The Wizard of Karres

the kind that doesn't have a power-pack and relies on drawing its current from the ship. They used to use those once upon a time, but they found it meant that they could lose ships coasting on inertia. I guess I'd better suit up, too. I've placed a few leeches and I know what to look for.'

'How big are they, Miss Do Eldel?'

The do Eldel made motions with her hands. 'About like this, Captain—say the size of three fists. And they're hull-metal color. They're usually put somewhere near the drive tubes, where the area is too hot to spend long looking.'

'Makes sense.' Pausert looked at the viewscreens and detector array. 'And it appears that we have one that relies on our power, because we seem to have escaped notice. The fight is definitely moving off. We'd better suit up, take radiation meters and go hunting. It's going to be a big job, but we'd better leave . . . Vezzarn in the command chair and the Leewit on the nova guns. The rest of us can go out a-hunting.'

The Leewit rubbed her hands in glee. 'Hope they find us!'

Pausert didn't feel that way about it at all. There were an awful lot of ships out there.

* * *

The moonlet was made up of gray-blue water-ice imbedded with rock fragments. The surface was jagged with impact craters and tricky to walk on, being either uneven or glassy smooth with shards of sharp rock sticking up like daggers out of it. True, the suits were tough. But if someone went sliding in among those rocks—well, those rock-edges looked very sharp. The rock seemed to be volcanic glass and there was no atmosphere here to erode the splintered edges.

Pausert, Hulik and Goth, roped and suited, made their way cautiously onto the surface from the ramp. Gravity was perhaps a hundredth of ship-normal. They had to be careful not to make sudden moves or even to step too high, as they edged their way cautiously along the hull. The captain had a blaster at the ready. It wasn't likely that the planetoid would have any dangers, but the one thing humans had learned since leaving old Yarthe was that life in space took myriad forms and cropped up in the most unexpected places.

However, other than the fact that the surface was difficult to move on, with low gravity and very little friction, there were no problems. Only . . . there seemed to be a trace of vatch around. Pausert could rell it somewhere, though he couldn't say exactly where the thing was.

They searched patiently and carefully around the tubes. Suddenly the ground shuddered.

Pausert fell.

They all did, tumbling on the ice among blades of rock. The airless space above the moonlet was full of flying shards, too. Looking upwards as he spun across the ice, the captain saw to his horror that the Venture was toppling off her unstable landing point . . .

Towards him. He was on his back, slithering and skidding helplessly closer. The bulk of the hull would squash him like a bug. There was a terrible, helpless inevitability about it all.

The rope linking him with Hulik and Goth suddenly went taut. Hulik and Goth, wrapped around a stone monolith, were hauling at it.

It was a small ice-lump moon they'd landed on. There was not much gravity here. The Venture was falling over in a kind of ultra-slow motion, and Hulik and Goth were exerting a terrific pull on the rope. A pull that would have dragged him on Karres or Nikkeldepain or even old Yarthe.

Here, it sent him flying. Hurtling between the stone edges, steering frantically with his feet and arms, whizzing past Goth and Hulik . . . and right up a steep ridge and into space.

The Venture coughed; the briefest flicker of her laterals. Vezzarn must have taken action to stop her fall. He must have desperately weighed up frying them or crushing them.

Pausert realized that his flight had had a rather unexpected consequence. He'd plucked the other two into space after him. Well, there had been pretty little holding them down on the moonlet. They were quite safe . . . except they were going one direction and the Venture and the moonlet and a number of asteroid fragments other directions. They'd just have to use reaction pistols to get back.

Then, with a sickening feeling, the captain realized it wasn't going to be that simple. They'd set out to walk around the Venture's hull. Walk. Not spacewalk. Still, there should have been a reaction pistol at his belt.

There wasn't. Just a completely recoilless and useless blaster. And the moonlet, along with the Venture, was proceeding on its merry way. They were heading in the opposite direction: three tiny sparkle- figures in the vastness of space.

The vatch giggled. What fun!

Drifting away from them, dark against the dust veils, Captain Pausert saw three reaction pistols.

Vatches thought of the human universe as a sort of dream-game, with humans as pieces. The fun lay in challenging the pieces . . . so there had to be a solution. Besides, the little vatch seemed more inclined to mischief than anything more malicious.

Goth seized the initiative. The guns were well within her weight limit and she teleported them back.

The vatchlet squeaked indignation. It's not supposed to be that easy!

'Quick. Before it thinks of something else. Back to the ship.'

The leech search was abandoned in their flight back to the Venture.

* * *

Pausert studied the screens. 'It looks like our landing jarred this little moonlet a bit off-course. In a crowded zone of space like this, it only takes a tiny fraction of a degree to cause other collisions. We'd better abandon the search, because this iceball is almost bound to hit something else. I'd like to take off before that happens, and not after.'

The Leewit scowled. 'Captain, I was listening in to the pirates—they'd lost us, but they picked up the signal the moment that Vezzarn kicked the engines.'

Hulik bit her lip. 'The leech must definitely draw its power from the ship's drive, then.'

Pausert shrugged. 'We have to use them sometimes.'

'We could use the Sheewash Drive,' pointed out Goth.

'Not all the time. You and the Leewit would get too tired. And we couldn't use it very well here, anyway, in this part of space. There are too many obstacles.'

'Yes, but we could hop for the edge of this cluster now. Even if they follow us, they're too far off to catch up before we get there and . . . oh-oh. Vatch.'

It wasn't the little silver-eyed mischief, this time. It was a much bigger vatch, almost the size of Big Windy. Pausert wasn't surprised. The Venture had drawn much klatha force to her, and vatches were attracted by klatha. The captain had a feeling of big slitty eyes peering at them in delight. He hastily formed the pattern in his mind of a vatch lock, which would at least stop the creature reading his mind.

A BLOCKED ONE! AND SUCH A SITUATION, SUCH POTENTIAL!

And then . . . Go 'way. Mine! Mine! The tiny vatch was not amused. The words were almost glowing in Pausert's mind.

YOU ARE FAR TOO YOUNG FOR THIS GAME, PUNY ONE.

Pausert could see the tiny blackness dancing in front of the greater bulk of nothingness. Am not! They're mine! Go 'way!

PLAY YOUR PATHETIC GAMES ELSEWHERE. I AM GOING TO SEND THESE BACK.

The Venture moved, abruptly, to the center of the conflict. The hull shuddered and rang like a bell as the Venture took a hit.

With an effort of will, Pausert forced himself to ignore the terrifying noise, and formed his klatha hooks. He reached for the bigger vatch, hooking great lines of force into it and pinning it down.

The internal spinning maelstrom of blackness seethed. It began yowling. YAAAH. THE MONSTER! The vatch desperately strained against the bonds. The captain pulled out pieces of it, flinging them at the pirate vessels.

LET ME GO! LET ME GO, I BEG—THIS IS KILLING ME!

Pausert thought sternly at the squalling creature. We need to be outside this cluster. Do that and you can be