Gerns, were easily mastered.

  They could spend the forty-day voyage to Athena in further learning andpractice so on the sixth day they prepared to depart. The unicorns hadbeen given the freedom they had fought so well for and reconnaissancevehicles were loaned from the cruiser to take their place. Later therewould be machinery and supplies of all kinds brought in by freighterships from Athena.

  Time was precious and there was a long, long job ahead of them. Theyblasted up from Ragnarok on the morning of the seventh day and went intothe black sea of hyperspace.

  By then the Gern commander was no longer of any value to them. Hisunwillingness to believe that savages had wrested his ship from him hadincreased until his compartment became his control room to him and hespent the hours laughing and giggling before an imaginary viewscreenwhereon the cruiser's blasters were destroying, over and over, theRagnarok town and all the humans in it.

  But Narth, who had wanted to have them tortured to death for daring toresist capture, became very cooperative. In the control room hiscooperation was especially eager. On the twentieth day of the voyagethey let him have what he had been trying to gain by subterfuge: accessto the transmitter when no men were within hearing distance.

  After that his manner abruptly changed. Each day his hatred for them andhis secret anticipation became more evident.

  The thirty-fifth day came, with Athena five days ahead of them--the dayof the execution they had let him arrange for them.

  * * * * *

  Stars filled the transdimensional viewscreen, the sun of Athena in thecenter. Humbolt watched the space to the lower left and the flicker cameagain; a tiny red dot that was gone again within a microsecond, soquickly that Narth in the seat beside him did not see it.

  It was the quick peek of another ship; a ship that was running invisiblewith its detector screens up but which had had to drop them for aninstant to look out at the cruiser. Not even the Gerns had ever beenable to devise a polarized detector screen.

  He changed the course and speed of the cruiser, creating an increase ingravity which seemed very slight to him but whic
h caused Narth to slewheavily in his seat. Narth straightened and he said to him:

  "Within a few minutes we'll engage the ship you sent for."

  Narth's jaw dropped, then came back up. "So you spied on me?"

  "One of our Ragnarok allies did--the little animal that was sitting nearthe transmitter. They're our means of communication. We learned that youhad arranged for a ship, en route to Athena, to intercept us and captureus."

  "So you know?" Narth asked. He smiled, an unpleasant twisting of hismouth. "Do you think that knowing will help you any?"

  "We expect it to," he answered.

  "It's a battleship," Narth said. "It's three times the size of thiscruiser, the newest and most powerful battleship in the Gern fleet. Howdoes that sound to you?"

  "It sounds good," he said. "We'll make it our flagship."

  "Your flagship--your _'flagship'_!" The last trace of pretense leftNarth and he let his full and rankling hatred come through. "You gotthis cruiser by trickery and learned how to operate it after a fashionbecause of an animal-like reflex abnormality. For forty-two days youaccidental mutants have given orders to your superiors and thought youwere our equals. Now, your fool's paradise is going to end."

  The red dot came again, closer, and he once more altered the ship'scourse. He had turned on the course analyzer and it clicked as thebattleship's position was correlated with that of its previousappearance. A short yellow line appeared on the screen to forecast itscourse for the immediate future.

  "And then?" he asked curiously, turning back to Narth.

  "And then we'll take all of you left alive back to your village. Thescenes of what we do to you and your village will be televised to allGern-held worlds. It will be a valuable reminder for any who haveforgotten the penalty for resisting Gerns."

  The red dot came again. He punched the BATTLE STATIONS button and theboard responded with a row of READY lights.

  "All the other Gerns are by now in their acceleration couches," he said."Strap yourself in for high acceleration maneuvers--we'll make contactwith the battleship within two minutes."

  Narth did so, taking his time as though it was something of littleimportance. "There will be no maneuvers. They'll blast the stern anddestroy your drive immediately upon attack."

  He fastened the last strap and smiled, taunting assurance in the twistedunpleasantness of it. "The appearance of this battleship has very muchdisrupted your plans to strut like conquering heroes among the slaves onAthena, hasn't it?"

  "Not exactly," Humbolt replied. "Our plans are a little broader in scopethan that. There are two new cruisers on Athena, ready to leave theshops ten days from now. We'll turn control of Athena over to the humansthere, of course, then we'll take the three cruisers and the battleshipback by way of Ragnarok. There we'll pick up all the Ragnarok men whoare neither too old nor too young and go on to Earth. They will be giventraining en route in the handling of ships. We expect to find nodifficulty in breaking through the Gern lines around Earth and then,with the addition of the Earth ships, we can easily capture all the Gernships in the solar system."

  "'Easily'!" Narth made a contemptuous sneer of the word. "Were youactually so stupid as to think that you biological freaks could equalGern officers who have made a career of space warfare?"

  "We'll far exceed them," he said. "A space battle is one of trying tokeep your blaster beams long enough on one area of the enemy ship tobreak through its blaster shields at that point. And at the same timetry to move and dodge fast enough to keep the enemy from doing the samething to you. The ships are capable of accelerations up to fiftygravities or more but the acceleration limitator is the safeguard thatprevents the ship from going into such a high degree of acceleration orinto such a sudden change of direction that it would kill the crew.

  "We from Ragnarok are accustomed to a one point five gravity and canwithstand much higher degrees of acceleration than Gerns or any otherrace from a one gravity world. To enable us to take advantage of thatfact we have had the acceleration limitator on this cruiserdisconnected."

  _"Disconnected?"_ Narth's contemptuous regard vanished in franticconsternation. "You fool--you don't know what that means--_you'll movethe acceleration lever too far and kill us all!_"

  The red dot flicked on the viewscreen, trembled, and was suddenly agigantic battleship in full view. He touched the acceleration controland Narth's next words were cut off as his diaphragm sagged. He swungthe cruiser in a curve and Narth was slammed sideways, the strapscutting into him and the flesh of his face pulled lopsided by thegravity. His eyes, bulging, went blank with unconsciousness.

  The powerful blasters of the battleship blossomed like a row of paleblue flowers, concentrating on the stern of the cruiser. A warning sirenscreeched as they started breaking through the cruiser's shields. Hedropped the detector screen that would shield the cruiser from sight,but not from the blaster beams, and tightened the curve until thegravity dragged heavily at his own body.

  The warning siren stopped as the blaster beams of the battleship wentharmlessly into space, continuing to follow the probability courseplotted from the cruiser's last visible position and course by thebattleship's robot target tracers.

  He lifted the detector screen, to find the battleship almost exactlywhere the cruiser's course analyzers had predicted it would be. Theblasters of the battleship were blazing their full concentration offirepower into an area behind and to one side of the cruiser.

  They blinked out at sight of the cruiser in its new position and blazedagain a moment later, boring into the stern. He dropped the detectorscreen and swung the cruiser in another curve, spiraling in the oppositedirection. As before, the screech of the alarm siren died as thebattleship's blasters followed the course given them by course analyzersand target tracers that were built to presume that all enemy ships wereacceleration-limitator equipped.

  The cruiser could have destroyed the battleship at any time--but theywanted to capture their flagship unharmed. The maneuvering continued,the cruiser drawing closer to the battleship. The battleship, indesperation, began using the same hide-and-jump tactics the cruiser usedbut it was of little avail--the battleship moved at known accelerationlimits and the cruiser's course analyzers predicted each new positionwith sufficient accuracy.

  The cruiser made its final dash in a tightening spiral, its detectorscreen flickering on and off. It struck the battleship at a matchedspeed, with a thump and ringing of metal as the magnetic grapplesfastened the cruiser like a leech to the battleship's side.

  In that position neither the forward nor stern blasters of thebattleship could touch it. There remained only to convince the commanderof the battleship that further resistance was futile.

  This he did with a simple ultimatum to the commander:

  "This cruiser is firmly attached to your ship, its accelerationlimitator disconnected. Its drives are of sufficient power to thrustboth ships forward at a much higher degree of acceleration than personsfrom one-gravity worlds can endure. You will surrender at once or weshall be forced to put these two ships into a curve of such short radiusand at an acceleration so great that all of you will be killed."

  Then he added, "If you surrender we'll do somewhat better by you thanyou did with the humans two hundred years ago--we'll take all of you onto Athena."

  The commander, already sick from an acceleration that would have beennegligible to Ragnarok men, had no choice.

  His reply came, choked with acceleration sickness and the greatersickness of defeat:

  "We will surrender."

  * * * * *

  Narth regained consciousness. He saw Humbolt sitting beside him asbefore, with no Gern rescuers crowding into the control room withshouted commands and drawn blasters.

  "Where are they?" he asked. "Where is the battleship?"

  "We captured it," he said.

  "You captured--a Gern battleship?"

  "It wasn't hard," he said. "It would have been easier if only Ragnarokmen had been on the cruis
er. We didn't want to accelerate to any highergravities than absolutely necessary because of the Gerns on it."

  "You did it--you captured the battleship," Narth said, his tone like onedazed.

  He wet his lips, staring, as he contemplated the unpleasant implicationsof it.

  "You're freak mutants who can capture a battleship. Maybe you will takeAthena and Earth from us. But"--the animation of hatred returned to hisface--"What good will it do you? Did you ever think about that?"

  "Yes," he said. "We've thought about it."

  "Have you?" Narth leaned forward, his face shining with the malice ofhis gloating. "You can never escape the consequences of what you havedone. The Gern Empire has the resources of dozens of worlds. The Empirewill build a fleet of special ships, a force against which your own willbe nothing, and send them to Earth and Athena and Ragnarok. The Empirewill smash you for what you have done and if there are any survivors ofyour race left they will cringe before Gerns for a hundred generationsto come.

  "Remember that while you're posturing in your little hour of glory onAthena and Earth."

  "You insist in thinking we'll do as Gerns would do," he said. "We won'tdelay to do any posturing. We'll have a large fleet when we leave Earthand we'll go at once to engage the Gern home fleet. I thought you knewwe were going to do that. We're going to cripple and capture your fleetand then we're going to destroy your empire."

  "Destroy the Empire--_now_?" Narth stared again, all the gloating goneas he saw, at last, the quick and inexorable end. "Now--before we canstop you--before we can have a chance?"

  "When a race has been condemned to die by another race and it fights andstruggles and manages somehow to survive, it learns a lesson. It learnsit must never again let the other race be in position to destroy it. Sothis is the harvest you reap from the seeds you sowed on Ragnarok twohundred years ago.

  "You understand, don't you?" he asked, almost gently. "For two hundredyears the Gern Empire has been a menace to our survival as a race. Now,the time has come when we shall remove it."

  * * * * *

  He stood in the control room of the battleship and watched Athena's sunin the viewscreen, blazing like a white flame. Sigyn, fully recovered,was stretched out on the floor near him; twitching and snarling a littlein her sleep as she fought again the battle with the Gerns. Fenrir waspacing the floor, swinging his black, massive head restlessly, while Tipand Freckles were examining with fascinated curiosity the collection ofbright medals that had been cleaned out of the Gern commander's desk.

  Lake and Craig left their stations, as impatient as Fenrir, and cameover to watch the viewscreen with him.

  "One day more," Craig said. "We're two hundred years late but we'recoming in to the world that was to have been our home."

  "It can never be, now," he said. "Have any of us ever thought ofthat--that we're different to humans and there's no human world we couldever call home?"

  "I've thought of it," Lake said. "Ragnarok made us different physicallyand different in the way we think. We could live on human worlds--butwe would always be a race apart and never really belong there."

  "I suppose we've all thought about it," Craig said. "And wondered whatwe'll do when we're finished with the Gerns. Not settle down on Athenaor Earth, in a little cottage with a fenced-in lawn where it would beadventure to watch the Three-D shows after each day at some safe,routine job."

  "Not back to Ragnarok," Lake said. "With metals and supplies from otherworlds they'll be able to do a lot there but the battle is already won.There will be left only the peaceful development--building a town at theequator for Big Winter, leveling land, planting crops. We could never besatisfied with that kind of a life."

  "No," he said, and felt his own restlessness stir in protest at thethought of settling down in some safe and secure environment. "NotAthena or Earth or Ragnarok--not any world we know."

  "How long until we're finished with the Gerns?" Lake asked. "Ten years?We'll still be young then. Where will we go--all of us who fought theGerns and all of the ones in the future who won't want to live out theirlives on Ragnarok? Where is there a place for us--a world of our own?"

  "Where do we find a world of our own?" he asked, and watched the starclouds creep toward them in the viewscreen; tumbled and blazing andimmense beyond conception.

  "There's a galaxy for us to explore," he said. "There are millions ofsuns and thousands of worlds waiting for us. Maybe there are races outthere like the Gerns--and maybe there are races such as we were ahundred years ago who need our help. And maybe there are worlds outthere with things on them such as no man ever imagined.

  "We'll go, to see what's there. Our women will go with us and there willbe some worlds on which some of us will want to stay. And, always, therewill be more restless ones coming from Ragnarok. Out there are theworlds and the homes for all of us."

  "Of course," Lake said. "Beyond the space frontier ... where else wouldwe ever belong?"

  It was all settled, then, and there was a silence as the battleshipplunged through hyperspace, the cruiser running beside her and theirdrives moaning and thundering as had the drives of the _Constellation_two hundred years before.

  A voyage had been interrupted then, and a new race had been born. Nowthey were going on again, to Athena, to Earth, to the farthest reachesof the Gern Empire. And on, to the wild, unknown regions of spacebeyond.

  There awaited their worlds and there awaited their destiny; to be a racescattered across a hundred thousand light-years of suns, to be an empiresuch as the galaxy had never known.

  They, the restless ones, the unwanted and forgotten, the survivors.

  THE END