Treasure Of The Stars rb-29 Read online

  Eventually the Kananites and the Menel gave up trying to keep any sort of close watch on Targa. They set up a hidden base in the Targan system's asteroid belt and settled down to see what happened.

  «I hope both your people and the Menel are at least building warships and training soldiers as fast as you can.»

  «I think we are converting a few ships for war. The Menel are doing the same. I do not know how many, though. The Menel are divided into Gorani-I do not know what your word is. Each Goran has a special task, and only the War Goran can fight or fly armed ships.»

  «Can't other Gorani of the Menel learn to fight?»

  «No. It is not just a matter of law or custom. It is the way the Menel are raised from the time they are hatched. One who is hatched and raised in one Goran cannot learn to do the work of another.»

  «I see.» Blade didn't like what he saw but there was no point in mentioning it to Riyannah, The Menel seemed to be divided into a series of rigid classes. They were going to be seriously handicapped in a war with the more adaptable Targans.

  «As for soldiers,» Riyannah continued, «I cannot see how we will need them. If we can meet the Targans in space and keep them on their own planet, that will be enough. We don't need to conquer Targa. We don't even want to!» Her voice was almost shrill.

  «I believe you, Riyannah,» said Blade. «But you seem to have a problem with making your Targan friends believe it.»

  Riyannah sighed. «We certainly do.»

  Everything that could go wrong went wrong when Riyannah and five other Kananites came to Targa to negotiate with the underground. They were attacked from the air soon after leaving their spaceship in its hiding place. The leader of the delegation was badly hurt. Two others, including Riyannah, suffered head injuries sufficient to destroy their implanted knowledge of the Targan language.

  «The Teacher Globes will teach you almost anything, including a language,» she said. «But the knowledge does not go deeply into the brain. If you are drugged or hit on the head, you often forget what you've learned.»

  So that was what lay behind the maddening language problem! Lord Leighton's computer did its usual job on his brain, and the Teacher Globe no doubt did just as well for Riyannah. But sheer bad luck drove every word of Targan out of Riyannah's battered head!

  A few days later, more planes attacked the underground camp where Riyannah and her comrades were hiding, smashing it completely. One of the Kananites and many of the underground's fighters were killed. The survivors had to flee across country, taking the wounded Kananite leader with them.

  «The Targans soon saw how little we knew about life in the woods. That did not make them trust us more. Then our leader Marocah died, and we buried him in the forest, far from home.» Riyannah was silent for a moment.

  The fugitives eventually reached another underground camp, and were finally able to open negotiations with the underground's leaders. These negotiations didn't get far. Perhaps Chard's men had tracked the fugitives, perhaps they were just lucky. In any case, the second camp was also attacked, both from the air and on the ground. Riyannah and a handful of people escaped just before the camp fell, to run into more soldiers as they tried to get clear.

  That was where Blade came in, and after that he and Riyannah were partners in their adventures.

  «We'd radioed to the asteroid base, and the two Menel ships you saw were on their way to pick us up. After they were destroyed, I knew I would have to return to the ship in the mountains to the north. It is so well hidden that I do not think Chard's men have found it. I trusted you not to kill me on the way, and after that-«She shrugged.

  «Yes,» said Blade. «And after that?»

  «If I didn't think it was safe to take you to the asteroid base, I was going to kill you. I wasn't sure I could, but I knew I had to be ready to try. Even if I died, I could still send the ship to the asteroid on automatic control. What happened to us and what we'd learned had to get to the base.»

  What they'd learned was an important development in Loyun Chard's strategy. He was pouring material and manpower into building a monstrous starship nearly a mile long, heavily armed and armored, able to serve as a warship, exploration ship, and transport for colonists all at once.

  «What it will do first is attack the asteroid base. It will certainly win, and the base will be destroyed. So will many of our ships and the Menel's, hundreds of our fighting people, and any hope of keeping the Targans in their own system. We will have to meet them out among the stars. The war will be far longer and more terrible if we must do that, and we may not win.»

  Loyun Chard no doubt knew that just as well as the Kananites. So he was building the great starship, Dark Warrior. The man was a formidable opponent, and peace would be in danger as long as he lived.

  «If the two Menel ships hadn't fallen,» said Riyannah, «we'd already be on the asteroid base, or even on our way to Kanan. With Menel to help me, I wouldn't have needed to kill you, no matter what.»

  «And now?»

  Riyannah smiled and put her arms around him. «I think I can trust you to do nothing to help Loyun Chard. I do not know what else you may want to do, but if it is not dangerous to me or to Kanan, then it is your affair. I want to know more about you and your world, but you don't have to tell me if you don't want to.»

  «How did you come to trust me?»

  «I knew you could not be my enemy after you saved me from the bat-cats. Before that-you were still a mystery. You'd saved my life and killed Targan soldiers. Yet you looked like a Targan, spoke Targan well, and kept me from helping the Menel.»

  «I did that to keep you from getting yourself killed, Riyannah.»

  «I know that now. I didn't at the time. Also, you didn't seem to understand who the Menel were. That meant you could not be one of the Targan underground fighters.»

  «And so I was a bigger mystery than before?» said Blade, stroking Riyannah's hair.

  «Yes. Then the night after we came up the canyon, some of the mystery disappeared. I knew you could not be one of Loyun Chard's people.»

  «How was that?»

  Riyannah laughed. «I got you to take off your clothes, then watched you. All of Chard's men have a lightning bolt tattooed on their penis, and a triangle on the inside of the right or the left thigh.»

  Blade stiffened, put both hands on Riyannah's shoulders, and held her at arm's length.

  «A lightning bolt tattooed on the penis?»

  «Yes. Down the middle. The officers have the triangle on the inside of the right thigh, the ordinary soldiers on the-«

  «Riyannah, what are you-?»

  «I'm telling you the truth, Blade. If you'd looked at the bodies of the soldiers, you'd have seen it for yourself.»

  Blade nodded slowly. «A tattoo on the penis,» he said, half to himself. Then he threw his head back and roared with laughter until the echoes rolled around the forest.

  «A tattoo on the penis,» he gasped, tears running down his cheeks. «A tattoo on the penis!» Then he reached out for Riyannah again, and she came into his arms. He felt her lips on his and her hands fumbling at his trousers. He thrust his hands inside the back of her trousers and cupped her buttocks. She laughed and tossed her head so that her hair brushed his face and neck.

  Then all the delicious sensations of making love to Riyannah were coming so fast Blade could no longer sort them out.

  Chapter 10

  Toward dawn Riyannah fell asleep. Blade wanted to but found he couldn't. His mind was still whirling too fast from what Riyannah told him. She'd answered some of his questions, but left many others open and raised some completely new ones.

  The most important question was also the least easily answered. Was she telling the truth? If she wasn't, what if Blade went with her to Kanan? He might be signing his own death warrant, as well as helping the wrong side in a war. He would be alone, against the resources of a whole planet. He could be eliminated as easily as a swatted mosquito-more easily, if they didn't teach him the Kanani
te language.

  That wasn't the only problem he might face if he went to Kanan and found its people hostile. So far Riyannah seemed to believe his story about being the survivor of a wrecked spaceship. What about the Kananites back home? With the resources of their home planet, they might probe his brain, prove he was lying, reveal the truth, and perhaps even discover the Dimension X secret. Then what? Blade had a vision of the Kananites unleashed on the whole universe, like the Looters who'd also discovered inter-Dimensional travel and used it to destroy one civilization after another until Blade met and defeated them in Tharn.

  Even assuming the Kananites didn't get the Dimension X secret, they still might get the location of Earth from him. Then a swarm of Menel and Kananite ships might descend on Earth, drawing it into a Kananite empire.

  So much for what could happen if Riyannah was lying. There wasn't much he could hope to do against it, except keep alert and be ready to put himself out of reach of the Kananites. He doubted they could get much out of a corpse.

  What if Riyannah was telling the truth? It would probably be safe to go to Kanan, although the less they learned about Dimension X the better. After that, what he ought to do would depend on the answer to another maddening question.

  Where was he? Had he been hurled across the Dimensions to an alternate Earth, so that none of the people here could be any menace to Home Dimension as long as they could only travel in space? Or was he on another world in the same Dimension as the Earth he knew, separated from it only by light-years of space? He remembered the moment of cold and star-studded blackness all around him. Was that a leap between Dimensions, or across light-years within a single Dimension?

  Just to make things more confusing, what about the other two times he'd met the Menel? Why had he now met them three times in three different Dimensions, or worlds, or whatever? What had happened to him the other two times? Did the Menel perhaps have the ability to travel among the Dimensions and hadn't told the Kananites?

  Blade laughed softly. As far as finding out where he was, talking to Riyannah hadn't helped at all. If he got back to Home Dimension with this load of mysteries, Lord Leighton was going to drop dead from sheer frustration at so many unanswerable questions!

  If he got back. Soberly Blade faced that unpleasant little word. If Lord Leighton's computer had twisted space as well as his senses, hurling him across light-years, could it reach out and grip his brain as usual? Or was this going to be a one-way trip into wherever he'd ended up?

  Blade decided to call it Wherever instead of Dimension X until he knew a little more. The only way to learn that little more was to go with Riyannah to Kanan. The underground people couldn't help him. Loyun Chard's people would almost certainly kill him, whether or not they could be any danger to Home Dimension Earth. Out among the stars he might find a greater treasure than he'd ever found before, the treasure of Kanan's scientific knowledge.

  A great weight seemed to lift from Blade's mind with this decision. Part of the relief was simply knowing what came next. Another part was knowing that he'd be traveling on with Riyannah. They'd been through too much together for him to feel comfortable about leaving her.

  After breakfast that morning, Blade asked Riyannah how far it was to her spaceship.

  «About three or four days, if we walk as fast as you like to.» She wrinkled up her face in comic dismay at the idea.

  «I'm afraid we'd better walk that fast, Riyannah. Chard's planes might be searching for the ship.»

  «It won't be easy for them to find it. We have it hidden well inside a cave at the foot of the Mount Grolin. The mountain has three peaks, so it's easy to recognize.»

  The slopes of a high mountain would give little cover from Chard's air force, but it couldn't be helped. «You can fly the ship yourself?»

  «Oh yes. It practically flies itself, and all of us who came in it learned how to handle it. But it will help if you can manage the hurd-ray controls.»

  «I should be able to do that. I was in charge of the weapons aboard my ship.»

  «Are you of the War Goran of your people?»

  «No. We are not like the Menel. We prefer to have each of our people able to learn to fight.»

  «Like the Targans?» said Riyannah quietly.

  «I do not think we have much else in common with the Targans. Many years ago, a man like Loyun Chard tried to conquer our world. We fought a terrible war to stop him. In the end he was defeated and killed himself. We don't care for people like Loyun Chard. So I am coming with you to Kanan to help you fight him. Now let's stop talking and start packing.»

  They were on the move by noon, taking only what they needed for the march. The load was still enough to make Riyannah grunt as she slung on her pack, but she was smiling as she picked up her rifle. She was on her way home, however rough and long the road might be. Blade wished he could be so cheerful.

  After a while he was. It was a beautiful day, just cool enough to keep them both comfortable, with the sun striking golden through the leaves. Once Riyannah stopped to pick some blue flowers and stick them in her silvery hair. There was always a bird singing somewhere nearby, and Blade found it almost too easy to forget this wasn't a picnic or a vacation.

  They slept that night in their blankets, curled together for warmth, rifles in hand. In the morning they refilled their canteens from a spring and Blade climbed a tree to study the route ahead. He thought he saw a mountain with three peaks far off to the northwest, but couldn't be sure.

  That evening he climbed another tree, and this time the three-peaked mountain stood out unmistakably. When he described it to Riyannah, she almost danced with delight.

  «That has to be Mount Grolin!» she said. «There's nothing else like it. If you can see what you've seen, we'll be there the day after tomorrow!»

  Riyannah was right. They hadn't gone far on the fourth day before the trees began to thin out. By noon they had the three snowcapped peaks of Mount Grolin continuously in sight. By mid-afternoon they were out on the bare mountainside, with nothing growing around them but wiry grass and gray-blue lichens. If the spaceship was much higher, they'd have to spend a night in the open without the warm clothing they'd need.

  At least the ground ahead offered plenty of cover. It was rugged and scarred, with enough boulders and ravines to hide a small army. It would be rough going, but it would also take a lot of luck for a pilot to spot them.

  They spent the night huddled in the shelter of a boulder. Blade stuffed handfuls of lichen into their boots for extra insulation, and somehow they managed to not only survive but even sleep. They both woke feeling stiff, half numb, and generally wretched, but the first few hundred yards of climbing thawed them out and limbered them up.

  A mile farther on, they spotted the enemy camp.

  Fortunately they spotted it from a particularly rugged stretch of mountainside, one where Blade would have been glad to have some climbing gear. Taking off his pack and boots he crawled silently forward until he could get a good look at the camp. Then he returned to Riyannah.

  «It could be worse. I saw only one complete shelter. They must still be setting the camp up. I don't think there will be more than twenty soldiers.»

  Riyannah tried to smile, not very successfully. «Do you think this camp means they've found the ship?»

  «I don't know. Did you put any traps or weapons at the mouth of the cave to stop anyone trying to get in?»

  Riyannah shook her head. «We don't have anything like that on Kanan. We haven't needed it,» she added in reply to Blade's frown.

  Blade shook his head slowly. He was going to have problems on Kanan even if the people were friendly. The Kananites seemed to be rather naive and innocent when it came to the practical little details of war. This wasn't necessarily a vice, just as his own skill in killing wasn't always a virtue. Right now, though, the Kananites' innocence could mean victory for Loyun Chard.

  «Since we can't know if they've found the ship, we'll have to go on. Where on the mountain is
the cave?»

  «You can't see it from here,» said Riyannah. «It's just around the ridge of the peak farthest to the east. There's a streak of black rock running down from the summit. The cave is at the bottom of the streak.»

  «All right,» said Blade. «We'll swing wide around the camp to the west. The ground to the east is too flat to hide us. We should still get to the foot of the mountain by midnight. Then a few hours' sleep, and we can make a final push just after dawn. Think you can make it?»

  «It would be foolish to give up now, when we're so close,» said Riyannah. She started to get to her feet.

  Blade said nothing, but he didn't like the weariness in her voice or on her face. Her lips were cracked and her eyes were red, with great dark circles around them. As he gripped her shoulders to help her up, Blade could feel her shivering.

  They'd covered more than half the distance to the foot of the mountain when Blade stiffened and pushed Riyannah behind a rock. Then he lay down, rifle ready and eyes searching the sky toward the Targan camp.

  The whirring sound he'd heard grew louder, and the dot he'd seen in the distant sky took shape. It was one of Chard's troop carriers, heading straight for the camp. Blade waited until it landed and the dust raised by the propellers settled. Then he crept behind the boulder and told Riyannah what he'd seen and what it meant.

  She stiffened as if he'd jabbed her with a needle and one hand clenched until the nails drew blood from the palm. «We'll have to go straight on to the cave,» she said. «I notice you've been staying where the rocks hide us. Well, there aren't any rocks like that around the foot of the mountain. It's all smooth and open there. The climb up to the cave is even worse.»

  Blade nodded, realizing what Riyannah was trying to say. They couldn't risk crossing a wide stretch of open ground in daylight, not now. If they kept moving all night, though, they'd be crossing the open ground under cover of darkness. They'd be much harder to see.