I asked the Lady Raire to teach me her language, and along with the new words I learned a lot about her home world, Zeridajh. It was old—fifty thousand years of written history—but the men there were still men. It was no classless Utopia where people strolled in misty gardens spouting philosophy; there was plenty of strife and unhappiness, and although the Lady Raire never talked about herself, I got the impression she had her share of the latter. I wondered how it happened that she was off wandering the far end of the Galaxy in the company of two unlikely types like Lord Desroy and Sir Orfeo, but I didn’t ask her; if she wanted to tell me, she could. But one day I said something that made her laugh.
“I thought—Sir Orfeo said Lord Desroy had been on Earth three hundred years ago. And you speak the same old-fashioned English—”
She laughed. “Billy Danger, didst deem me so ancient?”
“No—but—”
“I learned my English speech from Lord Desroy, somewhat altered, mayhap, by Sir Orfeo. But ’twas late; indeed, I have but eighteen years, Earth reckoning.”
“And you’ve been away from home for four years? Isn’t your family worried . . .” Then I shut up, at the look that crossed her face.
The weather had been gradually changing; the days grew shorter and cooler. The flowers Milady had brought in from the caves dropped their blossoms and turned brown. The cats got restless, and we’d hear them yowling and scrapping, down in their leafy den. And one day, there were kittens everywhere.
Our diet consisted of beans, fried, baked, sliced and eaten raw, chopped and roasted, mixed with food concentrates to make stews and soups. We used the scissors from the first-aid kit to trim our hair back. Fortunately, I had no beard to trim. The days got longer again, and for a while the ravine was a fairyland of blossoms that filled the air with a perfume so sweet it was almost dizzying. At sunset, the Lady Raire would walk out across the desert and look at the purple towers in the west. I trailed her, with a gun ready, in case any of Sir Orfeo’s dire-beasts wandered this way.
And one night the ship came.
7
I was sound asleep; the Lady Raire woke me and I rolled out grabbing for my gun and she pointed to a star that glared blue and got bigger as we watched it. It came down in absolute silence and ground in the desert a quarter of a mile from us in a pool of blue light that cast hard shadows across Milady’s face. I was so excited I could hardly breathe, but she wasn’t smiling.
“The lines of yon vessel are strange to me, Billy Danger,” she said. “‘Tis of most archaic appearance. Seest thou the double hull, like unto the body of an insect?”
“All I can see is the glare from the business end.” The blue glow was fading. Big floodlights came on and lit up the desert all around the ship like high noon.
“Mayhap . . .” she started, and a whistling, whooping noise boomed out across the flats. It stopped and the echoes bounced and faded and it was silent again.
“If ’twere speech, I know it not,” Milady said.
“I guess we’d better go meet them,” I said, but I had a powerful urge to run and hide among the pea vines.
“Billy Danger, I like this not.” Her hand gripped my arm. “Let’s flee to the shelter of the ravine—”
Her idea was a little too close to mine; I had to show her how silly her feminine intuition was.
“And miss the only chance we’ll ever have to get off this dust-ball? Come on, Milady. You’re going home—”
“Nay, Billy—” But I grabbed her arm and advanced. As we came closer, the ship looked as big as a wasp-waisted skyscraper. Three cars came around from the far side of it. Two of them fanned out to right and left; the third headed toward us, laying a dust trail behind it. It was squat, rounded, dark coppery-colored without windows. It stopped fifty feet away with its blunt snout aimed at us. A round panel about a foot in diameter swung open and a glittery assembly poked out and rotated half a turn and was still.
“It looks like it’s smelling of us,” I said, but the jolly note in my voice was a failure. Then a lid on top popped up like a jack-in-the-box and the most incredible creature I had ever seen climbed out.
He was about four feet high, and almost as wide, and my first impression was that he was a dwarf in Roman armor; then I saw that the armor was part of him. He scrambled down the side of the car on four short, thick legs, then reared his torso up and I got a good look at the face set between a pair of seal flippers in the middle of his chest. It reminded me of a blown-up photo of a bat I’d seen once. There were two eyes, some orifices, lots of wrinkled gray-brown skin, a mouth like a fanged frog. An odd metallic odor came from him. He stared at us and we stared back. Then a patch of rough, pinkish skin centered in a tangle of worms below his face bulged out and a gluey voice came from it. I didn’t understand the words, but somehow he sounded cautious.
The Lady Raire answered, speaking too fast for me to follow. I listened while they batted it back and forth. Once she glanced at me and I caught my name and the word “property.” I wasn’t sure just how she meant it. While they talked, the other two cars came rumbling in from offside, ringing us in.
More of the midgets trotted up, holding what looked like stacks of silver teacups, glued together, the open ends toward us. The spokesman took a step back and made a quick motion of his flippers.
“Throw down guns,” he said in Zeridajhi. He didn’t sound cautious anymore.
The Lady Raire’s hand went toward her pistol. I grabbed her arm.
“I know these hagseed now,” she said. “They mean naught but dire mischief to any of my race—”
“Those are gunports under the headlights on the cars,” I said. “I think we’d better do what it says.”
“If we draw and fire as one—”
“No use, Milady. They’ve got the drop on us.”
She hesitated a moment longer, then unsnapped her gunbelt and let it fall. I did the same. Our new friend made a noise and batted his flippers against the sides, and his gun-boys moved in. He pointed at the Lady Raire.
“Fetter this one,” he said. “And kill the other.”
Two or three things happened at once then. One of the teacup-guns swung my way and the Lady Raire made a sound and threw herself at the gunner. He knocked her down and I charged at him and something exploded in my face and for a long time I floated in a river, shooting the rapids, and each time I slammed against a submerged rock, I heard myself groan, and then I opened my eyes and I was lying on my face with my cheek in a puddle of congealing blood, and the ship and the monsters and the Lady Raire were gone.
8
For the first few hours my consciousness kept blinking on and off like a defective table lamp. I’d come to and try to move and the next thing I knew I was coming to again. Then suddenly it was daylight, and Eureka was sitting beside me, yowling softly. This time I managed to roll over and raise my head far enough to see myself. I was a mess.
There was blood all over me. I hurt all over, too, so that was no clue. I explored with my hands and found a rip in my coverall along my side, and through that I could feel a furrow wide enough to lay two fingers in. Up higher, there was a hole in my right shoulder that seemed to come out in back; and the side of my neck felt like hamburger, medium rare. The pain wasn’t really as bad as you’d expect. I must have been in shock. I flopped back and listened to all the voices around me. I heard Sir Orfeo: She’s your responsibility now, Jongo. Take care of her.
“I tried,” I said. “I really tried—”
It’s all right, the Lady Raire was standing by me, looking scared, but smiling at me. I trust you, Billy Danger. The light from the open furnace door glowed in her black hair, and she turned and stepped into the flames and I yelled and reached after her, but the fires leaped up and I was awake again, sobbing.
“They’ve got her,” I said aloud. “She was frightened of them, but I had to show off. I led her out to them like a lamb to the slaughter. . . .” I pictured her, dragged aboard the dwarfs’ ship, locked away in a dark place, alone and terrified, and with no one to help her. And she’d trusted me. . . .