They all made reluctant salutes.
“And if we see any Skorpis patrols we lay low and let them pass. No firing unless they shoot first. I want to get into those ruins undetected, if we can.”
We spent the rest of that day working our way along the ridge of mountains, down to the cleft where the river cut through on its way to the sea. With the fading light of dusk we maneuvered down to the riverbank, where we made camp for the night. No fires. And no Skorpis patrols in sight.
I did not even try to sleep that night. I skulked through the shadows, every sense straining, knowing that the Skorpis were at their best in the dark, wondering if they really were complacent enough to sit snug inside their base, wondering above all if they knew that we were near. The river made a rushing sound, as if hurrying to be reunited with the sea. The wind blew in off the water, warm and moist, like a lover’s breath. The night was dark, moonless, and the stars scattered against the black sky meant nothing to me; I could not recognize any of the familiar constellations of Earth.
I saw the gleam of a light, far down the river, almost at the point where it widened into a broad and deep bay. An enemy patrol? Why would the night-loving Skorpis need a light? It couldn’t be any of my troopers; they were all behind me with strict orders not to make a fire or even strike a spark.
I edged carefully toward the light, the rushing river on my left, keeping as much as I could to the brush and stunted trees that lined the base of the cliffs we had descended. I eased my pistol from its holster.
The light grew, brightened, and suddenly I knew what I was seeing. I knew who was there.
Boldly I left the protection of the foliage and slipped the pistol back into its holster. Sure enough, Aten the Golden One was standing in an aura of radiance, arms folded across his chest, an expectant smirk curling his lips. He no longer wore a military uniform. Now he was decked in a long white cloak atop a glittering metallic formfitting suit.
He looked like a god, I had to admit. Splendid of face and form, as ideal a human specimen as Michelangelo or Praxiteles could carve. Yet I knew that his appearance was an illusion, a condescension, actually. Aten’s true form was a radiant sphere of energy; he assumed a human aspect merely to deal with his mortal creations.
“You are doing well, this time, Orion,” he said to me, by way of greeting.
“Is this planet so important to your plans that my entire troop has to be sacrificed for it?”
“Obviously so,” he answered. “Why do you think I placed you here? I have great faith in your abilities. After all, I created them, didn’t I?”
We were temporarily outside the space-time continuum, I knew, wrapped in a bubble of energy that neither my own people nor the Skorpis could see.
“You created my soldiers, too?” I asked.
“Those things? Oh no! How little you must think of me, creature, to believe I would make such limited tools. No, they have been developed by their own kind, the humans of this era.”
“And what is so important about this era?”
He smirked. “How to specify time to a creature who perceives it so linearly? You see, to those of us who understand , Orion, time is like an ocean-like the great sea that lies out beyond your pitiful little camp. You can be at one place on that ocean or another, but it is still the same ocean. You can travel across it, or even plumb it to its depths.”
“There are currents in the ocean,” I said.
“Very good! There are currents in the sea of space-time, as well. Quite true.”
“And where in this ocean of space-time is Anya?”
His face clouded. “Never mind her. She is busy elsewhere. Your task is here.”
“This is the ultimate crisis that you spoke of? Here on this planet?”
“This is part of it, Orion. Only a small part. Small, but critical.”
“And you expect me to take the Skorpis base with fifty-two troopers, with no support, no heavy weapons?”
Aten made a condescending shrug. “I wish I could send you more help, Orion, but you must make do with what you have. There are no reinforcements to spare.”
“Then we will fail. We will all be killed, with no hope of success.”
“Perhaps I will revive you. If I can.”
“And the others?”
“They are of no concern to me. I didn’t create them; they were made by their own people.”
“Who regard them as dirt. Expendable cannon fodder, cheaper than robots.”
Again the shrug. “Tools, Orion. They are tools. You can’t expect someone to pamper his tools. You use them as they have been designed to use.”
“And when their task is finished?”
“You store them away carefully until you need them again.”
“Or you throw them away because they’ve been damaged doing your work for you.”
Aten shook his golden mane. “How emotional you are, Orion. Your emotions help to drive you, I know, but it does make it tedious talking with you.”
“I want to see Anya. To speak with her.”
“Impossible.”
“Then I’ll go out and find her.”
He laughed in my face. “Certainly, Orion! Grow wings and fly away.”
“I’ve traveled across the continuum on my own,” I said.
“Really? On your own? Without any help from your beloved Anya? Or perhaps even from me?”
“On my own,” I insisted. But I wondered inwardly if that was true.
“Do your job, Orion,” he said harshly. “Demolish this Skorpis base, or as much of it as you can before your little troop is wiped out. Then perhaps I can bring you to Anya. If all goes well.”
“But my troopers-”
“They’ll all be dead, Orion. Then you won’t have to worry about them any longer.”
With that, he disappeared, winked out like a star eclipsed by a cloud. I was left alone on the bank of the river that rushed to the sea.
Chapter 7
We marched along the riverbank the next morning, and by noon had reached the area where it broadened into a wide calm bay. By midafternoon we reached the beach and stopped for a few moments of rest and reconnoitering.
From where we were, huddled beneath the trees and shrubbery that lined the river, we could not see the Skorpis base. The ruins of the ancient city stood between us and them. My hope was that they could not see us, and would not detect us as we marched across the open beach to the ruins.
“No sign of Skorpis patrols,” Manfred told me, sweating from running to report in person. I had forbidden all radio communications for fear of being overheard.
“I’m sure they have satellites up,” Frede said. Quint seconded her estimate with a worried bob of his head.
“Even if they do,” I said, “we’re not doing any good here. Those ruins will make a better defensive site, if we have to fight.”
So we dashed across the kilometers of beach, skimming scant centimeters above the sand on our flight packs, hurrying, worrying, expecting a swarm of Skorpis attackers to swoop down on us at any moment. Frede kept squinting up at the brazen sky, as if she thought she could see any satellites up there if she only tried hard enough.
It was fun skimming that fast, so low to the sand, the waves to one side and the flowering shrubs on the other streaking into a blur, the cracked and crumbling ruins rushing up toward us, wind whistling past, breathless, racing, racing like a flight of low-swooping hawks.
We slowed down as we approached the ruins and touched our boots onto the sand, one by one, panting and laughing from the dash we had just gone through. The sun was hanging on the rim of the ocean horizon, a bloated red ball that threw long purple shadows among the blasted buildings and heaps of debris. We filed into the ruins gratefully, happy to feel some little protection of the decaying walls after being out in the open, vulnerable.
It had been a sizable city, I could see now that we were in it. Wide avenues lined for several kilometers with buildings that must have risen quite high before they were blasted into rubble. How old? And what destroyed them?
“Radioactive background is nominal,” Frede murmured as we picked our way through the debris littering one of the major avenues. She had unpacked the scanner from her equipment web and was holding it out stiffly in front of her almost the way a blind man pokes his cane ahead of him.
“This city wasn’t nuked,” I said to her.
The troop had automatically fanned out into two columns, one on either side of the shattered street, the troopers spaced out widely enough so the first shots of an ambush would not take out more than one or two of us. Manfred had taken the van, with four picked men and women; Quint had assigned himself to the rear. I was starting to worry about Quint; it was normal for a man to be afraid, but he was letting his fears get in the way of his duties.
“If it wasn’t nuked,” Frede asked, walking beside me, “how did it get blasted so badly?”
I thought I knew. “They fought a battle here. A long, bloody battle that went from street to street, building to building. Hand-to-hand killing, for weeks. Maybe months.”
Frede shook her head, uncomprehending. “But that would mean the whole population was in the fight: civilians, children, everybody.”
Memories were stirring in me. Troy. Stalingrad. The Crusaders’ siege of Jerusalem and the bloodbath that followed.
“Civilians, children, everybody,” I echoed. “In the siege of Leningrad most of the city’s population died of starvation. They ate rats and all the animals in the zoo.”
“Hell’s fire,” Frede murmured.
“Can you get a fix on how old these ruins are?” I asked her.
“Doubtful. Have to know the ambient ratios of radioactives for this planet, and that data isn’t in our computer background data.”
“You’re sure?”
“I already checked,” she said, tapping the side of her helmet where the earphones were. “I got curious about this city the first time we saw it, when we were still in the mountains.”
So these “tools” can exhibit curiosity. They are more than mindless killing machines, despite the purposes of their creators.
We made camp in the littered basement of one of the crumbling buildings, with a thick concrete roof over our heads and solid walls around us. I let the troops risk a small cook fire, and while they were preparing the last of the food we had hunted in the mountains, I left them to wander through the buildings, seeking some clue to their age and origin.
I could find no pictures to help me. No paintings were left unburned, no statues unsmashed, no friezes or murals or mosaics were recognizable on the shattered remains of the walls that still stood. I found patterns of tiles here and there, tantalizing suggestions of what might have been decorations or even maps. But nowhere was there enough of a wall left intact for a whole picture to be seen.
As I picked my way through the debris-filled buildings, I discovered something else. There were no animals scurrying about. No rats or even insects that I could detect. The destruction of this city must have happened so long ago that even the bones of its inhabitants had long since crumbled to dust and blown away on the winds of the nearby sea.
I stood in the middle of one ruin, in what might have been the lobby or entrance hall to a great building. With my booted foot I scraped aside some of the debris on the floor and saw that it was tiled in colors that once had probably been quite bold. Now they were faded with time, gray with clinging dust. I hunkered down on my knees and swept more of the debris away, seeking a pattern, a picture, any kind of a clue as to who built this city and when.
Nothing but a checkerboard of many-colored tiles. Perhaps, like the ancient Moslems, the creatures who built this city refused to draw representations of themselves.
What difference does it make? Once, long ago, the creatures who built this city fought an implacable enemy. And lost. Their city was ground down to dust. A civilization was destroyed. Another turn of the wheel.
Wearily, I took my helmet off and used it for a pillow as I stretched myself out on the rubble-strewn floor and gazed up at the darkening sky, those strange patterns of alien constellations. And with all my heart I wanted to be with Anya, to see her, to speak with her, to watch her fathomless gray eyes when she smiled at me, to touch her, hold her, love her and know that she still loved me.
Clasping my hands behind my neck, I said to myself, You boasted to the Golden One that you could find her without his help. All right, then, let’s see you do it.
At least I could try.
I closed my eyes and attempted to remember those times when I had been translated across the continuum. The moments of nothingness. The cryogenic cold of the void between place-times. The endless dance of the atoms slowing, shifting, energies glowing and radiating in an endless coruscation, rising and waning like the tides, like the moon, like life itself.
Nothing happened. When I opened my eyes I was still in the shattered remains of the long-dead city, lying on the littered floor of one of its roofless bombed-out buildings. It was deep night; the stars had shifted noticeably above me. The luminous ribbon of the Milky Way twisted across the sky, clouds of stars, rich beyond counting. That pale, tiny, distant moon looked down on me sorrowfully. It seemed vaguely familiar, as if I had known it in another life, a different era.
Who are you?
I felt the voice, rather than heard it. The faintest thread of a question, inside my mind.
Who are you? it repeated.
“I am Orion,” I answered aloud.
You are not like the others.
“What others?”
Those who call themselves the Skorpis. And their allies.
That made my chin come up. “Allies? What allies?”
We have seen you before. You were here yet not here.
“What do you mean? Who are you?”
No answer. Only a sense of utter revulsion. And then it was gone. I was alone again. Whoever-whatever-it was, it had left me.
I sat up and pondered. I had not imagined the contact; it was real. And it was here, in this space-time. It knew of the Skorpis. And it said that the Skorpis were not alone; they had “allies” with them.
“Who are you?” I called out.
No reply.
“I identified myself to you. It’s only fair that you tell me who you are.” The words sounded slightly ridiculous to me even as I spoke them. Some entity contacts me telepathically and I demand that they follow the rules of etiquette.
I sensed an amusement, although it might have been merely my own feelings of foolishness.
I waited there, squatting on the littered floor, until the sky began to turn milky pale above me. Admitting defeat, I got up and returned to the building where my troopers had camped.
Manfred was standing in the doorway at street level, rifle in his hands.
“Captain!” he snapped. “You’re all right!”
“Of course I’m all right,” I said.
“We spent half the night searching for you. When you disappeared-”
“I was inspecting the city,” I said curtly. “If I had run into trouble I would have contacted you on the emergency frequency.”
In the gray light of dawn Manfred’s taut face looked half disappointed, half relieved. “Yes, sir, I suppose so. But still, we expected you to return and when you didn’t…” His voice trailed off.
I clasped him on the shoulder. “You’re right, Manfred. I should have told you that I was going to spend the night exploring. It’s my fault. I hope you didn’t lose too much sleep.”
“No, sir. I’m fine.” But now that I looked at him closely I could see that his eyes were baggy from sleeplessness.
The troop breakfasted on prepacked rations; then I sent them out by squads to check out the ruins and locate the best defensive positions they could find. Each squad went out under its top sergeant; I kept the officers with me.
“We need to scout the Skorpis base,” I told them. “And, if possible, to get inside it.”
Quint made a snorting laugh. “Sure. We’ll just walk up to their perimeter and ask for a tour.”
“Or tunnel from here to there,” Frede suggested, grinning.
“I’ve done some tunneling in my time,” I said, “but I don’t think that would work in this case.”
“Then what do you have in mind?” Quint asked. Then he added, “Sir.”
I considered telling them about my telepathic contact but decided against it. I wasn’t certain that I believed it myself. But the thought that the Skorpis might have allies inside their base was too important to neglect.
“I’m going alone,” I said.
“You can’t do that,” Frede snapped. “With all due respect, sir, you can’t go out on a suicide mission and leave your command to fend for itself.”
“It needn’t be a suicide mission, Lieutenant. I’m not a total fool.”
“Then let me do it,” she said without hesitation.
I shook my head. “I’ve had more experience at this sort of thing than you. I’ll do it. If I’m not back by sundown tomorrow, you can consider me dead.”
Frede looked as if she wanted to argue, but she knew it would be pointless. Manfred looked as if he thought I was crazy. Quint almost smiled. If I was killed, he would be in command.
Manfred cleared his throat. “May I ask, sir, how you intend to get to the Skorpis base? There’s a couple of klicks of empty beach between the edge of these ruins and their perimeter.”
“Wait until dark?” Quint asked.
“They see better in the dark than we do,” Frede reminded him. “Any advantage we have, it’s in daylight.”
“Cross the beach in daylight?”
I smiled. “No, that would be like trying to sneak up on a pack of Tyrannosaurs.”
“Tyranno-what, sir?”
“Very large carnivorous reptiles, ten meters tall, teeth the size of your forearm,” I explained.
Frede looked as if she thought I was making it up.
Manfred brought us back to the subject. “Sir, if you can’t get across the beach without being seen, how are you going to get to their base?”
“Swim.”
“Swim?”
I said, “Their base is laid out along the beach, isn’t it? There are even some projections like piers that extend into the water, aren’t there?”
“Yessir, but-”
“I’ll double back to the bay, slip into the water there, let the current carry me into the ocean and then swim along the beach to the Skorpis base.”
“That’s a lot of swimming, sir,” said Manfred.
“I’ll use a flight pack. I assume they’re watertight.”
“Yessir, but salt water is very corrosive and-”
“What if there are animals in the water like the ones we met in the swamp?” Frede asked.
I hadn’t thought of that. Sucking in a breath, I said, “I’ll have to outrun them, I guess. Or kill them.”
“It’s suicide,” she said flatly.
I gave her a tight smile. “I’m not asking permission.”
Chapter 8
The water was surprisingly warm.
I had expected the bay to be cold, fed as it was by the river that came down from the snowcapped mountains. But instead the water was almost bath temperature, warmed by the sun during the long hot days.
The current was strong and swift, once I got away from the shore. I made a mental note to remember that for when I returned. I would have to struggle against that current unless I hugged the shoreline closely. The flight pack would help, of course, if it wasn’t drained of power or corroded by the salt water.
With a final wave to Frede and Manfred, who had accompanied me to the edge of the bay, I ducked beneath the surface and let the powerful current carry me out to sea. I had stripped down to nothing more than shorts. The only equipment I carried was my pistol, my knife, and the flight pack strapped to my back.
I have strengths and abilities far beyond those of normal humans, even the cloned warriors that made up the involuntary army of this era. I could stay underwater for a quarter of an hour without difficulty, and even longer if I needed to; in an emergency I could squeeze spare oxygen from my body cells.
But I am not superhuman. I knew that if one of those tentacled swamp things got its grip on me now, underwater, I would be face-to-face with death. My laser pistol would work underwater, but only at very short ranges. The water absorbed laser energy very quickly.
I wished that we had oxygen tanks with us, so that I could remain submerged indefinitely. But we did not. Oxygen tanks were not among the equipment we had carried to the planet with us. I wished that the flight pack could push me through the water faster, but I dared not drain its power pack too quickly. So I had to be content with allowing the current to carry me along, saving the flight pack for when my muscle power alone would not be enough to propel me where I wanted to go.
When I broke to the surface, I saw that I was already past the curve of the shoreline. The sun was high overhead, the swells of the ocean driving up onto the long white beach, where the waves broke and boomed relentlessly. I swam out beyond the surf, using the flight pack to help me against the tide, and then struck out parallel to the beach, heading for the Skorpis base.
The salt water was beautifully clear and lit by the afternoon sun. I could see brightly colored fish by the hundreds sparkling and dashing about. A sleek, deadly-looking hunter slid through the water farther out; it paid no attention to me and I did nothing to change its attitude. None of those tentacled things from the swamps, thank fortune. I had no desire to get tangled with one of those again.
When I came up for a gulp of air again, I saw that I had made precious little progress toward the Skorpis base. Must be a current running against me, I thought. Or perhaps the tide is moving slantwise with respect to the beach. Reluctantly I notched my flight pack to a slightly higher power and dived beneath the waves again.
In the distance, through the crystal water, I saw what at first I thought was a reef. Fish swarmed all around it, a glittering moving rainbow of coruscating colors and flashing movement. As I came closer, though, I realized that it was not a natural formation but a set of structures built underwater and crusted over with coral and seaweed and a thousand other forms of shellfish and underwater plants.
I popped to the surface again to get my bearings. The ruins of the ancient city lay up above the beach. These underwater structures were part of that city, I guessed. Probably there were tunnels connecting the two. I tucked that possibility into my memory; it might be useful later.
I swam to the coral-encrusted structures. There were long arms reaching from the shore out to sea a kilometer or more, buttressed by stout pillars and cross-bracing. Whoever had built the city had built these structures, too. But why? I could discern no reason for them, no hint of their purpose.