Part 6 (1/2)
”You tell us,” Lukas said.
My head-I turned it a little on the pillow. That sickening wave of a.s.saulting blackness mixed with pain ebbed.
”Maelen-she was gone. I tried to find her by mind-seek. Then-something hit-inside my head.” It was as hard now to describe the nature of that attack as it was to remember how I had come earlier to land the flitter.
”It agrees,” Lukas nodded. But what agreed with what, no one explained to me. Until he continued, ”Esper force stepped up to that degree can register as energy.” He shook his head. ”I would have said it was impossible, except on one world or another the impossible is often proved true.”
”Esper,” I repeated. My head ached now, with a degree of pain which made me rather sick. Maelen, what about her? But perhaps to try mind-seek again would bring another such attack, and that dread was realized as Lukas continued: ”Keep away from the use of that, Krip. At least until we know more of what is happening. You had such a dose of energy that you were nearly knocked out.”
”Maelen-she's gone!”
He did not quite meet my eyes then. I thought I could guess what he was thinking.
”She wasn't responsible! I know her sending-”
”Then who did?” Harkon demanded ”You stated from the start that she is highly telepathic. Well, this is being done by a telepath of unusual talent and perhaps training. And I would like to know who landed us here-since we cannot remember! Were we taken over by your animal?”
”No!” I struggled to sit up, and then doubled over, fighting the nausea and feeling of disorientation that movement caused. Lukas put something quickly to my mouth and I sucked at a tube, swallowing cool liquid which allayed the sickness.
”It was not not Maelen!” I got out when I finished that potion. ”You cannot mistake a mind sending-it is as individual as a voice, a face. This-this was alien.” Now that I had had a few moments in which to think about it, I knew that was true. Maelen!” I got out when I finished that potion. ”You cannot mistake a mind sending-it is as individual as a voice, a face. This-this was alien.” Now that I had had a few moments in which to think about it, I knew that was true.
”Also”-Lukas turned to Lidj- ”tell them what registered on our receivers here.”
”We have a recording,” the cargomaster began. ”This esper attack began some time ago-and you were not here then. It broke in intensity about a half hour since-dropped far down the scale, though it still registers. Just as if some transmission of energy had been brought to a peak and then partly shut off. While it was on at the top range none of us can remember anything. We must have awakened, if you can term it that, at the moment it dropped. But the residue remaining is apparently enough to knock out anyone trying esper communication, as Krip proved. So if it was not Maelen-”
”But where is she now?” I swallowed experimentally as I raised my head, and discovered I felt better. ”I was alone in the flitter when I awoke-and no one can find a trail through that sand out there.”
”It may be that she has gone to hunt the source of what hit us. She is a far greater esper than any of our breed,” Lidj suggested.
I pulled myself up, pus.h.i.+ng away Lukas's hand when he put it out to deter me. ”Or else she was drawn unwillingly. She felt something back there in that valley where we found the flitter, she begged me to get her away. She-she may have been caught by whatever is there!”
”It is not going to help her to go charging out without any idea of what you may be up against.” Lidj's good sense might not appeal to me then, but since he, Lukas, and Harkon made a barrier at the door of the sick bay I was sure I was not going to get past them at present.
”If you think I am going to stay safe in here while-” I began. Lidj shook his head.
”I am only saying that we have to know more about the enemy before we go into battle. We have had enough warning to be sure that this is something we have never faced before. And what good will it do Maelen, Sharvan, or Hunold if we too are captured before we can aid them?”
”What are are you doing?” I demanded. you doing?” I demanded.
”We have a fix on the source of the broadcast, or whatever it is. On top of the cliff to the east-northeast. But in the middle of the night we aren't going to get far climbing around these rocks hunting for it. I can tell you this much-it registers with too regular a pattern to be a human mind-send. If it is an installation, which we can believe, working on a telepath's level-then there should be someone in charge of it. Someone who probably knows this country a lot better than we do. But we have our range finder out now-”
”And something else,” Harkon cut in crisply. ”I loosed a snooper, set on the recording pattern, as soon as Lidj reported this. That will broadcast back a pick-up picture when it locates anything which is not just rock and brush.”
”So-” Lidj spoke again. ”Now we shall adjourn to the control cabin and see what the snooper can tell us.”
The Patrol are noted for their use of sophisticated equipment. They have refinements which are far ahead of those on Free Trader s.h.i.+ps. I had heard of snoopers, though I had never seen one in action before.
There was a flutter on the surface of the small screen set over the visa-plate of the Lydis Lydis-a rippling of lines. But that continued without change and my impatience grew. All that Lidj had said was unfortunately true. If I could not use mind-seek without provoking such instant retaliation as before, I had little chance of finding Maelen in that broken country, especially at night.
”Something coming in!” Harkon's voice broke through my dark imaginings.
Those fluttering lines on the screen were overlaid with a pattern. As we watched, the faint image sharpened into a definite scene. We looked into a dark s.p.a.ce where an arching of rocks made a niche. And the niche was occupied. It was the face of the man or being who stood there which riveted my attention first. Human-or was he? His eyes were closed as if he slept-or concentrated. Then the whole of the scene registered. He was not in the open, but rather enclosed in a box which, except for the s.p.a.ce before his face, was opaque. That box had been wedged upright, so he faced outward.
At his feet was a smaller box. But this was broken, badly battered, wires and jagged bits of metal showing through cracks in it.
Harkon spoke first. ”I think we can see why the broadcast suddenly failed. That thing in front is an alpha-ten amplifier, or was before someone gave it a good bas.h.i.+ng. It's meant to project and heighten com relays. But I never heard of it being used to amplify telepathic sends before.”
”That man,” Lidj said as if he could not quite believe what he saw. ”Then he is a telepath and his mind-send was so amplified.”
”A telepath to a degree hitherto unknown, I would say/' Lukas replied. ”There's something else-he may be humanoid, but he's not of Terran stock. Unless of a highly mutated strain.”
”How do you know?” Harkon asked for all of us.
”Because he's plainly in sta.s.s-freeze. And in that state you don't broadcast; you are not even alive, as we reckon life.”
He glanced at us as if he now expected some outburst of denial. But I, for one, knew Lukas was never given to wild and unfounded statements. If he thought that closed-eyed stranger was in sta.s.s-freeze, I would accept his diagnosis.
Harkon shook his head slowly. Not as if he were prepared to argue with Lukas, but as if he could not honestly accept what he was seeing.
”Well, if he is in sta.s.s-freeze, at least he's tight in that box. He did not get there on his own. Somebody put him there.”
”How about the snooper-can it pick up any back trail from that?” Lidj gestured to the screen. ”Show us who installed the esper and the amplifier?”
”We can see what a general life-force setting will do.” Harkon studied the dial of his wrist com, made a delicate adjustment to it. The screen lost the picture with a flash and the fluttering returned.
”It isn't coming back,” Harkon reported, ”so the life-force search must be at work. But as to what it will pick up-”
”Getting something!” Korde leaned forward, half cutting off my view of the screen, so I pulled him back a little.
He was right. Once more there was a scene on the screen. We were looking into a much brighter section of countryside.
”The cache-they're looting the cache!” But we did not need that exclamation from Lidj.
There were excavation robos busy there. And they had broken through the plug we had thought the perfect protection. Three-no, four-men stood a little to one side watching the work. Two were armed with blasters, one had a robo control board. But the fourth, man- I saw Lidj hunch farther toward the screen.
”I-don't-believe-it!” His denial was one we could have voiced as a chorus.
I knew Griss Sharvan; I had shared planet leave with him. He had been with me on Yiktor when first I had seen Maelen. It was utterly incredible that he should be standing there calmly watching the looting of our cargo. He was a Free Trader, born and bred to that life-and among us there were no traitors!
”He can only be mind-washed!” Lidj produced the one explanation we could accept. ”If an esper of the power Krip met got at him, it's no wonder they could find the cache. They could pick its hiding place right out of his brain! And they must have Hunold, too. But what are they-jacks?” He asked that of Harkon, depending upon the authority of one who should know his lawbreakers to give him an answer.
”Jacks-with such equipment? They don't make such elaborate efforts in their operations. I would think more likely a Guild job-”
”Thieves' Guild here?”
Lidj had a good right to his surprise. The Thieves' Guild was powerful, as everyone knew. But they did not operate on the far rim of the galaxy. Theirs was not the speculation of possible gains from raiding on frontier planets. Those small pickings were left to the jacks. The Guild planned bigger deals based on inner planets where wealth gathered, drawn in from those speculative ventures on the worlds the jacks plundered. If jacks had dealings with the Guild it was only when they fenced their take with the more powerful criminals. But they were very small operators compared with the members of that spider web which was, on some worlds, more powerful than the law. The Guild literally owned planets.