For the first time ever, Captain Pausert was truly glad to see those tiny, slitty silver eyes peering at him. One of the reasons he was so glad about it was that they could be seen at all. There appeared to be no other form of light, and his attempts at moving hadn't succeeded. He wasn't really sure if they were actually talking with sound and words. It didn't feel as if his lips were moving. Actually it didn't feel at all.
"I never thought I'd be glad to see a vatch," said the Leewit. "Hey! Leggo, you little beast!"
Where are we, little vatch? asked Pausert.
You mean you don't know?
Tell us. Please?
Might. If I feel like it. What are you going to do now, Big Real Thing?
Pausert didn't tell it that what he really wanted to do right now was wring the little silvery-eyed vatch's neck, if it had a neck and if he could have come to grips with it. Nothing interesting, he said. Sit here and be boring.
The vatch made a rude noise. Can't do that. The wave of everything is coming.
Wave of everything? Pausert wondered if it was worth fashioning klatha hooks. Of course he could only tickle this one, but maybe he could tickle it into telling them. Tickling was not that far removed from torture, after all.
Yes. You're outside of everything. The only thing that's here is your ship. Even time hasn't got here yet. It's a strange place to come.
Well, can you get us out of here? Or tell us how to get out of here?
I don't think I will, said the vatchlet petulantly. Last time I did something for you I got sick. And then when I went to play in all the other ships so they'd leave you alone, you ran away.
Inwardly, Pausert groaned. If there had been any doubts in the minds of the captains of Imperial Space Navy ships that the Venture was indeed chock full of the notorious witches of Karres and should definitely be destroyed on sight, he was sure it wasn't there anymore.
But here, outside of everything, that seemed a minor problem. Oh, well. I suppose you can't do anything, anyway.
Can too! snapped the little vatch, and vanished.
Sitting in the darkness, Captain Pausert had time to wonder if he'd handled it right. And time to try to reconstruct the pattern he had used, inside his head. He was sure if he could just get up and redraw it, he'd have it.
"I've been thinking, Captain," said Goth.
"Careful! You know what happened last time you did that," said the Leewit, snippily.
"You're lucky I can't move," grumbled Goth.
In the interests of peace, Pausert intervened. "What, Goth? Have you some idea of how we can get out of here?"
"Well, no. But I think I have some idea of how we got in here. You remember you said you had changed some things in the pattern?"
"Yes," admitted the captain. "They . . . well, they just didn't seem right. It felt as if my changes would stop all the vibrations."
"And it did," said Goth, thoughtfully. "Never heard of that with the Egger Route, before. But we—the Leewit and me—were also using that same klatha pattern. And so I think we didn't end up where any of us were heading."
"So you mean we could just do it again?" asked the Leewit.
"Doubt it," answered Goth. "It might do something else entirely. Anyway, I've tried all sorts of klatha stuff. It doesn't work. There is just nothing here, except us. Or nothing here yet. Looks like only vatches can handle this place, though I don't know why that should be true."
Goth was sounding very like her mother, Toll, now. The captain wondered whether it was her Toll-pattern speaking, and wished, yet again, that he could have such an instructor.
"It also means," she continued, "that to reverse it we'd probably have to work together."
"Uh-oh!" interjected the Leewit. "I'm relling vatch again. Big vatch."
It was a big vatch. A huge one—and it was in hot pursuit of little Silver-eyes, who didn't seem in the least bit amused about anything. Downright scared, in fact.
The huge eyes were green, at the top of a mountain of tumbling black energy, roiling and twisting klatha force. The vatch paused abruptly in its chase, its eyes fixed on Pausert and his crew.
HOW DID THEY GET HERE? HOW ODD. The big vatch laughed thunderously. NO—HOW DELIGHTFUL! WELL, I'M GLAD I FOLLOWED YOU AFTER ALL, YOU LITTLE NUISANCE.
Pausert hastily began fashioning klatha hooks in his mind.
They're mine! All mine! hissed the little one, buzzing around the big vatch and then hastily retreating.
Before Captain Pausert could react, he was plucked, no, hurtled, out of the Venture. He was dimly aware of the passage of enormities of time and space. And then of sitting down, hard, onto blue-green spongy stuff.
His first realization was that he'd actually felt that landing. The next was that, far from the darkness of a few moments before, his senses were almost drowning in colors. The horizon was pricked by towers. Improbably slim towers, elfin and beautiful, and very white against a sky that was definitely a shade of primrose. Somewhere in the middle distance a waterfall splashed.
He glanced around hastily. To his immense relief, he saw that the whole crew of the Venture had come with him and were sitting on the same spongy material. Above them, parasol-like trees stretched feathery red leaves towards an alien sun. The air was full of strange but almost intoxicating scents.
"Where are we?" asked Vezzarn, warily. "Boy, I really hate this witchy stuff."
Hantis answered, in an almost dreamy voice. "We're on Nartheby. Nartheby in her golden age." She pointed to the towers on the horizon. "The towers of fabled Delaron were destroyed during the final phase of the quarantine wars. We lacked the skills needed to rebuild them. They are partly creations of klatha force."
Pausert knew that time and space were not limiting to vatches, particularly large ones. He was also grimly aware that this was a game to them, an entertainment played with what they considered to be phantasms of their minds. And that a vatch loved to test its phantasms, to see if the pieces in its mind-games had a role in the dream-drama.
True, there was usually a way out for pieces of quality. Although not always—the vatch who had placed them on the Worm World had fully expected them to be destroyed. The immensely powerful and capricious living klatha creatures were quite capable of maneuvering players into hopeless situations, just to watch the drama of their doomed efforts to escape.
And even if there was a way out, there was usually only one. Not for the first time, the captain wished that vatches would just leave him alone. Of course, that wasn't likely. Klatha use attracted the creatures; the Venture must have stood out like a lighthouse.
"What do we do now, Captain?" asked Vezzarn, looking nervously around.
Pausert did rather wish that people wouldn't keep asking him that. He really had no idea. This vatch was undoubtedly watching, but from beyond the range at which the Karres witches could rell it.
And there seemed to be a more immediate problem, anyway. By the deep-throated rumble issuing from Pul, there was something else watching them too. Pausert felt the hairs on his neck rising the way they had when the Sheem war robot had been stalking up behind them. He stood up, turning as he did so.
Of course. The vatch would not have chosen a safe, comfortable place to deposit its play pieces.
No. They just had to be in trouble.
Hantis had turned from her rapt contemplation of the towers and was now looking in horror at what Pul was growling at. "Gnyarl!"