“A guard field,” said the Daal sourly. “I’ve done everything possible to keep the matter quiet. In that I think I’ve been successful. It was all I could do until I came in contact with a competent member of your people.” He gave them a sideways glance. “No doubt you have your own problems — but for weeks I’ve been unable to learn where somebody who could act for Karres might be found!”
His manner had taken another turn. He was dropping all formality here, addressing them with some irritability as equals and including Goth as if she were another adult. And he was not concealing the fact that he felt he had reason for complaint — nor that he was a badly worried man. Reaching into his gown, he brought out a small device, glanced at it, pressed down with his thumb.
The guard field faded, and the far end of the room appeared beyond it. A couch stood there. On it, in an odd attitude of abruptly frozen motion, sat a man in spacer coveralls. He was strongly built, might have been ten years older than the captain. Goth’s breath made a sharp sucking sound of surprise.
“You know this fellow?” the Daal asked.
“Yes,” Goth said. “It’s Olimy!”
“He’s of Karres?”
“Yes.”
She started forward, the captain moving with her, while the Daal stayed a few feet behind. Olimy gazed into the room with unblinking black eyes. He sat at the edge of the couch, legs stretched out to the floor, arms half lifted and reaching forwards, fingers curled as if closing on something. His expression was one of alertness and intense concentration. But the expression didn’t change and Olimy didn’t move.
“He was found like this, a month and a half ago, sitting before the controls of his ship,” the Daal said. “Perhaps you understand his condition. I don’t. He can be shifted out of the position you see him in, but when released he gradually returns to it. He can be lifted and carried about but can’t actually be touched. There’s a thin layer of force about him, unlike anything of which I’ve heard. It’s detectable only by the fact that nothing can pass through it. He appears to be alive but—”
“He disminded himself.” Goth’s face and tone were expressionless. She looked up at the captain. “We got to take him to Emris, I guess. They’ll help him there.”
“Uh-huh.” Then she didn’t know either how to contact other witches this side of the Chaladoor at present. “You mentioned his ship,” the captain said to the Daal.
“Yes. It’s three hours’ flight from here, still at the point where it was discovered. He was the only one on board. How it approached Uldune and landed without registering on detection instruments isn’t known.” Sedmon’s mouth grimaced. “He had an object with him which I ordered left on the ship. I won’t try to describe it — you’ll see it for yourselves… Are there any measures you wish taken regarding this man before we go?”
Goth shook her head. The captain said, “There’s nothing we can do for Olimy at the moment. He might as well stay here till we can take him off your hands.”
Olimy’s ship had come down in a nearly uninhabited section of Uldune’s southern continent, and landed near the center of a windy plain, rock-littered and snow-streaked, encircled by misty mountains. It wasn’t visible from the air, but its position was marked by what might have been a patch of gray mist half filling a hollow in the plain — a spy-screen had been set up to enclose the ship. On higher ground a mile away lay a larger bank of mist. The Daal’s big aircar set down there first.
At ground level, the captain, sitting in a rear section of the car with Goth, could make out the vague outlines of four tents through the side of the screen. Two platoons of fur-coated soldiers and their commander had tumbled out and lined up. One of the Daal’s men left the car, went over to the officer, and spoke briefly with him. He came back, nodded to the Daal, climbed in. The aircar lifted, turned and started towards Olimy’s ship, skimming along the sloping ground.
There’d been no opportunity to speak privately with Goth. Perhaps she had an idea of what this affair of a Karres witch who had disminded himself was about, but her expression told nothing. Any question he asked the Daal might happen to be the wrong one, so he hadn’t asked any.
The car settled down some fifty yards from the edge of the screening about Olimy’s ship, and was promptly enveloped itself by a spy-screen somebody cut in. Sedmon, as he’d indicated, evidently took all possible precautions to avoid drawing attention to the area. The captain and Goth put on the warm coats which had been brought along for them and climbed out with the Daal, who had wrapped a long fur robe about himself. The rest of the party remained in the car. They walked over to the screen about the ship, through it, and saw the ship sitting on the ground.
It was a small one with excellent lines, built for speed. The Daal brought an instrument out from under his furs.
“This is the seal to the ship’s lock,” he said. “I’ll leave it with you. The object your associate brought here with him is standing in a plastic wrapping beside the control console. When you’re finished you’ll find me waiting in the car.”
The last was good news. If Sedmon had wanted to come into the ship with them, it might have complicated matters. The captain found the lock mechanism, unsealed it and pulled the OPEN lever. Above them, a lock opened. A narrow ladder ramp slid down.
They paused in the lock, looking back. The Daal already had vanished beyond the screening haze about the ship. “Just to be sure,” the captain said, “better put up our own spy-screen… Got any idea what this is about?”
Goth shook her head. “Olimy’s a hot witch. Haven’t seen him for a year — he goes around on work for Karres. Don’t know what he was doing this trip.”
“What’s this disminding business?”
“Keeps things from getting to you. Anything. Sort of stasis. It’s not so good though. Your mind’s way off somewhere and can’t get back. You have to be helped out. And that’s not easy!”
Her small face was very serious.
“Hot witch in a fast ship!” the captain reflected aloud. “And he runs into something in space that scares him so badly he disminds to get away from it! Doesn’t sound good, does it? Could he have homed the ship in on Uldune on purpose, first?”
Goth shrugged. “Might have. I don’t know.”
“Well, let’s look around the ship a bit before we get at that object. Must be some reason the Daal didn’t feel like talking about it…”
They saw it in its wrappings as soon as they stepped into the tiny control cabin. The large, lumpy item, which could have been a four hundred pound boulder concealed under twisted, thick, opaque space plastic, stood next to the console. They let it stand there. The captain switched on the little ship’s viewscreens, found them set for normal space conditions, turned them down until various angles of the windy Uldune plain appeared in sharp focus. The small patch of gray haze which masked the Daal’s aircar showed on their port side.
They went through the little speedster’s other sections. All they learned for their trouble was that Olimy had kept a very neat ship.
“Might as well look at the thing now,” said the captain. “You figure, it’s something pretty important to Karres, don’t you?”
“Got to be,” Goth told him. “They don’t put Olimy on little jobs!”
“I see.” Privately, the captain admitted to considerable reluctance as he poked gingerly around at the plastic. Whatever was inside seemed as hard and solid as the bulky rock he’d envisioned when he first saw the bundle. Taking hold of one strip of the space plastic at last, he pulled it back slowly. A patch of the surface of the item came to view. It looked, he thought, like dirty ice-pitted old glacier ice. He touched it with a finger. Slick and rather warm. Some kind of crystal?