Hunt the Space-Witch! (15 page)

“A little on the primitive side, aren't you?” Duyair asked.

“No more so than the Empire. When information is needed, it must be extracted.”

“That's the theory they used on my father. Much good it did them.”

“And much good it did him,” Holsp said. “If necessary, the same will befall you. Ras, why not tell us?”

Duyair was silent for a moment. The two sub-priests appeared with sturdy rope to bind him, and he let them approach without protest. Then he shrugged away.

“No.”

“Bind him,” Holsp ordered.

“I'll tell you where the Hammer is!” Duyair said. He took a deep breath. What he was about to do went against all his conditioning, all his beliefs. To strike a priest of the Temple—

But Lugaur was no High Priest. Had he been, Vail Duyair would have given him the Hammer. Holsp frowned. “A change of heart, eh? All right. Let go of him. The Hammer is where?”

“Right here,” Duyair said. He smashed a fist into Holsp's pale face, and the High Priest staggered backward under the impact of the blow. The platinum sunburst fell from his throat and clinked hollowly against the stone of the floor.

Ignoring Holsp for the moment, Duyair turned to the other two, Thubar Frin and Helmat Sorgvoy. Helmat was short and heavy; Duyair caught him by one fleshy arm and, using him as a battering ram, swung him crunchingly into Thubar Frin. Both priests grunted at the crash.

Letting go of Helmat, Duyair sprang forward into the shadows. Now some of his childhood memories returned; he recalled passages, catacombs leading beneath the Temple grounds and into sunlight through a hidden exit.

“After him!” he heard Holsp's outraged voice call. But the sound was growing more distant with each moment. “Don't let him escape!” came the echoing, half-audible cry.

Duyair grinned at the thought of the growing blossom of red that had sprouted in Holsp's pale, supercilious face. More than ever now he was convinced that Lugaur Holsp held the High Priest's throne by fraud; Duyair would never have been able to strike down a true priest.

Panting, he emerged at the border of the Temple grove. He realized he would have to flee Aldryne; having raised a fist against Holsp, he would have all men's hands lifted against him.

But where? Where could he go?

He glanced up. In the gathering shadows of late afternoon the sky was growing dark. He saw the dull red globe that was Dykran, the sister world of Aldryne. To Dykran, he thought. Yes, to Dykran!

Chapter Three

He arrived at Aldryne Spaceport later that day, almost at sunset; the star Aldryne was mostly below the horizon. A bored-looking young man at the ticket window squinted at him when he requested a ticket for Dykran and said, “No more flights to Dykran.”

“Eh? Last one's left already? But it's hardly sundown yet. There ought to be at least two evening flights, if not more—”

“No more flights, period. By order of the Imperial Government for the duration of hostilities on Dykran.”

“What sort of hostilities?” Duyair asked, surprised.

The clerk gestured with his hands. “Who knows? Those miners up there are always striking for something or other. Anyway, I can't give you passage to Dykran.”

“Umm. How about Paralon? Any flights there tonight?”

“Nope. Matter of fact, no flights anywhere tonight within the system. I can offer you half a dozen out system flights if you're interested.”

Duyair rubbed his chin perplexedly. He had only a hundred credits with him, hardly enough to pay for an out-system flight. And he did not dare return to the Temple for more cash. He had been counting on making an early flight to one of the other worlds in the Aldryne system.

“Nothing at all in the system?” he asked again.

“Look, friend, I thought I made it clear. You mind moving along?”

“Okay,” Duyair said. “Thank you.” A look of bleak abstraction on his face, he left the line and walked away.

No flights anywhere in-system? Why, that just didn't make sense, he thought. Trouble in Dykran, maybe—but why couldn't he go to Paralon, or Moorhelm, or any of the other three worlds?

He felt a tug at his tunic sleeve. Quickly he turned and saw a short, space-bronzed young man at his side.

“What do you want?”

“Shhh! You want to get us jugged? I just heard your troubles at the ticket window, friend. You interested in going to Dykran tonight?”

“Y-yes,” Duyair said tentatively. “What's the deal?”

“Private flight. Two hundred credits will get you there in style.”

“I've only got a hundred,” Duyair said. “And I can't take time to raise any more. I'm a priest,” he improvised. “I have to attend a special conference on Dykran tomorrow, and if I'm not there, it'll be bad.”

“Priest? What Temple?”

“Temple of the Suns,” Duyair said.

The spaceman thought for a moment. “Okay. A hundred credits will do it. But I want to be paid in advance.”

Cautiously Duyair unfolded his five twenty-credit bills and showed them. “This ought to cover it, yes?”

“Yes.”

“Good. They're yours the second we blast off for Dykran.”

The flight was short, the ship cramped and uncomfortable. Duyair had made the interplanetary journey more than a dozen times, and so none of the phenomena of conventional ion-drive space travel was new to him. He weathered acceleration well, rather enjoyed the weightlessness of free fall, and once the ship began to spin to provide gravity, settled in a hammock and dozed.

He had sized up the shipboard picture fairly quickly. The pilot was obviously a privateer running some illegal cargo between worlds. Just what, Duyair didn't care. But it was apparent that the shrewd pilot had seized on a way of making a few extra credits by admitting passengers. There were perhaps a dozen on board, and doubtless each had some good reason for traveling to Dykran. They had all been caught short by the unexpected embargo.

He was awakened by a bell—the signal for a shift to deceleration, pending planetfall. And the small ship dropped down to the surface of Dykran.

They had landed, it seemed, in a bare, treeless plain somewhere far from civilization; a cold wind was whining, kicking up gray clouds of dust, as Duyair dropped through the open hatch and touched ground.

He turned to the pilot, who was supervising the unloading of crates. “Are we supposed to find our way to the city by ourselves?”

The pilot laughed. “You expect limousine service with an illegal flight? Wake up, boy. You're on your own. For another hundred credits I'd drive you into town, but you don't have the hundred, do you?”

“No,” Duyair said bitterly, and turned away. He had come away too quickly; he was penniless and not dressed for the bitter Dykranian climate.

But there were priests here, and Temples; he could find shelter. He started to walk across the barren plain. Some of his fellow passengers, grumbling disgruntledly, followed him.

He had gone about half a mile and was shivering with every step when a jetcopter descended almost directly in front of him. Through the swirling dust he saw the emblem on the 'copter's side: the purple and gold star-cluster insigne of the Imperial Police.

He debated fleeing. The Imperial Police were a good deal more to be feared than the relatively easygoing local Dykranian police corps.

But the sight of a blaster pointed unwaveringly at him changed his mind. He stood where he was, waiting for the Imperial policeman to draw near.

The policeman was short and stubby, with a lined face that told of long service on this dreary planet. His opening gambit was the inevitable “Let's see your papers!”

“Certainly, officer.” Duyair handed over the sheets of identification. The corpsman read through them thoroughly, returned them, and said, “According to these you're Ras Duyair of Aldryne. What are you doing on Dykran?”

“Visiting, Officer. I'm a priest.”

“So I noticed. I didn't happen to see any spaceport verification on your papers, though. How'd you get here?”

“By spaceship, of course,” Duyair said mildly. He towered more than a foot over the corpsman, but the blaster held steadily in his ribs did not encourage violence.

“Don't get wise,” the corpsman snapped. “Suppose you tell me how long you've been on Dykran.”

“About half an hour.”

“Half an hour? And you came by spaceship? Very interesting. There's been an embargo on interworld transportation in the Aldryne system in effect for the past eight hours. Suppose you come down to the Proconsul's headquarters and explain yourself.”

“Are you Ras Duyair?”

“That's my name, yes. It says so right there.”

“No insolence,” said the questioner. He was Rolsad Quarloo, Imperial Proconsul on Dykran, a small, weather-beaten little man with a grim, doggedly tough look about him. “I want to know why you're on Dykran when there's an Imperial embargo on interworld traffic. How'd you get here?”

Duyair was silent. The corpsman standing behind him said, “He came in on that smuggler's ship. We picked up about a dozen that way.”

“I know that, fool,” snapped the Pronconsul. “I want
him
to say it. It has to go down on tape.”

“All right,” said Duyair. “I came in on a smuggler's ship, if that's what he was. I wanted to go to Dykran, and none of the ticket windows were selling tickets. Then this fellow came along and offered me transportation for a hundred credits. He brought me here, and then you picked me up. That's all.”

The Proconsul scowled. “You must have known the trip was illegal! Why did you want to come to Dykran so badly?”

“To visit,” Duyair said. He had decided earlier that the safest course was to play the role of a simple bumpkin and let his questioners do most of the talking.

“To visit! That's all—just a visit? And you defied an Imperial embargo just for a visit? I give up.” Rolsad Quarloo touched a stud on his desk, and the door opened.

A tall, stately-looking man, magnificent in his purple and gold robes, entered. He glanced contemptuously at the Proconsul and said, “Well? Did you get anything from him, Quarloo?”

“Not a thing. You want to try?”

“Very well.” The magnifico looked at Duyair. “I am Olon Domyel, Imperial Legate from the Court of the Emperor Dervon XIV. You are the priest Ras Duyair, of Aldryne in the Aldryne system?”

“That's my name, yes.”

“Are you the son of the late Vail Duyair, priest, of Aldryne?”

Duyair nodded.

“Do you know how your father died?” Domyel asked.

“At the hands of the Imperial interrogator. They were trying to find out a secret of our religion.”

“The Hammer of Aldryne, you mean,” said Domyel.

“Yes. That was it.”

The ponderous Legate strode up and down in the Proconsul's tiny office. At length he said, “You know, we could have you tortured to obtain the same secret. We of the Empire are very interested in this Hammer, Duyair.”

Duyair grinned. Everyone suddenly seemed interested in the Hammer. And many torturers were having booms in business.

“You grin?”

“Yes, milord. This Hammer—it does not exist, you see. It's one of our legends. A myth. My father tried to tell your interrogators this, and they killed him. Now you will interrogate me and probably kill me as well. It is really very funny.”

The Legate eyed him sourly. “A myth, you say? And for a myth I've crossed half a galaxy—”

“The rebellion brewing on Dykran is very real,” Proconsul Quarloo reminded him gingerly.

“Ah—yes. Rebellion. And this Hammer of Aldryne—a myth? Ah me. Boy, what brought you to Dykran?”

“I came here to visit,” Duyair said innocently.

They turned him loose finally after another half-hour of questioning. He stuck fairly closely to his bumpkin role, and it became quite clear to the exasperated Legate and to the Proconsul that they were going to get nothing from him. He promised not to stray far from the city, and they let him go.

The moment he stepped outside the Proconsul's headquarters, a shadowy figure moved alongside him, and a whispered voice said, “Are you Ras Duyair?”

“Maybe.”

“You were just questioned by the Proconsul, weren't you? Speak up or I'll knife you.”

“I was,” Duyair admitted. “Who are you?”

“Quite possibly a friend. Will you come with me?”

“Do I have any choice?” Duyair asked.

“No,” said the stranger.

Shrugging, Duyair let himself be led down the street to a small, blue, teardrop-shaped auto that was idling there. He got in at the other's direction, and they drove off.

Duyair made no attempt to remember the streets as they passed through them; his driver was taking such a deliberately winding, tangled route that any such attempt would be hopeless.

They stopped finally in front of a squat gray-brown brick building in the ugly, antiquated style popular here.

“We get out here,” Duyair's mysterious captor told him.

Duyair and the stranger left the car and entered the old building. Two blank-faced guards stood within. Duyair wondered what nest of intrigue he had stumbled into now. He wondered whether he might not have been safer remaining back on Aldryne.

“Is this Duyair?” asked a cold-faced man with a strange accent.

Duyair's captor nodded.

“Bring him within,” ordered the cold-faced man.

Duyair was shoved into a brightly lit room ringed with packed book shelves and furnished with shabby, out-of-date furniture. Three or four other men were sitting in battered chairs.

The cold-faced man turned to Duyair and said, “I must apologize for a number of things. First, for not getting to you ahead of the Empire men—and second, for the mysterious handling you've had since Quarloo turned you loose.”

“Apology tentatively accepted,” Duyair said. “Where am I, and what's going on?”