She calculated a moment.
“Klayung,” she said, “does the Service owe me a favor?”
Klayung’s expression became a trifle cautious. “Why, I’d say we’re under considerable obligation to you. What favor did you have in mind?”
“Will you have Make-up turn me back like I was right away?”
“Of course. And?”
“Can you put me on a ship that’s fast enough to get me to Orado City this evening, local time?”
Klayung glanced at the clock, calculated briefly in turn.
“I’m sure that can be arranged,” he said then. He looked curiously at her. “Is there some special significance to the time you arrive there?”
“Not to me so much,” Telzey said. “But I just remembered—today’s my birthday. I’m sixteen, and the family wants me to be home for the party.”
Blood of Nalakia
[Editor’s note: This story is not part of the Telzey cycle, since it is set in a much earlier period of Hub history. It gives some of the background of the Elaigar who figure as Telzey’s opponents in the “Lion Game” sequence.]
It was an added bitterness to Lane Rawlings to discover that in the face of sudden disaster the Nachief of Frome could react with the same unshakable, almost contemptuous, self-confidence which he showed toward her and his other human slaves. That the lonely station of the Terrestrial Bureau of Agriculture and the nameless world far below them was both alert and heavily armed enough to ward off the attack of a spaceship should have come as a stunning surprise to him—and Lane would have exchanged her own very slim chances of survival at that point for the satisfaction of seeing the Nachief show fear.
Instead, he did instantly what had to be done to avoid complete defeat.
Lane’s mind did not attempt to keep up with the Nachief’s actions. The ship was still rocking from the first blow of the unseen guns beneath, when she, Grant, and Sean were being flung into the central escape bubble. When a lock snapped shut behind them and the bubble lit up inside, she saw that the Nachief had followed them in and was crouched over the controls. Tenths of a second later came another explosion, triggered by the Nachief himself—an explosion that simultaneously ripped out the side of the ship and flung the bubble free . . .
* * *
Lane found herself staring out of the bubble’s telescopic ports at the sunlit, green and brown strip of land toward which they were falling. It was framed on two sides by a great blue sweep of sea. Behind them, to the left, was the glassy dome of the station, twin trails of white smoke marking the mile-long parallel scars the ship’s guns had cut into the soil in the instant of the Nachief’s savage, wanton attack. The trails stopped just short of the dome. Whoever was down there also had reacted in the nick of time.
The scene tilted violently outside, and Lane went sprawling back on the forms of Sean and Grant. The two colonists gave no indication even of being conscious. They had sat about like terrorized children for the past several days; they lay there now like stunned animals. Regaining her balance, Lane realized the bubble was falling much too fast, and for an instant she had the fierce hope that it was out of control.
Then she understood: he wants to get us down near that station—near a food supply! A wave of sick, helpless fury washed over her.
The Nachief looked around, grinning briefly, almost as if he had caught the thought.
“Pot-shooting at us, Lane! But we’ll make it.”
The deep voice; the friendly, authoritative, easily amused voice she’d been in love with for over a year. The voice that had told her, quite casually, less than thirty-six hours ago, that she and Sean and Grant would have to die, because she had found out something she wasn’t supposed to know—and because she had made the additional mistake of telling the other two. The voice had gone on as casually to describe the grotesque indecency of the kind of death the Nachief was planning for them—
She stared at the back of his massive blond head, weak with her terror and hatred, until the bubble lurched violently again, flinging her back. This time, when she scrambled up on hands and knees, they were dropping with a headlong, rushing finality that told her the bubble had been hit and was going to crash. But they were still a mile above ground.
She offered no resistance when the Nachief picked her up and hauled her out of the lock with him.
* * *
Ribbon-chutes were unfolding in a coordinated pattern of minor jolts above them. Though it was only the Nachief’s arm that held her clamped hard against his side, Lane felt quite insanely calm. They had dropped below the point where the station’s gunners could target on them. He was going to get her down alive. He had no intention of giving up his prey merely because his own life was in danger. Something struck against her legs—the barrel of the big hunting gun he held in his other hand. A sudden cunning thought came to her, and she went completely limp, waiting.
The ground was less than a hundred feet below, turning, tilting, expanding and rushing up at them, before she flung herself into a spasm of furious activity. She heard the Nachief’s angry shout, felt them sway and jerk as his arm tightened with punishing, rib-cracking intensity about her. Then they struck.
Lane stood up presently, looked about dazedly and went limping over to the Nachief. He lay face down two hundred feet away. The chutes were entangled in a cluster of stubby trees, but they had dragged him that far first. He was breathing. He wasn’t dead; but he was unconscious. She stared down at him incredulously, briefly close to hysterical laughter. She couldn’t have done it intentionally; the Nachief kept his slaves under a repression to attempt no physical harm against him. She was free, for the moment anyway, only because she had tried to kill herself. Her glance went to a rock near his head, but a sense of weakness, a heavy dread, swept through her instantly.
The thing to do was to get out of the vicinity immediately. If she could reach the station before he did, she might warn its occupants what they were up against—provided they didn’t kill her first. The Nachief’s hunting gun lay almost at the point where she had fallen. It was too heavy for her use, or even to carry. But she paused long enough to thrust it hurriedly into a tangle of dry brush which should hide it from him for a while. Then she set off in the general direction of the station.
Only five hundred yards away, she had an unexpected glimpse of the crashed bubble in open ground far below her and stopped to stare at it with a sensation of horrified remorse. Grant and Sean hadn’t had a chance after she had told them what she knew about the Nachief; in a way, she was responsible for their deaths. Hurrying on, she dismissed the thought with an effort, because it was more important just now that somebody might be coming out from the station to investigate the crash. But she couldn’t risk waiting here. The station must be more than three miles away, and her fear of the Nachief actually still seemed to be growing. Out of sight and sound, the illusion of humanity he presented was dropping away. What remained was an almost featureless awareness of a creature as coldly and savagely alien as a monstrous spider—
Suddenly breathless and shaking, Lane stopped long enough to fight down that feeling. When she set off again, it was at a pace designed to carry her all the way to the station, if nobody came to meet her.
Ten minutes later, she heard the sharp crack of a missile-gun and a whistling overhead, followed by a distant shout. It wasn’t the Nachief’s gun. She turned to look for her challenger, a vast relief flooding through her.
* * *
The tall, brown-skinned man who stepped out of a little gravity-rider a few dozen feet away held a gun in his hands, but looked at Lane with no particular indication of anything but self-confident wariness and some curiosity. A sharp-snouted, sinuous, streamlined animal, something like a heavy, short-legged dog, flowed out of the rider’s door behind him, sat up on muscular haunches and regarded Lane with gleaming black eyes. The man said, “Unh-uh, Sally!” warningly.
“Any other survivors?” His voice was not loud but carried the same self-assurance as his attitude.
“Only one.” Lane hadn’t missed the by-play. That animal, whatever it was, needed only a gesture to launch itself at her throat. Its lean brown form was that of a natural killer, and the command could easily be given. “Look,” she hurried on, “will you just listen to me for thirty seconds, without interrupting—without any questions?”