"They play some game," Zurzal had said at last. "But it is not ours. I wish we had better luck in our passage. Lochan is a fourth place world, the only visitors are Free Traders. I do not have unlimited funds—for I cannot draw upon the resources of my House since they have disowned what I would do. Thus we have to wait for a Trader already bound for Lochan to take passage—I cannot just charter the ship on my own. However, this is the port from which such take off, and sooner or later one will appear."
To the wary Jofre such waiting, especially now, was like a silent war. This city was a maze of strange buildings of which he knew very little, though he made every attempt to study maps and mark out the principal reference points. The throngs of visitors (many kinds of whom he found it very difficult to name as "people" at all) added to the general dissatisfaction the whole port raised in him. The sooner they could be free of this place the better—it was far too removed from all he knew and he had almost begun to wonder if all those skills which had been assha honed would hold in such diverse surroundings.
For the third time he made the round of the rooms, moving noiselessly, his night sight enough to take him in the circuit. He would pause every few steps to listen, sniff, call on his warn sense to pick up anything out of the ordinary. This was the second night he had spent so and he could not stand guard thus forever.
It was the faint flicker of one of his warn stones which brought him along the wall, flattened against that, to peer out on the terrace. His stunner was in hand, but in the other he had one of the throwing knives on which he would first depend, since it was an old and familiar arm and he knew his skill with that.
There was something moving in a slow sweep in towards the edge of the terrace. A grav-raft such as he had seen in use for transport through the city. Jofre raised the stunner—
It fell from fingers suddenly rendered limp, a grasp which would not obey his will, anymore than his knees would continue to hold his body upright. He crumpled forward, facedown, and found that he could hardly breathe, as if the muscles of his chest, the power of his lungs was being crushed out of him.
If assault had been meant to cause his death, the attackers did not know the quality of their victim. Jofre's inner defenses rallied instantly. He went into withdrawal, his only answer to the unknown until he could learn the nature of the weapon being used.
Though sight, hearing, other senses were dulled to near unconsciousness, he was still aware enough to know that there was movement now in the room, confident, assured, as if those invaders had nothing to fear. Would they take the common sense action and kill him as he lay? So far they had moved around him, heading towards the inner room where Zurzal slept.
The pressure holding him immobile remained steady. Only issha defense kept him breathing shallowly! Then— he had been seeking the Inner Heart, the core of strength to hold to. There was a sudden flash, a shock as if he had heedlessly thrust a hand into a fire. He was aware of that hand now instantly. It was crumpled under him at an awkward angle, the fingers still curled as if about the stock of his missing sidearm. But he could move those fingers— a fraction. And the strength for that came from— The find he had made in the mountains—that he had brought out of Qaw-en-itter—the stone!
His thoughts seemed to slide in and out of a cloaking darkness as if he were bog-trapped. He fought to hold to them. Then there was a sudden explosion of pain in his side as he was struck a sharp blow there. And very faintly followed an explosion of sound, hardly more than a whispering, which seemed to be an argument of sorts. The answer came when he was roughly hoisted and dragged out of the room, over the terrace, to be dumped on a surface which vibrated under him—the lift platform.
A moment later a weight rolled against him and he smelled the musky scent of the Zacathan, who was plainly also helpless in the hands of these captors.
The platform gave a quick bound upward and it seemed to Jofre that it was whirling around. His precarious hold on consciousness grew even less, though he had somehow been able to move his hand so that the palm lay across the very slight bulge which concealed the mountain talisman.
There was clearly no move he might make now; he must wait until he could work around or break whatever the compulsion was which held him so pinned. But he could hold to the Inner core and so far had been able to survive. While a man lived there was always chance— which favored one who was ready to seize upon it.
How long they were airborne Jofre could not tell. It was much lighter and though he could not turn his head and dared not even lift those eyelids more than a slit high, he surveyed what he could of his surroundings.
The craft on which he was unwilling cargo was just that, a transport for cargo. And it had at least three passengers besides him and the limp and silent Zurzal. Two of them crossed his very restricted line of vision. One was Harse, and the other could be his twin. The third member of the party remained at an angle behind where Jofre lay and he could not see who it might be. But Harse's presence made plain that this dawn raid was a ploy of the Tssekians.
The lift gave a sudden drop, bringing Harse, who was in line of sight at that particular moment, to mutter a guttural sound or two and clutch at the rail, waist high, behind him. Another downward fall and they landed on some surface, with force enough to raise Jofre's body a fraction from the lift flooring and let him slam back again.
That slight change in the angle of his carefully masked sight showed him a tall reach of space-scoured metal. They had made landing close to a ship. Having done so, they were now in a hurry to get this particular cargo on board. Harse and his fellow ducked under the rail and then showed again with boxes which they dumped on the lift. One on the top tottered and fell forward, its weight bringing a red wave of pain through Jofre's leg. Once more the lift arose and was maneuvered closer to the side of the sky-towering ship. And into the cargo hatch of that he was slung along with the Zacathan, though the latter was immediately carried out of Jofre's very limited sight.
Harse appeared again, turned Jofre's body over with a kick and proceeded to search him for weapons. His belt knife and sleeve knives were jerked out, and hands felt over him but the Tssekian seemed to be quickly satisfied that his prey was now totally unarmed—too satisfied.
Though much of what Jofre could depend upon for offense and defense was gone, no issha was unarmed as long as he had control of his body. To regain that was the immediate task in hand. Jofre had not dared to experiment with even the smallest move while he had been under the eyes of his captors. But his hearing was slowly sharpening once more and he could detect now the sound of metal-shod space boots going away. Nor had they apparently left any guard.
He had been able to straighten the fingers of that hand which lay against the hidden talisman. Which was a suggestion he could not overlook. In his mind Jofre built a picture of that oval stone as he had studied it many times over. The dead, opaque darkness of it did not repel, rather it drew attention, as if there was a need within it—
The stone—dare he cut concentration from his surroundings to focus fully on that? Yet he felt that such a reckless move was the only one left for him to make.