Within hours he was ready to take off. Histrina still had the gun, but she seemed well disposed towards him and he didn’t feel too uneasy—and anyway she needed him, he told himself. He abandoned thoughts of luring her back down to Erspia and leaving her there. She was too sharp for that. But he would try to buy some psychological rehabilitation for her in Harkio, he decided.
One thing he left till last. He had found himself reluctant to switch off the projector, knowing the field would be left to purely Ahrimanic influences. But what else could he do?
So, at the last minute, when he sat before the station’s control board ready to energise the engine, the projector was still emitting. But already he had taken a key which he had found hanging from the neck of the dead Kwenis, and had opened the lid of a sturdy box bolted to the board. Inside the box was a massive switch of the old-fashioned lever type.
Laedo’s arm seemed extraordinarily heavy as he moved his hand to the switch. The lever seemed to resist him, and he thought for a moment that it might be corroded in place. Then, with a clunk, it shifted.
The invisible mental searchlight went out. Without pause he energised. The globe of Ormazd shot away from Erspia, into the interstellar realm and towards Harkio.
The sun had set and Hoggora, High Priest of the Forces of Darkness, felt vigorous and confident. True, the villagers, contrary to Drosh’s report, had assembled a force to match his own. He was faced, in fact, by an alliance of villages, and this would be a battle to go down in legend. But darkness had come, and the darkness always made him feel strong. He looked forward with joy to the carnage that was about to commence.
His cavalry was lined up on one side of a shallow river, the infantry jostling behind. On the other side of the water was a less colourful, but more rigidly disciplined parade. It was a case of ferocity versus fortitude, as it had always been. But this time the outcome would give one side or the other a decided advantage for years to come.
Beyond the silent ranks, the priests of Ormazd, in their tall, coiffed headdresses, raised their faces to heaven in rapt prayer. Hoggora prayed, too, hurling his voice hoarsely to that point in space where he knew the Mouth of Ahriman hovered.
“Ahriman! Aid us!”
And then, as if in answer to his supplication, an event took place that caused the entire assembly, on both sides, to pause and become stock-still. It was an invisible event, but one that was yet felt by everyone present. In the perpetual tussle that took place in each man’s mind, one of the contending factors abruptly went missing. Ahriman alone remained, to exult in his victory.
It was as if a shadow of evil swept over the world, a shadow that could never be lifted. The priests, sensing the death of the Good God, wailed in disbelieving horror. The ranks arrayed before them shivered and moaned as they, too, felt the strength of their lord leave them.
But among Hoggora’s army an incredible chafing joy took hold. Hoggora screamed a command, howling in triumph. A volley of arrows whistled across the river. Lances were levelled, pennants flew. With a great shout, the Horde of the Evil One surged across the shallow water to claim its own.
TWO
Orchid Paradise
The drive had been in operation for only minutes when a mechanism behind the panel of the control board chattered and a sheet of parchment-like material came stuttering out of a slot.
Laedo snatched it up as it floated floorwards. Words, still smoking, had been etched or burned into the sheet in argot galactica.
Experiment incomplete, they read. Return station to duty.
Laedo stared. It had not occurred to him that the projector station might be able to monitor the performance of its staff.
How to reply? Laedo searched the panel. The mechanism had not spoken out loud, so he presumed there would be a writing plate or something even more primitive, such as a keyboard. But he found nothing. Finally, in exasperation, he responded as if to a normal control device.
“The experiment has been abandoned. The staff are all dead,” he said, raising his voice.
After a pause there came more chattering and another sheet of parchment was extruded.
Must report to Klystar, he read. Then he felt movement under his feet.
The dials on the board were shifting their settings. With a yell he seized control levers and tried to correct the course, but it was no good. The station was changing direction and all the flight parameters—velocity flow, fuel rate, flight tensor—were being adjusted by an unseen, expert power.
Not back to Erspia. Not towards Harkio. To where?
He groaned and sank back in the pilot’s seat.
The door slid open. Histrina stepped into the room, her gun thrust into the belt of her gauzy shift-like gown, dimpling her soft belly.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, in the cool and self-possessed voice she had acquired since the killings.
“I don’t know where the hell we’re going—if anywhere.”
“I thought we were going to your home world. To Harkio.”
“So did I. But this thing has a mind of its own. I think it’s trying to take us to Klystar, the being who made Erspia. Only I don’t suppose it even knows where Klystar is.”
“Well, do something,” Histrina said, in a tone whose sharpness surprised and even frightened him a little.
Raising his face, and ignoring Histrina’s puzzlement at seeing him address thin air, he spoke again.
“Klystar went away a long time ego. There’s no one to report to. Hand back control of the station to me.”
This time there was no chattering of words being burned onto parchment, and no change in the dial readings. “It’s no good,” Laedo muttered.
Histrina clenched her fists in frustration. “Think of something else, ” she insisted bitingly.
“I’ll have to see if I can get the casing off and jigger about with the cybernetics somehow. The trouble is, putting it out of action might disconnect the drive unit controls as well. We’d be stranded.”
“Look!” said Histrina.
Over the control panel a part of wall had changed colour from grey to smudgy white, forming a wide oval patch. The oval cleared and became glasslike. It was a viewscreen.
In it, Laedo saw what he presumed lay ahead of them: black space dotted with stars. Then, to the accompaniment of more movement under their feet, the view swivelled round.
Suddenly they were looking at a planet, shining in the darkness, lit on one side by an unseen sun.
“It’s Erspia!” Histrina cried. “We’re back at Erspia!”
“No, we couldn’t be.” Laedo inspected the dials with a frown. “We haven’t gone back, not unless these readings are all wrong. We’re thousands of miles away.”
For all that, it did look a lot like Erspia. Now he spotted where the planet’s daytime illumination came from: a point source of light, orbiting the globe not far away. It was the Erspia system in duplicate, and automatically he began to see it not as a planet proper but as a spherically shaped planetoid, even though the screen gave no ranging figures from which to estimate size.
“Erspia looks brownish-green from space,” he said to Histrina. “Look close at that planet. It’s mottled in different colours.”
“I don’t see.”
Laedo wasn’t sure if he saw the colours either now. Perhaps it had been an optical effect, a sort of shading of phantom hues. But the globe was definitely lighter in tone than Erspia. It was almost pastel.