The Fugitive Worlds (22 page)

Steenameert's eyes, peering from the horizontal slit be
tween his scarf and the edge of his hood, gave no indication
that anything out of the ordinary was happening, but Toller
was suddenly struck by the fantastic import of his own words.
His hand dropped of its own accord to the hilt of his sword as he realized that his entire being was awash with dread.

Even as he was first hearing of Vantara's disappearance
there had been born in him the sickening fear that she was

dead. He had refused to acknowledge that fear, driving it out of his mind with manufactured optimism and the demanding activities of the hurriedly-mounted rescue expedition. But new elements had been added to the situation —bizarre, monstrous and inexplicable new elements—and it was impossible to see how they could bode anything but ill.

The six wooden structures were known collectively as the Inner Defense Group—a name which had clung to them since the days of the interplanetary war although it had long since lost all relevance.

Toller and Steenameert had located the group on the Overland side of the ice barrier and about two miles out from the alien station. Taking his ship in a wide curve, Toller had approached the wooden cylinders very cautiously from an outer direction, keeping them between him and the mysterious angular outline. He had chosen the course with a tenuous hope of avoiding detection by alien eyes, although it was purely an assumption that the metallic construct housed living beings. It appeared to be embedded in the crystalline barrier, and when viewed through his powerful glasses had something of the look of a vast and lifeless machine— an incomprehensible engine which had been placed in the weightless zone to carry out some incomprehensible task on behalf of equally incomprehensible builders.

And now, as his ship nudged to within a furlong of the cylinders, Toller was developing the conviction that they were empty. They were nestling against the underside of the frozen sea, apparently held in place by slim girdles of crystal which had grown around them. Four of the cylinders were habitats and stores, and two longer versions were functional copies of the spaceship which had once flown to Farland, but they all had one thing in common—the appearance of lifelessness.

If Vantara and her crew had been waiting within any of the wooden shells they would surely have been maintaining a watch and by this time would have signaled to the approaching skyship. But there was no sign of activity. All the portholes remained uniformly dark, and the hulls obstinately remained what they had been since Toller first saw them— inert relics of years long gone.

"Are we going to go inside?" Steenameert said.

Toller nodded. "We have to—it is expected of us— but. . . ." His throat closed up painfully, forcing him to pause for a moment. "You can see for yourself that nobody is there."

"I'm sorry, sir."

"Thanks." Toller glanced at the strange alien edifice which projected from the icecap far to his left. "If that had been an aerial palace—as I so foolishly surmised—or even a fortress, I could have clung to some shred of hope that they had taken refuge in it. I would even have preferred to imagine them as the captives of invaders from another star—but the thing looks like nothing more than a great block of iron . . . an
engine
. . . Vantara could have seen no prospect of a haven there."

"Except. ..."

"Goon, Baten."

"Except in a case of the utmost desperation." Steenameert had begun to speak quickly, as though fearful of having his ideas dismissed. "We don't know how wide the ice barrier was when the Countess reached it, but if she did so in the hours of darkness—and there was a collision which disabled her ship—she would have been on the Land side of the barrier. The
wrong
side, sir. It would have been impossible to locate or reach our own vessels, and under those circumstances the . . . engine could have seemed a likely place to shelter. After all, sir, it is certainly large enough, and there may be hatches or doors leading to its interior, and—"

"That's good!" Toller cut in as the darkness in his mind suddenly began to abate. "And I'll tell you something else!

I have been treating this whole affair as though the Countess were an ordinary woman, but nothing could be further from the truth. We have been talking about an accidental collision, but there may not have been one. If Vantara had chanced to see the alien engine from afar she would have taken it upon herself to investigate it!

"She and her crew could be watching us through some vent at this very minute. Or . . . they might have spent some days exploring the machine and then have decided to return to Land. They could have passed us unseen as we were ascending with the commissioner—such things can easily happen. Don't you agree that such things can easily happen?"

The tentative way in which Steenameert nodded in assent told Toller something he already knew—that he was allowing the pendulum of his emotions to swing too far—but the black despair he had begun to feel had to be staved off as long as possible, and by any means available. In the unexpected upsurge of hope it mattered little to him that his reactions were immature, that the
real
Toller Maraquine would have acted differently—he had been restored to the universe of light and was determined to remain in it as long as possible.

Now keyed up to a state in which he had to undertake some physical action, his system thrumming with emotional energy. Toller grinned fiercely at Steenameert. "Don't just sit there fiddling with the controls—we have work to do!"

They fully inverted the ship and shut down the jet, letting the vessel coast to a gentle halt only fifty yards from the nearest of the wooden cylinders. The gondola's landing legs actually came in contact with the barrier's glowing surface, which at close range proved to be highly uneven—a haphazard mass of man-sized crystals. Most of them appeared to be hexagonal in cross-section, but others were circular or square, and many displayed feathery interior patterns of pale violet. The overall effect was visually stunning—a seemingly endless vista of unearthly beauty and brilliance.

Toller and Steenameert strapped on their personal propul
sion units and made an inspection tour of the six cylinders.
As expected, they were empty except for the provisions which had been stored against an emergency which had
never come. The shells, with their varnished timbers and
reinforcement bands of black iron, were colder and more
silent than tombs. Toller was glad he had satisfied himself in
advance that Vantara and her crew were elsewhere, other
wise the opening and investigating of each darkly brooding
hull would have been an unbearable experience.

Towards the end of the tour he was struck by the fact that,
although the crystals of the barrier had indeed extended
themselves downwards to encompass the cylinders, they had
done so in a very sparing fashion. Instead of completely
engulfing the wooden hulls, as would have seemed natural
to Toller, they had encircled each with only a narrow and
spiky growth. It was something he might have puzzled over
had his thoughts not been fully occupied with what lay ahead.

When the formal search had been completed, he and Steenameert—riding on plumes of white condensation—
returned to their ship and collected from it seven parachutes
and seven failbags, which they stored in the nearest of
the habitats. Toller had insisted on bringing the survival
equipment in case something catastrophic should happen
to the skyship's balloon while maneuvering close to the
crystalline spikes of the barrier.

With the bags and parachutes at hand he and Steenameert,
and any others they might rescue, were rendered independent of their skyship as far as descending to Overland was
concerned. Protected from slipstream's deadly chill by the
fleecy wombs of the failbags, they could drop for more
than a day and a night towards the planetary surface, only
deploying the parachutes for the last few thousand feet of the descent. Daunting though the prospect might seem to
die uninitiated, in all the years it had been in use the system
had resulted in only one death—that of an experienced messenger who, it was thought, had fallen so deeply asleep

that he had not roused himself in time to emerge from the fallbag and open his parachute.

Leaving their ship hanging in the inverted position, Toller and Steenameert began the strange two-mile flight to the huge alien artifact. Their jet units carried them at walking pace below a fantastic, glittering ceiling of giant crystals which appeared to have grown at random, except that at widely spaced intervals there were flatter areas in which the crystals were packed in what looked like orderly ranks, and in which the faint violet patterns within were more evident.

As the structure ahead expanded to fill more of his vision Toller began to revise his opinion that it was merely a lifeless engine. Here and there on the metallic surface he could see what seemed to be portholes, and there were hatches which had the size and proportions of doorways. The thought that Vantara might be at one of the portholes and watching his approach added to the heady excitement which suffused his system. At last, after a lifetime of waiting, he was taking part in an adventure which could stand comparison with the exploits which had studded his grandfather's career.

On reaching the nearest edge of the artifact he saw that it was rimmed with a single metal rail supported by slim posts which could easily have been made in a foundry on Overland. The sea of crystals abutted the perimeter of the artifact with no discernible gap. Toller shut down his jet and brought himself to a halt by gripping the rail. Steenameert arrived at his side a moment later.

"This is obviously a handrail," Toller said. "I fancy we are about to meet travelers from another star."

Steenameert's face was all but hidden by his scarf, but his eyes were wide with wonder. "I hope they bear no ill will towards trespassers. Anybody who can loft a redoubt like this into the sky. ..."

Toller nodded thoughtfully as he surveyed the structure and saw that it was at least half a mile across. He and Steenameert were perched at the edge of a flat area the size
of a large parade ground, beyond which a central tower-like
extrusion projected a hundred feet or more into the chilled
air. As Toller studied it his senses made an adjustment and suddenly he was no longer "beneath" a fantastic landscape.
In his new orientation he was looking across a plain towards a strange castle, and the great disk of Overland was directly
overhead. Far off to his right was a cluster of curved, tapering
poles—like giant reeds sculpted in steel—and as he watched
a cold green fire began to flicker around their tips. The phenomenon served as a reminder that he was venturing far
beyond the limits of his people's understanding.

"We have nothing to gain by waiting here," he said briskly,
fending off an unwelcome surge of doubt and timidity. "Are
you ready to. . . ?"

He broke off, shocked into silence, as from behind him
came a sudden and unexpected sound. It was a hissing noise and a continuous crackling noise merged into one, like dried
leaves and twigs being consumed in a fierce blaze. Toller
tried to spin around, but panic and the absence of gravity combined to thwart his intention. He only succeeded in
thrashing helplessly for a few seconds, and by the time he
had used the handrail to steady himself it was too late—the
trap had been sprung.

A sparkling globe composed of fist-sized crystals had grown
up around him and his companion with breath-stopping
speed, enclosing them in a spherical prison some six paces
in diameter.

It had extruded itself from the greater crystals of the frozen
sea and part of its lower edge was molded and attached to
the metal of the alien station. The glittering material of it
encompassed a section of the handrail to which the two men
were clinging. Toller and Steenameert gaped at each other
for a moment, faces contorted with shock, then Toller pulled
off one of his gloves and touched the inner surface of the sphere. It was as cold as ice, and yet remained dry under his
fingertips.