Captive of Gor (5 page)

“Perhaps you are interested in knowing how you were followed?” he asked.

I nodded, numbly.

From the handbag he extracted an object.

“What is this?” he asked.

“My compact,” I told him.

He smiled, and turned it over. He unscrewed the bottom. Inside there was a tiny

cylinder, fused to a round, circular plate, covered with tiny, copperish lines.

“This device,” he said, “transmits a signal, which can be picked up by our

equipment at a distance of one hundred miles.” He smiled. “A similar such

device,” he said, “was concealed beneath your automobile.”

I sobbed.

“It will be dawn in six Ehn,” said the man in the tunic. I could see that there

was a lightness in the east.

I could see that there was a lightness in the east.

I did not understand what he said.

The large man nodded at the man in the black tunic. The man in the black tunic

then lifted his arm. The small disklike ship then slowly lifted and moved toward

the large ship. A port in the large ship slid upward. The small ship moved

inside. I could briefly see men, in black tunics, inside, fastening it to plates

in a steel flooring. Then the port slid shut again. The remains of the boxes had

now been replaced in the truck. Here and there, about the clearing, men were

moving about, gathering up equipment. They placed these things in the truck.

(pg. 31)I could now move my arm and, barely, the fingers of my hand.

“But your ship,” I said, “the small one, could not seem to find me.”

“It found you,” he said.

“The light,” I said, “it couldn’t catch me.”

“You think it was misfortune that you stumbled into our camp?’ he asked.

I nodded, miserably.

He laughed.

I looked at him, with horror.

“The light,” he said, “You ran always to avoid it.”

I moaned.

“You were herded here,”

I cried out with misery.

He turned to a subordinate. “Have you brought Miss Brinton’s anklet?”

The subordinate then handed him an anklet. I could see that it was steel. It was

open. It had a hinged catch.

Then I stood before them as I had, in the tan slacks, in the black, bare-midriff

blouse, save that I now wore a steel anklet.

“Observe,” said the large man, indicating the black ship. As I watched it, it

seemed that lights began to flicker on its surface, and then it seemed that

tendrils of light began to interweave across its steel, and, before my eyes, it

began to change color, turning a grayish blue, streaked with white.

I could now see the first streak of light in the east.

“This is a technique of field-light camouflage,” said the large man. “It is

primitive. The radar-screening device, within, is more sophisticated. But the

light camouflage technique has considerably reduced sightings of our craft.

Further, of course, we do little more, normally, with the large craft then

arrive and depart, at given points. The smaller craft is used more extensively,

but normally only at night, and in isolated areas. It, too, incidentally, is

equipped for light-camouflage and radar-screening.”

I understood very little of what he said.

(pg. 32) “Shall we strip her?” asked one of the subordinates.

“No,” said the large man.

The large man stepped behind me. “Shall we go to the ship?” he asked.

I did not move.

I turned to face him.

“Hurry!” called the man in the black tunic, from within the large ship. “Dawn in

two Ehn!”

“Who are you? What do you want?” I begged.

“Curiosity,” he said, “ is not becoming in a Kajira.”

I stared at him.

“You might be beaten for it,” he said.

“Hurry! Hurry!” cried the man in the black tunic. “We must make rendezvous!”

“Please,” invited the large man, gesturing to the ship with one hand.

Numbly I turned and preceded him to the ship. At the foot of the ramp I

trembled.

“Hurry, Kajira,” said he, gently.

I ascended the steel ramp. I turned. He was standing back on the grass.

“In your time,” he said, “dawn occurs at this meridian and latitude, on this

day, at six sixteen.”

I saw the sun’s rim at the edge of my world, rising, touching it. In the east

there was dawn. It was the first dawn I had ever seen. It was not that I had not

stayed up all night, even many times. It was only that I had never watched a

sunrise.

“Farewell, Kajira,” said the man.

I cried out and extended my arms. The steel ramp swung upward and locked in

place, shutting me in the ship. A sealing door then slid across the closed ramp,

it, too, locking in place. I pounded on its plates, wildly, sobbing.

Strong hands seized me from behind, one of the men in a black tunic. There was a

tiny, three-pronged scar on his right cheekbone. I was dragged weeping and

kicking through the ship, between tiers of piping and plating.

Then I was in a curved area, where, fixed in racks on the wall, sloping to the

floor, were several large, transparent (pg. 33) cylinders, perhaps of heavy

plastic. In these were the girls I had seen, those who had been taken from the

truck.

One tube was empty.

Another man, clad as the first, unscrewed one end of the empty tube.

I could see that there were two small hoses, one at each end, fixed in each

tube. They led into a machine fixed in the wall.

I struggled wildly, but the two men, one at my ankles, the other holding me

under the arms, forced me into the tube. My prison was perhaps eighteen inches

in diameter. The lid to the tube was screwed shut. I screamed and screamed,

pushing and kicking at the cylinder. I turned on my side. I pressed my hands

against the walls of the tube. The men did not seem to notice me.

Then I began to feel faint. It was hard to breathe.

One of the men attached a small hose to a tiny opening in the tube, above my

head.

I lifted my head.

Oxygen streamed into the tube.

Another hose was attached at the other end of the tube, above my feet. There was

a tiny, almost inaudible noise, as of air being withdrawn.

I could breathe.

The two men then seemed to brace themselves, by holding onto some rails, part of

the racking of the piping. I suddenly felt as though I were in an elevator, and

for the moment could not breathe. I knew then we were ascending. From the

feeling of my body, pressing against the tube, I thought we must be ascending

vertically, or nearly vertically. There was no peculiarly, powerful stresses,

and very little unpleasantness. It was swift, and frightening, but not painful.

I heard no sound of motors, or engines.

After perhaps a minute the two men, holding to the railing, moved from the room.

The strange sensation continued for some time. Then, after a time, I seemed

pressed against the side of the tube, rather cruelly, for perhaps several

minutes. Then, suddenly, no forces seemed to play upon me, and, to my horror, I

(pg. 34) drifted to the other side of the tube. Then, after a moment of this, a

very gently force seemed to bring me back to the side of the tube on my right.

Oddly enough, I now thought of this as down. Shortly thereafter one of the men

in a black tunic, wearing sandals with metal plates on the bottoms, stepped

carefully, step by step, across the steel plating. It had been the floor, but

now it seemed as though it were a wall at my left, and he moved strangely on the

wall.

He went to the machine into which the hoses from the tubes led, and moved a

small dial.

In a moment I sensed something different in the air being conducted into my

tube.

There were several similar dials, beneath various switches, doubtless one for

each of the containers.

I tried to attract his attention. I called out. Apparently he could not hear me.

Or was not interested in doing so.

I was vaguely aware that now the gentle force seemed to draw my body against the

tube differently. I was vaguely aware that now the ceiling and floor seemed as

they should be. I saw, not fully conscious of it, the man leave the room.

I looked out through the plastic. I pressed my hands against the heavy, curved,

transparent walls of my small prison.

The proud Elinor Brinton had not escaped.

She was a prisoner.

I fell unconscious.

5
     
Three Moons

(pg. 35) It is difficult for me to conjecture what happened.

I did not know how long I was unconscious.

I know only that I awakened, stunned, bewildered, lying on my stomach, head

turned to the side, on grass. My fingers tore down at the roots. I wanted to

scream. But I did not move. The events of the August afternoon and night flashed

through my memory. I shut my eyes. I must go back to sleep. I must awaken again,

between the white satin sheets in my penthouse. But the pressing of fresh grass

against my cheek told me I was no longer in the penthouse, in surroundings with

which I was familiar.

I got up to my hands and knees.

I squinted toward the sun. Somehow it seemed not the same to me. I moved my

hand. I pressed my foot against the earth.

I threw up with horror.

I knew I was no longer on my world, on the world I knew. It was another world, a

different world, one I did not know, one strange to me.

And yet the air seemed beautifully clear and clean. I could not remember such

air. The grass was wet with dew, and rich and green. I was in a field of some

sort, but there were trees, tall and dark, in the distance. A small yellow

flower grew near me. I looked at it, puzzled. I had never seen such a flower

before. In the distance, away from the forest, I could see a yellowish thicket,

it, too, of trees, but not green, but bright and yellow. I heard a brook nearby.

I was afraid.

(pg. 36) I cried out as I saw a bird, tiny and purple, flash past overhead.

In the distance, near the yellowish thicket, I saw a small, yellowish animal

moving, delicately. It was far off and I could not see it well. I thought it

might be a deer or gazelle. It disappeared into the thicket.

I looked about myself.

Some hundred yards or so from me I saw a mass of torn metal, a ruptured

structure of black steel, half buried in the grass.

It was the ship.

I noted that I no longer wore the anklet on my left ankle. It had been removed.

I still wore the clothing in which I had been captured, the tan slacks, the

black, bare-midriff blouse. My sandals I had lost in the woods on Earth, while

fleeing from the ship.

I felt like running from the ship, as far as I might. But there seemed to be no

sign of life about it.

I was terribly hungry.

I crawled in the direction of the brook, and, lying on my stomach before it,

scooped water into my mouth.

What I thought was a petaled flower underneath the swift, cold surface of the

brook suddenly broke apart, becoming a school of tiny yellow fish.

I was startled.

I slaked my thirst.

I wanted to run from the ship. Somewhere there might be the men.

But the ship seemed still. I saw some small birds flying about it.

There might be food on the ship.

Slowly, frightened, I approached the ship, step by step.

I heard a singing bird.

At last, about twenty yards from the ship, I circled I fearfully.

It was torn open, the steel plating split and bent, scorched and blistered.

There was no sign of life.

I then approached the ship, half buried in the grass. I (pg. 37) looked inside,

trough one of the great rents in the steel. Its edges seemed to have melted and

hardened. In places there were frozen rivulets of steel, as though heavy

trickles of paint had run from a brush and then hardened. The inside of the ship

was black and scorched. The piping, in several places, was ruptured. Panels were

split apart, revealing a complex, blackened circuitry within. The heavy glass,

or quartz or plastic, in the ports was, in many places, broken through.

Barefoot, on the steel plating, buckled under my feet, the bolts broken, I

entered the ship, holding my breath.

There seemed no one there.

The interior of the ship was compactly organized, with often only small spaces

between tiers of tubing, piping and meters. Sometimes these small passages were

half closed with bent pipes and tangles of wire erupted from the sides, but I

managed to crawl where I wished to.

I found what seemed to be a control room, with two chairs and a large port

before them. In this room there were also chairs about the side, four of them,

before masses of dials, gauges and switches. There was no engine room that I

could find. Whatever force drove the ship must have been beneath it, reached

perhaps through the floor plating. The engines of the ship, and its weapons, if

weapons it had, must have been operated from the control room. I found the area

where the heavy plastic tubes had been kept, in one of which I had been

confined. The tubes had all been opened. They were empty.

I heard a sound behind me and I screamed.

A small, furred animal scurried past me, its claws scrabbling on the steel

plating. It had six legs. I leaned against a rack of piping, to catch my breath.

But now I was afraid.

I had found no one in the ship.