Terry Pratchett: Tama Princes of Mercury

Nevertheless, as he approached the rendezvous, he flew high, gazing cautiously down, sweeping his binoculars over the white, frozen landscape. The afternoon sun was shining.

The forest stretched white, with sharp black shadows; every twig of the underbrush was touched with winter's fairy fingers, glittering in the sunlight.

He could see, some ten miles apart, the two landing fields which the unknown voice had namedthe hangars, repair shops, and the towns nearby. Mentally he drew a line connecting them.

Jimmy made a wide circle. There were a few towns, shapeless in the snow, overhead an occasional plane, and camps in the forest, most of them deserted in this season. The town of Quogg was visible, and far off to the south, a patch on the lakeshore marked the snow-piled site of the White Summer Camp for Girls, where the Mercurian invaders had made their first raid the summer before.

Jimmy saw nothing suspicious. The designated spot was obviousa level snow field near the lake shore with the forest set close around it. A desolate, lonely spot.

Jimmy flashed on his wing insignia, dropped his snow-skid gear and descended. The dragon skimmed the naked treetops like an albatross, struck the field, slid its length, and stopped with the forest edge and a thick line of underbrush twenty feet beyond its propeller nose.

For a minute Jimmy sat in his little open pit, waiting.

The forest was silent; the small open field lay blue-white in the sunlight, an unbroken surface save for the double track of his skids.

No one was waiting here. Then it occurred to Jimmy that he had the dragon in a wrong position. He pressed down his turning spikes, wheeled the little plane around, facing the open field for a quick takeoff.

Jimmy was alert. He was awkward in his thick suit, but he had flung back his face visor, taken off his gloves, and in his hand he held his automatic. As the dragon wheeled with its tail to the nearby forest edge, a figure appeared from the underbrush there. Jimmy did not see it at once; but he saw it an instant later when he raised himself cautiously up to gaze back over the pit-cowl.

"Hil" called Jimmy. "Stand where you arethat's close enough." The single figure stopped obediently. It was a small man bundled in a huge gray-white fur garment with a hood over his head. His pale face was uncovered, but his hands were lost in the voluminous fur.

Jimmy noticed that at once and ducked back of his cowl, clicking open a tiny slit through which he poked the muzzle of his gun. Down in the pit where he crouched, his periscope mirror showed him the standing figure. The stranger was only twenty feet away; the astonished expression of his face at Jimmy's actions was plainly discernible.

Jimmy called, "I've got you covered. Better throw your hands up. Up I tell you! I never talk to strangers when they hide their hands like that." The man's arms went up. His hands were seemingly empty. His voicethe soft voice of the phone callsaid, "Are you Jimmy Turk?"

"Yes. What is it you want to tell me?"

"I cannot shout it. Can I come closer?"

"Yes. But keep your hands up." The man came walking with a slow, dragging tread. To Jimmy's mind flashed the thought that he was a cripple, his feet laboriously scuffling the snow.

And then another thought came: a realization. Jimmy's heart leaped. His finger very nearly pressed the trigger of his leveled automatic. But it was not Jimmy's way to kill in cold blood. He shouted, "Hey there1 say, wait a minutel Stand still!" The man stopped. He was only ten feet from Jimmy now.

His hands were over his head and one of them flipped forward suddenly.

Jimmy fired. He thought he saw the man's knees knock together, an instant in advance of the shot. At the stranger's waist a spreading stab of blue-green light leaped out. Jimmy's bullet went into the light-radiance: melted in a harmless puff of ignited gas.

All in a second. Jimmy was aware of the tiny object the man had flipped, dropping into the open pit beside him as he crouched. It shattered into a tiny puff of light, almost invisiblecolorlessincredibly bright. Stabs of pain leaped in Jimmy's eyeballs. The pit interior went dazzling white, then dark. Black.

Jimmy felt himself firing again, blindly. He biinked. The pain in his eyeballs was horribleconfusing, blurring. His eyes were open. But he was blind.

He felt arms reaching in to seize him. He swung up his automatic, but it was knocked from his hand. Then something struck his heada blow dulled by his headgear, but it was enough. His senses whirled; he felt himself falling backward to the floor of his pit.

Ill THIRD DEGREE JIMMY'S FIRST returning consciousness brought again those stabbing pains in his eyeballs. The white puff of light had caused only a temporary blindness: a horribly brilliant actinic ray which narrowed his pupils and paralyzed their nerves so that they could not expand when the light was gone.

The effect was wearing off now. He could see dim blurred shadows around him; and out of the shadows of unconsciousness the murmur of voices became audible.

Jimmy felt himself to be lying upon something soft. He moved his hand and struck a curved, smooth metal surface. He felt his head. His hair was matted with blood, drying now, stiffly sticky. A scalp wound where something had struck him.

He realized that his headgear had been taken off; and then that his flying suit was off. But he was warm, lying in some interior. His returning senses were clarifying, the sounds around him becoming less blurred. He could hear footsteps, and men's voices in a strange, unintelligible language.

Then he heard the approaching tread of heavy footsteps.

A shape bent over him and a face took forma woman's face with a wide, flat nose, flabby, sagging pallid-gray cheeks. Over her thick shoulder, he could distinguish the arch of gray-feathered wings.

She said in a gutteral, broken English, "You better? No hurt now?"

"No," said Jimmy. "But I can't see. Where am I? That man"

"No talk." She pushed at him with a flabby hand as he tried to sit up. "You no move. He kill." Jimmy sank back. "If he's here, you send him to me." She straightened and moved away into the blurred shadows of the room. Jimmy lay motionless and felt his strength coming back to him. He felt now that he was capable of standing, fighting But he was still very nearly sightless, and unarmed. He felt his clothes. There was no weapon upon him. He was in a lighted room; several men were here. A room unmoving, vibrationless.

Again approaching footsteps. A man this time. As the face came down, Jimmy saw a man with a smallish face of perhaps thirty. His black hair grew down in a little peak on his white forehead to give him a curiously satanic look. Jimmy recognized the soft voice of the man who had phoned him, he was saying, "And you have your senses now?"

"Yes. What the devil do you mean by" Jimmy broke off.

That line of talk was useless. He amended, "You've done something to my eyes. I'm blind."

"That will wear off presently. Have no fear, I have not banned you." The man sat down beside him.

"Look here," said Jimmy. "What's this all about? Who are you?" The man laughed softly. "My name you have heard, just as I have heard of you. I am Roc." Roc, the Mercuriani Jimmy had never seen him before, but from Guy Palisse he had heard of him. He was the son of the giant Croat who had come to Earth last summer and met his death. In the Light Country of Mercury this man Roc had risen to be chief of the army in Tama's native Hill City. Guy had taught him English, had known him for nearly ten years.

At Jimmy's exclamation. Roc chuckled grimly.

"You have heard of mel But you and Palisse, that Jack Dean and the rest never thought I would come to your Earth. Well, I came, to find out what became of my father and his spaceship" Jimmy interrupted cautiously, "Did they come to Earth? Well, I don't know"