James Schmiz - The Witches of Karres

He hesitated then. If this, too, was part of a potential lock pattern, then that lock must be an enormously more powerful klatha device than the one which had shut the Nuris out of his mind!

Well -

“Are you certain,” something inside him seemed to ask very earnestly, “that you want to try it?”

He was, he decided. It seemed necessary.

He did something he couldn’t have described, even to himself. It released the klatha spark. The line of fire marched on. From above, a second line came trickling down on it — a third zigzagged up from below…

It was awesomely hot stuff! There was a moment when the universe seemed to stretch very tight. But the fire lines crossed, meshed, froze; there was a flash of silent light, and that was it. The pattern had completed itself and instantly disappeared. The ominous tightness went with it.

It was not, the captain decided, the kind of pattern that needed to be practiced. It had to be done right once, or it would not be done at all. And it had been done right.

He waited. After a while he relled vatch. That strengthened presently, grew fainter again, almost faded away. Then suddenly it became very strong. Old Windy was with him, close by.

And silent for the moment! Possibly puzzled, the captain thought.

Then the wind voice spoke. But not in its usual tumultuous fashion and not addressing him. The vatch seemed to be muttering to itself. He made out some of it.

Hmmm?… BUT WHAT IS THIS?… MOST UNUSUAL… IT APPEARS UNDAMAGED, BUT -

SMALL PERSON, the familiar bellowing came suddenly then, CAN YOU HEAR ME?

“Yes!” the captain thought at it.

HMMM?… COMPLETE BLOCK! BUT NO MATTER, the vatch decided. A MINOR HANDICAP! LET THE GAME GO ON -

A momentary sense of rumbling through icy blackness, of vast distances collapsing to nothing ahead of him. Then the captain found himself lying face down on something cool, hard, and prickly. He opened his eyes, lifted his head. He had eyes to open and a head to lift again! He had everything back! He rolled over on rocky ground, sat up in a patch of withered brown grass, looked around in bright sunlight. A general awareness of windy autumn scenery, timbered hills about and snowcapped mountain ranges beyond them, came with the much more important discovery of the Venture standing some four hundred feet away, bow slanted towards him, forward lock open and ramp out. He scrambled to his feet, started towards it.

“ Captain! ”

He swung about, saw Goth running down the slope of the shallow depression in which he and the ship stood, shouted something and ran to meet her, relief so huge he seemed to be soaring over dips in the ground. Goth took off in a jump from eight feet away and landed on his chest, growling. The captain hugged her, kissed her, rumpled her hair, set her on her feet, and gave her a happy swat.

“ Path am!” gasped Goth. “Am I glad to see you! Where you been? ”

“Worm World,” said the captain, grinning fatuously down at her.

“Worm — HUH?”

“That’s right. Say, that crystal thing of Olimy’s — it’s still on the ship, isn’t it?”

“How’d I know?” Goth said. “ Worm World!” She looked stunned. She shook her head, added, “Ship came just now, with you.”

“Just now?”

“Minute ago. I was headed back to camp—”

“Camp? Well, skip that. Hulik and Vezzarn are with you?”

“Both. Not Olimy. I relled a vatch. Giant -vatch — you don’t do things small, Captain! Turned around, and there the Venture was. Then you stood up—”

“Come along,” he said. “We’ve got to make sure it’s on board! I know what it is now. Ever hear of a synergizer in connection with Manaret?”

“Syner… no,” said Goth, trotting beside him. “Important, huh?”

“The most!” the captain assured her. “The most! Tell you later.”

They scrambled up the ramp and through the lock. The control section lighting was on, the heating system going full blast. The bulkheads felt icy to the touch. They took a moment to check the control desk, found everything but the general emergency switch and the automatic systems in off position, left things as they were and headed for the back of the ship. They paused briefly again at the first emergency wall. The Sheem Spider hadn’t exactly burned out a hole in it; it had cut out a section big enough to let it through endwise along with its master and knocked the loose chunk of battle-steel into the next compartment, shattering fifteen feet of deck.

“One tough robot!” remarked Goth, impressed, “Kind of sorry I slept through all that!”

“So were we, child,” the captain told her. “Come on…”

The lost synergizer of Manaret was in the strongbox in the vault, in its wrappings. They picked their way back out of the shattered vault, opened Olimy’s locked stateroom next and saw him imprisoned but safe in his eternal disminded moment there, locked up the room and left the ship by the ramp.

“Let’s sit,” said Goth. She settled down cross-legged in the grass. “The others are all right. What happened to you? How’d you get to the Worm World? What’s that synergizer thing?”

She listened without interrupting, face intent, as he related his experience up to the point where he’d decided to take a fling at constructing a vatch lock. For various reasons it didn’t seem advisable to mention that at the moment. “The vatch seemed to say something about going on with the game,” he concluded. “Next thing I knew I was here.”

Goth sighed. “That vatch!” she muttered. She rubbed her nose tip. “Looks sort of bad, doesn’t it?”

“Not too good at present,” the captain admitted. “But we have the synergizer safe here. That’s something… We don’t know what the vatch intends to do next, of course.”

“No.”

“But if it leaves us alone for a while… any idea of where we are here?”

“Know exactly where we are,” Goth told him. “Can’t see that’ll help much, though!” She patted the ground beside her. “This is Karres.”

“ What! ” He came to his feet. “But then—”

“No,” Goth said. “It’s not that simple. This isn’t Karres-now. It’s Karres-then.”

“Huh?”

She indicated the big yellow sun disk above the mountains. “Double star,” she said. “Squint your eyes, you can see just a little bit of white sticking out behind it on the left. That’s its twin. This is the Talsoe System where Karres was when witches found it — its own system. There’s nobody here yet but us.”

“How do you… You think that vatch sent us back in time? ”

“Long way back in time!” Goth nodded.

“How can you be sure? Now you’ve mentioned it, this could be Karres by its looks! But a lot of worlds—”

“Uh-uh!” Her forefinger pointed at a shining white mountain peak beyond the rise. “I ought to know that mountain, Captain! That’s where I was born… or where I’m going to be born, thirty miles from here. Town’s going to be in the valley north of it.” Goth’s hand swept about. “I know all this country — it’s Karres!”

“All right But they could have moved it to the Talsoe System the last time, couldn’t they? Let’s get in the ship and…”

Goth shook her head. “Not a bit of klatha around except ours and the vatch. There’re no witches here yet, believe me! And won’t be for another three hundred thousand years anyway—”

“ Three hundred thou… ! ” the captain half shouted. He checked himself. “How do you know that? ”

“Got a little moon here. You’ll see it tonight. Karres had one early, but then it smacked down around the north pole and messed things up pretty bad for a while. They figured that must have been a bit more than three hundred thousand years back… so we’re back before that! Besides, there’s the animals. A lot of them aren’t so much different from what they’re going to be. But they’re different. You see?”