Hunt the Space-Witch! (18 page)

With trembling feet he ascended the throne of his father. He paused before sitting and said, “I now accept the duties and tasks of the office.”

He sat.

The trigger in his mind was touched off.

In a sudden overwhelming burst of revelation his mind was cleared; fog rolled back. He heard his father's words again, reverberating loudly around him:

“The day you take your seat as High Priest of the Temple, my son, will be the day all this will return to your mind
—

“The Hammer is for you to wield. It will be for you to break apart the Empire and bring freedom to Aldryne and the worlds of the galaxy.
”

Suddenly, as of the moment he had touched the throne, he knew. He knew where the Hammer was, how it operated, when it would be needed. He knew now that Lugaur Holsp could not possibly have had the Hammer—that its location was a secret old Vail Duyair had planted in his son's mind alone, so deeply that not even Ras had known it was buried there.

He rose again.

“The Hammer is ours. It will soon be brought into play.”

Chapter Six

Against the sharp blackness of the night sky eight colored shapes, illuminated by the brightness of the Cluster, could be seen.

They were spaceships of the Empire—massive hundred-man vessels whose heavy-cycle guns were capable of destroying a world within hours. Their yellow and red-violet hulls glittered in the night sky. They ringed themselves in a solid orbit around Aldryne. They waited.

Duyair made contact with them from the communications rig he had improvised in the Temple.

“This is Commander Nolgar Millo of the Imperial Flagship
Peerless
. I'm instructed to contact Lugaur Holsp, High Priest of the Temple of the Suns.”

“Hello, Commander Millo. This is Ras Duyair, successor to Lugaur Holsp, High Priest.”

“Duyair, you know why we're here?”

“Tell me.”

The Imperial Commander sounded irritated. “To pick up the consignment of conspirators your predecessor was planning to turn over to us. Or don't you know anything about the arrangement?”

“I do,” Duyair said. “Be informed that there will be no ‘consignment' for you to pick up—and that I order you to return to your base at once and leave the Aldryne system.”

“You order us? By whose grace?”

“By grace of my power,” Duyair said. “Leave at once—or feel the Hammer of Aldryne!”

There was silence at the other end. Duyair paced tensely in his room, waiting. But he knew the tension aboard those ships must be infinitely greater.

Time passed—just enough time for Commander Millo to have contacted the Emperor and received a reply.

Millo said, “We are landing. Any attempts at hostile action will result in complete destruction of this planet by direct order of the Emperor.”

“You will not land,” Duyair said. He stepped to the Temple parapet and lightly touched a stud on the newly rehabilitated cannon. A bright, white-hot energy flare streaked across the heavens, was deflected by the screens of the
Peerless
, and splashed harmlessly away.

Duyair waited. There came angry sputtering, then Commander Millo said, “Well enough, Duyair of Aldryne. That shot has killed your world.”

The ships of the Imperial fleet swung into battle formation; the heavy-cycle guns ground forward on their gimbals, readied for fighting.

Smiling, Duyair nudged a switch on the big gun's control panel.

A moment later, the sky went bright red with energy pouring from the Imperial guns.

The high-voltage barrage rained down. A thousand megawatts assaulted Aldryne.

And ten thousand feet above the planet's surface, an invisible screen turned them back.

“You can't have the whole planet shielded!” Commander Millo shouted. “Keep up the barrage!”

The Imperial ships continued. Duyair, head inclined upward, watched the spouting guns. Energy glare lit the sky; flares of brightness speared downward, to be turned away inevitably by the ten-thousand-foot shield.

“Your eighth ship,” Duyair radioed. “Watch it, Commander Millo.”

He touched a switch. The atomic cannon thrummed for a moment, and a bolt of force creased the sky, leaping upward toward the ship Duyair had designated. For an instant the ship was bathed in brightness as its screens strained to hold off the energy assault. Then the screens, terribly overloaded, collapsed.

Duyair's bolt seared right through the ship, gutting it in one long thundering flash. It split; by the illumination of the continuing bombardment it was possible to see tiny figures tumbling outward.

“One ship has been destroyed,” Duyair said. “The other seven will follow. This is the Hammer of Aldryne, Commander Millo.”

Duyair glanced out at the Temple grounds. They were filled with kneeling townsfolk—people who, seeing the armada in the skies, had come to pray and remained to cheer. He heard them shouting now:

“The Hammer! The Hammer!”

The subradio brought in Millo's puzzled words: “A one-way screen that shields you from our guns and lets you fire at our ships? Impossible!”

“Impossible? Your seventh ship, Commander.”

Again Duyair's fingers touched the firing switch. Again a bolt of force leaped skyward, and again a ship's screens dissolved under the pressure, and a ship died. Two of the eight Imperial ships now spun slowly, gutted wrecks drifting sunward.

“This is fantastic!” Millo said. “Double the charge! Destroy them!”

Duyair chuckled. Lightly he depressed the switch; a third ship died, and a fourth.

“The Hammer!” the people cried. “It destroys the ships of the Empire!”

The Hammer descended again, and the fifth ship blazed fitfully. And the sixth.

“An unstoppable gun, Commander Millo, coupled with an impregnable planet-wide force screen. This is the Hammer of Aldryne,” Duyair said. “This we have held in reserve, waiting for the day we could use it—waiting until the time was ripe to crush the Empire!”

He jabbed down again. Lightning flashed, and when the sky cleared, only the Imperial flagship
Peerless
remained still intact in the skies.

“We surrender! We surrender!” cried Commander Millo over the subradio. “No more, Aldryne! Surrender!”

“Surrender accepted,” Duyair said. “I order you to return to the Emperor, Millo. Tell him of what happened this day on Aldryne. Go; I spare you.”

Commander Millo did not need any further commands. The hulking flagship blasted jets rapidly; it spun, turned over, headed outward, slinking away toward Dervonar, sole survivor of the proud Imperial fleet.

Duyair waited until the ship was out of sight, then turned to the priests at his sides.

“Man those radio sets,” he ordered. “News of this victory is to be relayed to every planet in the Empire. Tonight is the night we rise against Dervon!”

He paused to swab his forehead. He grinned; the Hammer had worked, the installation had been correct. The old gun, idle all these years, had been an ideal channel for the mighty force the Hammer held.

The screen—and the gun. It was a combination with which Duyair could rule the galaxy if he so chose. But he had no desire to found a new Empire.

“Word from Dykran,” said a priest. “From one Bluir Marsh. He sends his congratulations and reports that three thousand worlds are striking against the Emperor tonight.”

“Send him an acknowledgment,” Duyair said. He stepped out on the parapet once again. By now several thousand citizens had gathered there.

“In a short while,” he said loudly, “a ship armed with the Hammer of Aldryne shall leave this planet, and since it is unstoppable, it will destroy the Imperial fleet singlehandedly. Tonight an Empire falls, and ten thousand independent worlds will take its place!”

“Duyair!” they roared, “Hammer! Duyair! Hammer!”

The time had come.

Chapter Seven

To witness the death of an Empire that had endured three thousand years is not pleasant, but to be the final Emperor of your line is agony.

Dervon XIV sat alone in his throne room on that final night. His ministers were long since dead, dead by their own hands. The revolt had struck even here—here, at Dervonar itself!

He eyed the map that told of the spreading of the rebellion—out of the Aldryne system into the Cluster of which it was a part, then through the Cluster like a raging blaze.

And then across the skies.

Dervon shook his head sadly. The Empire had been foredoomed—but that it should end this way, at this time! He realized that his own attempts to preserve it had been the mainspring of the Empire's destruction.

He had known of the rebellion on Dykran. A stronger Emperor might have obliterated those two worlds at once, while he had the chance. But Dervon had been devious. He had feared losing the support of the rest of the galaxy by such a terrible action. And thus he had given Aldryne time to loose its Hammer.

Now they all rebelled, all fell away. He saw coldly and clearly that nothing he could have done would have saved the Empire. It had crumbled of its own weight, died of its own extreme age.

Gloomily he peered at the gyrotoy in his hand. From far away came the sound of pounding, a constant reiterating
boom
…
boom
.…

The Hammer, he thought. Coming ever closer, here on the last night of the Empire. Smiling bitterly, the dying Emperor of the dead Empire stared at the delicate patterns shaped within the gyrotoy. Sighing, he waited for the end, while the blows of the Hammer sounded ever louder, ever closer in his ears.

Valley Beyond Time

Chapter One

The Valley, Sam Thornhill thought, had never looked lovelier. Drifting milky clouds hung over the two towering bare purple fangs of rock that bordered the Valley on either side and closed it off at the rear. Both suns were in the sky, the sprawling pale red one and the more distant, more intense blue; their beams mingled, casting a violet haze over tree and shrub and on the fast-flowing waters of the river that led to the barrier.

It was late in the forenoon, and all was well. Thornhill, a slim, compactly made figure in satinfab doublet and tunic, dark blue with orange trim, felt deep content. He watched the girl and the man come toward him up the winding path from the stream, wondering who they were and what they wanted with him.

The girl, at least, was attractive. She was dark of complexion and just short of Thornhill's own height; she wore a snug rayon blouse and a yellow knee-length lustrol sheath. Her bare shoulders were wide and sun-darkened.

The man was small, well set, hardly an inch over five feet tall. He was nearly bald; a maze of wrinkles furrowed his domed forehead. His eyes caught Thornhill's attention immediately. They were very bright, quick eyes that darted here and there in rapid glittering motions—the eyes of a predatory animal, of a lizard perhaps ready to pounce.

In the distance Thornhill caught sight of others, not all of them human. A globular Spican was visible near the stream's edge. Then Thornhill frowned for the first time; who were they, and what business had they in his Valley?

“Hello,” the girl said. “My name's Marga Fallis. This is La Floquet. You just get here?”

She glanced toward the man named La Floquet and said quietly, “He hasn't come out of it yet, obviously. He must be brand-new.”

“He'll wake up soon,” La Floquet said. His voice was dark and sharp.

“What are you two muttering?” Thornhill demanded angrily. “How did you get here?”

“The same way you did,” the girl said, “and the sooner you admit that to yourself—”

Hotly, Thornhill said, “I've always been here, damn you! This is the Valley! I've spent my whole life here! And I've never seen either of you before. Any of you. You just appeared out of nowhere, you and this little rooster and those others down by the river, and I—” He stopped, feeling a sudden wrenching shaft of doubt.

Of course I've always lived here
, he told himself.

He began to quiver. He leaped abruptly forward, seeing in the smiling little man with the wisp of russet hair around his ears the enemy that had cast him forth from Eden. “Damn you, it was fine till
you
got here! You had to spoil it! I'll pay you back, though.”

Thornhill sprang at the little man viciously, thinking to knock him to the ground. But to his astonishment he was the one to recoil; La Floquet remained unbudged, still smiling, still glinting birdlike at him. Thornhill sucked in a deep breath and drove forward at La Floquet a second time. This time he was efficiently caught and held; he wriggled, but though La Floquet was a good twenty years older and a foot shorter, there was surprising strength in his wiry body. Sweat burst out on Thornhill. Finally he gave ground and dropped back.

“Fighting is foolish,” La Floquet said tranquilly. “It accomplishes nothing. What's your name?”

“Sam Thornhill.”

“Now, attend to me. What were you doing in the moment before you first knew you were in the Valley?”

“I've always been in the Valley,” Thornhill said stubbornly.

“Think,” said the girl. “Look back. There was a time before you came to the Valley.”

Thornhill turned away, looking upward at the mighty mountain peaks that hemmed them in, at the fast-flowing stream that wound between them and out toward the Barrier. A grazing beast wandered on the up reach of the foothill, nibbling the sharp-toothed grass. Had there ever been a someplace else, Thornhill wondered?

No. There had always been the Valley, and here he had lived alone and at peace until that final deceptive moment of tranquility, followed by this strange unwanted invasion.

“It usually takes several hours for the effect to wear off,” the girl said. “Then you'll remember … the way we remember. Think. You're from Earth, aren't you?”

“Earth?” Thornhill repeated dimly.