Bob Shaw - The Fugitive Worlds

He had lain for a while on the spongy oblong that was his bed, but had quickly become bored and had tried to visit Vantara in her cell. His hope had been that her attitude towards him would have improved once she had learned from Jerene that it had been impossible for him to have arrived at the head of an army of rescuers. She had, however, remained aloof and uncommunicative in her little enclave—her cell was flanked by those of the other women. Trying to be philosophical about it, Toller had decided that being informed she was a prisoner millions of miles from home—instead of only a few thousand—was good enough grounds for any woman to lapse into a spell of depression.

Becoming even more restless, he had explored every gallery of the dome. It was big enough to accommodate twenty times as many captives as at present, but none of the featureless compartments showed any sign of previous occupation. Had the place been designed as a prison? Did the Dussarrans have such things as prisons? Or was the dome, with its sterile shadowless illumination, more the equivalent of a zoo? A birdcage?

The torrent of questions caused a stirring in Toller’s memory. Just before he and Divivvidiv had parted company, possibly forever, the little alien’s mental presence seemed to have been disturbed by a dark emotion. Toller had intuitively recognized it as guilt—and in retrospect that identification appeared more and more accurate. At the time Toller had wondered if he and Steenameert were being led away to be slaughtered, but his suspicions had been ill founded—so what had been causing the turmoil in Divivvidiv’s alien soul?

There was also the matter of the Xa—that fantastic sea of living crystal—and the reason for its presence in the weightless zone between Land and Overland. Now that Toller’s consciousness had been saturated with exotic concepts, now that strangeness had in a way become the norm, he could accept the notion that the Xa’s function was to hurl an entire world into the heart of a galaxy which was millions of light years distant.

When he had first encountered the proposition it had been remote from the realities of life on the sister planets. It had been a conceptual soap bubble; a gossamer palace constructed from pale-tinted abstracts— but now everything was different!

He and Vantara and some loyal companions were imprisoned on that ill-fated world, and… and…

Toller’s brow wrinkled as other pertinent memories began to flicker behind his eyes. During his first antagonistic meeting with Divivvidiv the alien had told him that the intergalactic leap was due to take place in about six days’ time. Had it been six days? Yes, that memory held true… and the flight to Dussarra had taken roughly four days… and more precious time had slipped away during the long fall from the edge of space…

Icy sweat prickled through Toller’s skin as he realized that the time available to the small band of lost Kolcorronians could conveniently be reckoned in hours.

Or perhaps only minutes…

The sight of black-clad, corpse-faced figures assembling behind the metal-and-glass screen came like the answer to a prayer.

Toller froze in mid-stride—trying to control the tumult in his mind, trying to think and at the same time not to think. His realization that the stupendous leap to a remote part of the universe had to take place in the very near future had filled him with pessimism. He needed a new hostage to give him even the faintest hope of escaping from Dussarra, but his off-hand way of mentioning the subject to Jerene had been a disguise for despair. His own society had faced its fair share of crises, and, although there were no real parallels, he could not imagine any official or scientific group on Overland deciding to visit a zoo at a comparable time.

And yet—in the aseptic and cheerless luminance of the dome—a few of the enemy were gathering, perhaps incautiously, perhaps making themselves vulnerable to a determined assault. The odds against a Kolcorronian success were vanishingly small, but the mere existence of odds—no matter how infinitesimal—was the only spur that Toller needed…

He strode across the open floor to where Steenameert and two of the rankers—Mistekka and Arvand—were sitting cross-legged and engaged in discussion. The women looked up at him without moving, but Baten hurriedly got his feet as soon as he saw Toller’s expression.

“Come on, Baten,” Toller said in a low voice. “Keep your mind on whatever it was, but follow me—this may be our only chance.” He looked down at the women. “Go at once and tell Vantara and Jerene to make ready to leave. We may have to move quickly.”

He turned and walked towards the enclosure, which now held about ten Dussarrans, with Steenameert at his side. “We will take the right hand edge of the box… yes, the Kailian black grape does make the most distinctive wine… I think we can hit hardest coming from the right… but it contains too much acid for my taste…”

Blanking all structured thought from his mind, surrendering himself to a crimson rage, Toller broke into a fast, loping run. The side of the enclosure expanded in his vision and he saw white-orbed, grey faces turning in his direction. He was moving at high speed now and could hear Steenameert snorting as he strove to keep pace. The metal-and-glass structure filled his view, and the voice of instinct was screaming at him to halt or risk terrible injury.

Snarling like an animal, Toller hit the enclosure with his shoulder and felt the edge of it tear free from the wall of the dome. Steenameert impacted with it at almost the same instant, having chosen to launch himself feet first at a lower panel. The side of the enclosure crumpled and was driven inwards, trapping several Dussarrans in the narrowing angle between it and the front wall. A huge pane of glass fell on Steenameert as he was scrambling to his feet, chilling Toller with images of brittle daggers, but the sheet remained intact and bounced harmlessly to the floor. Some of the Dussarrans were emitting thin mewing cries—the first sounds Toller had heard these aliens make with their mouths—as they backed away in obvious panic.

“Do not be in such haste about leaving,” Toller shouted, his shoulder hard against the metal panel, keeping pressure on the trapped Dussarrans. “We have three of your number here and they may require medical attention.”

He examined the haphazardly acquired captives. Two of them were still on their feet, held upright and immobile by the compressive force that he was exerting, their livid faces regarding him from a distance of inches. The third alien had dropped down to a crouching position inside the metal sandwich, possibly unconscious or dead. As Toller glared ferociously at the pair who were standing, he made no attempt to disguise the revulsion inspired in him by their noseless faces and tremulous, black-lipped mouths. They maintained a petrified silence, but Toller’s head was filled with a confused telepathic yammering. It was a mental distillation of pure fear—an exhilarating reminder that the Dussarrans were not a warrior breed—and therefore Toller saw it as a favorable omen as far as the hopes of his compatriots were concerned.

“See if the women are ready to proceed,” he called out to Steenameert. “In the meantime I will persuade the scarecrows to listen to reason.”

Steenameert nodded and darted away to where the female astronauts—Vantara among them—were clustered at the foot of a stair. Toller returned his attention to the scene within the enclosure. The aliens, all of them identical to his gaze in their scrappy dark garments, were poised near the doorway which led out of the dome. Their soupy body odor pervaded the confined space.