Star Quest

after escaping the Romaghin guards. She was perturbed, he was sure, by the fact that it had been her fault that Babe now wore his arm in a sling and had it patched with heavy heal-and-flex bandages. Corgi and Mayna took the lead, Fish guiding the Seer next, and Babe and himself with Hunk on his shoulder bringing up the rear. Moving past the lake, skirting its shores, they snaked downward for a time through phosphorescent corridors, then turned upward and finally struck out in a straight tunnel with no nonsense to it. Tohm estimated ten or twenty feet to the surface, perhaps as much as thirty.

The weight of Hunk was already burdening him down, sending throbbing pains through his shoulder. There was no flybelt now to support them, and he was taking all of the Mutie's weight himself with no help from the limited de-grav and propeller plates in the magic waistband.

“Not much farther,” Hunk said, sensing his discomfort.

“I can't believe it,” Babe said, puffing away on his tobacco cylinder. “I can't believe we're finally ready for the big show.”

“I wish,” Tohm said, “I understood what this big show is all about.”

“You will. In time, you will.”

Tohm tried to remember how long ago it had all begun. Strangely, he could not. Whether it had been a week or a month or a year, he did not know. All he knew was that he had come a long way, from hut to Jumbo to “pervert.” He had crossed millions of miles of space and thousands of years of civilization. Somehow, his destiny had become linked with these semi-people. There had, in the beginning, been few people in his life. Parents, a girl whom he had loved — or thought, in his inexperience, that he had — and a few tribal friends. Now there were many people and semi-people in his life whom he had directly or indirectly affected for better or for worse for as long as all should live. He had killed, it suddenly came to him with a bitterweet shock, as many people in this week-month- year as he had known all together in his previous life.

“Another half mile,” Corgi said, calling back over his shoulder.

Another half mile to what? What was going to happen when the Muties got together and did their thing? Who was the Old Man? What was the Fringe? Did he want to be a part of it, and would they let him even if he did? The last thought struck hard. He thought they liked him — aside from Mayna — but how could he be certain? Could one judge these people on normal human standards? Mayna herself had told him not to force his mores and values on her. Did they really want a peaceful world, or was that some front for a larger design they had on things? His mind was wrapped in on itself. Whatever was coming, however, and whatever had been left behind, he could not imagine anything but being a pervert. Their cause, at least, seemed just, the first righteous cause or purpose he had seen in civilization. Personally, he was hooked on these people: comical Babe, songwriter Fish, competent Corgi, incomparable Hunk, possibly even Seer now that he understood him… And there had been hissing in the bushes …

“This is it,” Corgi said, as they all gathered around him.

A small cavelet yawned upward at an angle.

A fresh breeze swept down, stirred their hair and tickled their nostrils with freedom.

“We cleaned out the mouth of this a long time ago, broke through to the surface. A back door for emergencies. It comes up in a clump of rocks just outside the gate. There's no cover for about a thousand feet. Remember, when you're out, run. The walls are very near, and you don't want to draw any attention. Don't stand about making a target of yourself''

Then he was snaking up through the blackness, moving amazingly fast if one thought of him as eyeless, progressing normally if one remembered he had radar cells. Dirt crashed down in handfuls, but there was no sign of a cave-in. Mayna went next with Seer, passing without notice, blending with the walls. Gone. Fish followed, then Babe, at his insistence. Hunk and he were the last. Heaving mightily, he lurched upward. He was grateful for his new and powerful body, for without it, he could never have done what was expected of him.

They broke ground in a pile of rocks just as Corgi had said. Straight ahead a clump of brush and trees loomed darkly. He wondered whether they had transferred the trees as well as the caves, then decided they hadn't. There were many other clumps of growth further out, exactly like this one, and they would not have transferred them all. Possibly, in the old city, this clump of brush and trees had been closer to the outlet. A thousand feet was a terribly long way when the guards were so close. He swiveled his head about, taking Hunk's with it, to look at the wall which was not even two hundred feet away. Once he had reached the trees where the others now waited, the growth would conceal their retreat to the meeting place the Old Man had chosen. This was the only dangerous ground, this open space. Heaving again, he cleared the rocks and began running, his ankles twisting slightly in the loose sand. But he would have made it — would have if some citizen had not been leaving the gate then. The huge portals swung open, and floodlights flashed on to show the traveler the road. The light caught him and Hunk. Plainly. Brightly. Less than half a dozen seconds passed before a stronger light snapped on, found him. The sand began boiling as near-miss laser beams splashed around him. The shrubs seemed an eternity away.

The searchlights began fanning the bushes, more than a dozen of then now, picking out darker forms that were Corgi, Babe, the others. Beams lanced in, setting the desert weed on fire. The brush erupted quickly, jumping from a tiny tongue of flame to an impenetrable wall of fire. The others were running from it. He saw Mayna fall on her belly, take aim, and laser out a searchlight. Another. Another still.

He ran, his tongue lolling from the corner of his mouth much like the tongue of a dog. He dropped onto the sand next to the others and drew his own pistol. Hunk had one clutched in his tentacle. They fired. Now and then he saw a guard slump away from the wall where he had been hiding. The majority of the Romaghins, however, were behind portions of the wall that were too well fortified and were too wary of the lasers to let themselves be injured very easily. Mayna pumped steadily at the lights, every shot counting, every shot making their hiding place a little less brilliantly illuminated. But the wall guards were searching out the source of her beam, trying to fix the exact location. Every shot she fired added to their basis for calculations, helped them vector in on her. A block of guards came through the gate, the front line blasting steadily to cover their advance.

“Run!” Corgi shouted, following his own advice.

They leaped from the sand and rounded the wall of flame, momentarily putting a barrier between themselves and the troops. But the Romaghins would soon clear it too. And suddenly they had cleared it. There was a scream. Tohm turned to his right and saw Fish grabbing at the air, his arms stroking as if he were swimming through very thick water. Then he fell, burning, rolled several times, and was still.

Tohm looked at his watch.

At first, nothing seemed to focus. Then his vision cleared through sheer willpower. There were still ten minutes until the Old Man arrived. Ten minutes, he realized, as Seer lost his head in a blaze of purple light and crashed to his knees, would be much too late. Much.

XIV

They were behind a ridge of sand, firing at the mass of Romaghin guards that had collected in the windblown dunes ahead. It was only a matter of minutes, Tohm knew, until the officers would direct their flanks to spread out and surround the Muties. And worst of all, they were too outnumbered to do anything about it. Far away, the roar of a desert tanker droned steadily forward, closer, louder. When the tanker moved in between the Romaghins and Muties and began lobbing shells, they would be dead to the last. He realized that the guards would not risk their own lives when a deadly and efficient machine like the tanker could kill for them.

Mayna was crying about Seer and Fish. It was the first time he had seen her cry real tears.

Corgi was cursing the oncoming artillery.

Just that suddenly, the thought of artillery reminded him of Jumbo Ten. Somewhere in his brain, a memory was dug out of storage and dusted off. The small communications bulb in his ear! He lifted a finger to the fleshy lobe. The bulb was still there, a little lump in the fat. He pressed it between two fingers, smashed it, activating the chemical broadcasters. Instantly, J-10 would be firing loose of the sands, homing in on the beam. Eight hundred miles at 24,000 miles an hour top speed. That meant it would be there in — he began doing some swift calculations…

But before he could even decide on a relative arrival time, he heard the roar of the mighty engines, the