Star Winds

Chapter EIGHT

Elegantly the Bucentaur raised sail and receded from Mars, curving round the Girdle of Demeter and then hurtling outward on the plane of the ecliptic.

In little over a week the orbit of Pluto had fallen far behind, even though the starship had extended but a few of her sails. Then, in interstellar space, the journey proper began.

For now she had moved into conditions of incomparably greater power than was available within the solar family; conditions from which the sun, like a mother, protected her planets with her own etheric atmosphere. Out here were ether winds on a stupendous scale, amassed from the outputs of billions of suns, creating processes affecting the entire galaxy.

This colossal system of invisible motion was what made interstellar sailflight possible. As the Bucentaur eased herself into the stream that was to carry her toward Maralia, her passengers sedated themselves and took to deep-cushioned bunks. The crew, too, took drugs that helped them to withstand the period of acceleration, though the potions were of a kind that did not bring on stupor, and in a well-drilled sequence more and more sail was run out.

The ship’s velocity mounted, became stupendous.

Then, after a few days, a remarkable change took place. A barrier seemed to have been broken, heralding new, pleasanter conditions. The sails remained at full stretch; but the bone-breaking pressure abruptly dropped to a comfortable one-half Earth normal which bore no relation to the ship’s actual rate of acceleration. The Earthmen on board were puzzled by this, especially when they were told that maneuvers which logically should have torn the ship to pieces (such as sudden changes in direction) could now be tackled without danger.

Rachad Caban, bunked deep down in the starship with the rest of Zhorga’s men, recovered his strength somewhat more quickly than the others. For the first time since coming aboard the stupendous Bucentaur he found himself unsupervised. He decided it would be a good opportunity to go exploring.

He wandered at length up companionways and through corridors which were still deserted for the most part. Eventually he found a hooded door, and on passing through it emerged, without warning, onto the main deck.

The view was breathtaking. The deck, the size of a large playing field, consisted of an immense expanse of polished planking waxed to the color of light honey. At least a hundred capstans studded it; and swelling over the major part of it like a giant glass cocoon was an enormous transparent air balloon.

There were towering superstructures whose nature was not immediately clear to Rachad. Farther down the deck, docked in special bays, were the three lighters, plus the fast reconnaissance craft, which the Bucentaur used for planetary contact—though she could, if the need arose, put down on most planets herself.

In order that Rachad and everyone else on board could stand upright on the floor, the ship currently traveled deck foremost. Rachad knew, however, that she could just as easily move stemward, sternward, sideways or even bottom first. On enormous booms extended from either side of the hull were arranged the sails that made such maneuverability possible; he now turned his attention to these.

They were even more spectacular than the deck itself, curving away and away into the void, their farther limits vanishing in the distance. And there were colors. Not just the shimmering blue Rachad was familiar with, but thousands of dazzling rainbow colors that crawled across the sails in evershifting moiré displays.

Rachad stared hypnotized, gaping in a dazed rapture.

Suddenly a slap on his face rocked him back on his heels. A voice snapped at him harshly. “Keep your eyes off the sails—the silk will trance your mind!”

Rachad swung blankly to his attacker, shocked out of his reverie. He found himself facing a neatly bearded sailor in a body-hugging striped tunic.

The sailor’s stern expression softened slightly. “Never look at ether silk when we’re in star travel,” he instructed in a more kindly tone. “The luminescent patterns are because we’re moving faster than light, and they’re not like anything you’ve ever seen before. They’ll leave you dazed for the rest of your life.”

Rachad touched his stinging cheek. “I—I didn’t know,” he faltered.

“One of the Earth lubbers, eh?” the sailor said, gazing at him condescendingly. “Don’t know much about star flight, do you?” He gestured upward. “Take a look overhead.”

Rachad obeyed. At first he thought there was something wrong with his eyes. It wasn’t like looking into space at all. The blackness was incomplete. Violet curtains seemed to be swirling behind the void, reminding him of dark oil poured on water. Set against those curtains, the stars were a startling sapphire blue. And they danced: they wove, darted, spun, leaving contrails of lavender light.

“Space will get more purple as we accelerate,” the sailor informed him. “Already we’re doing better than a hundred lightspeeds.”

“Why do the stars move?” Rachad asked shyly.

“It’s an illusion. When the sails get up to lightspeed they disturb the ether. That distorts space. And if space around us is different, everything is different. That’s why we only have one-half gravity—roughly Mars-weight—when by common sense we should be smeared against the deck.”

“Space can be distorted?” Rachad echoed incredulously.

“We’d never break the light barrier otherwise. If it weren’t for ether silk, light would be the fastest thing there is.” The sailor smiled, grunting reflectively. “It’s a weird experience when space starts to waver and we overtake light. Time seems to slow down, to stand still. I must have gone through it a hundred times. You wouldn’t know anything about it, of course, sound asleep in your bunk.”

The starman spoke with the pride of one who considered himself a member of an elite. Rachad struggled to understand his words. He was conversant, of course, with the general principle that the larger the sail the greater the velocity. Theoretically if one had a sail spanning the entire macrocosm, its speed would be infinite.

But the idea that light had a speed of its own was something that had never occurred to him. He did not understand why this speed should be so significant, nor why it should comprise a “barrier.” He did recall, though, that Gebeth had once described light as a compound of ether and fire; and that according to some sages the motion of the ether winds was more apparent than real—the ether did not actually “move” at all, but conveyed a vibration or tensioning force in some way.

The sailor left to go about his business, giving him a parting warning to keep his eyes off the silk. Rachad strolled about the deck for a time, but grew nervous; always the shimmering sails seemed to lure his eyes. Shortly he went back below, through the hooded door.

He felt no desire to return to his quarters, however. He walked aimlessly through the quiet corridors, passing men and women all clad in some version of the baron’s livery (as he himself now was). Everywhere he seemed to be tantalized by closed doors. Until, that was, he spotted Elissea, the baron’s niece, stepping along a passageway wearing a flowing robe cinched fetchingly at the waist.

He quickened his steps, but before he could catch up with her she had disappeared behind a door of paneled wood. Rachad halted before it, lifted his fist to knock, but instead, swallowing at his own temerity, he turned the knob and opened the door gently.

Quietly he stepped into what was evidently a private bedchamber. Elissea was alone, seated at a dressing table. She turned, startled to see Rachad, her expression one of shock but also of veiled excitement.

“Is this how you conduct yourself on Earth?” she accused coquettishly.

Rachad was flustered. “Forgive me, I…” Afraid lest someone should happen along in the corridor outside, he closed the door behind him.

She rose and sauntered toward him. Her eyes were dancing. “Why, you look terrified. Is this the brave hero who faced space dragons?”

He looked away, stung by the taunt. “Excuse me. I will leave.”

“No, wait. Come here.” Taking him by the elbow, she led him to a wide, plush bed and sat him down beside her. “Why so gloomy? I should have thought everything was going well for you.”

He snorted. “Well? Hardly! I didn’t embark on this adventure meaning to leave home forever. I’ve lost everything—my freedom, my…” My chance to make gold, he finished silently.

“Shsh.” She put a finger on his lips. “Don’t ever let my uncle hear you talk like that. It’s treason.”

“So what?” he muttered with a shrug.

They were silent. Then he turned to her. “Well, never mind about that. Tell me what it’s like where we’re going—in Maralia.”

“Where we’re going is to my uncle’s own domain, the Castarpos Moons. It’s only a small corner of Maralia, and rather dull and gloomy, really.” She let loose a sigh. “That’s why I came along on this trip. I thought it might be fun. It hasn’t been so far, though.”

“Well, we must, er, see what we can do,” he stuttered, and his arm went round her waist. Excitement mounted in him. At the same time new ideas began to invade his brain. All was not lost, he told himself. New frontiers lay ahead—and there was still a chance, he thought stubbornly, that he could somehow get hold of the alchemical book, still a chance that he could learn the secret of making gold.

Apart from that, he speculated, allowing his thoughts to spiral crazily, what if he were to become related to Baron Matello? Married to his niece?

Unaware that there was no chance of a commoner marrying into the nobility, Rachad sank down onto the soft bed with Elissea, and soon, for a while, forgot all his ambitions and disappointments.

For two months the Bucentaur sailed along a glittering star arm, traversing several degrees on the great galactic circle by which interstellar flight was reckoned. In the latter half of the voyage her crew, showing great skill, guided her onto invisible running contours which the layers of ether wind created as they slid against one another—for the interstellar ether was far from homogenous but formed tunnels, streams and inclines as it swirled and boiled around the stars. The Bucentaur’s sails were able to gain leverage on these contours and use them by which to decelerate, so that as she approached the borders of Maralia her velocity steadily dropped.

Finally she fell below lightspeed and began picking her way through a vast natural obstacle that lay between Maralia and the region of space in which Sol lay: a great screen of cosmic rubble, a Girdle of Demeter on a stellar scale. It was the chief reason, in fact, why ships rarely penetrated in that direction.

Zhorga spent his time being put through a military training routine by Captain Veautrin, together with a squad selected from his former crew. At first it irked him to be under the tutelage of a younger man, but he applied himself to the drills with zeal and grew to like Veautrin, who in many ways was a man after his own heart, though less hasty in his judgments and more disciplined in his actions.

Toward the end of the training period Zhorga expressed an interest in how the Bucentaur was run. He had heard that her captain commanded her from a control room deep within her hull (though there was a second, rarely used bridge towering over her main deck) and he was puzzled to know how this was done. As a favor Veautrin arranged a visit to this control room.

There, by chance, Zhorga learned of the nature of the enemy he might well spend the rest of his days fighting.

The control room was a large, wood-paneled chamber. The captain, a spare, bearded figure, sat in a straight-backed chair on whose arms were fitted a number of wheeled handles. Occupying the opposite wall, receiving his full attention, was an extraordinary device which answered Zhorga’s question.

It consisted of a circular screen nearly ten feet across, made of milky-white frosted glass. At first Zhorga thought that it was a porthole into space, or that it was painted, for it showed the rock-strewn void through which they were passing. Then the captain twirled one of his handles. The picture expanded; they seemed to hurtle dizzily through space, toward a distant group of irregularly shaped asteroids.

Captain Veautrin leaned close, muttering an explanation to Zhorga. “A system of lenses, prisms and mirrors projects a view of external space onto the glass screen. The system can also function as a telescope of enormous power, as you have seen.”

“An invaluable aid,” Zhorga remarked, getting his breath. Once again he was astonished at the technical excellence of the starship. Compare this with his own fumbling journey to Mars!

“It would be difficult to cross these reefs without it,” Veautrin agreed, “but in essence the device is simple. It works on the principle of the camera obscura.”

The image of the rock cluster had stabilized in the center of the screen, quartered by its cross-hairs. Again the captain fiddled with the handles and the rocks shifted, moving toward the circumference where the screen was scored with calibration lines. He turned his head and spoke to the officer standing behind him.

The first officer took a couple of steps and barked an order into a speaking tube. Shortly afterward the floor shifted slightly under their feet. As the ship changed course, the asteroid group disappeared from the screen.

The captain relaxed. The screen continued its scanning, sweeping space to and fro in search of danger.

Veautrin explained that by means of speaking tubes, of which the control room had many, one could communicate with most parts of the ship. Then he pointed to what looked like a locked desk, which with the lid off, he said, disclosed a battle plan of the Bucentaur, useful for directing her armament—though she was not primarily a warship.

Zhorga nodded, taking everything in. He wondered if the day could come when he might command such an interstellar ship himself. Probably not, he conceded. He was too old to learn so many new tricks.

They turned to leave, but a murmur behind them caused them to halt. All eyes had turned to the glass screen, which now showed a veritable jungle of asteroids through which the captain was trying to find a safe gap, having reduced the slip’s speed still further. But that was not all. There were also ships, their images small but unmistakable, sliding through the rock fields.

A single word, harsh with hatred, came from the first officer.

“Kerek!”

Veautrin nudged Zhorga. His expression had changed to one of restrained ferocity. “Stay,” he grated. “As well you see what Maralia may soon be up against.”

The screen zoomed and refocused, bringing into closer view a drove of strange vessels. To Zhorga they appeared like nothing so much as ancient sea-galleys, crudely adapted for space. Their hulls were clinker-built, of overlapping planking, and to the gunwales were welded the sides of leathery coverings, or bags, which bulged by air pressure over what were presumably decks, and in which were cut square windows. The ships were driven by crescent-shaped lateen sails, vast in proportion to the loads they carried, supported by enormously long out-riggers, so that seen head-on the craft looked like some grotesque species of blue-winged butterfly.

Veautrin agreed bitterly when Zhorga remarked on their makeshift appearance. “They are exactly what they seem,” he said. “Galleys taken from the oceans of the Kerek world. It’s astonishing how well they are able to travel in interstellar space. But then the Kerek have a talent for improvisation—as well as an insatiable appetite for conquest! Yet they were completely unknown until fifty years ago, when the secret of ether silk was unwisely introduced there.”

“The Kerek are not human, then?”

“Indeed they are not!” Veautrin spoke with what, for him, was an uncharacteristic degree of passion. “They are monsters with a terrible ability—the ability to enslave the minds of men, to capture the human will, though just how this is done is still a mystery. Their hordes are constantly swelled by incorporating seemingly willing slave-soldiers in this way, from their conquered worlds.” His voice fell. “And that’s not all. They also have a practice of converting these worlds into likenesses of the Kerek world, creating new atmospheres, even climates, by planting fast-growing forests and lichen beds from their home planet. Kerek-forming, the process is called, and a pretty unpleasant business it’s supposed to be.”

A hollow laugh came from behind them. “Yes, Zhorga, even your native Earth may be Kerek-formed before long. Like the smell of sulphur compounds, do you?”

It was Baron Matello, who had already received a message by speaker tube. He strode over to stand by the captain, peering at the glass screen.

“They’re coming this way, I see.”

“I think they mean to attack, my lord.”

“When they get close enough, hit them with everything we’ve got. Just like the jackals to be lurking in these reefs.”

“I have already given the orders to prepare, my lord.”

Kerek craft were clearly not handled as carefully as those of Maralia. One, striking an asteroid, shattered to dust which exploded in all directions. But the rest came on, magnified by the viewfinder so that every detail of their construction became visible.

The battle board was unlocked. The Bucentaur prepared to engage the enemy. As the Kerek ships came near all her subsidiary craft quit her decks, approaching the attackers from their flanks, spreading out to give the giant starship’s guns and catapults a clear line of fire.

The captain ordered a full salvo. Seconds later the ship shook and thundered to the bark of the bombards and the loud, snapping twang of fire-darts being shot off. The effect of the bombards, which discharged a type of spreading shot, was not seen, but that of the fire-darts was dazzling even on the shifting field of view of the glass screen. For a moment space coruscated and seemed to catch fire.

Only one of the glimmering fire-darts found its mark. A Kerek galley began to burn, glowing as some sort of seething fluid spread all over it.

There was a second salvo, to which the lighters added their fire. Zhorga was surprised that the Kerek failed to answer with any armament of their own. He saw no sign that they even possessed any. Their one tactic, it seemed, was to board.

The leading vessel came through the barrage. It swooped down toward the starship’s superstructure, but then was hit by a bombard and apparently lost control, crashing into the maindeck and ripping down the air balloon like so much paper.

From the broken hull crawled and staggered two score or so space-suited figures. Most were man-shaped, but a few were four-legged creatures, with narrow, rearing bodies and long necks. The forelegs were longer than the hind legs, and together with a pair of grasping limbs the creatures looked a little like miniature giraffes with arms. These, Zhorga imagined, were the Kerek.

But they all, men and aliens alike, fought with equal ferocity as the Bucentaur’s commandoes rushed to engage them. They wielded outlandish blades that were oddly curved, almost circular. They aimed ring-shaped devices which hurled spinning discuses capable of slicing a man in half. They gave no quarter nor expected any, and soon a bloody brawl was in progress.

The captain shifted the scene away from the deck, back to the Kerek flotilla. Two more galleys were blazing in the darkness. The rest were withdrawing, beaten off.

“They’re licked!” Zhorga exclaimed loudly.

Baron Matello cast him a sour glance. “A small squadron like that is no great threat to a ship of our size, but the Kerek can rarely resist a chance to attack,” he told him. “When they really move, their fleets number thousands.”

He turned back to the screen, fretting. “A damned nuisance just the same! This close to Maralia!”

“Strange we should come upon them accidentally, space being so vast,” Zhorga ventured with a frown.

Matello ignored this, but Veautrin spoke quietly to Zhorga. “It’s no accident. The Kerek have some instinct that helps them find ships over immense distances.” His lips quirked. “Yet one more facet of the ‘Kerek Power.’”

Before Zhorga could ask the meaning of this phrase, the screen focused back on the maindeck, where the last of the intruders were being efficiently butchered. Clouds of vapor puffed from slashed space suits, shining briefly in the light of the deck lamps before dissipating into the void.

At the troop sergeant’s orders a prisoner was taken; overwhelmed, disarmed, and then dragged down below. Minutes later, under heavy guard and with a sword point at his neck, he was brought into the control room.

Zhorga was somewhat startled to see that the renegade human cut an impressive figure. He stood tall and proud, his head held high. His space suit was a magnificent piece of work, made of honey-colored metal inlaid with what looked like silver and gold. The helmet, however, had been removed, and his face reminded Zhorga very much of Captain Veautrin—young, moustachioed, with blazing but steady eyes, and blond hair. But a foul smell, like the odor of rotting eggs, seeped from him, and the handsomeness of his features was made bizarre by a proboscis-like gadget clipped to his nose, enabling him to stomach the odious mixture of gases that made up the Kerek atmosphere.

“You want to see one? Here it is!” Baron Matello intoned somberly. “A human turned Kerek!”

His expression a mixture of contempt and pity, the starship captain rose and gazed at the prisoner. “Were you born under the Kerek?” he asked mildly.

The prisoner seemed unconscious of the proboscis, which dangled and danced as he spoke but did not prevent him from speaking clearly. “No,” he said, “I am from Frujos, of the Anderra system, which came under the Kerek Power in my youth.”

“Why were you sailing these reefs?” Matello demanded suddenly.

“You know the reason. Kerek ships rove everywhere.”

The man’s manner was disconcertingly rational and self-possessed. “You would do well not to resist, but to join with us,” he declared. “Cease your opposition. Live in vigor and harmony with us, not against us. Ours is the better life! We know true joy under the Kerek Power!”

“As slaves of the Kerek?” Matello snorted.

The prisoner’s voice took on a ringing tone. “Not so! We are no slaves, for the Kerek also are under the Kerek Power. With us, all are equal and together as brothers.”

“Kill him,” Matello said gloomily. “Throw his body overboard with the rest.”

The warrior put up barely any resistance as he was bustled from the room. Zhorga heard chopping sounds from the other side of the door; then something heavy was dragged away.

Baron Matello grunted. “Hah! The Kerek Power!”

Without another word he swept from the room.

“What is this ‘Kerek Power?’” Zhorga asked Veautrin, as the two of them also turned to go.

Veautrin took his time about replying. “It has never properly been accounted for,” he said. “It is only known that it is a mental force that can command human and Kerek alike. Some say it does not exist as such and is only a form of collective hypnosis—others that it is a living entity that can reach out across space.” He shuddered. “Already whole kingdoms have fallen to the Kerek. If they are not stopped the outlook for the galaxy itself will be bleak. But the Kerek will be stopped! They have to be stopped!”

Zhorga felt chill. Why had this menace never been mentioned to him before?

It could only be because it was such an ever-present shadow that it was taken for granted.

They stepped out into the corridor. The Bucentaur swept on, sinuating through the asteroid shoals toward the clear void beyond.