The Overlords of War

Chapter 13

He had scarcely dropped off when he found himself back on Earth. He was running along an underground passage walled with rough concrete, a thousand meters below the surface, his eyes stinging from the glare of a snakelike neon tube. He was fleeing from something. His whole body vibrated to the beat of nuclear explosions which were taking place regularly, one a minute, a kilometer overhead. The bombs had been launched from too far away to be aimed at any special target. Urian ships had released them from the orbit of Pluto, or from even deeper into space, and nine tenths of them had been intercepted before reaching Earth’s atmosphere. Some failed to brake properly on entry and burned up in a flash, without time to explode. Four fifths of those that did reach the surface fell in the sea and caused no damage worth mentioning. Only one or two per cent struck a land mass. But the holds of the Urian fleet seemed to be bottomless. For the first time Earth itself was being bombarded, and overhead this hemisphere had been turned into a literal hell.

Naturally nobody was left up there. Those few who had not found room in the shelters in time had died in the first seconds of the attack. As he ran he mechanically repeated a calculation. At least two hundred million must be dead. All in ten seconds.

He didn’t know why he was running. It was impossible to stop himself, impossible even to slow down the legs that were bearing him along with the automatic frenzy of the pistons in an engine. He ran with his hands outstretched before him as though in a headlong fall, as though at any moment he was due to crash against some blank wall mindlessly upheaved from the ground. But the underground corridor was at least twenty kilometers long. The tempo of the explosions quickened and seemed to be echoing the sound of his feet. Someone was chasing him!

A light touch wakened him. He rolled over so suddenly that he made his narrow bunk wobble, and discerned in the gloom the form of Antonella leaning over him. He must have cried out in his sleep. His limbs were as limp as if he had just run a long race. It wasn’t the first time he had endured this dream. In sleep his memory often replayed the terrible punishment inflicted on Earth by the Princes of Uria. But it had never seemed so real before.

Antonella was whispering to him.

“Something’s going to happen. I can tell. But it won’t come clear yet.”

And, as he stretched out his hand to turn on a light: “No, better not alert them!”

She was showing more presence of mind than he was. He threw back his coverlet, set his feet on the ground, and in the course of the movement brushed against her. She caught at him. He clutched her to him and felt her lips move against his ear.

Before he had time to catch one word of what she was saying, there was uproar in the camp. Men ran and shouted oaths to the accompaniment of a rattle of gunfire. A motor began to wheeze. A shrill vibration ripped the air. Artillery snarled and burped. Officers shouting orders sought to call their men to stations. Searchlights stabbed the sides of the tent, but they were in quest of another target and did not pause. Above the cries and the clanging of metal on metal Corson clearly made out the sobs of frightened pegasones.

Frightened? But in the wild no Monster—

The lamps went out. The shadows which had been moving on the walls of the tent gave way to total shadow, menacing. The racket changed its nature. Sounds became muffled. The guns grew quiet. Someone stumbled and fell groaning against the tent, whose guys held good, and then made off on dragging feet.

In the silence which followed, he recognized the voice of Veran, much amplified.

“Corson, are you there? If this is one of your tricks... I”

The rest was lost. Corson hesitated. Not knowing what was going on, he had no reason to make things worse between himself and Veran. He almost called back, but Antonella put her hand over his mouth.

“Someone’s coming!”

When he lost sight of her in the sudden dark, he had not been particularly alarmed. Now that his eyes had had time to adjust, though, he realized that this was no ordinary night. They were adrift in the same opaque fog as when they had been taken prisoner. Something was blotting up light.

So the camp was under attack. The onslaught had lasted less than three minutes and already it was over. No one could fight in murk like this. And even if Veran knew how to generate it, he apparently didn’t know how to counteract it.

“You mean Veran?” he whispered, harking back to Antonella’s precognition.

“No, not him. Nobody from the camp. Someone”—she tensed, pressing close against him—“someone like you. Someone very much like you!”

One of the attackers, then—a liberator, or a new threat?

There was a draft. Someone had lifted the flap of the tent. A spot of light appeared close to Corson’s face. It grew larger, swirled, sucked in wreaths of the dense fog. Soon Corson could see his own hands on Antonella’s shoulders. The luminous area resembled a galaxy spinning on its axis in free space, and deforming and tearing the space as it expanded. When the zone was two meters across it stabilized and ceased to revolve. Antonella and Corson found themselves almost completely within a cocoon of brilliance, roughly spherical and walled with night.

Antonella stifled a cry.

A gloved hand emerged from the mist. It floated in midair as though it had been severed from its arm. It was empty. Palm forward, it made a universal gesture of peaceful intention: I hold no weapon!

And there was, after all, a man behind that open hand. Or at any rate a humanoid form in a space suit. The visor was full of darkness.

Without a word the visitor offered Corson two suits identical to his own and indicated by signs that he and Antonella should put them on.

Corson broke the silence. “Who the hell are you?”

The unknown pointed with greater insistence at the suits Corson was so slow to take hold of. Antonella seized one and started to draw it on.

“Not so fast,” Corson said. “We have no reason to trust this man!”

“He’s going to get us out of here,” she answered. “Get us out of the camp.”

“How?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know. He’s going to use a method I can’t grasp.”

Corson made up his mind, peeled off his festive garments, and slipped into the suit. He set the helmet in place and was surprised at being able to hear as well as before. He exchanged a few words with Antonella. So there was no technical reason for the stranger to remain dumb. But why space suits? Did this obscuring mist have a toxic effect after long exposure?

The stranger checked the seal on Antonella’s suit, then turned to Corson. He jerked his head, indicating the engulfing mist, and took Antonella by the hand. She caught on at once and offered her other hand to Corson. They plunged together into total blackness.

The stranger led them along with confidence. Carefully he avoided obstacles and made sure his companions did the same. Several times Corson felt soldiers brush against him, wandering around the camp in utter confusion. Once someone clutched desperately at him. He struck out reflexively with his free hand and the attacker doubled over with a gasp.

The darkness had imposed quiet. Here and there a few calls could still be heard, but it seemed that the soldiers, dazed, had given up hope of locating each other except by groping their way. Perhaps, too, they were afraid of attracting the blows of unseen enemies. Even the officers had stopped issuing orders. Only the pegasones continued to wail. Their sobbing reminded Corson unpleasantly of his first night on Uria.

And the sobs grew louder. The stranger was leading them toward the pegasone park. Corson hesitated, but Antonella’s hand drew him onward. He was angry with himself for his own misgivings, because she seemed unaffected by them. On the other hand, she had never seen Monsters at work…

Finally they came to a halt. Close to them, the stranger busied himself with some unknown task. Corson guessed that he must be saddling up a pegasone. So that was the way of escape he had picked for them. It was terribly risky, in Corson’s view.

Now the mystery man produced a little glowing ball and Corson could see his guess had been correct. Complex harness hung from the beast’s flank. What corresponded to a saddle for its riders was no more than a kind of swing fitted with stirrups. There were straps to fasten yourself on by.

Corson had scarcely mounted before he felt the fearful tendrils of the pegasone curl around his wrists. He expected the worst. But the pressure remained gentle. Those strands which could cut like steel wires did not even hamper his movements. He guessed that they must serve as reins for the rider. But he had not the slightest idea how one controlled a pegasone.

The Monster—as he still thought of it despite his best efforts to the contrary—trembled with excitement. It had stopped whining and now was giving forth an irregular series of whistles. Raising his head, Corson could just make out three of its eyes.

He heard the stranger utter a peculiar cry, braced for a shock, and—against all expectation—found himself falling. He was weightless. If he had not felt the straps floating around him and the massive body of the pegasone against his side, he would have believed that a pit had opened under his feet. Antonella gasped in surprise. He wanted to comfort her, but before he had time to frame the words, they emerged from darkness.

Above them stars shone peacefully. Corson craned his neck, but the vast bulk of the beast hid Antonella from him.

Then he saw something which took his breath away: another pegasone, like a giant mushroom turning in the air, occulting a vast area of the sky, its eyes flashing as wildly as the lamps on an insane computer. The stranger hung on its flank like a wart. He waved encouragement to them.

Then Corson dared to look downward, expecting to see a pool of opaque fog. But in the weak starlight all he could make out was the ground in the clearing. A breeze was bowing many tall plants where, a few hours earlier, he had seen nothing but ashes. The camp seemed never to have existed.

So they had made a jump through time. The pegasone was capable of motion not merely in space but far further across time than the wild Monster Corson was acquainted with. How far, he couldn’t guess; they might have gone back a night, a week, a century before Veran or even Corson reached Uria.

It occurred to him to invoke Antonella’s talent. He called out, “What’s going to happen next?”

She answered uncertainly. “I don’t know. I can’t cog anything at all.”

Suddenly they went up like a rocket. The clearing disappeared in the black fleece of the forest. Now Corson realized the purpose of the space suits. At this rate they would be out of atmosphere in a few minutes.

A smear crossed the sky, hiding the stars for a fraction of a second. Then another. Then the two fleeing pegasones were high enough for the sun to be seen over the eastern rim of the planet. They raced beneath a sky that grew blacker and blacker while, below, Uria was a huge bowl of shadow, crested on one side with a diadem of fire.

Inexpressible jubilation overcame Corson’s mind.

Once more, a dark smear on the sky. Although the vision lasted only an instant, this time he recognized it. A pegasone, no doubt one of Veran’s. The colonel hadn’t lost any time. No, that phrase didn’t mean anything. Since the pegasones were capable of time-jumping, Veran could have taken as long as he liked to prepare for the chase. He might have organized an ambush. These pegasones rushing by were no more than scouts beating the past and future in search of the quarry.

Suddenly: a scrimmage. They were in the middle of a sphere of pegasones. The sun stared Corson in the face and he shut his eyes. It had crossed the sky in one gigantic bound. He understood why. To escape the snare, the stranger had dodged through time. For a moment they played this weird game with Veran’s cavalry on a chessboard of meters and seconds. But the outcome seemed scarcely to be in doubt. Each time they found themselves in the middle of a smaller sphere. Despite vacuum and great distance Corson fancied he could hear the soldiers’ shouts of triumph. The sun danced in the sky as though it had been turned into a bouncing ball. Was it below, to the side, or where? The planet Uria flickered between the brilliance of day and the obliteration of night.

Corson saw the other pegasone, the stranger’s, coming dangerously close. He uttered a cry of warning. Antonella echoed him. The stranger leaned over and seized a handful of the tendrils on their steed. And the universe changed shape and color. Everything they knew disappeared.