He was sinking, but there was no sense of suffocation. He felt no need to breathe. Neither was there complete darkness: a flesh-coloured glow surrounded him. But there was nothing to see apart from vague shadows which might have been faces, bodies, or anything. What there was, quite distinctly, was flickering presences. Helsey Fong was somewhere nearby, feebly protesting. The process of absorption into the fluid was slow. Individuals briefly and sketchily reconstituted themselves. The pus-like yellow muck was a turmoil of bewildered children—they were mostly children—being mixed together as if in some cooking process.
Laedo made swimming motions in an attempt to reach the surface. It was impossible. The more he struggled, the more the custard of melted life resisted. At length he despaired, and was on the point of letting himself sink to the bottom of the tank, when he felt a hand seize his. A slender hand, without a great deal of strength, but with its aid he was able to break free, pushing upward and lifting his head clear.
To his astonishment he had not been more than a foot or two below the surface all the time. The fluid was somehow able to restrain its victims. But now it let him go. It had no wetness, no ability to cling. Instead it poured from him as he gripped the side of the tank and clambered over it. Not a drop of the flesh-stuff remained on him.
“What happened?” he gasped.
“I hid on the stairs till the monster went,” Histrina said in hushed tones. “Since then I’ve been feeling about in the tank looking for you.”
“Thanks.”
Laedo embraced Histrina in genuine gratitude.
“Where did he go?”
“Through that door at the other end.”
“Let’s get away from here.”
Like scared mice they scuttled to the stairway.
NINE
The Poisoned Chalice
While running back to the cargo ship Laedo told himself that he might now have an advantage. ‘Klystar’
would think him absorbed into the life-vat, his substance unwillingly donated to the formation of Klystar’s next body.
Once inside the ship’s lounge he sat down to think.
Histrina watched him with concern. “What are we going to do?” she asked anxiously.
Laedo didn’t answer. Matters were becoming clear in his mind. He had to do more than simply escape, if indeed that was possible at all. It was his duty to oppose Klystar.
He wondered if his cargo carrier’s defence blaster would be capable of destroying the main palace, or least that part of it containing the vat. He rejected the idea. He would be firing on innocent people, and besides the palace might well be capable of defending itself.
There might be a sneakier way of foiling Klystar.
Sunset came. All the Erspia worlds had a twenty-eight hour day, but the moon’s orbit gave it a much briefer period. Laedo had slept for only a few hours when the artificial sun came up again. He left Histrina fast asleep, and armed with a flashlight, made his way to the Excelsior.
He paused, sensing the derelict old starliner all around him. Hull integrity had held and the ship had done its settling long ago. It was eerie to think what it must have been like when in service, thronging with people. Especially weird was to contemplate their fright and bewilderment when the liner was seized by Klystar. As before, Laedo passed through a ballroom, a couple of salons, and descended to the cargo hold where Garo’s stasis cabinet rested.
It was many years since he had travelled on a starliner. He was trying to recall the likely layout. Where would the engineering section be?
Once through the other end of the cargo hold all lights were out. Garo was conserving power, lighting only that part of the ship he planned to walk through. Laedo switched on his flashlight. He was heading towards the stern of the ship, where he reckoned the crude mechanics of drive and power would be located. He got early confirmation. The elegance of the passenger section was gone. His flashlight flickered on bare metal and plastic, seams and rivets. Only the crew would come here.
In a ship of this size there must surely be facilities for effecting repairs: a machine shop, in other words. It perplexed him that he had not thought of this before. Another result of his mental confusion, perhaps, though very likely everything in the machine shop was wrecked.
In due course Laedo discovered the engine room. The huge windings of the inertial drive which had once propelled the Excelsior at several hundred times the velocity of light were a slumped mass of fused and molten metal.
Several doors led from the engine room. Through one of these Laedo found the machine shop. As anticipated, Klystar had trashed this also. Lathes, mills and forming machines were smashed, knocked over, melted, and even the benches on which they had stood mangled into useless shapes. Laedo passed along two lines of machines, training his flashlight on each machine in turn. When he reached the far extent of the room a faint smile came to his lips. Klystar had not been entirely thorough. Probably he had done no more than aim some type of destructive device from the doorway, because a forming machine at the end of the further row had been torn from its mooring bolts and tumbled to the floor, but remained in one piece.
Laedo knelt to examine it. The data processing unit was smashed, so the machine would have to be set up by hand. Laedo was no kind of engineer, but if he could lug the machine back to his cargo ship, power it up and study it for a while, then maybe he could make the part he needed from some piece of metal left lying around.
Maybe.
But that wasn’t his immediate concern. In the ruined engine section should be something else useful.
Laedo used his nose and followed dead, sterile smells years old. In a darkened, blackened corridor he found what he wanted, still seeping with infinite slowness from ruptured tanks: a thick sludge of oil, toxic metals, and exotic compounds. Another search produced a bucket flung in a corner a century and a half earlier. Laedo scooped up a quantity of the sludge and carried it out of the Excelsior.
Treading the yellow moss, he climbed up the declivity until the roofs of the pleasure palaces came in sight.
The rest of his plan depended on simple daring. He made the short journey to the main palace, passed through the magnificent entrance, and into the great entrance hall, still carrying the bucket.
Few people were about. Encouraged, Laedo started across the hall. Then he froze as a voice spoke behind him.
“What’s that you’ve got there?”
A young woman in a loose-fitting light green gown was staring at the bucket, her nose wrinkled in distaste. Laedo smiled in embarrassment.
“It’s from the food tanks. I’m taking it to reprocessing.”
“Oh.
Her face blank with incomprehension, she gave a curt nod and moved on.
Sighing with relief, Laedo continued on to the broad staircase, mounted to the outside balcony, and thence to the narrow corridor and spiral stairs. When nearly at the top he raised his eyes just above floor level and peeped furtively into the gallery.
It was unoccupied.
With alacrity Laedo leaped up the remaining steps, sprang to the nearest vat and upended his bucket.
The thick, dark, oily sludge poured with treacly slowness into the pus-coloured fluid. He watched in fascination as it spread and formed tentacles and swirls and multicoloured stains, tainting and poisoning the flesh substance that was meant to form Klystar’s new body.
Would ‘Klystar’, or the team which serviced the tank, discover the pollution? It would be rash to think otherwise, but Laedo paused to consider Klystar’s carelessness. There was a singular lack of security—in consequence, perhaps, of Klystar’s contempt for human intelligence.