Mick Farren - THEIR MASTER

Rance nodded grimly at the charred bodies of the medians.

"That can sometimes be the price of your freedom."

There was a long silence. Finally the lantere gave in.

"Very well, I will agree to this foolhardy expedition, but I still have grave doubts."

Renchett whooped and spun his weapon. "Let's get ourselves some girls!"

Rance looked at him. He wasn't smiling.

"This may not be that easy."

"The suits don't work," Dyrkin told Rance.

"What do you mean the suits don't work?1

"Try one. They go on the way they always did, but once they're on, there's no flexibility. You can't move your arms and legs. Also, they're secreting something that's got everyone close to throwing up."

"What the hell is going on? We're only hours out from the recstar. There's never been a problem with the suits before. Why now?"

Rance followed Dyrkin to the messdeck. The ship had completed its third and final jump, and preparations were under way for the attack. A problem with the suits was little short of a disaster. Rance immediately stripped off his dress tans.

"Somebody throw me a suit."

Hark tossed across one of the shapeless black blobs.

"It's like they know what we're doing and they're refusing to go along with it. It's like they won't go against the Therem."

"That's ridiculous superstition. The suits don't have the brains for anything like that."

Rance placed the suit on the deck and stood on it. The suit began to crawl up his leg, but it moved more slowly than usual. The slowness was easy to interpret as reluctance. When the suit covered his body, he experimentally flexed his arms. The suit resisted. The same happened when he tried to bend his legs.

"See what we mean?"

"We're not going to be able to use them."

"What are we going to do? We can't go into combat without suits."

"We could use radiation armor."

"It's goddamn bulky. It's going to really cut down on our mobility."

"What the hell else can we do?"

"Nothing. We'll have to go with the radiation suits. Dyrkin, scout around and see how many you can come up with."

"What are we going to do with the suits?"

Rance shook his head. "I don't know. I'm going to talk to the aliens and see if they've got a line on any of this."

The meeting with the aliens was brief. They had nothing to contribute as to why the suits should be behaving the way they were. Strangely, they seemed more inclined than Rance to accept the men's idea that the creatures were actually refusing to act against the interests of the Therem.

"Even though it seems at the time to defy logic, an intuitive feeling may be a pointer to the truth." "Sure."

"We don't feel that these things should be allowed to remain loose in the ship. The current loss of function may be only the start of an entire destructive cycle. We have no idea what might be built into their genetic code. We urge you to destroy them."

"The suits are not that easily destroyed," Rance reminded them.

"So simply jettison them into space."

"You want us to do that?"

"It would seem the obvious solution."

"The men aren't going to like this. They've been a long way with those suits. Remember that we and the suits are symbiotic."

"The men would probably like it even less if someone else disposed of the suits."

"You've got a point there."

The men didn't like it. The announcement was received by a hard silence. No one cursed'and no one complained, but also no one moved. Nobody wanted to be the first. Finally Dyrkin broke the deadlock.

"He's right. They're going to have to go. They ain't working with us no more."

"Maybe it's just a delayed-action side effect of the jumps. Maybe they'll come back to normal."

"Damn it, you know that ain't true. They've left us, and we've got to dump them. They could turn on us."

Rance quickly took control before the mood could alter. "Load them on a pallet and let's get it over with. Dyrkin, pick a squad to take care of this."

To his complete surprise, Dyrkin turned on him with something close to a snarl.

"No way, Rance. Each man does his own. As each man gets his radiation armor, he goes to the lock and blows out the old suit."

Rance nodded. "As you want it."

It became a solemn procession. The radiation armor was brought down to the messdecks. It had been hastily sprayed black so those wearing it wouldn't present too obvious a target. Each man in turn received his issue, fitted the suit, and checked the servos. Then he picked up the black blob of dormant suit and started the long walk to the nearest lock. Each would pause for a mo- ment as his suit floated into the void, and then he'd turn and make the walk back.

Communications started coming in from the asteroid. The survival of one of the Anah cluster seemed to be causing some degree of excitement. There were constant demands for information. The ship sent a broken, ragged signal of modulated static, as if the communication equipment were much more badly damaged than it really was. A number of shuttle craft came out to meet the Anah 5, but they seemed content to remain at a distance, merely inspecting the disabled newcomer. The asteroid base appeared to be accepting the slowly limping ship on face value. The men moved into the lower drop bay from where they were going to launch their attack. They were very quiet. Rance had worried that the discarding of the suits would have had a dampening effect on the men's spirits, but it seemed to have had quite the opposite result. They were quiet but deadly. They were fighting for themselves, and they weren't going to let anything stop them.

The asteroid was starting to broadcast warnings. They wanted the Anah 5 to stand off in deep space. Shuttles would be sent to take off the crew. This was understandable. Those on the asteroid had no idea of the levels of damage. For all they knew, the ship might be five minutes away from blowing itself to atoms. The Anah 5 ignored the warnings and kept on coming. It went right on broadcasting the unintelligible signal. The messages from the recstar began to sound more than a little spooked. The two bodies were now in visual contact. On the asteroid, they had to be entertaining the idea that the Anah 5 wasn't capable of stopping and was going to run right into them. The warnings started to be a good deal more threatening. There was a first tentative mention of force, although it was actually too late for that. The ship and the asteroid were now so close that neither could damage the other without doing damage to itself. The asteroid population must have been wondering if anybody was left alive on the cluster ship or if it was just a drifting hulk sending an automatic signal. The interpreter seemed to derive a lot of entertainment from imagining the state of mind of what was now being thought of as the enemy. It seemed to take a positive delight in directing the overall operation.

A more serious warning came in.

"Reverse spatial motion or we will be forced to deflect you with our heavy weapons. Please acknowledge."

This was the moment to change signal. A prepared message was sent. The deliberately desperate voice of lantere cut through the storm of jagged static. The fac that it was a lantere sending should have alerted the base to. the fact that things were very wrong on the cluster ship. The big crustaceans were natural engineers, but they never operated ship-to-ship communication.

"We are reducing spatial motion as best we can. W are coming round onto your darkside. It will be a clo dock."

The static took over again, but the Anah 5 did begin to slow as the two bodies came closer and closer. It still looked as if they were going to touch, but then, at the very last moment, the cluster ship started to curv around the asteroid.