Chapter VIII

He was still staring up at them when the Caligan girl climbed up into the control blister beside him.

"Can't you shoot them down?" she protested.

He shook his head.

"They stay out of range. I don't understand it. The way they act, you'd think they knew just how close they could come."

"Of course they know!" Tabak bit her lip. "Jupiter, they're directed telepathically by the Anolyn, and the Anolyn picked your brain clean!"

He said: "Damn!"

"They--they can't get at us in here," Tabak asked, "can they?"

He shook his head. "We're safe enough as long as we stay inside. We could fly away, I suppose, but as soon as we came back they'd pick us up again. And I haven't enough fuel to waste any of it."

The Caligan girl brightened.

"At least we're giving Reiloc and Lete a better chance to get through. We've drawn off all the birds for miles around."

Jupiter nodded, broke open his pack. Tabak's blue eyes were alive with curiosity as she watched him feed the radioactive tentacle into the fuel hoppers, reset the alarms and check the instruments.

Tabak poked into every corner of the ship, "Oh-ed" and "ah-ed" with delight. She wanted to know about everything. But before Jupiter could tell her she would say, "This is Briggs' cabin, isn't it?" Or, "This is the galley," and laugh at his expression.

"Jupiter," she said soberly, with one of her quick shifts of mood. "Are--are you very fond of Lete?"

He raised his sandy eyebrows. "What made you ask that?"

"I don't want to see you hurt, Jupiter." Tabak grew more and more confused under his level stare. "You don't know the Kagans. They--they're promiscuous like animals. Lete would never understand your morals. She couldn't--"

Jupiter slapped his leg, burst into laughter.

"Good heavens, I'm not in love with her. Why, I'll be leaving Yogol as soon as I can get enough fuel. I couldn't take her with me anyway."

"Oh," said Tabak.

Jupiter's eyes suddenly widened.

"You were speaking Lingua Galactica!"

"Why not? I know it as well as you." They were back in the control blister. She sank into an acceleration chair, smoothed the short black sarong over her legs, raised her eyes to his. A small frown drew her brows together.

"Jupiter, what is love?"

"What did you say?" he asked, not sure that he'd heard her aright.

"Love. There's no such emotion among Yogolians. Sexual attraction, but not love. What is it, Jupiter?"

He gave her a startled, baffled look.

"It--it's a romantic invention," he said, "to dress up the biological urge. It's something you feel for another person like hunger only not so tangible."

She nodded to herself. "That's what I thought, but I wasn't sure. Is it very strong, Jupiter?"

"It can be."

"What are the symptoms?"

He scratched his chin. "It hits different people different ways. You--you--Oh, hell," he said, "I don't know. What ever made you ask?"

"I've got it," she said in a stricken voice.

Jupiter sat bolt upright. "You mean you're in love?"

She nodded unhappily, stood up. "I think I want to be by myself." Averting her head, she walked quickly to the door and slipped out of sight down the ladder before Jupiter could recover from the shock.

"Hey!" he cried, springing to his feet; "where are you going?"

There was no answer. Then he heard the door of Briggs' cabin open and close. Suddenly his eyes widened. He dropped down the ladder, tried the door, but it was locked. "Tabak! Tabak!" he called, rapped on the panel. "Open up!"

"Go away," he heard her call in an unsteady voice; "please go away and leave me alone."

"Tabak, listen," he said. "You didn't mean me? You weren't talking about me when you said--" His voice trailed off. Confound it, that didn't sound at all the way he wanted it to.

There was something suspiciously like a sob from beyond the door.

"No!" Tabak said in a muffled voice. "Of course not!"

Jupiter felt suddenly very foolish. Without another word, he turned on his heel, strode from the passage.

* * * * *

Two days later the web-birds came--tiny black specks wheeling around and around in the sky like vultures drawn by carrion. Jupiter stood in the control blister and scowled up at them.

He was worried about Reiloc and the cave girl who should have returned yesterday. Maybe he'd better not wait any longer. He was turning away to call Tabak, when a wild clamor broke loose from stem to stern of the Mizar as the alarm bell began to ring. Jupiter's head jerked up! The black specks were plummeting Yogol-wards, diving like kingfishers.

Then he saw Lete break from the encircling jungle, sprint for the ship. The cave girl was alone. There was no sign of Reiloc anywhere.

Jupiter yelled down the tube to Tabak: "Open the port! Quick!"

He heard her gasp as he sprang for the keys that brought the needle gun into play.

It was a precision weapon, a fine, invisible ray of disruptive force. As the first of the web-birds dropped arrow-like into range, the ray touched it. The creature exploded like a fountain of spray. He got two more before the startled birds sheered off.

Snapping on the outside amplifiers, he yelled: "Lete!" His voice boomed through the loudspeaker--a giant's voice that stopped the cave girl dead in her tracks. "Lete! What's wrong?"

She stared upward in fright at the gleaming bullet-shaped monster.

"Quick, girl, speak up!"

"The Anolyn," she said in a small voice.

"What about them?"

"The Anolyn have sent a great army of Nehogans. Our men have seen them, less than a day's march from here."

"Get in the ship!" Jupiter commanded.

Lete began to tremble, but she was too frightened to disobey. She climbed meekly through the port. With a hollow "clang!" it shut behind her.

* * * * *

Jupiter blasted the starship off the ground with the jets. He couldn't use the inertialess stellar drive inside Yogol's gravitational field and the Mizar rocked sickeningly as it hurtled above the surface under rocket propulsion.

Lete cowered in the shock absorber where Jupiter had buckled her down against her will. Her yellow eyes were glazed. She was like a wild animal in a trap.

Tabak was pale, but she stared eagerly through the transparent rind of the blister. Jupiter shot her an approving glance. He'd never realized how blue the Caligan girl's eyes were--cerulean blue, alive, dancing like a little girl's with a new doll.

"Take the scanner," he said gruffly. "You should know how it operates."

"May I? I'll be ever so careful."

She found it unhesitatingly, turned it on. The surface of Yogol sprang on the screen in three dimensional reality. Tabak gasped.

"I'm almost afraid I might fall into it!" Then she stiffened. "There they are! There! Look, Jupiter!"

He glanced into the screen. The valley widened out below, and he could see a great army of men camped on the level ground. Thousands of the copper-skinned Nehogan warriors! They stood in excited clusters, staring upward, pointing at the Mizar with its comet tail of flame.

Jupiter could make out the striped tents of the Anolyn in the center of the encampment. He could see pink-skinned Caligans and stolid porters. He turned to the terrified cave girl.

"What happened to Reiloc?"

Lete only moaned.

"Answer me!" he snapped. "Where's Reiloc?"

"He--he stayed at the cliffs to organize my people into an army. The tribes have been coming in for days. Ever since the word spread that the Wanderer has appeared. Reiloc said to tell you that he was going to split his forces, attack from both ends of the valley."

Jupiter swore under his breath. "We're going down," he told Tabak. "Going down fast. Hang onto your hair."

He put the Mizar into a tight spiral, drove her down like a blazing meteor. The star ship must have presented an awe-inspiring sight, jets shooting streamers of flame, her nose pointed directly at the cluster of striped tents in the center of the army.

Below him, the Nehogans scattered panic-stricken. The surface was rushing up at him like a gigantic expanding cannon ball. He cut in "George", buckled himself down frantically.

The Mizar seemed to explode as every available jet burst into life. A thunderous booming roar deafened him. Then the ship struck with a jar that almost shook loose his teeth.

He threw off the straps, dived for the control panel.

* * * * *

Ash covered the ground where the tents had been. At least half of the purple-shelled octopods had been consumed instantly by the jets. The Anolyn who remained alive were scuttling for the protection of the jungle. Jupiter swung the needle gun into action.

The Nehogans had outstripped their slow-moving masters, who crawled like a cluster of frightened tortoises across the bare, flat land. The sides of the valley were alive with humans; they had fled that far and had turned to watch in frightened silence.

Jupiter concentrated on the Anolyn, picking them off one by one. Only a few seconds actually had elapsed since the Mizar had appeared over the horizon, and already less than a dozen of the terrified creatures were left, crawling desperately for the hills.

A sudden whisper of wings sounded overhead. Something like the shadow of a cloud raced across the flat land toward the cluster of fleeing octopods.

"The web-birds!" Tabak cried.

Jupiter lifted his eyes, saw a flock of the ungainly creatures. There must have been nearly a hundred of them. They swooped down on their Anolyn masters, plucked the octopods from the ground with a furious beating of wings.

Jupiter's eyes widened in disbelief as the remaining Anolyn were borne to safety above the tree tops.

The Mizar was left all alone in the center of the valley.

Then to a man the frightened mob on the hillsides fell down on their faces, arms extended before them toward the ship below, and a great babbling cry arose:

"The Wanderer! The Wanderer-from-Beyond!"

Tabak whirled away from the plastic rind.

"Jupiter! There comes Reiloc now! He must be warned, Jupiter! He doesn't know that the Anolyn have fled. He'll attack!"

At the head of the valley a mass of half-naked cavemen were streaming from the trees. They were a wild, undisciplined lot like an army of soldier ants on the march. Even from this distance, Jupiter recognized the giant figure of Reiloc striding at their head.

He swore in Lingua Galactica. "I can't afford to leave the ship just yet. Not until we know how that crazy Anolyn army's going to behave. The ship's our ace in the hole."

"I'll go," Tabak said, and darted for the well.

Jupiter watched her disappear down the ladder with a vague feeling of uneasiness. Then he turned back to the transparent rind. He caught sight of her again, running across the level ground toward Reiloc, waving her arms--a slim, blonde figure in the sarong, barefooted and barelegged. He swallowed disconsolately.

So, he thought, it must be Reiloc that she's crazy about. Reiloc!

He could see the giant Nehogan leave the cavemen, hurry toward the girl. They met on the level valley floor between the ship and the wild Kagans who were still debouching from among the trees.

Jupiter's blood ran suddenly cold. A flock of web-birds had appeared over the crest of the hill.

He leaped for the keys of the needle gun.

"Reiloc!" he yelled through the P. A. "Tabak! Watch out! The birds!"

He got three of the ungainly flying webs with the needle ray. Then he couldn't shoot any more.

"Oh, hell," he said.

The web-birds had dropped onto the pair in the open. Jupiter could see neither Reiloc nor Tabak. Only the monstrous fluttering of the creature's wings. Then the flock lifted slowly into the air bearing the Nehogan and the Caligan girl aloft. Jupiter didn't dare fire for fear of hitting either the one or the other.

They rose higher, higher, then straight as wild bees they lined out for the distant city by the _Dra Dur_.

Jupiter was beside himself with helpless rage and consternation. He couldn't chase them in the starship. It would be like attempting to follow a school of fish in an ocean liner.

He was stunned. He sank into an acceleration chair, while the web-birds with their human freight, became smaller and smaller in the distance.

* * * * *

During the days following the capture of Tabak and Reiloc, Jupiter was frantic. He couldn't rid his mind of the horrors that the fragile Caligan girl might be undergoing. The breeding stations, the biological laboratories, the inhuman orgies that took place in the city by the _Dra Dur_. Reiloc would be no better off, except that they might kill him outright instead of by degrees. Every hour's delay multiplied their danger.

Jupiter drove himself unmercifully, but there weren't enough hours for him to cram in all the things that had to be done.

He allowed the Kagans to retain their loose tribal organization. More tribes joined the march on the city by the _Dra Dur_ every day. They were more like a migrating people than an army. They were bound together by only one common impulse--a desire to annihilate the Anolyn.

Lete was some help to Jupiter there. The cave girl acted as liaison officer between him and the Kagan chiefs. He was aware that she had risen to a position of eminence among her people--an Amazon chieftainess, a cave girl Joan of Arc.

Her rise to power suited him because it left him free to organize the Nehogan army.

They were his only trained body of men and they were useless so long as the parasites were fastened to their necks. The Anolyn could regain control of them, turn his own army against him.

Jupiter set himself to the impossible task of administering the exsrocain to the Nehogan soldiers, the Caligan advisers, even the green-skinned porters.

He made short hops in the star ship, setting up his camp ahead of the slow-moving army. As soon as they began to stream in, he set to administering the drug. He trained a staff of Caligans, who were more adept at such things. He synthesized gallons of the stuff and taught them how to synthesize it.

And all the time he lived in perpetual dread of the Anolyn's next move.

Overhead the web-birds wheeled and dipped, at first hundreds, then thousands of the creatures as they drew closer to the city. They were the eyes of the Anolyn, he sensed. They followed the army like gulls following a ship.

On the seventeenth day they reached the broad plains surrounding the city by the _Dra Dur_, deployed before the towering walls and battlements.

The Nehogan general and Lete were closeted with Jupiter in the Mizar, laying their final plans, when a postern gate opened and a man left the city, made his way alone toward the lines of the invading army.

* * * * *

He was a Caligan in a living, yellow furred boj and sandals. His eyes were peculiar--a glazed blue like enamelware. He made no move to escape or defend himself when the pickets grabbed him.

He said that he had a message for the Wanderer-from-Beyond from the Anolyn.

He was turned over to a Nehogan officer and brought before Jupiter in the Mizar.

One look at the man told Jupiter that he was possessed--that he was merely a vehicle through which some Anolyn inside the city was seeing, hearing, speaking, acting--

In an undertone he cautioned Lete and the Nehogan general not to mention their plans, turned to the Caligan envoy.

"What message do the Anolyn send?"

The Caligan stood like a man in a cataleptic trance, regarded Jupiter with fixed, unwinking attention.

"I am to inform you that the girl, Tabak, and the man, Reiloc, are unharmed."

Jupiter realized suddenly that his forehead was covered with sweat. He didn't interrupt.

The Caligan continued in that flat, unemotional voice:

"Unless you disband your army and send them away, the girl will be turned over to the long-tailed Begans to play with. If she survives the animal-men, which is doubtful, she will be sent to the biological laboratories for vivisection. Reiloc, of course, will be operated on immediately."

The Caligan paused. The control blister was still.

"In the event you agree to the Anolyn terms," the emissary went on, "both Tabak and Reiloc will be set free outside the city gates. You are to take them aboard your ship and leave Yogol forever.

"Post-hypnotic commands have been implanted in both their minds. If you return or attempt treachery, of any kind, they will kill you.

"You have until sunup to give us your decision."

The Caligan stopped talking.

Jupiter let his breath run out between his teeth. The orange sun was sinking into the _Dra Dur_. Lete's yellow eyes glittered. The Nehogan general opened his mouth to speak. But Jupiter silenced him with an imperative gesture.

"This is not something to be decided without thought," he told the unwinking emissary. "We'll give you our answer before daybreak." He turned to the guards. "Lock him in my cabin."

No sooner had the door closed on the Caligan envoy, than Lete sprang to her feet. She was clad in the fur of some jungle beast. A sword and dagger hung at her waist. She made Jupiter think of a savage Joan of Arc more than ever and he could feel his heart sink.

"There is but one answer," she flashed, "and that's to attack! Attack tonight before they can bring up reinforcements.

"This is the first time the Kagans have been united. Do they think we're foolish enough to throw away everything for the life of a man and a girl!"

Jupiter didn't say anything.

The Nehogan general shook his head. He looked somewhat like Reiloc except that he was older, heavier.

"After all," he said, "many men will die during the battle. Is that any reason to abandon the fight? What's the life of two people against the whole world? I don't understand it. The Anolyn must be very desperate to offer such terms. It is a trick, maybe."

"No," said Jupiter. "No, I don't think it's a trick." But he knew that it would be impossible to explain his feelings either to the cave girl or the Nehogan general. Such sentimentality was foreign to their natures. If he attempted to dissuade them from their purpose, they would go ahead in spite of him. And he couldn't blame them.

He said: "We'll attack at sunup."

"But why wait until then?" Lete demanded hotly, "When the Anolyn will be expecting us?"

"To give me time to get inside and open the gate," he told her.

"You can get inside the city?" the Nehogan general asked incredulously. "Undetected?"

"I think so. It's worth a try."

"Yes," said the general grimly, "if you can get the gate open it may mean the difference between victory and defeat. When will you start?"

Jupiter was staring at the spires and steeples of the city by the _Dra Dur_, bathed in the angry orange rays of the setting sun.

"One hour after dark," he said.