Андрэ Нортон - Beast Master's Planet

“You did it!” The younger man’s voice held the ragged edge of hysteria.

“What?”

“A live machine—one of the crawlers—”

Logan loosed his grip on Hosteen and tottered to the metal ribbon. A thin tendril of smoke arose as it battered its length senselessly against the floor. Logan stamped once, grinding his boot heel into the thing.

“I’ve wanted to do that for hours,” he informed Hosteen. “There’s more of ’em, though—we’ll have to watch out. And”—his gaze shifted to the weapon in Hosteen’s fist—“where in the name of the Seven Suns did you get that?”

“We’ve reinforcements.” For the first time Hosteen wondered about that. Would Najar and Quade be able to follow him, or was this another time when one of the baffling spiral paths would deposit travelers at different destinations?

“Listen.” He pulled Logan away from the feebly quivering “snake.” “Back there in the valley—did you walk the spiral path the same way I did?”

“Sure. You just vanished into air—I had to follow.”

“Where did you land?”

“In a place I wouldn’t have believed existed—after seeing the rest of this demon-inspired hole. All the time we were muckin’ around there was a place in here with regular livin’ quarters. But I ran into someone there—an off-worlder who has the run of this whole holdin’. For days—seems like days anyway—he’s been runnin’ me!” Logan was grimly bitter. “Turned those clockwork snakes loose and left me to it. I slowed up one of ’em with rocks in another cavern like the pen one and pushed one into a river. You took out this one, but there’s a pack of ’em—”

“Thief!”

The word boomed out of the air right over their heads, freezing both.

“Hide if you wish.” There was condescension in that. “You cannot escape, you know. The crawlers will deliver you to me just as I order. Have you not had enough of running?”

Surra had given no warning. Did Dean have some form of video watching them?

“You waste time in skulking. And a rock—if you have one left—is a poor weapon against this which can deal with a mountain if I so will it.”

A bolt of fire flashed over their heads well above the level of the machines.

A rock for a weapon! Then Dean did not know Hosteen had joined Logan! He was not watching them; he was only sure Logan had been hunted into the hall and was hiding out there.

“You would be better advised not to keep me waiting. Either you will come to me now or my pets will be given a full charge and turned loose to use it. You will be given to the count of five to consider the disadvantages of being a dead hero, and then you will come to the platform in this hall. One—two—”

Logan’s fingers made sign talk. “I’ll go and keep him busy.”

“Right. Surra will take the left aisle, I the right. We’ll flank you in.”

“—three—four—”

Logan walked out into full view of the platform. Two fingers of the hand hanging by his side twitched. Dean was up there waiting.

Hosteen started forward at a pace slightly slower than Logan’s. All they had to fear for the present was a sudden appearance of another “snake.”

Dean stood with his back to the board, over which rainbow lights ran in tubes. He was plainly pleased with himself. And Hosteen did not doubt he was equipped with a stass bulb or some other alien weapon.

“So the thief does not escape.”

“As I told you before, I’m no thief!” Logan retorted with genuine heat. “I was lost here, and I don’t know how I got into that room where you found me—”

“Maybe not yet a thief in practice, but in intent, yes. Don’t you suppose that I know any man would give years of life to master these secrets. Few ever conceive of such power as this hall holds. I am Lord of Thunder, Master of Lightning in the eyes of the natives—and they are right! This world is mine. It took the combined forces of all twenty solar systems in the Confederacy ten years to put down the Xiks. I was one of the techs sent to study and dismantle their headquarters on Raybo. And we thought we had uncovered secrets then. But they had nothing to compare with the knowledge waiting here. I was chosen to use the teaching tapes stored here, the cramming machines—they were waiting for me, me alone, not for stupid little men, ignorant thieves. This is all mine—”

Hosteen quickened pace and checked with Surra by mind touch.

“Why didn’t you finish me off with your crawlers or your tame lightin’—if that’s the way you feel about it?” Logan was keeping Dean talking. The tech, alone so long, must relish an audience of one of his own race.

“There is plenty of time to finish you off, as you say. I wanted you occupied for a space, kept away from places where you might get into mischief. You could not be allowed to interfere with the plan.”

“This plan of yours”—Logan was only a few steps from the platform—“is to take over Arzor and then branch out. Beat the Xiks at their old game.”

“Those who built this place”—Dean was fingering a small ball, another stass broadcaster Hosteen believed; otherwise, the Terran could not see that the other was armed—“had an empire into which all the Xik worlds and the Confederacy could both have been fitted and forgotten. All their knowledge—it is here. They foresaw some blasting end—made this into a storehouse—” He flung out his hand.

Hosteen fired the stunner. That ray should have clipped Dean alongside the head, a tricky shot, and it failed. A breath of the beam must have cut close enough to confuse him momentarily but not enough to put him out. Logan launched himself at the man who was staggering, only to crash heavily, completely helpless in stass, as Dean thumbed his control globe.

The tech was standing directly before the board, and Hosteen dared not try a second shot. A ray touching those sensitive bulbs might create havoc. The Terran signaled Surra.

Out of hiding the cat made a great arching leap that brought her up on the platform, facing Dean. Then she struck some invisible barrier and screamed aloud in anger and fear, as she was flattened to the floor.

Pressed back against the board, Dean reached for a lever, and Hosteen made his own move. Surra, striving still to reach her quarry, was aiming forepaw blows at nothing, and her raging actions held the tech’s attention as Hosteen jumped to the platform in turn. But he did not advance on Dean.

Instead, his own hand went out to a bank of those small bulbs that studded the boards in bands.

“Try that”—his warning crackled as if his words held the voltage born in the installations about them—“and I move too!”

Dean’s head whipped about. He stared with feral eyes at the Amerindian. Hosteen knew that his threat could be an empty one; now he must depend upon what some men termed luck and his own breed knew as “medicine.”

“You fool! There’s death there!”

“I do not doubt it,” Hosteen assured him. “Better dead men here than raiders loosed on the plains and a dead world to follow.” Bold words—a part of him hoped he would not have to prove them.

“Release the stass!” Hosteen ordered. If he could only keep Dean alarmed for just a few seconds!

But the tech did not obey. Hosteen moved his hand closer to the row of bulbs. He thought he felt warmth there, perhaps a promise of fire to come. Then Dean hurled the ball out into the aisle.

“Fool! Get away from that—you’ll have the mountain down upon us!”

Hosteen dropped his hand to the butt of the stunner. Now he could ray the other into unconsciousness, and their job would be over.

A breath of air, a sound came from behind him. He jerked his head. Two figures appeared out of nowhere on the dais. Hosteen heard Logan call out and felt a lash of burning heat about his upper arms and chest so that the stunner dropped from helpless fingers.