Return - Book III of the Five Worlds Trilogy (13 page)

“Yes…”

And then, in his head, Dalin heard, You must hurry. We can only hold it for a short time longer.

Shaking off his grogginess, Dalin looked evenly at Erik and nodded. “Yes,” he said with certainty.

A
n hour later they were in orbit, ready to rendezvous with Shatz Abel, whose grinning face filled the communications Screen of Dalin’s ship.

“Boy! I thought we’d said our last to each other!”

“So did I,” the king responded; and then his attention was drawn away from the Screen by a voice in his head:

We must go now, the Calling is over. We will meet with you again … .

“When?” Dalin said out loud.

When it is time, the voice said, and then, Dalin knew, it was gone.

“Dalin?” Shatz Abel was saying; his face on the Screen was filled with concern. “What is it, boy?”

Dalin regarded him with a puzzled look. “Something … but I’m not sure what. Remember the goblin on Pluto?”

The pirate’s face filled with primitive alarm. “What?”

Dalin tried not to laugh. “Never mind, for the moment. What’s our next move?”

The pirate’s look turned to one of satisfaction. “The cloaking device we … borrowed from Europa was made for one of Cornelian’s huge plasma generators and will cover almost the entire fleet in tight formation. My own ship and a couple of the other military boats will scatter and scout ahead. As I told you before, Sire, there’s nothing to stop us from getting to Venus now. Once we’re there, it’ll be a different matter, I’m sure. There will be a fight, sooner rather than later.”

“Venus…”

“Yes, Sire. Venus is our new home. The one we fight for. With what that damnable insect Cornelian has done to Earth, it won’t be habitable for a hundred years or more.”

“Maybe our children can bring it back …”

“If we live to have ’em,” the pirate said, with a gruff laugh.

“Yes …”

“By the way, Sire, in my rage I’m afraid I took care of that Plutonian ship. It was filled with Martians, just as I thought it would be. And I’m afraid I won’t have quite as much ammunition stores as I should have left for our present venture. I … went a bit overboard on it.”

“I understand.”

“Thank you, Sire. Till Venus, then.”

“Till Venus.”

The Screen went blank, and Dalin continued to stare at it for a few moments, before turning to wander back to one of the transport’s side ports.

In the near view, the remains of the Plutonian transport were sliding by, adrift in space, its oblong shape stood gutted and burned from stem to stern. Not one section looked as though it had escaped Shatz Abel’s rage.

Dalin turned his gaze from it.

And there, receding in the view, was the blue-brown ball of Earth, which up until a few hours ago had been not only his home, but his future. His people’s future. Even the dun??? and blackened lines of the Lost Lands had held promise, for they had seen their worst days and, with help, would have seen better. Now all of that was only memory, as the deadly snow of Puppet Death settled over the globe. Until the unstoppable virus burned out, it would affect nearly all life, twisting it into its grotesque shape, and Dalin felt a pang for the poor mutant beings that still roamed the Lost Lands, and even now were no doubt writhing or dying under the influence of the dreaded disease. Dalin thought he could see the faint sparkle of the falling death as it settled toward the surface of the area where he had recently waited for destruction. The area was faintly triangular in shape.

“We’ve indications that the shield that saved us is gone,” Erik remarked, joining the king at the window.

“It seems to have settled to Earth, along with the virus.”

“Do we know what it was?”

“Some sort of faint energy field.”

“That’s all? Just an energy field?”

“Yes.”

“Strange,” Dalin said.

“Yes, very strange.”

Dalin continued to stare at the damaged blue globe, until Erik finally added, “Sire, are you all right?”

“Yes,” Dalin whispered, continuing to stare. “I’m just saying good-bye.”

“To Earth?”

Without even realizing that he had said it, the king added, “To many things.”

Chapter 17

I
t was strange for Kay Free to be within a life-form again.

Especially one in the process of dying.

She could tell that the others were not enjoying the experience, either. Mel Sent was full of complaints, and Pel Front had regained his usual demeanor, one of churlish arrogance, which he especially reserved for Mel Sent. The two were like oil and water—well, not exactly, but that was a human term that applied.

“Life—now, there’s an interesting thing,” Pel Front said, the lips of his life-form, a half-man, half-vegetable mutant with leaves of translucent skin, curling in agony as Pel Front spoke. The creature writhed on the ground, in the throes of blindness and worse.

Immediately, Mel Sent, whose own choice had been a volelike thing with two heads and goggling eyes, spat, “You’ve said that before!”

“Yes, and meant it! But this time, it was meant with irony, not reflection. Not that you would know the difference!”

Kay Free was filled with a mixture of feelings, not the least satisfaction that her compatriots were back to their old selves. Perhaps it had been the inaction that had so disabled them all; but she knew it was deeper than that, and that this elation they all felt at the Calling might be only temporary. After all, look at where they were now.

Her own creature, a large, flat, round, tea-colored life-form symbiotically attached to the bole of an expiring tree, felt not only its own pain but that of its host. To Kay Free the experience was doubly unpleasant.

“This is not an affable world,” she said.

“Not in the least!” Mel Sent huffed. “Even without this disease, I would have passed it by. If you’ll remember, it was at my urging that we sampled the system’s life-forms on the second planet, not this or any of the others.”

“And left them as dead as we’ll leave these,” Pel Front sniped.

“That was inevitable,” Kay Free said, recalling with sadness their introduction to the system’s creatures, on Venus; she especially remembered Mel Sent’s majestic whale, its mammoth body at ease like a dancer in the depths of a burgeoning Venusian sea.

“Yes, as will this be,” Pel Front said, his tone less haughty when addressing Kay Free. “I can only hope that this will be over soon!” His life-form, in the throes of Puppet Death, pronounced the word as a whistling screech of pain.

“Strange, to have one with vocal ability, even though its brain is primitive,” Pel Front remarked, letting the creature have its own voice back to wail as its rubbery body began to twist into horrid shapes, nearly back on itself. “I don’t like this,” he appended testily.

“Mother thought it important that we experience death, as well as life,” Kay Free said.

“And I do hope Mother is all right!” Mel Sent blurted.

“I’m sure she is—” Kay Free began, but was interrupted by a cry from Mel Sent.

“Oh! This one is dying! I can feel it!”

In confirmation, the two-headed vole began to shake violently, and its bulging eyes burst outward as the body collapsed sideways, twisted into a circle on the ground, and lay still.

“That was horrid!” Mel Sent wailed, hovering, a bar of pure energy, above the dead thing.

Kay Free’s own life-form suddenly peeled away from the tree it had been parasitically habitating and rolled up into a tube, its tea coloring turning brackish; in an instant, Kay Free was above it, studying it sadly.

Pel Front’s entity gave a last wail of pain and lay still, its leaved skin draining of color and then turning brittle. Pel Front left as pieces of leaf began to flake off.

“Isn’t it best we go?” he said, a bit shaken. “Their expiration is quite … upsetting.”

“I wish Mother were here!” Mel Sent cried.

“Mother knew we had to experience this alone,” Kay Free said. With that she rose, and the others followed.

Kay Free paused high in the atmosphere, and regarded the planet below for a moment. “It’s ugly now,” she said, “and all but dead. But you can see where it once was beautiful.” She beheld the South China Sea, its waters lapping against blackened soil; its waves were now dotted with the floating carcasses of fish exposed to the Puppet Death.

“I wonder if he could have made it fertile again,” said Pel Front. “It must have once been like the second planet.”

“Very much like it,” Kay Free said. “But the second planet is where they will live or die, now. We must wait to see what they do there.”

“I want to leave!” Mel Sent said, giving something like a shiver.

“Yes, we must leave, and wait. I think I want to be alone again until this is over. Out beyond the last world, facing away from the star. There are things I need to contemplate.”

“Don’t think me too rude, but I must go immediately,” Pel Front said, speeding away; Mel Sent, too, took her leave, in the opposite direction.

Kay Free paused, a shimmer of inanimate energy—in effect, an energy machine. And yet, she felt something very close to other emotions: sadness, grief, dread.

She shimmered sideways and sensed a dot of light larger than the surrounding stars. The second planet. This she regarded for a moment, before speeding off to a place well beyond the Kuiper Belt of cometary material, and yet farther, altogether out of the system of worlds she had been sent to. She sped until the star behind her, and its attendant worlds, were tiny specks, nearly forgotten in the background of other stars surrounded by other worlds. She sped until her directive made her stop, and then she faced outward, away from the star and its tiny specks behind her.

The sense that filled her which was something like desolation was complete, and Kay Free herself, as had Mel Sent, gave something like a shiver.

She thought of the one who had given them the Calling—and still she would not turn to look back

She would wait here, alone, empty, until it was time.

We can help you no more
, she thought; and her thought reached back, through the desolate space, to the one who had called them.
Now you must help us
.

Chapter 18

V
isid Sneaden considered it a game.

Light soldiers were stupid: this she knew for a fact. They only reacted to direct stimuli—that is, movement; they could detect, and, to a lesser degree, radiant heat.

So … dress oneself in, for instance, a suit made of aluminum foil, don’t move—and you’ve beaten them!

This was only one of the mind puzzles that occupied Visid when she wasn’t working. Which wasn’t often, lately, since, after their brush with death at Sacajawea Patera, she and Benel had been forced to move their lab to a safer spot in the mountains. In effect, Benel had gotten his cave after all, though once Visid had finished outfitting it, it looked like anything but. Though technically within one of the mountains of the Arabia Terra range, Visid had given it all the comforts of home—or, home in a hostile environment, anyway. The four-foot thick walls were concussion-bomb-proof, laced with devices to deter detection from the air or ground. The satellite and communications link array was similarly camouflaged and protected a hundred feet above them in a second cave, with a backup system mounted in a third cave hidden in an adjoining peak.

When Benel had complained (which he did often, whether working or not) about the lack of natural light in their abode, Visid amazed him by developing a light shift mechanism that in effect gave them a view at the front of the lab. Though still four feet thick, the wall appeared to be gone. Benel had more than once tried to walk through it, prompting Visid to adjust its “density” so that it more resembled a picture window, complete with the glint of sunlight off its panes. Benel had finally figured out how it worked, but was still amazed.

Visid amazed him with other things, not the least of which was the transporter device which had saved their lives, Though she gave credit to the Machine Master of Mars for its development, her own version had proved easier to use. After their fall from the Piton, she and Benel had materialized in the recreation center; finding it swarming with Red Police and Martian Marines, they had instantly transported out again, leading the Martian authorities on a merry chase as they hopped from destination to destination, earning the transport device the name “kangaroo.” Periodically they had transported back into the center in lightning-quick raids to recover what they could of their equipment—until the Marines caught on and smashed what was left.

But there were other sources of equipment, especially now that the Martians had a renewed presence on the planet (another of Visid’s games: she had discovered that Martian Marines weren’t much brighter than plasma soldiers), and it wasn’t long before their new lab in the mountains was even better equipped than the old one had been.

The Martians even brought better food with them than Benel and Visid had been used to.

But though Visid Sneaden tried to look at her battle with the Martians as a game, she knew that it was an earnest one with a time limit on it. And not only the limit that the Martians would set when they returned in force.

“Why do you think they haven’t come yet?” Benel asked one evening as they ate in the darkened lab; the picture window showed a beautiful post-twilight vista of stars, Earth and Mars hanging above the horizon, and the Three Comets, tails impossibly long, between the two worlds and outshining them both. The scene was marred only by the occasional flash of a flare or cut of green raser fire in one of the far valleys below their peak, where the Martian Marines were carrying out night exercises.

“I don’t know,” Visid said, “but they will. Especially if the Machine Master can’t stop the comets.”

“But what about this ‘Irregulator’ we keep hearing so much about on the Screen broadcasts?”

“What about it? Have you ever seen a picture of it? Have you ever seen it demonstrated?”