For countless days I wandered through the city, buoyed in an invisible sphere that somehow always was filled with fresh air. I neither ate nor drank, yet I was nourished and refreshed. My wounds healed completely as I learned of the Old Ones, their origins and history, their place in the continuum, their relationship to the Creators and the war that was spanning this region of the galaxy.
The Old Ones had evolved from octopus-like invertebrates living in the early seas of their home planet. We humans have a prejudice that a species cannot become fully intelligent until it masters energy sources beyond its own muscular power. For a land-dwelling species such as ourselves, that first energy source was fire. Since fire is impossible underwater, we tend to dismiss the possibilities of intelligent sea creatures. Even the dolphins would not have reached true intelligence if human scientists had not augmented their native brains.
The Old Ones had manipulating organs: ten tentacles that could grasp and maneuver as well as human hands or better. They had large, intelligent brains and exquisitely subtle sensory organs. Instead of fire, they developed the abundant electrical energies they found in many species of fish and eels. Where we humans built tools and learned engineering, the Old Ones learned biology and incorporated the living forms they needed into a symbiotic existence within their own bodies.
They learned about the world around them. Over the millennia, over the eons, they slowly built up a body of knowledge about the sea and, eventually, the land and even the sun and stars. Long before the dinosaurs ranged across Mesozoic Earth, the Old Ones discovered the energies of space-time and learned how to move through the continuum.
By the time the primate apes of Earth began to develop into the earliest hominids, the Old Ones had explored the galaxy. By the time Aten and the other Creators decided to build their human tools and send them to the Ice Age strongholds of the Neanderthals on a mission of genocide, the Old Ones had decided to keep to themselves, content to contemplate the universe without tampering with it.
Where we humans, driven by our Creators, are constantly meddling with the flow of space-time, constantly trying to alter the continuum to suit our needs and desires, the Old Ones have withdrawn to their oceans and their thoughts. They are to us as a giant sequoia tree is to a chittering squirrel.
All this I learned from them.
“Friend Orion,” said the silky-voiced one to me, “the moment has come for you to return to your own kind.”
The Old One who addressed me was swimming alongside my sphere as we gently glided through an avenue of blue-white lights that flickered like fireflies through the dark water. In all the time I had spent with them I had never heard any of the Old Ones refer to one another by a name. They had no need of names, it seemed. I could tell them from one another by differences in their coloration and in the sound of their voices, although I never did learn how they produced sounds that I could hear.
“You know now who we are and what we are,” said my companion and teacher. “Please tell your Creators that we refuse to be drawn into their slaughters. Our only desire is to live in peace.”
“But what if one of our warring groups tries to force you to join their side?”
Again that sense of gentle amusement. “We will not be forced, Orion. We will not listen to their words. If they try to use weapons against us, their weapons will not function. We threaten no one. We will harm no one. But we will not allow our knowledge or strength to be used in war.”
I recognized the hint.
“Will you meet us if we stop fighting? Would you be willing to exchange thoughts with us if we stop the war?”
A feeling of wry humor touched me. “Perhaps, Orion. In a million years or so, perhaps then you will be ready to share thoughts with us.”
I felt myself grinning. “That’s something to look forward to.”
“Farewell, ambassador Orion.”
I found myself sprawled on the beach near the ruins of the ancient city, where I had left the rest of my troopers. How long ago? I had no idea of how much time had passed. It was daylight, close to midday, I judged from the height of the blazing sun.
Getting to my feet, I started walking rapidly across the glaring sand toward the ruins. Within minutes a voice from one of the crumbling walls hailed me.
“Captain? Is that you?”
“Yes,” I said, stating the obvious.
The trooper climbed up atop the broken edge of the wall. I recognized him: Jerron, the smallest man in the unit, often teased as the runt of the litter. He glanced behind him, and made a slight pushing motion with both his hands. I realized that his hands were empty. He was unarmed, not even a pistol on him.
I was about to ask him why he had no gun when a quartet of Skorpis warriors rose beside him. They were all fully armed. They pointed their rifles at me.
“Surrender or be killed.”
The nearest bit of cover was the wall on which they stood. Otherwise I was totally unprotected, standing out on the bare beach in the noontime sun, wearing nothing but a ragged pair of shorts. Not even much of a shadow with me.
I surrendered.
“They came in the second night you were gone,” Jerron told me as the Skorpis warriors marched us across the beach toward their base. “Just popped up in the middle of the ruins, outta nowhere. We never had a chance.”
So the Skorpis had found that the underwater tunnels led into the heart of the ruined city, I realized. They knew we were there and they used the tunnels to take the troop by surprise.
“How bad were our casualties?” I asked.
“It all happened so fast we never had much of a chance to put up a fight. The guys on sentry duty caught it. Manfred, Klon, Wilma.”
Manfred. The sergeant I had forced to become a lieutenant. A real lieutenant would not have been on guard duty. Manfred’s old habits killed him. Then I remembered Frede’s warning me that it’s not smart for a soldier to make friends. Manfred was hardly a friend, but I felt his loss as if it were my own fault.
“How long have I been away?” I asked. “I’ve lost track of time.”
“Four days, sir. The Skorpis knocked us off the second night you were gone, and then they’ve been waiting for you to come back ever since.”
“So now they’ve got us all.”
“Sorry to be the judas goat, sir.” Jerron looked fairly miserable as we walked, struggling to keep pace with the giant Skorpis’s strides. They were quite willing to nudge us with their rifle butts if they felt we were lagging behind.
“You’ve done nothing to be ashamed of, soldier,” I said. “This whole mission was a disaster from the outset.”
They marched us through their perimeter emplacements and into an open compound in the middle of the base, sealed off by electric fences, guarded by a dozen heavily armed warriors, surrounded by all the Skorpis on the planet. They were intent on keeping us from escaping, I could see.
Lieutenant Frede hurried to me as soon as the warriors pushed little Jerron and me into the compound.
“Orion! Captain! Are you all right?” There was real concern in her eyes.
“I’m unhurt,” I said.
“From what we had heard, the Skorpis had fried you six ways from breakfast.”
“They exaggerated their marksmanship,” I said.
Lieutenant Quint pushed through the group that had gathered around us. “They claim you killed half a dozen of them,” he said, with something like admiration in his voice.
“I didn’t stop to count.”
Frede said, “I don’t know what they intend to do with us, but it won’t be pleasant.”
“How have they treated you so far?”
“Oh, okay, by their standards. We’re stuck in this compound. No shelter. When it rains we get wet. We sleep on the ground. They feed us once a day, toward sundown.”
