Mick Farren - THEIR MASTER

One piece of furniture puzzled Hark. It was circular and plastic, with a slight depression in its middle. As far as he could see, it must have been originally created for I a very strange creature and been adapted for human use only by what had obviously been a good deal of applied violence.

A screen that showed moving pictures was set like a window in one of the bulkheads. A scratched and blotchy drama was being acted out by figures in strange armor who fought with swords. Back on his home world, this would have been a magical wonder to Hark; here, the new mind told him that it was only entertainment. There were just three men in the area. Two were staring at the screen while a third was winding tape around the handle of a large and vicious-looking knife. It was the same tape that affixed the pictures of naked women to the bulkheads, and it had also been employed extensively to repair the furniture. Hark, who was the first of the five to enter the area, nodded in greeting and was completely ignored. Finally the man taping the knife looked up and grunted. "New meat."

Hark nodded again. "We are new here."

The one with the knife spit on the floor and wrapped another twist of tape around the handle. This messdeck apparently had no tradition of hospitality or welcome for new recruits.

These troopers were hardly what Hark had expected. He had started to imagine that their future comrades would all be slick and polished like Topman Rance or Overman Elmo. These three were quite the opposite. They were close to ragged. The trooper with the knife was stripped to the waist, and an oily bandanna was tied around his head. There was a certain logic to that. It was hot on the messdeck. The man's chest was covered in scar tissue from old burns. His uniform pants were equally scrungy and crudely hacked off between knee and ankle. In total contrast, his boots were immaculate. The trooper had stopped winding tape around the knife handle and was now honing the gleaming blade with a small whetstone. His total absorption in the task made it close to an act of love.

Hark looked slowly around the room.

"Is it permitted for us to sit down?"

Again he was ignored. Hark glanced at the other recruits and shrugged. He selected a chair at the head of the big table and sat down. The other four did the same. Their attitude was one of uneasy defiance. What could these men do to them that hadn't already been done? A series of deep, rumbling shudders ran through the ship. The recruits turned to each other in alarm. The old-timers didn't even look up. The tremors subsided, and the recruits attempted to relax. Hark turned and watched the flickering images on the screen. The strange armored warriors were still hacking their way through their bloody intrigues. Unfortunately, when the characters spoke, their language was unintelligible. Even going deep into the new mind, he couldn't understand a word they were saying. After a while, he stopped trying to follow the story and settled into listening to the constant internal noises of the ship.

He was drifting into a half sleep when he heard voices from the other end of the messdeck and five men came down the aisle between the twin lines of coffins. They were an odd mixture. Two were in full harness and bulky black suits and carried black visored helmets under their arms. The new mind told Hark that these were the suits that Topman Rance had mentioned. These were the suits that the troopers wore into battle and into the emptiness of space. The material from which the suits were constructed was like nothing that Hark had ever seen. It was constantly in motion as if it were alive, molding itself to the wearer's body every time he moved. The other three men were dirty and oily, as if they had spent many hours doing hard manual work around machinery. They were dressed in ragged, cut-down dark green coveralls. One o them was a giant, his head shaved and his body such a mass of scars that it scarcely seemed possible that he could have lived through such injuries. Part of his left arm, a section of the forearm between the wrist and elbow, had been replaced by a steel and plastic prosthesis. Despite the fact that the section above it was entirely false, the giant's left hand seemed perfectly natural.

The giant was first into the rest area. He was so tall that he had to maintain a continuous stoop to avoid hitting his head on the ceiling. The trooper with the knife looked up as he approached the table.

"So how goes it, Dyrkin?"

The giant snorted. "How's it supposed to go when you've spent all the watch unblocking a filter in the forsaken twenties?"

The trooper with the knife shrugged. "You shoulda gone sick like me."

Dyrkin scowled. "Still jerking off that knife, Ren-chett? I wouldn't have thought you'd be so eager to use it again, not after the last time."

Renchett wiped the blade one last time and then slid it into his boot. "I'm in no hurry. No doubt we'll be dropping into some kind of shit soon enough… and talking of shit-" He jabbed a bony finger in the direction of Hark and the other recruits. "You see what we got here?"

Dyrkin nodded. "I seen it. I was just getting around to dealing with it."

He suddenly lunged across the table and grabbed Hark by the front of his singlet. "You're sitting in my chair, filth. What you got to say about that?"

Hark's mouth dropped open. "I didn't know-I-"

"Then you ought to have known."

Hark found himself jerked up and out of his seat, dragged across the table, and thrown bodily into a bulkhead. He lay winded for a few seconds, then he started to grow angry. He might have been delivered into this alien place, but he was still an Ashak-ai warrior. He scrambled to his feet and swung his fist at Dyrkin. The blow was stopped cold by a massive hand. The giant twisted Hark's arm, forcing Hark to bend half double. At the same time, he brought the steel forearm down across Hark's back. Hark's knees buckled, and he dropped to the deck plates with the world spinning around him.

Hark woke with a gasp. He was lying in a pool of water. His face was wet, and his singlet was soaked through. For a moment, he had absolutely no idea where he was or even who he was. All he knew was that he couldn't feel his left shoulder. Then he moved his head, and he felt it with a vengeance. Pain surged through him, and for a moment he wondered if his neck had been broken. A ring of grinning faces were staring down at him, hard faces with scars and cold unfriendly eyes. He knew where he was. He was on the Gods' starship. Except all that had changed. The Gods weren't Gods at all, they were creatures called the Therem, and he was part of their army. He groaned. The grins broadened. Dyrkin, the giant with the prosthetic arm, stood right over him. His grin was the meanest of all.

"You learned your place now, new meat, or do you want to go around again?"

Hark tried to sit up. He felt as if he were going to vomit. "I…"

Renchett, the one who seemed to be in love with his knife, was holding a plastic container. He must have dumped the water over the fallen man.

Hark tried to speak again. "I…won't sit in your chair no more."

Dyrkin nodded. "You learn fast, new meat."

Beyond the grinning circle of old hands were the other four recruits from Hark's group. They weren't grinning. Their faces showed an unhappy combination of relief that they weren't the ones who'd been getting the treatment at the hands of Dyrkin and apprehension that they might be next. Renchett turned and glared at them.

"One of you get him up on his feet and into his coffin."

None of them moved. The four stood as if fear had rooted them to the spot.

Renchett scowled. "You hear me, you scumsucks?"

The four looked at each other as if each was unwilling to be the one to draw attention to himself by stepping through the ring of longtimers. Renchett didn't wait for a volunteer. He grabbed the nearest by the front of his singlet.