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THE EYES HAVE IT

“HOLY SHIT! WHAT THE HELL’S GOING ON UP there ahead?” Modra Stryke asked. She’d shaken off the effects of Molly’s broadcast just enough to realize all that had happened and was trying to shake the rest out.

“Exactly what you said,” Jimmy McCray responded. “We’re too far away for many details, but from what I can pick up from here, the Holies are in deep dung and fighting their way out through inferior but very well positioned Mycohl forces, all taking place in Hell, of course, if that is indeed what this is.”

“We are thus faced with an ethical conundrum,” the Durquist commented, ignoring the attempted humor. “We are still far enough away that, with all that going on, they probably won’t even notice us. We could just wait it out and deal with the survivors, whoever they are. Or, we are alternatively close enough to intervene if we decide right now—but on whose side? I’ve never found any of the Mycohl particularly nice folks, and the kind of ones who would come into our territory so boldly are probably of the worst sort. On the other hand, they aren’t boring, which the Miz certainly are—and the kind that would try and get across Mycohl to us to check out a vague distress call about demons have to be absolutely sickening fanatics.”

“I’m satisfied that we’ve caught up,” Tris Lankur said. “If we can just stay close enough to find out the result without having anything turned on us, that’ll be fine with me. Besides, we don’t have the reserve power to afford to get into a fight.”

“I don’t think they do, either,” McCray told them. “I’m only getting the Mycohl side of things, and that very limited, but I get the strong idea that they were no more prepared to get stuck on this idiots’ railroad than we were. With these continuous fights, they have to be running pretty low. Also, the Mycohl leader’s a hypno, and I’m not sure we want him in the group right now.”

“We always wanted a hypno in the team,” Modra commented, “but they all want too much of a share and they always want to run things.”

<If we hold back, maybe we can finish off the survivors and get their power packs,> Grysta suggested hopefully.

“Grysta just suggested we fall on the survivors and steal their power, as well as the dead, I presume.”

“No good,” Tris Lankur told him. “While the suits are all based on the same stolen design—our design, by the way—internally, they’re very different. They’ll loot their own dead for what’s useful anyway, just as we’d better be prepared to do if any of us gets it.”

Modra sighed. “You mean we get to stand here in this muck and pouring rain and watch bright flashes and hear a blow-by-blow from McCray?”

“Molly think that just fine,” the syn commented.

<First time she and I have been in total agreement since she came aboard,> Grysta put in.

Jimmy McCray shrugged. “I’ll fight if I have to, but I’m not overflowing with a desire for action,” he told them. “Pick an ankle-deep section of stinking mud and relax, I suppose.”


Go!

The quartet came out blasting, the wide stun lighting up the whole hillside while rock flew from in front of and near the Mycohl shooters.

At the same time, Josef and Kalia opened up on automatic, shooting single full-strength pulses in a pattern going from the edge of the hill to the cliff and back again.

Manya took a glancing hit in her left thigh and stumbled; Gun Roh Chin caught her and forced her to her hands and knees, then went to a military crawl himself. The long-legged Morok took a number of great leaps between the shots and made it to the section of hillside below the flat; Krisha, realizing as Chin had that the automatic shots were a little high, went to the military crawl as well, pausing occasionally to shoot at the girl behind the rubble, keeping her down.

Morok, now a bit below, thought he pulled something when he landed, but managed to get forward to where he could almost see the two Mycohlians shooting from below the flat.

Tobrush picked up a sudden mental image of a very familiar shape and with a start realized that it was an image of a Julki. Swiveling, the telepath was struck by a beam before any defensive fire was possible, but Morok had forgotten that his was one of the pistols on wide stun; the Julki reeled and felt some numbness but wasn’t otherwise hurt.

By the time Morok made the adjustment on his weapon, both of the Mycohl were taking shots at him, forcing a slight retreat.

At that moment, Savin opened up from the hilltop, three quick bursts coming around both Josef and Tobrush. That was enough for them. “Tobrush! Kalia!” Josef shouted. “Wide stun across! I’ll shoot! We’re both making the crossing now! It’s our only chance!”

Atop the hill, Savin gave an ancestral, primal growl of victory and aimed for the pair as they started across.

Suddenly something struck him in the back, then came right through the suit, grinding into his internal organs. He stiffened and screamed in agony but did not immediately fall over, as whatever it was held him like a piece of meat on a skewer. Agonizingly painful but not yet fatal, Savin roared and struggled to grab at the thing that had bored through him, but found only a metallic tentacle so strong and supple it was beyond his strength to deal with.

“There is more than one way up a hill,” said a toneless, metallic voice behind him, and then he was lifted into the air and held out over the edge of the ledge, and then the tentacle withdrew, leaving him to fall, still living, to the rock below.

The shock of the attack on Savin stunned Krisha, and for a few seconds she could only watch and cry out in horror as the Mesok fell to his death. Chin, giving cover fire and helping Manya, wasn’t aware of the drama above but couldn’t adequately cover Krisha’s lack of shot, allowing Josef and Tobrush to come all the way across, beyond Krisha, and continue on up.

“Hurry, all of you—get up here before they regroup,” Desreth called. “You have only a few seconds to get up to a point where you cannot be shot directly from below. I recommend no hesitancy.”

The Corithian got no arguments from the trio below.

Morok had the only clear shot at them, but, raising up to do it, he felt a sudden severe pain in his right leg and fell back down, scrambling now to just keep hold of the wet rocks and keep from sliding all the way back to the bottom.


Less than three kilometers back, on the riverbank below, Jimmy McCray sighed. “That’s it,” he said flatly. “Battle’s over, and now it’s four to four again. Ugh! That Mycohl woman’s ugly as sin!”

“No cracks now,” Modra warned.

“Yeah? Wait’ll you see her.”

Tris Lankur got to his feet “Let’s move up,” he told them. “I think it’s time we cut ourselves in.”

As they approached the hill, McCray warned, “They’ve made us.”

“Which side?” Lankur asked.

“Both of them. Man! That Mizlaplanian telepath is strong! I know she’s got us because I felt the probe, but I haven’t got a one of them. Not one. The Mycohl on top, though, are fine. It particularly helps that both the non-telepaths up there are Terrans. Coming in strong as a radio signal. They have the Miz bunch pretty well trapped against the wall, unable to go up or down, and they’re debating whether or not to keep it that way or press on now that they’re in the lead.”

Tris Lankur gave the mental command to his suit to turn on the all-frequency hail and auto translator. The last simply took his words and translated them into the two interstellar commerce languages of the other Empires.

“This is Captain Tris Lankur calling all foreign parties ahead of us. You are operating illegally in our territory and represent a substantial risk to ourselves and our interests here by your presence and particularly by your fighting. We demand to know your identities and your purpose and goals for being here.”

There was a pause, and then Gun Roh Chin sent, “Are you really suggesting, Captain, that this is Exchange territory?”

“It was reached through a legally claimed Exchange world on the recognized frontier in Exchange space,” Lankur replied. “Since the only way you could get here was by violating our frontier, this is in fact Exchange territory under all treaties.”

“That would make all the demons citizens of the Exchange,” the Durquist commented dryly, for local broadcast only. “Oh, dear. I never really thought about that.”

A sudden, different voice broke in. The translator didn’t really put any emotional emphasis on words and phrases no matter how the original sounded, but somehow the voice sounded a little meaner and more arrogant anyway.

“Lankur, you are a freebooting team with no governmental authority stuck here in this mess just like we are,” Josef noted. “If we all get out of this, you might be able to file a proper complaint against us, but if you didn’t, nobody would even miss you.”

“Bravado,” McCray commented. “While his telepath is feeding him the information on us, the fact is that he has no more idea than we do if there’s an entire army division of our people somewhere behind us. On the other hand, he isn’t above thinking that if he is the only survivor, then he’ll have considerable control over how the diplomatic mess is managed no matter what the truth is.”

“What are you proposing, Captain Lankur?” Gun Roh Chin asked him. “I’m afraid we are a bit indisposed at the moment.”

“You met those things back there, and I notice that even the Mycohl didn’t succumb to their promises and release them. This entire thing, and those demons or whatever you want to call them, pose a potential threat to all three empires and the stability we’ve achieved over the centuries. It’s us versus them. Any more fighting and killing each other will just work to the demons’ benefit. No matter who or what follows us, the odds of any of us getting out of here alive, let alone back to our homes, is slim as it is. The odds are even worse for you, since the only way in or out that we know is through an Exchange world that, right now, is probably being transformed into an armed camp. If you have any slight hope of getting back and reporting this to your own people, we’d better work together.”

“You sure about this?” Jimmy asked him. “The way I read it, both of those bunches have hypnos. You may be immune, but we aren’t.”

“Join up with a bunch of religious fanatics? You have to be kidding!” Josef came back. “Maybe they’re all priests who can’t sin, but under their religion there’s no sin involved when you’re lying, cheating, stealing and backstabbing nonbelievers. No thanks. We might be able to make a deal with you, though—once we take care of these prayermongers. Those aren’t soldiers or traders down there—they’re the gods-be-damned Inquisition!”

“Cooperate with demon worshipers?” Manya shot back. “Never! That would be worse than death itself! It would imperil our souls!”

Gun Roh Chin, who was in no mood to die at the moment and, in his position, very likely to do so anyway, tried to calm things down. “I have some experience with the Mycohl, Captain, being a civilian ship commander like yourself and not a priest. I’ve also been in the Exchange. The Mycohl respect only power and strength; any sense of honor they have, when they have it, is only to each other. Even if disarmed, which would make them useless partners, the Corithian is a force unto itself. As for my people here, I might make some guarantees, but they wouldn’t be binding on the Holy Ones with me, who have their own inflexible mission.”

Tris Lankur looked around at the others. “Any comments or suggestions?”

“I’m afraid I must go along with them,” the Durquist said. “If there were a way around them, I’d say walk around and leave them to each other. They certainly seem to deserve each other.”

Modra thought for a moment. “The Durquist’s right. What we have most of all is a roadblock up there. On the other hand, we’ve been going crazy worrying that our power levels would run out. You realize how much power those two groups must have used coming at each other, even if only two are dead?”

“Good point,” Lankur acknowledged. “McCray?”

Jimmy scanned the top of the hill with instruments. “I could probably pot at least one of them right now. Two if they start going at the Miz below.”

“So? That just gives the Mizlaplanians, with their superior telepath and hypno to boot, a free hand,” the captain responded.

“Not what I mean. In fact, their telepath right now is explainin’ my meaning before I can say this to you. They can’t get the Mizlaplanians unless we let them. Even that metal horror they have with them can be melted into scrap if we get our sights on it. They can keep us off for a while, but we’ve half again their power reserves. So they all sit in the rain just like us and glower at each other until Hell freezes, or they run out of power or get desperate, or they take off and live to fight another day.”

Tris Lankur nodded. “What about it, Mycohl? Twenty minutes to get off that hilltop and make your way on. You’ve got the lead now; whatever’s ahead is yours first, for all the good it’ll do you. Then the Mizlaplanians move up and get the same margin. Then we’re going to move in. Any moves against us, in the rear, now or in the future, and we’ll intervene on the side of the other one. It’s not perfect, but at least it may get us all out of the rain.”

There was silence for a moment, and Jimmy said, “Their telepaths are explainin’ to them how it can be verified. I don’t like it, but, all things considered, it gets us moving.”


The Mizlaplanians, and most particularly Gun Roh Chin, were all for the idea. Suddenly, Chin looked around. “Where is Morok?”

“Here,” came the voice of the Lord High Inquisitor of the Arm of the Gods. “I’ve fallen halfway down. I’m afraid I’ve twisted, perhaps broken, something in my left leg or foot.”

“We will come and get you, My Lord!” Krisha called to him. “I am certain that the Exchange people will allow it!”

“No!” he responded. “At this point I am a burden to the Arm, and we do not know what is ahead. You must leave me here on my own until I can find a way to repair my leg and become mobile. Otherwise, caring for me will surely cause the rest of you to die.”

“But, Holy One, we cannot leave you here!” she argued. “Particularly not here. Besides, right now I am blocking them from even knowing that you are there. If I leave, the Exchange telepath will find you.”

“This will not be the first time I was left behind, nor the first time I have had that problem,” he told her. “I do have certain Talents of my own to cover such problems as you suggest. You might be surprised. I might well be able to catch up with you later. Now it is my command that you go as soon as you are told you can safely do so. Krisha, I pass the sword of the Arm to you until such time as I can reclaim it. You cannot refuse me.”

And she could not, for obedience was one of the cardinal provisions of ordination in the faith. Tearfully, she responded, “Very well, Holy Father. I obey.”


“All right, we agree,” Josef sent back to the Exchange team. “But we want an hour’s start. It’s slippery and dangerous up here and the best ways are flooded.”

Tris Lankur sighed. Another long period in the mud. “All right. One hour.”

“Ah! Team Two passes Team One in the Quintara Marathon!” Jimmy McCray said cynically. “They take a one-hour lead over Team Two, and who knows how long over Team Three, in dead last, as usual.”

“It’s a hell of a race, McCray,” Modra sighed. “We don’t even know where the finish line is—or if there is a finish line, short of death.”

“Oh, it’s simple,” the telepath replied. “This is a race where third place might be the place to be, since, obviously, whoever is left alive at the end wins.”


Up top, Tobrush caught the term and the holographic image it aroused in the mind of Stryke and the Durquist. “Quintara,” he said.

“Huh? What’s that you said?” Josef asked, irritated at having to abandon a perfect trap.

“The demons. That’s what they call them. The leader is half Terran and half machine. Apparently he directly tapped the records from the place, even though almost all had been destroyed. The last words his counterpart said back in the first station before the demon ripped it apart was ‘The Quintara—they still run!’ ”

“What a bunch of bullshit!” Kalia snapped. “We ought’a just take out the Mizzles and take the rest on and be done with it. We’ll have to do it sooner or later.”

“Later is better in this case,” Josef responded. “Besides, I am leader here. Your place is not to question but to obey.”

“Yeah? Well, Your Leadership, you already led us into this hole and almost got us all killed. Maybe you ain’t cut out for leadin’ this kind of thing.”

He turned quickly and faced her, eyes blazing, unavoidable. “Do you want me to enforce my leadership?” he asked in a dangerous tone of voice.

She felt the hypno power seeping into her mind, closing off control. “No, no. I’ll go. Don’t be so damned touchy!”

“I believe we should take full advantage of the hour,” Desreth put in. “This does us no good here, now.”

“I agree,” Tobrush put in. “Did your alternate route indicate any idea of where the next station might be?”

“No, but if they are equidistant, than we have a good day and a half s journey yet.”

Josef shook his head. “Uh-huh. And we don’t even know this time if we’re going in the right direction.”


Well under an hour later, Krisha was able to say, “They’re gone. Out of my range, anyway, which means out of shooting range as well.”

“Why don’t we just get going again?” Manya asked, irritated not only at letting the hated ones pass them but also not a little put off by Morok handing the leadership role to Krisha, of all people, instead of her. She, too, had to obey, but there was nothing in the vows about liking it, or preventing criticism.

“We will wait the full period,” Krisha responded, knowing how Manya felt and feeling sorry for her that she did. This was the last thing the telepath wanted, either, and she would have gladly surrendered authority to Manya if she could. Captain Chin, of course, could not lead, not being under the vows, but, like Morok, she intended to defer to his own experience and wisdom where possible. “Even if it wouldn’t be a good idea to show the Exchange people we keep our word, which it is, I want to give Morok all the time I can shield him to find a place where he will not be detected.”

So it’s “Morok” already, Manya thought sourly. How quickly the mantle of leadership passes. She knew that Krisha could read her mind, but she didn’t care a bit.

While they passed the time, Krisha, under some questioning from Chin, explained her newfound attitudes and the reasons for them. He was impressed, and understood her. He wondered, though, if she could keep refusing temptations. For all her rebelliousness, she’d led, overall, a very sheltered life. This was, in fact, her first journey outside the well-regulated Empire in which she’d been born, and her first encounter with enemy aliens outside her own turf.

Still, Morok had believed, and trusted her, and Morok was no fool. He wouldn’t even bet against the old fellow catching them somehow, although it was difficult to see how.

“It’s time,” he told them. “Move up carefully—that’s still slippery and exposed as well. We’ve also got to remember that we’re the outnumbered ones now, and the Corithian is undetectable except by instruments—and then only with luck. I wouldn’t put it past them to leave the thing somewhere along the route to snare us.”

“Their leader might,” Krisha acknowledged, “but that girl—I don’t know if any of them can completely control her. She’s so sick inside, so full of hate, and she is not one to be put off carrying out her own revenge for Manya’s wounds that she carries on her face. No, I fear more that the girl has no fear at all; left to herself, she would free a demon with nothing promised in return except our own deaths.”

“Well, let’s go, then,” Manya grumbled.

Krisha nodded, then paused. “I can no longer hear Morok’s thoughts. I do not understand, if he is too crippled to walk or climb, how he can have gotten that far away, though. Still, if I cannot hear him, neither can the ones behind us.” She sighed. “At the moment, I can see no choice for us. We have but one mission, and until it is done all else is secondary. We must kill all of the Mycohl, no matter what the cost. They are the only ones of this group likely to eventually release the Dark Ones.”

Gun Roh Chin went to Savin’s limp, twisted body and removed the dead Mesok’s utility and power packs. “We’ll need all we can get the next time we face the Corithian,” he explained.


Jimmy McCray walked around the small ruins, frowning.

“You want to get some dry sleep here, like they did?” Modra asked Lankur.

“I don’t think so. I know we’re all in, and I’m not in any big hurry, but I just don’t want to get trapped in here like they did, just in case somebody bright got the idea to double back. Still, I wanted a look at these things. Durquist?”

“Fascinating,” the star-shaped creature responded. “Very ancient—at least five or six thousand years. I couldn’t be more precise without some samples and my lab. What astonishes me is that I have seen such ruins before, on many other worlds. Home worlds, not colonized ones, that is. They usually had some astronomical bearings to them, and were some sort of temples. Since the Quintara seem a bit too advanced for this, I would suspect that this is not theirs, and that implies that, at least at one time, somebody else lived on this dunghole of a world.”

“What’s eating you, McCray?” Lankur asked. “You’ve walked around that dead body on the stone a dozen times.”

“Just thinking, but it’s not the body, it’s what’s under it that interests me. The Durquist’s right—I’ve seen pictures of these in ancient books. Back before our people ran smack into the Three Empires and got gobbled up by all of them, as it were, we found a few worlds with these things as well, and there were references to older ones back on the ancient home world of our ancestors. This is the first one I’ve actually seen, though. I’ve been tryin’ to figure out what’s nagging at me mind on this one.”

“I don’t see how you could tell much,” Modra commented. “After all the years, these rocks have been worn into shapes the builders never thought of. And that ugly monster on top doesn’t make seeing the detail any easier. It just gives me the creeps.”

Suddenly he had it. “It’s not the shape of the top, lass—it’s the supporting posts here. The two front ones are quite a bit closer together than the rear ones, and why three in the rear, with one out so it almost pointed to the river?”

“Maybe that was what was required to hold the thing up,” the Durquist suggested practically.

Jimmy, however, didn’t hear. “If we assume the capstone at one time was shaped deliberately, then it would be a pentagon. Five-sided. A pentagon or—of course! Of course! A pentagram!

“A what?” the Durquist asked.

“A pentagram. Naturally. In the old legends, you used a pentagram when you were gonna invoke a demon spirit. ’Twas said they couldn’t cross them for some reason. I’ll bet that if the post holes were measured they’d be exact. You make a pentagram by drawing a five-pointed star and then connecting the points. The pentagon shape alone won’t do it. If the demon is invoked inside, he’s trapped there and essentially at the mercy of those who called him. If you’re inside one and a demon comes to call, it can’t get to you. If that holds up here, it means that either they worshiped the demons and called them up somehow here, or they used this central place to come to find some protection.”

“Superstitious rot,” the Durquist mumbled.

“Maybe not,” Tris Lankur replied. “It’s an ancient religious power symbol to a lot of Terran groups, and I’m sure I’ve seen it elsewhere as well. We don’t know how the dimensionality works, and we certainly don’t know the potential power and technology of the Quintara. When we say ‘dimensions,’ though, we’re really using a mathematical model to make comprehensible something not really clear. Suppose—just suppose—that certain geometrical shapes are needed for some reason. That they cut through if you know how to do it, or provide insulation. We didn’t see all of any station. Suppose they are pentagonal? We don’t know what’s in the bases of those imprisoning pillars. McCray’s pentagrams, perhaps? Or some even more powerful geometrical shape our ancestors never lucked into? It’s possible. McCray, can you lay out a pentagram for us if you had to? A really exact one?”

“I suppose so. If the suit computer can calculate the distance from here to the top, it certainly can measure some simple straight lines, if I had something to draw them with. If it wasn’t raining like hell, it could be done with a stick in the dirt or a piece of chalky rock.”

“Well, we’ll keep it in mind as a possible protection when we can do it. I’m also resolved to take a much closer look if we see any more imprisoned Quintara, too, no matter what the risk. Any race that can just walk through a solid wall like it’s a piece of paper isn’t going to be held by that stuff so easily shattered by gunfire. Something else is holding them there—something that the shattering undoes. I want to know what.”

“In the meantime, let’s go if we’re going,” Modra suggested. “This place is a place of death.”

They continued on up, the shale providing something almost like steps to reach the top where the deadliest part of the battle had been fought. Jimmy McCray wanted to examine the larger ruins for a moment, and, feeling safer, they felt they could afford to. The truth was, most of them wanted rest more than they wanted to move on, but, without some cover, the beating rain on their helmets was almost like drumbeats, bad enough awake.

“Looks like the same sort of folks,” the telepath commented. “Maybe the same people built it. Hard to say. At a guess, though, even though it’s in worse shape than the one below, I’d guess this one was newer. It’s more exposed to the weather, which would account for its more worn shape.”

“What makes you believe it is newer?” the Durquist asked him.

“The altar in the center. Below, we’ve got a probable pentagram. That’s a protection. This one—no pentagram, no likely shape of that sort. If you look at the old altar, it’s got grooves in it and down to the floor, where there’s another channeling that probably took the runoff over the cliff when the thing was whole, same as it’s doin’ as much as is left with the rainwater. This, I think, is a sacrificial altar. Those grooves took the blood or whatever the folks here had inside ’em away.”

“Frankly, McCray, I believe your imagination is running wild,” the Durquist responded. “You see some ancient ruins, built by a people no longer here and whose shape and very nature we can’t even guess at, and thanks to an odd number of pillars you see a pentagram and thanks to erosion you see a sacrificial altar. All based upon some scary tales told you by your own religious leader in your childhood and a book you loved in school. Virtually all cultures tell those stories to their young, either to teach morality or, in some cases, just to scare unruly children into social conformity. The similarity of the Quintara to those ancient devils has brought back all those childhood fascinations and fears, and now you see it all vindicated. I will grant that the Quintara are the source of the nearly universal demon stories, and even that they’re another of the Higher Races, like the Guardians, the Mycohl, and the Mizlaplan. They’re dangerous—that’s why someone or some group more powerful locked them away. But supernatural?”

“There’s no reason why you aren’t both right,” Tris Lankur pointed out. “Something that’s supernatural is something nobody else has figured out how to do yet. The behavior of almost all the ancient gods and demons mirrors the cultures that created them. People create and develop gods in their own images. The relative consistency of the demons indicates a common source in reality, a source we now know. We also know that, while they can be pretty brutish, they had a well-developed technology beyond anything we currently understand and which is probably the source of their ancient power. I think all of us have been on worlds with very primitive and ignorant races who regarded us as supernatural. The demons themselves have their own kind of religion, as we’ve seen—they worship power. Power for its own sake. They like being gods. They enjoy it, even revel in it. If they have any higher agenda, we haven’t seen any evidence of it. The clues are here—such a race would never accept anything but the very top ruler spot over all others. They’d be warlike, and war lovers, which might account for their high level of technology. You see what I mean?”

“You left out an important part,” McCray commented.

“Oh?”

“There’s two of ’em loose now, heading someplace important. Quintara or devils or both, if I suddenly found myself, maybe a low-rankin’ demon in their hierarchy, suddenly loose in the old candy shop, I might be tempted to leave any possible competition behind and go for the center of power of the old days. Maybe gather up a few of the most trusted old boys who’ll work just under ’em and be the rest of the gang. If it was the Big Three we know who put ’em here—the races that run things—they’re obviously fat and lazy shadows of what they were. No match for these boys now, who have the same knowledge and fighting trim they did way back when. If we so-called lessers can’t figure out a way to do ’em in somehow before they get all set up, then Higher Race or Princes of Darkness, it won’t make a wee bit of difference. They’ll take all ninety trillion of us in the Three Empires like fruit overripe and a bit rotten falls from the tree with a mild shake.”

The Durquist could not find an answer to that one.

Modra sighed. “Well, there’s no sign of shelter up here. Let’s see what we can find further on. You keep those mental channels open, too, McCray. No telling where our friends up ahead will stop, either.”

“I’m not so worried about them, at least not yet,” the telepath replied. “They’re so filled with killin’ one another we won’t be real targets until one of ’em makes it happen. Let’s see if we can figure a way not to swim along this mountain ridge here and find someplace for a little rest.”

It wasn’t easy going; without the properties of the suits, the odds were they would have all slipped off or slid off at one or another point, or worse. Deep grooves, like paths, perhaps worn down by all those who came up for the temples, existed, too filled with water to be useful but vital as indicators of a direction to follow.

Finally, though, they reached the end of the high ground and looked down upon an eerie forest; the first real life, such as it was, they’d had any evidence of here.

The trunks of the tree-like plants might have been mistaken for vast numbers of eroded pillars; twisted, rising well up into the air, a mixture of grays and browns whose exterior looked and felt very stone-like. They also were embedded not in soil but in apparently hard basalt with a tremendous amount of obsidian embedded within. Yet, from their tall tops, half as tall as the hillside, sprang massive, thick leafy growths like great panels of marbled dark blue and gray canvas, catching the rain and tunneling it somehow into the center of the stony stalks.

“Certainly not photosynthesis or any similar process,” the Durquist commented. “Indeed, they appear silicon-based, although that might be deceiving.”

“But what do they feed on?” Modra wondered. “No sun, no soil . . . ”

“No animal life, either, thank heaven,” McCray added.

“I wonder,” the Durquist mused, “if the rain and whatever is below the bedrock could be enough for them. There must be a method for the water to recirculate as vapor into the air or we’d be in the midst of a sunny ocean. If all they need are minerals and water to mix them internally in order to grow and reproduce, the rain itself might bring them all they require, somehow. I am pretty sure the rain is harmless to us, but I’ve done no chemical analysis of it. Fascinating.”

“I’m more interested in the fact that most of the hillside runoff seems to go into those cracks and crevices below,” Lankur noted. “With the big leaves or collectors up there, it’s likely to be, if not dry, at least habitable in there. Modra, McCray—you have any sense of our friends down there?”

The empath and the telepath each surveyed the scene. “Something very distant, nothing close,” Modra replied.

“That’s about it,” Jimmy agreed. “The Miz probably managed to get a few hours’ sleep back there at the ruins before bein’ so rudely awakened, so they’re probably in the best shape of all of us. Even so, they’ll want to pick and choose how and when they hit the Mycohl crew and won’t be spoilin’ for a fight right off, I’d say. Nope—I’d guess that if we can use the forest for cover, it’s pretty safe on this side.”

Hopping over the cracks and crevices that collected the water proved a little difficult, particularly for Molly, whose feet really weren’t designed for all this, but she was game. If those Quintara could do it, so could she.

Now, finally, they stood at the very edge of the forest. “Which way?” Modra wondered: “We probably won’t even have telepathic clues in a little while.”

“This may seem a little nuts,” Jimmy McCray said, “but there are two trees next to each other, about thirty meters down, that look a wee bit different than the rest. Shiny, if you see what I mean.”

They walked the distance and looked at them. They were different; the exterior of their twisted trunks was encased—not all the way, but in three bands of clear, weatherproof material.

“Sort’a like the stuff they stuck the big syns in,” Molly noted. To her, the demons were variants of her own kind because that’s what she could understand.

The Durquist’s stalked eyes stared a moment. “You know, she’s right. It is similar stuff,” he said after an examination, a bit amazed. “Now, I don’t presume to think the way another race and culture might think, but I can see only one possible reason for doing this—and only to two trees.”

Modra nodded. “Trail markers.” She walked between them and, within eyesight, about ten meters farther in, was another pair similarly marked. “That’s how they do it—and how the others did it,” she told them.

They went in but a little ways; it wasn’t exactly dry underneath the forest canopy, but it wasn’t a thundering rain, either. Rather, the thunder, even the screams and moans, seemed very distant and far above them, and everything was just simply wet.

“I’d say right here is the best place,” Tris Lankur commented. “We have the trail, and shelter about as good as we can expect, but we’re close enough to the edge of the forest that if it holds any ugly surprises, we can make a break for it. I’ll stand guard again, the rest of you get some sleep. No telling when we’ll have another chance at it.”

They settled down, and within minutes Jimmy McCray, Molly, and the Durquist were all out to the world. Modra, however, stretched out as she was and, very tired, found it suddenly impossible to go to sleep. Overtired, she told herself, but it was more than that.

None of them, not even the telepath, could know how much her encounter with the demons had hurt her. Molly had wrenched her out and away by the single-mindedness of her simple outlook, something which had also insulated her to a degree. The demons, probably confused by Molly’s mind and the odd readings they were getting, had ignored her, perhaps dismissing her. Still, the fact that Molly couldn’t really comprehend what those bastards were doing to Modra’s own psyche meant that she, too, didn’t realize the full extent of injury.

The Quintara had multiple Talents, which was the age-old definition of a Higher Race—although it remained to be seen what, if any, Talents the mysterious Guardians of the Exchange, if they still existed, possessed. They had read her mind for the source of her jumbled hurts and emotions, then broadcast and amplified just the worst ones. That effect had only been diminished by Molly and time; it hadn’t by any means receded to the level it had been before the attack, even if she still could put on a tough front.

The fact that Tris was there, the walking corpse of the man she felt she’d murdered by her own insensitivity to anyone and anything but her own interests, so self-absorbed in her own ego and troubles she’d never guessed the depth of his feelings and reactions. Her, the empath! Choosing security over romance was something she knew would hurt him, but she hardly expected the kind of despair that resulted. He’d always been too strong, too flip, too tough for all that.

There, in the eerie forest, she couldn’t help but think back to that last nightmarish time when they were together, clinging to each other for security and sanity while under attack from horrible forces, and which had frightened her enough that she never wanted to do that again.

And for what? Here she was, the damage done, stuck in a damned alien forest on some dark, dank, rotten world in the empire of Hell, haunted by the ghost of the man she’d driven to suicide.

For nothing.

She got up, yawned and stretched. Lankur looked up and said, “Any problems?”

“Can’t sleep,” she told him. “I just need to stretch a bit.” She started walking slowly toward the edge of the forest.

“I wouldn’t go back out there,” he warned her. “I can’t guard everybody.”

“That’s all right. I’m not going out there, just to the edge. I need to be alone for a few minutes.” How can I tell you I just want to be out of sight of you for a few moments? “It’s all right. I won’t be long, and I can tell if somebody’s lurking about. Besides, we’re on intercom.”

He didn’t like it, but he settled back, knowing he was unable to prevent it.

She walked to the edge of the forest, then over a bit, so she was completely out of sight, and leaned on one of the trees, gazing out at that constant, unbelievable rain.

The weird sounds of this strange world were much louder here, possibly even amplified by some kind of echo effect bouncing them between the hills and the forest They were kind of creepy, but she didn’t want to turn the exterior sound off. The silence of all but her own breathing would be worse still.

She tried to imagine some ancient people coming through here in ritual processions to their great monuments up on high. What had become of them, she wondered? Did they die out after slavishly serving the Quintara? Did the Quintara grow bored and kill them off? Or was it, perhaps, just some sort of natural calamity, some great climatological change that swept away the old, familiar world that had supported them along with all the life in the chain, making way for this newer, duller, quieter life to take over? Was there, in fact, now a sun up there at all? It seemed that the light varied a bit, from gloomy to gloomier, but it was never pitch-dark and never bright as a true rainy day anywhere else she’d been.

McCray was a little too nuts on his childhood nightmares, but she couldn’t help thinking along those lines as well. It matched her mood, even as it took her thoughts away from what she really didn’t want to think about.

Tris—Damn! Can’t get around him!—was wrong when he said the Durquist and McCray were talking about the same thing, no matter how reasonable it sounded. He and the Durquist were in tune, with their view of a very nasty and dangerous crew that was still understandable, comprehensible, rational in the civilized sense. McCray’s childhood demons were more than that; even death didn’t free you from them, but rather enslaved your mind, your spirit, your soul, whatever it was called, to them forever in some other plane. He was saying they were worse than tyrants, of which the universe still had plenty; that those shrieks and moans that howled through this terrible place were the cries of the damned in eternal torment. Perhaps even the souls of all the ones who’d given their souls on this world to the demons.

It was easy, looking out on the place, to imagine that those ancient builders were still here—just out of sight, just beyond their perception, in another, eternal continuum.

The idea, in spite of her own lack of belief in anything she couldn’t see, hear, feel, or touch, gave her the creeps.

She thought she heard a different noise, not far off, sounding like a flag flapping in the brisk wind. It was oddly different, but she dismissed it as perhaps the sound of the great leaf-like collectors adjusting to the rain. She turned to look, but it was gone just as quickly, and she chided herself at getting too jumpy. She was simply too tired, and too depressed, and this place and McCray’s talk of demons and pentagrams and rituals had fed on that.

She felt, rather than heard, someone behind her, and turned, expecting to see Tris coming to check on her.

Instead, she was staring suddenly into huge crimson ovals of eyes, eyes that seemed to drain her strength and her will but from which she could not turn or break contact. She was suddenly totally without thought or will of her own, and, while not a word was spoken, she found herself shutting off the suit intercom, then switching the suit radio to an upper, rarely used frequency and turning on both the personal scrambler and the translator.

“You have no thoughts, no fears, no worries, no cares,” said a flat voice on the channel. “Your thoughts are only what I tell you they are. Your only purpose to existence is to help me in any way you can and obey my commands. You feel strength like you never have before, all through your body, and your mind is clear, alert, wide awake, without a trace of fatigue. You will now turn off your location transponder and help me into the forest but away from the marked path and your companions. You must save me and yourself from your companions. Your companions have all been taken over by the demons as they guarded or slept, and who now control them. You are the only one they did not get. Your only chance is to help me reach my people, and for you to join with us. Now—help me. Get me to a place where they cannot find us or the telepath locate us. I will need your help. My leg is injured. Come. Help me with your strength to escape the demon tools.”

Unhesitatingly, she supported him on one side, and they made their way as quickly as possible into the dense stone forest.


Tris Lankur was suddenly aware that Modra had been away a very long time.

“Modra?” he called on the intercom. “Modra, come in.”

He stood up now, concerned, and switched to the all-frequency call. “Modra? If you can hear me, please acknowledge.”

No response.

He brought up the locator to get a fix on her transponder and found no result

The all-frequency call had aroused the others. “Huh? What . . . ?” Jimmy McCray mumbled.

“Everybody up! Modra’s gone!”

That brought them at least to wakefulness. “What do you mean, ‘gone’?” the Durquist asked him tiredly.

“She couldn’t sleep, walked off a little ways towards the edge of the forest, and suddenly she just wasn’t there. No call acknowledge, no transponder, nothing. McCray—see if you can get a handle on her.”

Jimmy yawned, trying to come to wakefulness, then cast a routine mental net. There was something there, heading slowly away, but it made no real sense. It seemed like there were two minds, then one, then a lot of crazy gibberish. “Grysta, I need more juice.”

<Shit! Don’t anybody get rest in this outfit? Oh, okay . . .  >

The amplification didn’t do much for sense, but it did give him a fair idea that he wasn’t dealing with Modra alone.

“It’s Miz stuff, nutty stuff,” he told the others. “Are we sure all four of them went up that hill before us?” He snapped his fingers. “Shit! It’s that damned hypno of theirs!”

“I thought you said none of them were even close,” Lankur shot back.

“They weren’t! Not within a couple of hours of this place! I’d swear it!”

“Nevertheless, the creature is here,” the Durquist pointed out, “and it took Modra.”

“I blame myself a little for it,” Tris Lankur sighed. “I let her get out of sight, violating a cardinal rule in these situations.”

“No, we just underestimated them, I think,” the Durquist consoled.

“Or overestimated ourselves,” Jimmy added. “Look, I get the idea that the Miz is hurt—maybe back in the battle. Somehow, by some trick, he managed to avoid both Modra and my sweeps. I don’t know how, but we all know by now that nothing’s foolproof; there’s a way to fool almost anything, man or machine. I think Modra was just a heaven-sent target of opportunity.”

“Well, where are they going, man? And how do they know where they’re going without coming through here to get the trail marker?” Tris pressed.

“I can’t tell. You know it’s not directional. If we get started after them, though, they can’t be all that far away. How long was she gone before you noticed she was missing?”

“Twenty minutes. Maybe half an hour.”

“Great!” grumped the Durquist. “You could go pretty far in that time in this jungle.”

McCray shook his head. “No, he’s injured, and she’s all in, no matter how much his hypno power tells her to ignore it. They can’t be more than a kilometer or so, but they’re on the move.”

“That may be true, but the only way we can locate her is through trial and error with you checking for amplitude,” the Durquist pointed out. “If they’re lost in this mess, it would just get us lost as well.”

“The Durquist’s right,” Tris Lankur agreed. “We can’t go barging around in this or we’ll be in here forever. We’ve got to assume that either he knows where they’re going or he’ll eventually think to use Modra’s empathic Talent to head for his companions ahead. In any case, we know where they’re going, and we can assume that the Miz team is following this trail the same as we. Our best bet is to get moving fast along the markers here and try to get ahead of them. McCray will be able to warn us if we get close.”

“Makes sense,” the telepath agreed. “Have you figured out what we do if we catch him, though? He’s a damned hypno!

I’m not bothered by a hypno, or any other Talent,” Tris reminded him.

“True, but neither are you immune to being shot,” the Durquist added. “I confess to an almost sneaking admiration for this fellow.”

“I will admire him to death,” Tris said evenly. “They broke their word and so have broken the peace, as well as weakening our team. In the last analysis, they are between the Mycohl and us. That makes them the meat in the sandwich, and I have every intention to chew them up and swallow them.”



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