The Godmen

He strapped himself into his own recoil chair while Garcia flipped switches and made connections on the communic board. He too watched the screen. He could see the scars of combat on the barrel of the ram, the histories of old battles written in the chips and cracks in the stone warhead. He could see the faces of the Ktashans, quite clearly. They were the faces of fanatics, uniform across the galaxy no matter where you found them. The men who knew they were right, the men without mercy.

Garcia handed him the mike. “Here.” He looked at the great red head of the ram and folded himself as small as he could in the confines of his chair, as though he wanted to compact his atomic structure as solid as possible against the coming shock.

Harlow roared into the mike. Amplifiers picked up his voice and magnified it a thousand-fold and hurled it forth from the ship's exterior speaker system.

'N'Kann!” he cried. “Get your men out of there. We're taking off.” In the screen he could see the startled faces upturned toward the gigantic sound of his voice, the bodies arrested in motion. “We're taking off! Run, or you die. N'Kann, you hear me? Leave the ram and run!'

Kwolek turned from the intercom and said, “All ready.'

Harlow stared at the screen. Some of the Ktashans had turned to run. Others still stood undecided. Still others, the hard core of violence, shouted and waved their arms toward the ship, urging on the ram.

Harlow groaned. “The fools,” he said. “I don't want to kill them. I can't—'

The ram inched ponderously forward.

'Get away!” he yelled at them with a note of desperation, and touched a stud on the central control board.

The Thetis quivered and began to hum to herself, a deep bass note of anticipation.

The ram stopped. The men stood by it, staring up. Behind them the larger crowd was melting away, slowly at first and then with increasing speed.

Harlow touched the stud again, advancing it a notch. The hum became a growling, a wordless song. The Thetis gathered herself for the upward leap, “Get away!” screamed Harlow into the mike, but his voice was almost drowned in the iron voice of the ship, and then suddenly the men turned from the ram and fled away across the plain.

Harlow set his teeth and slammed the firing key all the way down.

* * *

The Thetis went up in a great wobbling surge, like a bird with an injured wing. But she was an awfully big bird, and terribly strong, and the violence of her thrashings about nearly snapped the eye- teeth out of Harlow's head. He fought through a deepening haze to keep her from flopping over out of the control of her gyros and crashing back to the ground, feeling the contents of his skull wash back and forth like water in a swinging kettle, feeling the straps cut into him when he went forward and the bolts of the chair prod him through all the padding when he was flung back, hearing strange rasping grunting whistling noises that he knew was himself trying to breathe. The control panel dimmed and at last disappeared beyond the red mist that filled the cabin, or his own head. His pawings at the keys became blind and unsure. Panic swept over him. I'm blacking out, he thought, I can't hold her, she's going down. He tried to scream, in anger and protest against this sudden end, in fear and regret. The contraction of his diaphragm forced blood into his head and held it there for a moment, and the mists cleared a little and the wild gyrations of his insides steadied down just enough for him to get hold of reality, if only by its thinnest edge.

He hung on, forcing himself to breathe deeply, slowly. One. Two. Three. The indicator lights winked peacefully on the board. The furious thrashings of the unbalanced drive had settled to a sort of regular lurch-and- spin no worse than that of a ship in a beam sea. The Thetis was in space. She was not going to crash.

He looked around at Kwolek and Garcia. Both of them were bleeding at the nose — he found that he was too — and their eyes were reddened and bulging, but they managed to grin back at him.

'That's a devil of a way to treat a good ship,” croaked Kwolek. “If I ever get hold of that Taggart—'

'You and me both,” said Harlow. “Let's get that tube fixed.'

Kwolek was already unstrapping. He went staggering out of the control room. Harlow gave the controls to Garcia and staggered after him, heading toward his own quarters.

He found Yrra almost unconscious in the bunk, her flesh already showing some cruel bruises from the straps. He unbuckled them and wetted a towel in cold water, and wiped her face, smoothing the thick tumbled hair back from her forehead. Presently she opened her eyes and looked up at him, and he smiled.

'It's all right now,” he said. “Everything's all right.'

She whispered, “Brai?'

'We're going after him. We'll get him back.'

'From the world of the Vorn.” She was silent a moment, her gaze moving about the unfamiliar cabin. The tiny viewport was open. She looked through it at her first view of deep space, the stars burning all naked and glorious in their immensities of gloom, and Harlow saw the thrill of awe and terror go through her. Her fingers tightened on his wrist, and they were cold.

'On my own world I was not afraid of the Vorn,” she whispered. “I laughed at N'Kann and the old men. But now—” She stared out the viewport. “Now I am in the country of the Vorn, and I am afraid.” She turned suddenly and buried her face against him like a child. “I am afraid!'

Harlow looked over the top of her head to the viewport. The country of the Vorn. The black and tideless sea through which they voyaged at will between the island stars. Harlow had never been afraid of the Vorn, either. He had hardly believed in their existence. But now, when he looked at space and thought of the brooding Horsehead and the two blue suns that burned in its shadow, he felt a cold prickling chill run down his spine.

Dundonald had gone that way and he had not come back.

* * *

That prickling of fear did not leave Harlow in the long days that followed — arbitrary “days” marked out of the timeless night through which the Thetis fled. With the damaged tube replaced, she built up velocities rapidly on a course that took her straight toward the Horsehead. There was no sign of Taggart's Sunfire on the radar. He was too far ahead for that. In fact, he was so far ahead that there was no hope of overtaking him or forestalling any action he might take on the world of the Vorn, which he would reach long before Harlow. Any sensible man would have said the pursuit was hopeless, but the men of the Thetis were not sensible. If they had been they would never have signed up with Survey. Also, they were angry. They had been made fools of, and they had almost died of their foolishness, and now they were determined to catch up with Taggart if it took them the rest of their lives.

Which might not be very long, Harlow thought. He looked gloomily at the screen that showed the panorama of space ahead of the Thetis. It was one of the most magnificent sights in the galaxy. You sat stunned and wordless before it, and no matter how often or how long you stared at it the wonder and the glory did not depart. There was the whole vast canvas of the universe for a backdrop, and all across it, arrogant, coal- black, and light-years vast, the Horsehead reared against a bursting blaze of suns. Magnificent, yes. Splendid and beautiful, yes. But there was another word that came to Harlow's mind, an old word not much used any more. The, word was sinister.

Yrra spent as much time as she could with him in the control room, watching the screen, straining her eyes for some glimpse of the ship that carried her brother. Harlow noticed that the Horsehead had the same effect on her. There was a sign she made toward it, furtive and quick as though she were ashamed of it, and he knew that it was a Ktashan sign to ward off evil.

For a long time the relative positions of the tiny ship and the great black nebula seemed not to change. Then gradually the blazing fringe of stars passed off the screen and the blackness grew and swallowed the whole viewfield, lost its shape, and then finally produced a defined edge outlined against the light of distant suns, and eventually that black coast-like showed the marker-lights of two blue sullen stars.

The Thetis decelerated and felt her way between the beacon suns.

Beyond them was a bay, a bight in that incredible coastline. And now fear really caught the men of the Thetis—a fear much greater than any they might have felt for the deeds of men or the legendary Vorn. This was something absolutely elemental, and it had to do with the terror of darkness and alienage