The Witches of Karres (7 page)

"Just like his great-uncle
Threbus!"
nodded
Councilor
Onswud
gloomily. "It's in the blood, I always say!"

"
—and a justifiable suspicion of a prolonged stay on said Prohibited Planet of
Karres
—
"

"I never heard of that place before this trip!" shouted the captain.

"Why don't you read your Instructions and
Regu
lations
then?" shouted Councilor Rapport. "It's all there!"

"Silence, please!" shouted Councilor Onswud.

"Fifth," said the policeman quietly, "general willful and negligent actions resulting in material damage and loss to your employer to the value of eighty-two thousand
maels."

"I still have fifty-five thousand. And the stuff in the storage," the captain said, also quietly, "is worth a quarter of a million, at least!"

"Contraband and hence legally valueless!" the policeman
s
aid.

Councilor Onswud cleared his throat. "It will be impounded, of course," he said. "Should a method of resale present itself, the profits, if any, will be applied to the cancellation of your just debts. To some extent that might reduce your sentence." He paused. "There is another matter—
"

"The sixth charge," the policeman announced, "is the development and public demonstration of a new type of space drive, which should have been brought promptly and secretly to the attention of the Republic of
Nikkeldepain.
"
They all stared at him—alertly and quite greedily. So that was it—the
Sheewash
Drive
!

"Your sentence may be greatly reduced,
Pausert,"
Councilor Onswud said
wheedlingly,
"if you decide to be reasonable now. What have you discovered?"

"Look out, father!"
Illyla
said sharply.

"Pausert," Councilor Onswud inquired in a fading voice, "what is that in your hand?"

"A
Blythe
gun," the captain said, boiling.

There was a frozen stillness for an instant. Then the policeman's right hand made a convulsive motion.

"Uh-uh!"
said the captain
warningly.
Councilor Rapport started a slow step backwards. "Stay where you are," said the captain.

"Pausert!"
Councilor
Onswud
and
Illyla
cried out together.

"Shut up!" said the captain. There was another stillness. "If you'd looked on your way over here," the captain told them, in an almost normal voice, "you'd have seen I was getting the nova gun turrets out. They're fixed on that boat of yours. The boat's lying still and keeping its yap shut. You do the same."

He pointed a finger at the policeman. "You open the lock," he said. "Start your suit
repulsors
and squirt yourself back to your boat!"

The lock groaned open. Warm air left the ship in a long, lazy wave, scattering the sheets of the Venture
's
log and commercial records over the floor. The thin, cold upper atmosphere of
Nikkeldepain
II came eddying in.

"You next, Onswud!" the captain said. And a moment later: "Rapport, you just turn around—
"

Young Councilor Rapport went out through the lock at a higher velocity than could be attributed reasonably to his
repulsor
units. The captain winced and rubbed his foot. But it had been worth it.

"Pausert," said Illyla in justifiable apprehension, "you are stark, staring mad!"

"Not at all, my dear," the captain said cheerfully. “You and I are now going to take off and embark on a life of crime together."

"But, Pausert
—"

"You'll get used to it," the captain assured her, "just
l
ike I did. It's got Nikkeldepain beat every which way."

"You can't escape," Illyla said, white-faced. "We told them to bring up space destroyers and revolt ships...
"

"We'll blow them out through the stratosphere," the captain said
belligerently,
reaching for the lock-control switch. He added, "But they won't shoot anyway while I've got you on board."

Illyla shook her head. "You just don't understand," she said desperately. "You can't make me stay!"

"Why not?" asked the captain.

"Pausert," said Illyla, "I am
Madame
Councilor Rapport."

"Oh!" said the captain. There was a silence. He added,
crestfallen,
"Since when?"

"Five months ago, yesterday," said Illyla.

"Great
Patham!"
cried the captain, with some indignation. "I'd hardly got off Nikkeldepain then! We were engaged!"

"Secretly... and I guess," said Illyla, with a return of spirit, "that I had a right to change my mind!" There was another silence.

"Guess you had, at that," the captain agreed. "All right. The lock's still open, and your husband's waiting in the boat. Beat it!" He was alone. He let the locks slam shut and banged down the oxygen release switch. The air had become a little thin. He cussed.

The communicator began rattling for attention. He turned it on.

"Pausert!"
Councilor
Onswud
was calling in a friendly but shaken voice. "May we not depart, Pausert?
Your nova guns
are still fixed on this boat!"

"Oh, that ..." said the captain. He deflected the turrets a trifle. "They won't go off now. Scram!" The police boat vanished. There was other company coming, though. Far below him but climbing steadily, a trio of atmospheric revolt ships darted past on the screen, swung around and came back for the next turn of their spiral. They'd have to get closer before they started shooting, but they'd stay between him and the surface of
Nikkeldepain
while space destroyers closed in from above. Between them then, they'd knock out the Venture and bring her down in a net of paramagnetic grapples, if he didn't surrender.

He sat a moment, reflecting. The revolt ships went by once more. The captain punched in the Venture's secondary drives, turned her nose towards the planet, and let her go. There were some scattered white puffs around as he cut through the revolt ships' plane of flight. Then he was below them, and the Venture groaned as he took her out of the dive. The revolt ships were already scattering and nosing over for a countermanoeuvre. He picked the neares
t
one and swung the nova guns toward it.

"
—and ram them in the middle!" he muttered between his teeth.

SSS-whoosh!

It was the
Sheewash
Drive, but like a nightmare now, it kept on and on...

"
Maleen!
" t
he captain
bawled,
pounding at the locked door of the captain's cabin.
"Maleen,
shut it off! Cut it off! You'll kill yourself. Maleen!"

The Venture quivered suddenly throughout her length, then shuddered more violently, jumped and coughed, and commenced sailing along on her secondary drives again.

"Maleen!" he
yelled,
wondering briefly how many light-years from everything they were by now. "Are you all right?"

There was a faint thump-thump inside the cabin, and silence. He lost nearly two minutes finding the right cutting tool in the storage and getting it back to the cabin. A few seconds later a section of steel door panel sagged inwards; he caught it by one edge and came tumbling into the cabin with it. He had the briefest glimpse of a ball of orange-coloured fire swirling uncertainly over a cone of oddly bent wires. Then the fire vanished and the wires collapsed with a loose rattling to the table top.

The crumpled small shape lay behind the table, which was why he didn't discover it at once. He sagged to the floor beside it, all the strength running out of his knees. Brown eyes opened and blinked at him
blearily.

"Sure takes it out of you!" Goth muttered. "Am I hungry!"

"I'll whale the holy howling tar out of you again," the captain roared, "if you ever—
"

"Quit your
yelling!"
snarled Goth. "I got to eat." She ate for fifteen minutes straight before she sank back in her chair and sighed.

"Have some more
Wintenberry
jelly," the captain offered anxiously. She looked pale.

Goth shook her head. "Couldn't... and that's about the first thing you've said since you fell through the door, howling for
Maleen.
Ha-ha!
Maleen's
got a boy friend!"

"Button your lip, child," the captain said. "I was thinking." He added, after a moment, "Has she really?"

Goth
nodded.
"Picked him out last year. Nice boy from the town. They’ll get married as soon as she's marriageable. She just told you to come back because she was upset about you. Maleen had a premonition you were headed for awful trouble!"

"She was quite right, little chum," the captain said nastily.

"What were you thinking about?" Goth inqu
i
red.

"I was thinking," said the captain, "that as soon as we're sure you're going to be all right
.
I
'm taking you straight back to
Karres."

"I'll be all right now," Goth said. "Except, likely, for a stomach-ache. But you can't take me back to
Karres."

"Who will stop me, may I ask?" the captain asked.

"Karres
is gone," Goth said.

"Gone?" the captain repeated blankly, with a sensation of not quite definable horror bubbling up in him.

"Not blown up or anything," Goth reassured him. "They just moved it. The Imperials got their hair up about us again. This time they were sending a fleet with the big bombs and stuff, so everybody was called home. And right after you'd left
.
.
.
we'd left, I mean... they moved it." "Where?"

"Great
Patham!"
Goth shrugged.
"How'd
I know? There's lots of places!"

There probably were, the captain agreed silently. A scene came suddenly before his eyes—that lime-white, arena-like bowl in the valley, with the steep tiers of seats around it, just before they'd reached the town
of Karres.
"the Theatre where
—"

But now there was unnatural night-darkness all over and about that world; and the eight-thousand-some witches of
Karres
sat in circles around the Theatre, their heads turned towards one point in the center where orange fire washed hugely about the peak of a cone of curiously twisted girders. And a world went racing off at the speeds of the
Sheewash
Drive!
There'd
be lots of places, all right. What peculiar people!

"Aren't they going to be worried about you?" he asked.

"Not very much. We don't get hurt often." Once could be too often. But anyway, she was here for now... The captain stretched his legs out under the table, inquired,

"Was it the Sheewash Drive they used to move
Karres
?"

Goth wrinkled her nose doubtfully. "Sort of like it...
"
She added, "I can't tell you much about those things till you've started to be one yourself."

"Started to be what myself?" he asked.

"A witch like us. We got our rules. And that likely won't be for a while. Couple of years maybe,
Karres
time."

"Couple of years, eh?" the captain repeated thoughtfully. "You were planning on staying around that long?"

Goth
frowned
at the jar of
Wintenberry
jelly, pulled it towards her and inspected it carefully. "Longer, really," she acknowledged. "Be a bit before I'm marriageable age!"

The captain blinked at her. "Well, yes, it would be
."

"So I got it all fixed," Goth told the jelly, "as soon as they started saying they ought to pick out a wife for you on
Karres.
I said it was me, right away; and everyone else said finally that was all right then— even
Maleen,
because she had this boy friend."

"You mean," said the captain,
startled,
"your parents knew you were stowing away on the
Venture
?"

"Uh-huh."
Goth pushed the jelly back where it had been standing and glanced up at him again. "It was my father who told us you'd be breaking up with the people on
Nikkeldepain
pretty soon. He said it was in the blood."

"What was in the blood?" the captain asked patiently.

"That you'd break up with them... That's
Threbus,
my father. You met him a couple of times in the town. Big man with a blond beard. Maleen and the
Leewit
take after him. He looks a lot like you."

"You wouldn't mean my great-uncle Threbus?" the captain inquired. He was in a state of strange calm by now.

"That's right," said Goth.

"It's a small galaxy," the captain said philosophically. "So that's where Threbus wound up! I'd like to meet him again some day
.'

"You're going to," said Goth. "But probably not very soon." She hesitated, added, "Guess there
's
something big going on. That's why they moved
Ka
rres. So we likely won't run into any of them again until
it's over."