As he tried to rise, the Taur rose beside him and gendy, firmly, pressed him back down. He rumbled something that Krake could not make out. "Make him let go of me, Moon!" he snapped.
But she was listening to Thrayl rather than the captain. "No, Francis," she said. "He says you can stay here. It's all right, he says."
"All rights Krake exploded, staring up at the Taur. The great head was lowered toward him, the eyes bright, the horns brighter still. The majestic head shook slowly as the Taur spoke again.
"He says no harm will come to Marco. The Sh'shrane are confused by them—they think they may be machines like themselves."
"What difference does that make? And how the hell would Thrayl know that?"
"He does know, Francis," the girl said with confidence. "And—oh, Francis! He's saying something else, too. I don't know what he means, but it's about help."
"Help! God, yes! I'd be begging for help, too, if I knew who to beg!"
"No, no, Francis, not like that. He says help is coming.'"
Krake turned his head to glare at her. "Now, where the hell would help be coming from here?" he demanded . . . and, off balance, almost fell as the Taur suddenly released him, straightening.
Krake stared up at the great shape, astonished, almost afraid. Something was happening to Thrayl. The great head was flung back, the strong arms lifted toward the sky; the Taur was rumbling deep in his throat, like a lion's purring. Suddenly Thrayl seemed even larger than before. The needle-sharp horns were almost crackling with internal fires, as brilliant shapes of gold and blue-white light chased each other across them.
Thrayl bent his head back down to regard them. His demeanor had changed—servile no longer, now almost commanding, though the purple-blue eyes were kind and reassuring.
"Help comes here vrom me, Francis Grake," he said, in a voice the captain had never heard from the Taur's mouth before.
Krake almost lost his grip on the belt that was holding Kiri Quintero's life in. The Taur reached down swiftly to place one great paw over Krake's hand, pressing the packing tighter.
"Do nod vear," he said, the voice deep and kind—and in English! In perfect English—or as perfect as the lips and throat of a Taur could make it. Some of the consonants seemed to drag, the vowels were rounder and more liquid than a human would have made them, but every word was perfectly clear. "This Taur's song has been heard vor a long time," the voice proclaimed, "and you are to be aided."
Litlun looked up from the butcher's offal that had been his Elder Brother, both yellow-red eyes starded and watchful. Moon Bunderan clapped a hand to her mouth.
"Who are you?" she wailed. "You're not Thrayl!"
The great eyes looked down benignly on her. "Thrayl is within, and never gone vrom you," the voice said. "All will be well."
There was a fresh racket from the hallway. The great head lifted, the horns thrusting toward the doorway. Then the Taur looked down again. He released his hold on Krake's hand and placed his paw gently on the faint stirring of heartbeat at the base of Kiri's throat. The horns blazed brighdy for a moment.
"There is time," he said, "but Kiri Quintero musd have help now. Francis Grake, pick him up. Take him to Sue-ling Quong. Facilitator, you will assisd."
Moon sobbed, "But the Sh'shrane are out there!"
The great head nodded comfortingly. "The Sh'shrane," said the beautiful organ voice, with a note of sadness, "will nod intervere again. Come now."
And the being that had been Thrayl turned and moved quickly, dancingly, toward the door. Those sharp horns were now shining so bright that they made faint, shifting pools of light on the corridor walls as the Taur led the way.
There was no way to refuse those orders. Lidun set down the fragments he had collected of Chief Thunderbird's anatomy. With Krake, he lifted what was left of Kiri Quintero and, Moon Bunderan by their side, they followed.
Shock had robbed Francis Krake of imagination. He didn't question his orders. He didn't even try to guess where the thing in the body of the Taur was leading them, or what they would find when they got there. He expected no one thing more than any other. . . .
And yet when he entered that corridor and saw what was there he gasped.
Those violent, vicious murder machines, the Sh'shrane— they were lined up like statues against a wall. They did not move or threaten. They made no sound. Their stubby tentacles were still, as silent and motionless as though frozen. Their eyes did not even follow as the thing that had been the Taur passed them without a glance.
Marco was standing there—alive! Well! He dodged out of the way as Thrayl passed, rumbling softiy, reassuringly. Marco's eyestalks were roving bewilderedly, and the expression of the face on his belly plate was incredulous. He turned the eyes on his captain. "Francis," he begged, "what the hell is happening? Those things looked like they were going to kill us —then, all of a sudden, they just stopped V
Krake didn't even try to answer. "Give us a hand with Kiri," he ordered.
The machine-man gasped as he saw the wounds. He ran to obey, but even so couldn't help asking, "But what's happened to Thrayl?"
"We'll explain later," Krake promised, a promise that he had no confidence he could really keep. Thrayl was in the doorway of the operating room, speaking to those inside. Daisy Fay's red ball of a body squeezed through past him, her eyes peering down the corridor.
"Oh, dear heaven!" she cried. "What happened to Kiri?"
She got out of the way as the drafted corpsmen carried him through. The being in Thrayl's body said, its voice rich and reassuring, "You are to help him, Daisy Fay McQueen, and—" as Sue-ling looked up from Sork's figure on the operating table, her face expressionless in the memmie mask—"you, Sue-ling Quong, will do whad is necessary."
"Of course," she said, with neither surprise nor doubt in her voice. She made room on the operating table for Kiri to be set down beside his brother, and bent to study his wounds without haste or emotion.
"All of you," said Thrayl, "will assisd in this—" he gestured with a three-fingered paw at Krake, his crew and the Turtle— "excepd for Moon Bunderan. She is to come with me."
Moon shrank back. "But the Sh'shrane are out there," she sobbed.
The Taur head bent to gaze kindly down at her. "Yes, the Sh'shrane," said the rich voice, a note of sadness coloring it. "Do nod fear the Sh'shrane. I will arrange whad musd be done vor the Sh'shrane." He was silent for a moment, as though sorrowing, before he finished, "I musd, vor they are the other halve of we."
What Krake did then he did almost without the use of his mind. He followed orders. He didn't bother to think, because there was no way of understanding what was going on.
It was only Sue-ling, of all in that room, who seemed unaffected, businesslike, competent. The memmie disk insulated her from astonishment and worry. She said crisply, "Daisy Fay, prep the patient. You others, scrub up. Litlun, you're the only one who can wear a memo disk; there's a spare in my bag. Use it, because you're going to assist."
No one argued. Everyone seemed to be in the same semi-shock as Krake. They did what they were told—even when what they were doing was wholly outside any previous experience, as it was for Francis Krake.
After three tours of combat duty in the South Pacific, Krake was no stranger to blood. Still, this kind of controlled, deliberate bloodletting made shivers run up and down his back. He was given the task of sterilizing instruments, not a part of the operating team at all—not a disappointment to him at all. He could hardly see what was happening on the table, for all the figures crowded around it. Lidun was methodically cauterizing blood vessels in the hollow where Kiri Quintero's shoulder had been, with a stink of burning flesh rising from the operation. Simultaneously Sue-ling was opening Kiri's skull, concentrating on what she was doing and yet sparing enough thought to keep an eye on Daisy Fay, monitoring Sork Quintero's condition at one side of the table, while Marco Ramos acted as assistant to all three operations at once. It was a great blessing that the machine-bodies of his crew had so many limbs to help with, for both of them were doing a dozen things at once.