The Witches of Karres (32 page)

When he looked around, Hulik do Eldel stood in the entry to the control room, watching him.

"Come in and sit down," the captain said. "I'm afraid I never really got around to thanking you for helping out with the Agandar!"

She smiled and came in. After eight days she'd spent camping out on Karres, Hulik looked perhaps better than she ever had. And she'd looked extremely good in a delicate-featured, elegant way since the first time the captain had seen her. For a moment it became a bit difficult to believe those warm, dark eyes had been sighting down the gun which blasted death at last into the legendary Agandar.

"I was helping myself out, too, you know!" she remarked. She added, "I heard the engines just now and wondered whether we were leaving."

"No, probably not for a while," the captain said. He hesitated. "The fact is I don't know when we'll be leaving or where we'll go when we do. We're still in something of a jam, you see. I can't tell you what it's about but I hope things will work out all right. And I'm sorry you're in it with us, but there's nothing I can do about that."

Hulik was silent a moment. "Did you know I'm an Imperial agent?" she asked.

"Yango mentioned it."

"Well, he told the truth for once. I signed up for passage on the Chaladoor run in order to steal the secret drive you were supposed to have on this ship. "

"Hmm, yes!" nodded the captain. "I gathered that... It isn't something that would be of any use to you or the people you work for."

"I," Hulik said, "had gathered that some two ship-days before the trouble with Yango began. At any rate, if I'm in a jam with you and our little witch, it's because I've worked myself into that position. I suspect I can't be of much further assistance in getting us out of it. If I can, let me know. Otherwise I'll simply try to keep out of the way. I'm considered a capable person, but Karres matters have turned out to be above my head."

The captain didn't tell her he'd entertained similar feelings off and on. He hoped that when this was over the do Eldel would be among the survivors, if any. But her future looked at least as uncertain as Goth's and his own.

That evening they had their supper outside the ship camp-style, which was Hulik's suggestion. She'd grown fond of this world, she said, felt more comfortable and at home here after a week than she could remember feeling anywhere else. Goth looked pleased in a mildly proprietary way; and Karres came through with a magnificently blazing sunset above the western ranges as the Talsoe Twins sank from sight. The wind died gradually and they sat around a while, talking about inconsequential things carefully remote from the present and themselves. The sky was almost cloudless now.

The captain watched a dainty, clean-etched little moon appear, and tried again to think of something he might do besides waiting for the vatch to show its hand. The disconcerting fact still seemed to be, however, that they had to wait for the vatch to act. Goth might have shifted them and the Venture light-years away from here; but literally and figuratively that could get them nowhere that counted... He realized suddenly he'd just heard Goth suggest they all bunk out beside the ship for the night.

He gave her a quick look. The troops obviously liked the idea at once; after everything that had happened, their cabins in the Venture's passenger compartment might look somewhat lonely and isolated to be passing a sleep period in. But to detach themselves from the ship overnight didn't seem a good notion. Depending on the vatch's whims, they could awaken to find it permanently gone.

Goth acknowledged his look with no more than a flicker of her lashes, but it was an acknowledgment. So she had something in mind besides reassuring their companions ... but what?

Then he felt his hackles lifting and, knew the vatch had returned. It wasn't close by; he could barely retain a sense of its presence. But it remained around. Goth had grown aware, of it before he did, that much was clear. He still didn't see what it had to do with moving out of the ship for the night.

He waited while the others cleared away supper dishes and utensils, began hauling out bedding, and went back for more. The vatch came closer, lingered, drew back…

There was a sense of a sudden further darkening of the evening air. Thunder pealed, far overhead. As the captain looked up, startled, into the sky, rain crashed down, on and about him, with the abruptness of an upended gigantic bucket of water.

He scrambled around, hauling up the drenched bedding, swearing incoherently. It was an impossible downpour. Water spattered up from the rocks, doused him with dirt from instantly formed puddles and hurrying rivulets. Thunder cracked and snarled, lightning flickered, eerily festooning the thick, dark, churning mass of storm clouds which now almost filled what had been a serene, clear sky above the Venture less than a minute before. Vezzarn came sliding down the ramp to help him. Vatch-laughter rolled through the thunder, howling in delight as they slipped and fell in the mud, struggled back up with the sodden bedding in their arms, shoved it at last into the lock, scrambled in and through themselves. The lock slammed shut and the rain drummed its mindless fury on the Venture's unheeding back.

"WELL, WE'VE LEARNED one thing," the captain remarked grumpily. "The vatch evidently prefers us to stay in the ship. . .

Goth said that wasn't all. "Never knew there were that many cuss words!"

He grunted. He was dry again but still more than a little fed up with the unmannerly ways of vatches. "You just forget what you heard!" he said. He looked at the desk chronometer. It was over an hour since the downpour outside had begun, and it was still going on, not with its original violence but as a steady, heavy rain. The ship's audio pickups registered intermittent rumbles of thunder; and the screens showed the Venture's immediate vicinity transformed to a shallow lake. The captain's nostrils wrinkled briefly as if trying to catch an elusive scent.

"You're sure you can't get even a trace of the thing?" he asked.

Goth shook her head. "Far as I can make out, it's been gone pretty near an hour. Think you're relling something now?"

The captain hesitated. "No," he said at last. "Not really. I just keep having a feeling … Look, witch, it's getting late! Better run and get your sleep so you'll stay fresh. I'll sit up for another smoke. If that self-inflated cosmic clown does show up again, I'll let you know.

"Self-inflated cosmic ... pretty good!" Goth said admiringly, and slipped off to her cabin. The captain took out a cigarette and lit it, scowling absently at the screens. The door between the control room and the rest of the section was closed, Hulik and Vezzarn had chosen to bunk up front on the floor tonight. What with the vatch's startling thunderstorm trick coming on top of everything else they'd experienced lately, he hadn't felt like suggesting they'd be more comfortable in their staterooms. On the other hand, the night still might provide events it would be better they didn't witness, if it could be avoided. He'd brought the strongbox enclosing the Manaret synergizer out of the vault with the ship's crane and set it down against the wall in the control room; an act which probably had done nothing to help Vezzarn's peace of mind.

There was something vatchy around. That was the word for it. Not the vatch but something that seemed to go with the vatch. He wasn't relling it. Goth figured his contacts with the vatch might have begun to develop some other perception. At any rate, he was receiving impressions of another kind here; and the impressions had kept getting more definite. The best description he could have given of them now would have been to say he was aware of a speck of blackness which seemed to be in a constant blur of internal motion.

The muted growl of thunder came through the pickups again, and the captain reached over and shut them off, then extended the screens' horizontal focus outward by twenty miles. Except for fleecy wisps to the east, the skies of Karres were clear all about tonight, once one had moved five or six miles away from the Venture. The inexhaustible bank of rain clouds the vatch had produced for them stayed centered directly overhead...

The vatchy speck of blackness had begun to seem connected with that. The captain laid the cigarette aside, shifted the overhead screen to a point a little above the cloud level... Around here?

And there it was, he thought. Something he was neither seeing, it couldn't be seen, nor imagining, because it was there and quite real. It came closest to being a visual impression of a patch of blackness, irregular in outline and inwardly a swirling rush of multitudinous motion.

Vatch stuff, left planted in the Karres sky after the vatch itself had gone. Not enough of it to excite the relling sensation. And what it was doing up there, of course, was to keep the rain clouds massed above the drenched Venture… The captain found himself reaching towards it.

That again seemed the only description for a basically indescribable action. It was a reaching-towards in which nothing moved. He stopped short of touching it. A sense of furious heat came from the swirling blackness. Power, he thought. Vatch power; plenty of it. Living klatha...

He put pressure against the side of the living klatha. Move, he thought.

It began to move sideways, gliding ahead of the pressure. The pressure kept up with it.

The captain licked his lips, turned the horizontal screens back to close focus around the ship, picked up the cigarette and settled back in the chair, watching the steady, dark, downward rush of rain about them in the screens. The vatch device continued moving southwards. Now and then the captain glanced at the chronometer. After some nine minutes the rain suddenly lessened. Then it stopped. The night was clear and cloudless above the ship. But a quarter-mile away to the south, rain still poured on the slopes.

He put out the cigarette and eased off the pressure on the vatch device. Stop there, he thought... While it was drifting away from the ship he'd become aware of a second one around. There would be, of course. A much smaller one ... it would be that, too, for the comparatively minor purpose it was serving--

It took a couple of minutes to get it pinpointed down in the Venture's engine room, a speck of unseeable blackness swirling silently and energetically above the thrust generators, ready to make sure the Venture didn't go anywhere at present.

A rock hung suspended in the clear night air of Karres, spinning and wobbling slowly like a top running down. It was a sizable rock; the Venture could have been fitted comfortably into the hole it had left in the planet's surface when it soared up from it a minute or two before. And it was a sizable distance above that surface. About a mile and a half, the captain calculated, watching it in the screen.

He let it turn end for end twice, bob up and down a little, then leap up another instant half-mile.

There was a soft hiss of surprise from behind his shoulder.

"What are you doing?" Goth whispered.

"Using some loose vatch energy I found hanging around," the captain said negligently. "The vatch left it here to keep us pinned under that rainstorm… " He added, "Don't know how I'm doing it, but it works just fine! Like the rock to try anything in particular?"

"Loop the loop," suggested Goth, staring fascinatedly into the screen.

The rock flashed up and around in a smooth, majestic three-mile loop and stood steady in midair again, steady as a rock.

"Anything else?" he offered.

"Can you do anything with it?"

"Anything I've tried so far. Ask for a tough one!"

Goth considered, glanced up at the little moon, high in the northern sky by now. "How about putting it on the other side of the moon?"

"All right," said the captain. He clicked his tongue. "Wait a minute. We'd better not try that!"

"Why not?"

He glanced at her. "Because we don't know just what the vatch stuff can do… and because the moon's scheduled to come crashing down on the pole some time in the future here. I'd hate to have it turn out that we were the ones who accidentally knocked it down!"

"Patham!" exclaimed Goth, startled. "You're right! Give the rock a boost straight out into space then!"

And the rock simply disappeared. "Guess it's out there and travelling," the captain said after a few seconds. "Plenty of power there, all right!" He chewed his lip, frowning. "Now I'll try something else…"

Goth didn't inquire what. She looked on, eyes watchful, as he shifted the view back to the area immediately about the ship. A big tree stood on the rim of the rise to the north. He brought it into as sharp a focus as he could, sensed the vatch device move close to the tree as he did it. The device remained poised there, ready to act.

He gave it a silent command, waited.

But nothing happened. After half a minute he turned his attention to a small shrub not far from the tree. The patch of blackness slid promptly over to the shrub. As he began to repeat the command, the shrub vanished.

Goth made a small exclamation beside him. "Time move?" she asked.

"Yes," said the captain, not at all surprised she'd guessed his intention. He cleared his throat. "I'm very much afraid that won't do us any good, though."

"Why not? Patham, if--"

"Tried to move the big tree into the future first, and it didn't go. Just not enough power for that, I guess… Let's try that medium-sized one nearer to us…"