Star Soldiers (47 page)

He lashed a kick at Cummi, who, reflexes weakened by the fever, could not dodge the blow. As the Ageratan sprawled flat on his face, the ranger hurdled his body and began to back toward the woods in the general direction of the hidden aircraft.

Seconds later he heard a welcome voice behind him.

"I have them covered, Kartr—"

"Cummi controls them—"

"Okay. I've got him, too. Fall back to the trees, Zicti is waiting for us." Rolth spoke calmly as he stepped out of the shadows to stand shoulder to shoulder with the sergeant.

Cummi caught at Wulf as the chieftain passed him. Using the native as a support he pulled himself up on his feet.

"So you don't have galdine," he spat at them. His face was no longer malevolent. It was twisted and white with pure fear.

"I may be a dead man," he went on softly, "but I still have time to finish you, too." He released Wulf suddenly and pushed him at the rangers. "Kill—!" he screamed.

"We'll do what we can for you—" Kartr said slowly.

The Ageratan was holding himself erect with an effort which was draining the last resources of his strength. "Still living by the code, fool! I shall live to see your blood—barbarian!"

"Ahhhhhhhh!" The scream was shrill and it bit rawly at the nerves. It could only have been torn from a woman's throat.

Wulf and his men half turned just as a second scream broke. There was a frenzied gabble of words which Kartr did not catch. But Zicti's thought translated for them.

"One of this tribe—a maiden—has fallen ill. They believe that the demons of Cummi have entered into her—"

Wulf had gone to the source of the screaming; now he came back into the firelight walking heavily.

"The demons"—he spoke directly to the Ageratan—"are in Quetta. If you are truly a sky god—bring them forth."

Cummi swayed, conquering the weakness of his body by sheer power of will.

"It is their doing." He pointed to the rangers. "Ask them."

But Wulf's attention did not waver.

"Koomee is a sky god, he has sworn it. These have not sworn it. Koomee brought the devils hither in his body. They are the devils of Koomee, not the devils of my people. Now let Koomee summon them forth out of the body of my daughter!"

Cummi's ravaged face, gaunt and hollowed, was a mask of pain in the flickering light. His black eyes held on the rangers.

"Galdine." Kartr saw the Ageratan's lips form the word. Then slowly, as if he were fighting to the last, he lost control and toppled forward into the trampled dirt and ashes on the very edge of the fire.

Wulf stooped and twisted his fingers in the Ageratan's cropped hair, fumbling for a hold, and then he jerked up the head. But Cummi had not lost consciousness. And, before either of the horrified rangers could move, the chieftain drew his knife in a quick stroke across the stretched throat of the Vice-Lord.

"Here is an open door for the devils to enter," he remarked, "and also much blood for them to drink. May they speedily find it." He wiped the knife on Cummi's tunic. "Sometimes it takes very much blood to satisfy the thirst of a strong demon," he ended as he looked up at the rangers.

Rolth's blaster was ready but Kartr shook his head. Together they backed into the darkness under the trees.

"They will follow—" suggested the Faltharian.

"Not yet," came Zicti's reassurance. "I think that they are still a little daunted by their chieftain's act. After all, it is not every day that one slays a god—or ex-god. Now, let us make haste to the lifeboat."

It was morning again and there was a sun bright and hot across Kartr's knees but his thoughts were dull and gray.

"We couldn't do anything to help them." Smitt was making his report. "If we had had the galdine—maybe—if they would let us near them. But we have tried during these last three days. When Dalgre and I went there two hours ago one of them crawled out just to throw a knife at us. Most of them must be already dead." He spread out his hands in a gesture of defeat. "I do not think any will be alive by nightfall."

"Twenty people—maybe more—murdered. It was murder," Kartr returned bleakly.

"We don't catch it," Dalgre wondered.

"Immunity shots—and the Zacathans have never come down with emphire. But this is the way it used to hit—when it was a plague. It hasn't been like this for years—"

"We've had galdine. And we've known emphire a long time, remember. It struck us just after the Ciran worlds were explored. Through generations," Rolth pointed out, "we may have built up some natural immunity to it, also. Man does, by natural selection. But how do we know how many other germs we may carry with us—harmless to us but devastating to this world. The best thing we can do from now on is to stay away from the natives."

"And that move may not be altogether altruistic," added Zinga. "Suppose they have bred some pleasant little viruses of their own. Let us pray that our immunity shots continue to work."

"It is a tragedy, but one we can do nothing to end." Zicti pulled off his traveling cloak and let the sun beat warmly on his shoulders. "From now on we shall keep away from these people. I gather that they are not a numerous race—?"

"I believe not," answered Kartr. "From the little I was able to learn there are only a few small family clans—but they unite once a year at—"

"The Meeting Place of the Gods, yes, that is a most interesting point. These `gods' who departed into the sky—who were they, some galactic colony later withdrawn? That would account for the city left in order to wait a return. Pardon me, gentlemen, I am being swept away again by my own subject." The hist-techneer smiled.

"But there was no space ship landing field near the city," protested Dalgre.

"That was only one city. There may be others," Fylh pointed out. "Suppose they had only one or two space ports on the whole planet. That could be true of a colonial outpost."

"The Meeting Place of the Gods," mused Zicti. "What does that suggest?"

"We've got to go there!" Dalgre sat up eagerly. "The city machinery, what I saw of it, was in an amazing state of preservation. If we find a space port we might even find a ship we can use!"

A ship to use. Kartr frowned. And then he could only be surprised at the instant protest those words had sparked in him. Didn't he want to leave this world?

Zacita and her daughter came out of the makeshift tent that was their own domain and joined the group by the fire. Kartr noted with an inner tickle of amusement how quick Zinga was to heap up the grass intended for seating.

"You have news of importance?" Zacita asked.

"There may be an ancient space port near here. The native boy told Kartr of a `Meeting Place of the Gods' which suggests possibilities," replied her husband.

"So—" Zacita considered that. But Kartr caught a fleeting impressing that she was not altogether pleased with that news. Why? A Zacathan lady of the highest rank—for the gold forehead paint she wore proclaimed her an Issitti, one of the fabulously wealthy and noble Seven Families—certainly would rejoice at the chance to return to galactic civilization as quickly as possible.

"Techneer Dalgre believes that if we find one of the old ships we might be able to activate it again—since the machinery in the city was in such an excellent state of preservation. They used a city form of aircraft to come here, remember—"

"I hope that any spaceship we might discover would last longer than that did," Dalgre stuck in ruefully. "It did bring us this far but then it went to pieces."

"An important point to consider." Kartr met Zacita's eyes and it was almost as if he read in them some subtle encouragement. "I have no desire to blast off in a ship which will go powerless after we hit deep space. I can think of many more effective and less painful ways of committing suicide—"

"But we can visit this Meeting Place of the Gods." Dalgre was almost pleading.

"I would say yes, if we can keep free of the natives. It is time for their annual pilgrimage there. And we can't mingle with them. Cummi infected and killed that clan just as truly as if he had taken a disruptor to their camp! We can't be walking death to a whole nation!"

"Very true," Zicti agreed. "Let us do this—send out a scouting party to make mind contact with some clan bound for this assembly. But our men must keep out of sight. The natives thus discovered will serve us as unconscious guides. Once contact is established we can follow with our supplies— Will the lifeboat be of any more service?"

"It can go twenty—maybe twenty-five miles." Dalgre answered that with authority.

"Well, walking is good for the figure," Zicti continued good-humoredly. "What do you think, Sergeant Kartr?"

"You have the best solution," Kartr returned.

Zinga got up, crooking a taloned finger in Rolth's direction. "Let us go out by night—owl eyes here can watch and I can think us into contact. Should we find what we seek, you shall speedily know of it."

Before midnight they received the message they had been waiting for, Zinga and Rolth had found a clan of natives camped for the night and had made sure that they were en route to the Meeting Place of the Gods. In the late afternoon of the next day the rangers abandoned their own camp and set out on the trail blazed by their unknowing guides.

On the eighth morning both Kartr and the Zacathans caught the warning of a multitude gathered not far ahead—they must be approaching their goal. And, picking a well-sheltered and secluded thicket, they made camp, sleeping uneasily by turns until nightfall when Zinga, Kartr and Rolth set out to learn the general lay of the land before them.

It was not the lights of a city which lit a glow in the northern sky to beckon them, but the rising flames of at least a hundred campfires. The three rangers moved gingerly about the rim of the wide, shallow cup which held the clan rendezvous, avoiding any near contact with the few stragglers still coming in.

"This
is
a space port!"

"How can you be sure?" demanded Kartr, striving to see what had made Rolth declare that with such firmness.

"The ground—all over this depression—it has been blasted time and time again by take-off back-flares! But it's old—no new scars showing."

"All right. So we've located an old space port." Zinga sounded irritated, almost disappointed. "But a port isn't a ship. See any of those, bright eyes?"

"No," Rolth returned calmly. "But there is a building on the other side—there. See—that fire lights it just a little—"

Kartr, now that his attention had been directed, sighted it, an expanse of massive blocks only barely perceptible in the poor light.

"It's large—"

Rolth cupped his hands around his eyes to cut some of the fire glare. "Let's have the visibility lenses, Kartr." And when he used those he added with a faint trace of excitement:

"Its huge—bigger than anything we saw in the city! And—did you ever visit Central City?"

Kartr laughed bitterly. "I saw visigraphs of it. Do you think we outer barbarians ever came so close to the fount of all knowledge as to see it in reality?"

"And what has Central City got to do with this?" Zinga wanted to know. "Were you ever there yourself?"

"No. But one can get a pretty good idea of the place from the visigraphs. And that building over there is an exact duplicate of the Place of Free Planets—or I'll eat it stone by stone!"

"What!" Kartr snatched the lenses out of his companion's hands. But, although the fires and the figures of the natives moving about them leaped up to meet his eyes, the building beyond remained only a shadowy blurred shape shrouded in the night.

"But that is impossible!" Zinga cried almost triumphantly. "Even the newly hatched know that the Place of Free Planets is archaic, designed by architects who lived so far in the past we don't even know their names or home worlds. And it has never been copied!"

"Except that it has—right here," Rolth returned stubbornly. "I tell you, there is something odd about this world. Those tales you heard, Kartr, of the `gods' who took to space—that city left waiting, ready for its owners to return, this place where the natives have a tradition that they must gather at regular intervals to await such a homecoming—it all adds up—if we only knew how to add—"

"Yes," agreed Kartr, "there is some mystery here, a bigger one maybe than we have ever tried to solve before—in spite of our system ranging—"

"Mysteries!" Zinga scoffed. "And now, my friends, we had better withdraw in a hurry unless you wish to be trampled by a select party from below—"

But Kartr had received the same sense warning and was already creeping on his hands and knees back from the rim of the ancient space port.

"If we made a wide circle to the west," Rolth pointed out, "we might be able to come out behind that building and see more of it."

So the Faltharian wanted to see more of it. Kartr shared his impatience. A solitary building which resembled the sacred Place of Free Planets! He must get to the bottom of the mystery; he had to! A world not included on even the most ancient routing tapes which he had seen—in a solar system so near the rim of the galaxy that it had been overlooked—or forgotten—centuries before he was born. Yet here beside an age-old space port stood a replica of the oldest and most revered public building ever built by human beings! He must find out why—and who—and what—

During the next few hours they made the western circle Rolth had suggested, and when, just before dawn, they were joined by the other rangers and Patrolmen, they were behind the building. Kartr's eyes were grainy from lack of sleep but excitement would not let him go back to their camp. He had to see what Rolth had described.

They moved from cover to cover, at last crawling snakewise to reach a point from which they could see clearly.

"Rolth was right!" Dalgre's voice rose to a squeak in his amazement as he looked down at the white mass. "My father was stationed at Headquarters one year—we lived in Central City. I tell you that's the Place of Free Planets down there!"

Kartr's hand pushed him flat. "All right, we'll take your word for it. But keep your voice and your head down. Those men below are trained hunters—they could easily spot you."