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XVII

The plan called for months of careful preparation.

First, spies, disguised as Deecee of various classes, drifted into Washington. They investigated any sources that might be able to inform them about the equipment left on the Terra. They also used their many means to find out what had happened to the Sunhero. During their inquiries, they discovered that Doctor Calthorp was back in Washington.

It was not long before he was contacted, and, a few days later, he slipped out by boat down the Potomac to Chesapeake Bay and on out into the ocean. Here a Karelian ketch picked him up and took him to the port of Aino.

He had a happy reunion with Churchill and the others, marred only by news of the deaths of Sarvant and Gbwe-hun and the doubts about Stagg's whereabouts.

Churchill explained the deal he had made with the Karelians. Calthorp chuckled and said that it might work. If it didn't, they would at least have tried. He himself was the most profitable source of information on the conditions of the Terra. He knew exactly what they would find in it and what they needed to get elsewhere.

Finally, they were ready.

They left Aino with Captain Kirsti Ainundila and three Karelians to each one of the crew of the Terra. The Karelians carried knives which they would use at the first suspicious action of the starmen.

They sailed in a swift brigantine that preceded the vast fleets to follow. This fleet was composed of vessels manned by Karelians from the colonies south of Deecee and the colonies of what had once been called Nova Scotia and Labrador.

The brigantine sailed boldly into Chesapeake Bay and let the small party of invaders out on a sailboat at the mouth of the Potomac. Disguised as a fishing vessel of Deecee, the sailboat tied up at night on a dock near Washington.

At midnight, the party rushed the building where the arms from the Terra were stored.

The few guards went down silently, their throats cut. The armory was broken into, and the starmen took the rapid-fire rifles and passed out the rest to the Karelians. These had never handled such weapons before, but they had worked in Aino with mock-ups made by Churchill.

Churchill also armed the starmen with self-propelled grenades.

They walked without hindrance to the great baseball stadium, now a shrine sacred to the Sunhero. Inside it, the Terra still reared her needle nose toward the stars she had left.

The group was challenged by the sentries; a fight took place—slaughter, rather. Thirty archers were killed by the automatic rifles, and forty more badly wounded. The invaders, unscratched, blasted open the gate to the stadium.

The starship was designed so that one man could operate it. Churchill sat in the pilot's seat, Kirsti and two Karelians standing beside him, knives in their hands.

"You will see what this ship can do," Churchill said. "It can destroy Washington simply by letting its bulk down on the buildings. Your fleet will have no trouble sacking the city. And we can fly to Camden and Baltimore and New York and do the same there. If we had not been taken in by the Deecee at first, we'd never have been captured. But we let them sweet-talk us into coming out of the ship after they made Stagg their king."

He tested the controls, checked the indicators, found everything working. He closed the main port and then looked at the clock on the instrument board.

"It's time to go into action," he said, loudly.

Every starman held his breath, at this prearranged code.

Churchill punched a button. Sixty seconds later, the Karelians keeled over. Churchill pressed another button, and air from outside swept out the gas.

It was a trick they had used to get away from the avianthropes of the planet Vixa when they had been in a similar situation.

"Do we put them in deep-freeze?" Steinberg said.

"For the time being," Churchill replied. "Later, we'll put them on the ground. If we took them to Vega II, they might murder us."

He took hold of the wheel, pulled back on a lever, and the Terra rose from the ground, her antigravs lifting the fifty-thousand ton bulk easily.

"Due to atmospheric resistance," Churchill said, "it'll take us fifteen minutes to get to Aino. We'll pick up your wives there and mine—and then it's Poughkeepsie ho!"

The wives he was referring to were the Karelian women Yastzhembski and Al-Masyuni had married during their stay in Aino.

"They're not expecting this. What'll they do once we get them aboard?"

"Give them the gas and put them in deep-freeze," Churchill said. "It's a dirty trick, but we can't waste time arguing with them."

"I hate to think of what they'll say when they thaw out on Vega."

"Not much they can do about it," Churchill said. But he frowned, thinking of Robin's sharp tongue.

However, for now at least, there was no trouble. Robin and the two women came aboard, and the starship took off. The Karelians still on the ground discovered the abduction too late and hurled harmless invectives at them which they did not hear. Again, the gas was released. The women were put in the tanks.

On the way to Poughkeepsie, Churchill said to Calthorp, "According to what the spies said, Stagg was seen in a little village on the east bank of the Hudson a few days ago. That means he escaped from the Pants-Elf. Where he now is, I don't know."

"He must be trying for Caseyland," Calthorp said. "But he'll just be jumping from fire to pan. What I don't understand is how he's had will power enough to keep from going back on the Great Route. That man is possessed by something to which no man can say no."

"We'll land outside Poughkeepsie," Churchill said. "Near Vassar. There's a large clearinghouse for orphans, operated by the priestesses. The orphans are kept there until families are found who'll adopt them. We'll pick the infants up and deep-freeze them. And we'll kidnap a priestess and use a hypnotic on her to make her reveal what she knows about Stagg's whereabouts."

That night, they hovered above the clearinghouse. There was a slight wind, so the starship moved upwind a little and then released the anaesthetic.

It took an hour to install sixty sleeping infants in the deep-freeze. Then they revived the head of the clearinghouse, a priestess of about fifty years of age.

They did not bother trying to get her to talk voluntarily. They injected the drug. Within a few minutes, they learned that Alba and her hunting party had left Poughkeepsie the night before on Stagg's trail.

They carried her back into the house and put her in bed.

"When morning comes," Churchill said, "we'll cruise over the vicinity where they should be. We could use black light, but our chances of finding somebody who'll be hiding under cover of trees are very remote."

The starship rose shortly after dawn from the little valley in which it had been hiding. It sped at a height of thirty meters above ground, heading due east. When it reached the Housatonic River, Churchill turned it back to the west. He calculated that Stagg could not have reached the river yet and so must be somewhere in the wasteland.

Returning, they were delayed a dozen times, because they saw people in the woods and descended to investigate. Once a man and a woman disappeared into a cave and the starmen went after them to interrogate them. They had trouble getting them out of the winding tunnels of what turned out to be an abandoned mine. By the time they had questioned them, and found out the two knew nothing of Stagg's location, they had lost several hours.

Reaching the Hudson again, the starship went due north a few miles and then began her eastward hunting.

"If Stagg sees the Terra, he'll come out of hiding," Calthorp said.

"We'll go up a few more meters and turn on the full power of the magnifier," Churchill said. "We have to find him!"

They were above five kilometers from the Housatonic River when they saw a number of deer riders racing pellmell down a trail. They dropped down but, seeing a lone figure on foot leading a deer about a kilometer behind the others, they decided to interrogate the straggler.

She was Virginia, the ex-chief maiden-priestess of Washington. Heavy with child, unable to endure the hard riding any longer, she had gotten off her mount. She tried to escape into the woods, but the ship sent a cloud of gas around her, and she crumpled. Revived a short time later by an injection of antidote, she proved willing enough to talk.

"Yes, I know where the so-called Sunhero is," she said viciously. "He is lying on the path about two and a half kilometers from here. But you need be in no hurry. He'll wait for you. He is dead."

"Dead!" Churchill gasped. He thought, So close to success. Half an hour sooner, and we could have saved him!

"Yes, dead!" Virginia spat. "I killed him. I cut off his remaining antler, and he bled to death. And I am glad! He was not a true Sunhero. He was a traitor and a blasphemer, and he killed Alba."

She looked pleadingly at Churchill and said, "Give me a knife so I can kill myself. I was proud once, because I was to bear the child of the Horned King. But I want no brat of a false god! And I do not want the shame of bearing it."

"You mean that if we let you go, you'll kill yourself and the unborn child?"

"I swear by the sacred name of Columbia that I will!"

Churchill nodded to Calthorp, who pressed the syringe against her arm and pushed in on the button which sent a blast of anaesthetic into her flesh. She slumped, and the two men carried her to the deep-freeze tank.

"We certainly can't allow her to kill Stagg's child," Calthorp said. "If he is dead, his son will live."

"I wouldn't worry about his not having descendants, if I were you," Churchill said. He did not elaborate on the statement, but he thought of Robin, frozen in the tank. In about fifty years, she would give birth to Stagg's boy.

Oh well, there was nothing he could do to change the situation, so he quit thinking about it. The immediate concern was Stagg.

He raised the ship and shot it straight east. Below, the trail was a thin brown curving line bordered by green. It went around a small mountain, a hill and then another hill; and there was the scene of the battle.

Bodies of dogs and deer and pigs. And a few human forms. Where were the many reported killed?

The ship touched ground, settling on the path and crushing many trees on either side. The men, armed with rifles, stepped out of the main port and surveyed the scene. Steinberg stayed behind in the pilot's seat.

"I think," Churchill said, "that the dead Caseys have been taken off the trail into the woods. They're probably being buried. You'll notice that all the corpses here wear Deecee clothes."

"Maybe they're burying Stagg," Calthorp said.

"I hope not," Churchill replied. He was sad because his captain, who had led him successfully through so many dangers, was gone. Yet he knew that there was a reason why he could not find it in him to mourn very much. If Stagg were alive, what complications would exist once they arrived on Vega? Stagg would not be able to help taking more than a mild interest in Robin's child. Every time Churchill loved or punished the boy, Stagg would be wanting to interfere. And he, Churchill, would be wondering if Robin still regarded Stagg as more than human.

What if she wanted to keep her religion alive?

The men separated, looking for the burial party. Presently, a whistle sounded. It could not be heard by the Caseys, because it was pitched too high. The starmen wore in one ear a device which lowered the frequency to an audible noise, yet did not block normal sound.

They came swiftly, stealthily, and assembled behind Al-Masyuni, who had blown the whistle. There, inside a ring of trees, they saw the worst: a girl and four men, smoothing out the mound of what was obviously a common grave.

Churchill stepped out from the trees and said, "Do not be alarmed. We are friends of Stagg."

The Caseys were startled, but, hearing Churchill repeat his assurance, they relaxed somewhat. However, they did keep their hands upon their weapons.

Churchill advanced a few steps, stopped and explained who he was and why he had come here.

The girl's eyes were red-rimmed and her face tear-streaked. Upon hearing Churchill ask about Stagg, she burst into weeping again.

"He is dead!" she sobbed. "If only you had come sooner!"

"How long has he been dead?"

One of the Caseys eyed the sun. "About half an hour. He bled much for a long time and did not give up without a fight."

"Okay, Steinborg," Churchill said into his walkie-talkie. "Bring the ship up and send out a couple of walking shovels. We have to dig Stagg out of this ground fast. Calthorp, do you think there's a chance?"

"That we can resurrect him? A good chance. That he'll escape brain damage? No chance at all. But we can build up the damaged tissue and then see what happens."

They did not tell the Caseys their real reason for wanting to exhume Stagg. By now they knew a little of Mary's love for him, and they did not want to rouse false hopes. They told her they wished to take the captain back to the stars, where he would have wished to be buried.

The other corpses were left in the grave; they were badly mangled and had been dead too long.

Inside the ship, Calthorp, directing the delicate robo-surgeon, cut the bony base of the antlers out of Stagg's skull and removed the top of his skull.

His chest was laid open, electrodes implanted in the heart and the brain. A blood pump was attached to his circulatory system. Then the body was lifted by the machine and placed in a lazarus tank.

The tank was filled with biogel, a thin fluid which nourished the cells swarming in it. There were two kinds of cells. One would eat away the damaged or decomposed cells of the corpse. The other was a multitude descended from cells from Stagg's own body. These would seek out and attach themselves to the mother organs and replace those which had been scourged from his body.

Stagg's heart began pumping under the electrical stimulus. His body temperature began to rise. Gradually, the grayish color of skin was replaced by a healthy pink.

Five hours passed, while the biogel did its work. Calthorp studied for the hundredth time the indications on the meters and the waves on the oscilloscopes.

Finally he said, "No use keeping him in there any more."

He twisted a dial on the instrument panel of the robo-surgeon, and Stagg was slowly lifted from the tank.

He was deposited on a table, where he was washed off, the needles withdrawn from heart and brain, his chest sewed up, a metal skull cap fitted on, the scalp rolled back over the cap and the skin sewn up.

From there the men took over. They carried Stagg to a bed and put him in it. He slept like a new-born baby.

Churchill went outside, where the Caseys waited. They had refused to enter the ship, because they were too filled with superstitious fear and awe.

The men were talking in low tones. Mary Casey sat slumped against a tree trunk, her face a Greek mask of tragedy.

Hearing Churchill approach, she raised her head and said, emotionlessly, "May we go now? I'd like to be with my people."

"Mary," Churchill said, "you may go wherever you wish. But first I must tell you why I asked you to wait all these hours."

Mary listened to his plans for going to Mars, picking up or making fuel there and then going on to Vega II to settle. She lost some of her grief-stricken look at first, but after a while she seemed to fall back into her apathy.

"I am glad for you that you have something to look forward to," she said. "Although, somehow it sounds blasphemous. However, it does not really concern me. Why are you telling me this?"

"Mary, when we left Earth in 2050 A.D., it was common practice to bring men back from the dead. It was not black magic or witchcraft, but application of knowledge that did it . . ."

She leaped to her feet and seized his hands.

"Do you mean that you have brought Peter back to life?"

"Yes," he said. "He is sleeping now. Only . . ."

"Only what?"

"When a man has been dead as long as he was, he suffers a certain inevitable amount of brain damage. Usually this can be repaired. But sometimes the man is an idiot."

She lost her smile. "Then we won't know until morning. Why didn't you wait until then to tell me?"

"Because you would have gone on home unless I told you this. There's something else. Every man aboard the Terra knew what might happen if he died and was resurrected. All of us, except Sarvant, agreed that if he came out of the lazarus tank an idiot, he was to be killed again. No man wants to live without his mind."

"To kill him would be a terrible sin!" she said. "It would be murder!"

"I will not waste time arguing with you," he said. "I just want you to know what might happen. However, if it's any help to you, I can tell you that when we were on the planet Vixa, Al-Masyuni was killed. A poisonous plant which shot little darts by means of air pressure got him twice. He died at once, and then the plant opened up and about twenty centipede-like insects raced out. They were enormous for insects, two feet long and armed with great pincers. They apparently intended to drag Al-Masyuni's body into the plant, where everybody—including the plant—would share in the feast.

"We stayed out of range of the darts and blasted the insects with rifle fire and the plant with grenades. Then we took Al-Masyuni's body to the ship and resurrected him, after we'd gotten rid of the alkaloid in his system. He suffered no physical or mental effects from his death at all. But Stagg's case is somewhat different."

"May I see him in the morning?" she said.

"For better or for worse."

The night went slowly. Neither the starmen nor Mary slept, though the Caseys sprawled in the woods and snored lustily. Some of the crew asked Churchill why they did not proceed with their plans while waiting for Stagg to waken. They could gas a village or two, put more babies and women in deep-freeze, and be on their way to Mars.

"Because of that girl," Churchill said. "Stagg might want to take her with us."

"Why don't we just put her in the tank, too," Yastzhembski said. "After all, it's rather delicate hairsplitting, isn't it? Being sensitive about her feelings and yet kidnaping dozens of babies and women?"

"We don't know them. And we're doing the babies, and the Pants-Elf women a favor by getting them out of this savage world. But we do know her, and we know that she and Stagg were going to get married. We'll wait and see what Stagg has to say about it."

Morning came at last. The men ate breakfast and did various chores until Calthorp summoned them.

"Time," he said. He filled a hypodermic syringe, plunged it into Stagg's huge biceps, swabbed the invisible break, and then stood back.

Churchill had gone to Mary Casey and told her that Stagg would awaken very soon. It was a measure of her love for Stagg that she had the courage to enter the ship. She did not look around her as she was led through the corridors filled with what to her must have been weird and evil-looking devices. She looked straight ahead, at Churchill's broad back.

Then she was at Stagg's side, weeping.

Stagg mumbled something. His eyelids fluttered, became still again.

His deep breathing resumed.

Calthorp said loudly, "Wake up, Pete!"

He lightly slapped his captain's cheek.

Stagg's eyes opened. He looked around at them, at Calthorp, Churchill, Steinberg, Al-Masyuni, Lin, Yastzhembski, Chandra, and looked puzzled. When he saw Mary Casey, he was startled.

"What the hell happened?" he said, trying to roar but succeeding only in croaking. "Did I black out? Are we on Earth? We must be! Otherwise, that woman wouldn't be on board. Unless you Don Juans had her stowed away all this time."

It was Churchill who first grasped what had happened to Stagg.

"Captain," he said, "what's the last thing you remember?"

"Remember? Why, you know what I ordered just before I blacked out! Land on Earth, of course!"

Mary Casey became hysterical. Churchill and Calthorp took her out of the room and Calthorp gave her a sedative. She fell asleep in two minutes. Then Calthorp and the first mate went into the control room.

"It's too early to tell for certain," Calthorp said, "but I don't think he's suffered any loss of I.Q. He's no idiot; but that part of his brain which contained the memory of the last five and a half months was destroyed. It's been repaired, so it's as good as ever, but the memory content is gone. To him, we've just returned from Vixa, and we're preparing to descend to Earth."

"I thought so," Churchill said. "Now, what are we going to do with Mary Casey?"

"Tell her the situation and allow her to decide for herself. She may want to try to make him fall in love with her."

"We'll have to tell her about Virginia. And Robin. She may not like the idea."

"No time like the present," Calthorp said. "I'll have to give her a shot to bring her out of her sleep. Then I'll tell her. She can make up her mind now. We've no time to dillydally."

He left.

Churchill sat thinking in the pilot's seat. He wondered what the future held. Certainly events wouldn't be boring. He would have troubles enough of his own, but he would not be in Stagg's shoes for anything. To have fathered hundreds of children in the wildest and most extended orgy a man could dream of, yet be innocent of any knowledge of it! To go to Vega II and there be presented with two babies by different women, and perhaps a third if Mary Casey came along. To be told what had happened—and yet be absolutely unable to visualize it, perhaps not to believe it even when a dozen witnesses swore it was true! To have incidents of which he had no remembrance at all hurled at him during the inevitable marital quarrels.

No, thought Churchill, he would not care to be Stagg. He was content to be Churchill, though that was going to be bad enough when Robin awakened.

He looked up. Calthorp had returned.

"What's the verdict?" Churchill said.

"I don't know whether to laugh or cry," Calthorp said. "Mary is coming with us."

 

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