“It sounds incredible,” Hrityu admitted. “But above all the Tlixix like to preserve an outward appearance of authority. If it looks like the Crome will go ahead anyway… Yes, the Market Master may give his permission, simply so as not to be defied.”
He gripped his flinger and his face set. “There is only one sure way out for us. We must make certain that we win the war!”
CHAPTER TWO
The entrance to the Pavilion of Warfare was in appearance a long grill, the gaps between whose teeth were automatic doors which shot up when touched, sliding smoothly back down again a few moments later. Having watched this mechanism operated by a lizard Grokog who disappeared inside the building, Hrityu tried it for himself. The two Analane slipped nimbly through and were faced with a vast interior.
A cantilevered roof admitted light through transparent sections. Beneath it, the cavernous space was marked out into various stands accessed by aisles. A whispering, booming noise filled the air. It was a concert of talk, of devices being demonstrated, of objects being dragged across the floor. What struck the Analane most forcibly, however, was a peculiar quality and smell to the atmosphere, making them curl up their facial membranes, giving them a feeling of discomfort.
It was moisture. There was moisture in the air.
Not much, it was true. The humidity was evaporation from a podium some distance from the entrance. There, reposing in a bath-like couch, tented in transparent curtains, lay one of the Market Masters: a Tlixix, stalks and feelers waving and twitching, the telescoping segments of his shell gleaming with a bluish sheen.
The Analane stared in awe as they timidly approached the podium. The Tlixix bore no resemblance either to lizard or humanoid: they had ruled the world long, long ago, before the Great Dehydration, when none of the desert species had existed.
In those days, it was said, water had been everywhere, floating in the sky, falling from the air, lying on the ground in vast sheets as far as the eye could see. Such a hellish world was hard to envisage, but if it could be imagined, then the Tlixix was a fitting creature to live in it. Angled over the bath-couch were pipes ending in nozzles from which atomised sprays of water hissed over it. Fortunately little of the spray drifted through the folds of the curtains. Hrityu knew that such as did was mostly recovered at night, when it condensed against the cooling walls of the building. The Market Masters were careful hoarders of the corrosive, alien substance on which their lives, and theirs alone, depended.
The bewhiskered, chitinous visage, whose eyes were no more than whitish scales, had a bleary look. Water sploshed in the bath-couch as the Tlixix leaned towards the arrivals, speaking in a voice that was hoarse and distant-sounding.
“You come to buy and sell?”
Momentarily Hrityu found that his voice had deserted him. He drew himself erect.
“We Analane are engaged in a war with the Crome, who lately have begun destroying the beds of ground-fungus which is our food. We are here to barter for weapons with which to defend ourselves against a stronger enemy.”
“Is the conflict permitted?”
Hrityu hesitated. “The Market Masters were notified. No edict of denial has been issued.”
“I shall check the truth of that. Meanwhile, go your way. When you have made a transaction, there is a fee to be paid. Should you wish to rent space in the pavilion to display wares of your own, the terms will be explained upon request. Do you understand all this?”
“Yes.”
The Tlixix twitched a feeler and turned away. He appeared to be luxuriating in the water in which he lolled and with which he was being sprayed, even though the weird environment was all he had known since being hatched.
The Analane set off cautiously between the rows of stands, carefully inspecting everything around them. At nearly every stand a hawker boasted of the death-dealing devices that were on show there, irrespective of whether anyone was nearby to listen. On offer were flingers of various types and sizes, their innovation lying in the ingenuity of the flenchers they projected, or else in their range or speed. There was little of interest there, and Hrityu and Kurwer passed them by. They passed by, too, rolling war wagons to be hurled at an enemy spitting darts in all directions, multiple flingers trailing nets which would then contract, choking the life out of an enemy, and engines for raising such a wind that an enemy was faced with a lethal sandblast.
They were in search of something invincible. The Crome had to be defeated without question. And with them they had brought the means to pay for it: one of the greatest inventions ever—as great a step forward, possibly, as the radium motor itself.
Deeper into the pavilion stands were stocked with sample mercenary warriors, both humanoid and lizard. The Analane took no notice of these. Mercenaries could not be trusted, being liable to turn on their paymasters if they found themselves on the losing side.
New methods of war lay at the far end of the pavilion, and this was what the Analane were pinning their hopes on. They gazed bewildered at a jumble of battle machines of all shapes and sizes, until a blue-skinned lizard a head taller than Hrityu accosted them.
“You are here to buy?”
Hrityu nodded. The lizard’s reply was a hiss. “Then witness our ferocious invention in action.”
At his gesture his helpers set to pushing a large, heavy block of a dark material in place. Then there was aimed at it a weapon resembling some sort of giant flinger, but instead of a shaft there was what looked like a barrel or cylinder.
Two lizards withdrew to safety. A third squatted behind the weapon, and pulled a lever.
A radium motor had all the while been humming in the depths of the contraption. Now, with a rapid ratcheting noise, the barrel of the weapon rotated, hurling an incredible stream of flenchers.
The onslaught seemed endless. Before their eyes the target block was chewed to bits.
“This machine is the product of much mechanical skill,” the lizard hissed smoothly. “It will annihilate a whole company of warriors. Consequently its price is high.”
Stunned by the demonstration, Kurwer became excited. Hrityu, however, cautioned him to silence.
They passed on, and were accosted by a sand-coloured Grishi who spoke to them gruffly. “Curiosity-seekers are not welcome among those who innovate and invent. Is what you can offer of comparable value to what you find here?”
“What we have,” Kurwer snapped, “is so extraordinary that only dire necessity persuades us to part with it!”
The Grishi inspected him, and then nodded slowly. “Perhaps you would care to see our own devastating contribution to the art of total warfare. It works by denying the enemy breathable air.”
He turned and picked up a glass globe from a nearby table. It contained a mass of green crystals. “Sprayed onto a force of enemy warriors, this preparation instantly absorbs the life-giving element in the atmosphere, causing them to fall insensible. I am ready to prove its efficacy against a few prisoners we keep in the testing ground outside—if, that is, your own goods can be deemed of equal desirability.”
From the adjoining stand a Grishi of a different tribe, his skin a somewhat darker orange, laughed. “My rival’s chemicals are interesting, but unreliable. They do not necessarily kill the enemy, who is apt to recover later. Here, now, I have a device of a definitely lethal description: a machine which casts a tough flexible canopy over the enemy. The canopy contracts, stifling its victims. As many as a hundred may be asphyxiated together.”
He indicated a balled-up rubbery object in the midst of an arrangement of rods and loaded springs. “I, too, can apply it to some prisoners I keep ready, provided there is sufficient inducement.”