“How would you like to have such weapons?” Bec said, ignoring the last question.
“Oh, we will. We will.”
The Meramite’s answer came as a surprise. I heard a choking gasp. Turning round, I saw the visitor sitting across from me, his knees drawn up, his thin lips bunched up in a smile that seemed to distort his flat, gigantic face. It was a smile of complacent triumph. Bec, Harmen and the two Heshans were folding up and falling to the floor.
At the same time something sharp thrilled in my nostrils and throat. My nerves tingled. I tried to move, but couldn’t. The Meramite had released some sort of gas into the bunker, a gas which left him unaffected.
My last thought as I passed out was that we had been outmanoeuvred. The Meramites knew some angles, too. We had been taken.
Eight
High-pitched voices. Mingled background noises. Chinking sounds coming from all round.
I opened my eyes to find myself trussed up and lying on the ground. Painfully I forced myself to a sitting position. Becmath and Harmen were already awake nearby, sitting upright with their hands tied behind their backs. Harmen, as so often, had withdrawn into himself, his head bowed. Bec grimaced as he saw I was conscious.
“I guess Hesha was harder to hang on to than it was to take,” he said.
My head cleared quickly. We were in one of the big meadows outside Hesha. Meramite troop carriers were parked all round us. The grey, lank soldiery went about their business with a peculiar loping gait, tending machines I hadn’t seen before, or merely stood around.
It seemed that the chinky sounds happened every time they walked. For the first time I noticed that they wore on their arms and legs a kind of open harness made of metal rods. As they moved the rods worked in a piston-like action. This puzzled me, but I didn’t stop to think about it at the time.
Smoke from the burning village blew over the scene. I coughed, then looked up to see the Meramite officer who had slipped us the knock-out gas standing over us.
I stared into his flat, grey face: thin lips, large, heavy jaw, wide vacant cheeks, oddly flat grey eyes that were without any trace of humour or expression, as if no mind lay behind them.
Suddenly the alk raised his head. “So this is what you understand by a flag of truce,” he said accusingly.
The Meramite’s lips curved in the faintest sneer. “Subterfuge is a weapon. We did not have to use it. We could have summoned heavier equipment to blast you out. But we wished to capture your weaponry undamaged.”
He paused, then continued: “We have searched the village for others of your kind, but found none. Despite that, the villagers have not been slow to talk. They say you have other forces which left a few days ago. Where did they go?”
“You’ll be hearing from them,” Bec said. His voice sounded faraway and unreal.
For the first time I began to feel a loss of confidence in Bec. He looked like an insignificant, squat figure alongside the looming Meramite. The other listened to his answer, stared as if he didn’t understand, then glanced over his shoulder. Following his glance, I saw something approaching from the distance, sailing low above the ground. It was a big cylinder, part silver and part copper in colour, bevelled at either end and finished off in flattened points.
“You will be taken to our main camp on the central plain of Rheatt,” our captor told us. “There your answers will be made more meaningful — you may even meet the persons of exalted rank you desire. I pity you. Merame has only one use for prisoners.”
The cylinder settled on the grass. “Here comes your transport. Now we shall see how you can be of service to the Rotrox.”
Cold, clammy hands lifted us and carried us into the cylinder. We sat on a metal deck, leaning against the curved walls, guarded by the gigantic soldiers. I felt the machine lift into the air with a slight droning sound.
“What do we do now?” I said hoarsely to Bec.
He shifted uneasily. “It all depends on whether the boys got to Blue Space Valley in time. If the Meramites got there first….” He shrugged.
We seemed to fly for quite a while. About halfway through the journey our guards opened a hatch in the floor and gazed through it with interest, smiling. One glanced at me, speaking to his companions in a strange language. What he said seemed to please them. He came across and dragged me nearer the hatch, so that I, too, could see through it.
We were passing leisurely over a level plain. Through it wound a seemingly endless column of wretched Rheattites strung together by chains. Many of them appeared to be dead or unconscious but were still dragged along helplessly by their fellows. The column was policed by Meramites riding smaller versions of the circular transport platforms. Shouts, screams and the sharp crack of whips floated up to us. I saw upturned green faces watching our passage. On either side of me the guards uttered cruel, humourless chuckles.
Then they thought of a new sport. One grabbed me by the legs and another under the armpits, and I was swung out over the open hatch. The breeze tugged at me. They jigged me up and down, pretending to let go. I closed my eyes. I didn’t think a couple of rank and file klugs would have the nerve to murder a prisoner in their charge, but I didn’t know much about how Meramites behave. I was scared.
I felt a lurch, for a split second felt myself sailing through the air, then fell roughly to the deck again. The guards sniggered.
“Take it easy, Klein,” Bec murmured. “We’ll have our turn.”
The people of Rheatt didn’t build cities. Their civilisation was more dispersed, more rural. They did have centres of loose concentration, however — what would pass for cities for them. We flew over the main one and were able to see something of it through the open hatch.
It was like a vast park stretching beyond the horizon in all directions. There were broad walks, gardens and groves. The buildings were few and scattered, and consisted mostly of tall, delicate green towers.
The scene would have been a really pretty one had it not been for the fact that the Meramites had chosen to set up their main camp there. A maze of continuous, low corridor-like buildings sprawled across the park and snaked between the green towers, rather like a system of tunnels built above the ground. Their colour was grey, the same as everything else about the Meramites.
I was beginning to realise that we from Killibol had more in common with the Meramites than with the people of Rheatt. Like us, they had a distaste for the open. They were city dwellers, ruthless, smart and practical. If anything, they were several degrees more vicious. I hoped this meant that they had a streak of stupidity in their make-up, the kind that Bec would know how to take advantage of.
The flying cylinder slanted down and came to rest. We were manhandled on to one of the circular vehicles and wheeled into the corridor complex. These corridors reminded me of endless barracks. They were lit by a strange whitish illumination, quite unlike the light outside. Uniformed Meramites stared at us in puzzlement as we were carried along.
The angles at which some of the corridors branched off at the intersections told me that the invaders had also been busy digging underground. They also, maybe, hid away from the sun.
We were thrown into a darkened room and lay there for a short while. I asked Bec if he had any ideas. He said just to keep cool, to take my cue from him, and if left on my own not to say anything even if they got rough. I asked Harmen if he had any ideas. The alk just grunted.