Bradley, Marion Zimmer - Hunters of the Red Moon

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Bradley, Marion Zimmer - Hunters of the Red Moon orig

DEDICATION

Grateful thanks and acknowledgments are due to PAUL EDWIN ZIMMER

Marshal and Weapons Consultant of the Society for Creative Anachronism who kindly supplied me with

information about the nature and use of all the weapons used in the Hunt, and provided continuity

for all the fighting scenes. However, the reader is urgently requested not to blame him for any

feckless mistakes which I may have made in using the material which he supplied. Whatever is good

or accurate in what I say of weapons is my good brother's; whatever is wrong or misinformed is

certainly my own.

-M.Z.B.

CHAPTER ONE

That speck of light had been hanging in the same part of the sky, it seemed, for a long

time.

Dane Marsh lounged on the prow of the _Seadrift, naked except for trunks and a loose shirt

flung over his sunburned shoulders, and watched the unmoving point of light. _Sun on the wing of a

plane, he thought _Sign of life, the first in days. Human life, that is; plenty of flying fish,-

dolphins; depends how far you want to go down the scale to call life; billions and billions of

shrimp and plankton.

_But we're off the regular jet plane routes, and way off the shipping lanes. The last ship

I sighted was that tanker nineteen days ago.

He wondered if it _was a plane.

He entertained himself briefly with the thought of men in business suits, women in nylons

and furs, seated in orderly rows, maybe even watching a movie, eighteen hundred miles from the

nearest coast. Out here, where two hundred years ago, Captain Bligh and twenty-two men sailed for

weeks and months in an open boat, starving and burned up by the sun; and now Pan American Airlines

flew over the same area in a few hours, just time enough for an American first-run movie and a

couple of drinks.

I _wouldn't mind one of those drinks, right now, with ice in it, Dane thought. _Seadrift

did pretty well, all things considered, in the food and drink department, what with freeze-dried

chow mein and beef stroganoff, but he would like a long cool drink with ice in it, served to him

by one of those pretty stewardesses. A refrigerator on a thirty-foot boat would be stretching

things a little.

_Damn it, that plane doesn't seem to be moving. It's just hanging there. One place.

Obviously, then, Dane told himself without moving from his idle vantage point, it couldn't

be a plane. Reflection on a cloud, or something.

For miles around, in every direction, the Pacific was quiet, slow ripples moving, almost

imperceptibly, out of the east and dying away toward the sunset. _Seadrift was ghosting along, her

vast acreage of spinnaker set to catch the lightest of airs-a light breeze usually sprang up about

sundown-but for the moment, even the solitary crew was superfluous. Dane Marsh knew he should get

up, check the self-steering, go below and make himself a pot of tea, put out a fishline for any

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stray overnight catch, but the cumulative effect of sun and sea and silence held him half

hypnotized, staring at the distant and unmoving light which looked more and more like the typical

circular flash of sunlight on bright metal, the wing of a distant plane. He liked the idea that it

was a plane, that there were other human beings within sight, if out of reach. Stewardesses in

miniskirts.

_It's been two hundred and eighty-four days, by actual count, since I saw a woman who

could speak English. Or even one who couldn't. Why the hell did I ever get this notion, anyway?

Sailing around the world- alone in a small boat-_it's not as if I'd be the first. Or even the

fastest.

It seemed a good idea at the time, that's all.

So what if he wasn't the first? These days, everything worth doing, in the adventure line,

had already been done. Climbing Everest Sailing around the Horn alone. Reaching the North Pole.

Everything except going to the moon, and that took a kind of education and sponsorship he never

could manage.

I envy _the first guy to hike around it on foot. Now there's _an adventure for some lucky

bastard, someday. . . .

Reluctantly, Dane Marsh hauled himself up from his lazy perch. Work to be done. The sails

were slamming in the first wisps of the oncoming night breeze; he adjusted the jib and the poled-

out spinnaker slightly, and set a new tack, then went down to root out some supper. Belowdecks the

cabin was stifling in the heat; he had debated taking advantage of the quiet sea to cook something

hot, but the steambath effect discouraged him. He opened a packet of rye crackers and a tin of

cheese, dumped lemon crystals into drinking water and stirred in sugar, and carried the food and

drink on deck, to catch the breeze.

The light lingered long in these latitudes at this time of year, and the sun lingered, low

and red on the horizon, making a crimson and scarlet track across the barely moving sea. A tiny

crescent of moon, a mere scrap of silver, hung low and dim above the setting sun. High above, a

glimmer of the evening star-

_No, Dane Marsh thought incredulously, _it's the same damn light!

He knitted his brows, determined to solve the puzzle. A plane? Hell no; the oldest prop

plane would have been miles out of sight-range by now. A jet would have been long gone while he

was watching it. Satellite? No; they _move. Weather balloon? Well, _maybe one could drift this far

off an inhabited coast, possibly with the wind from Australia, but it would be a real freak.

He bit into his crackers and cheese, watching the strange light which hung, seeming to

brighten, in the slowly fading red twilight. It seemed self-luminous, and was now the apparent

diameter of a golf ball.

_Some weather phenomenon, no doubt, but one I've never seen in fifteen years spent mostly

at sea.

Oh, well, he told himself, if there was one thing you learned at sea, it was that you've

always got more to learn. This old world still had plenty of surprises left for people who kept

their eyes and ears open, Dane thought, munching at his crackers.

It was getting bigger. Now it was the apparent size of a small dinnerplate, and had

elongated somewhat from round to oval.

I _wonder if this is what people are seeing when they report seeing flying saucers-_excuse

me-_Unidentified Flying Objects! This was sure as hell some kind of flying object, and it was

about as unidentified as he ever saw!

Now he could see that it was definitely solid, although without any idea as to its actual1

distance he could not judge its size. He watched, in growing wonder and wild surmise, as it

settled slowly down toward the surface of the water and grew ever greater, greater, more huge and

unbelievably contoured.

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_Flying saucer? Flying skyscraper, more like it!

It was bigger than an ocean liner; bigger than a tanker.

No plane ever built was this size. _Not even the Russians ...

Fear surged over him. Not, yet, the obvious fear of the great vessel, but-to a man of Dane

Marsh's type-a deeper, more compelling fear.

_Have I freaked out? Loneliness does weird things to people. . ..

He fought for calm, setting his teeth and reaching out to grip the familiar mast of the

_Seadrift. The smooth white paint he had just renewed two months ago, already specked with the

relentless eroding of the salt. His own hand, calloused with handling ropes and spars. His pulse,

a little elevated with fright, was still perceptible and pounding steadily away, and his eyes were

clear, for when he moved his head and blinked the huge strange _thing had not moved.

_Well, I'm not nuts, anyway. Not dreaming or hallucinating.

_Therefore, even if there isn't any such thing, that thing is definitely there. If I'm

seeing it, and there's nothing wrong with my eyes, it must exist.

_And therefore-his breath caught in his throat at the next, inescapable step of his logic-

_if no country on Earth has ever built anything remotely like this, it must somehow come from

outside.

He discovered that his arms and legs were ridged, in the heat of the tropical sunset, with

gooseflesh. _Outside. In one great step, his awareness had transcended the slow steps of

scientists toward the stars. _There was something out there.

And it swept over him, with a shuddering thrill. _Did I think there weren't any adventures

left?

Hard on the heels of that came a sudden icy fear. All this time, and they had kept their

very existence secret; what would happen to him if they happened to notice him watching them? He

did not yet believe they were malicious. Why should they be? A spaceship capable of traveling

interstellar distances (what strange metal was that hull, pale with a shimmer like a peacock's

wing?) would pay no more attention to a little ship like the _Sea-drift than he, Dane Marsh, paid

to a flying fish. (But then, what did he do when a flying fish landed on his deck in the morning?

Sometimes he threw it back. But if he happened to be hungry, he fried it for breakfast.)

Dane Marsh began, moving swiftly and steadily, to tack his ship to wear around. He was

curious, yes, but he'd rather watch from a safer distance. He had no desire to end up in a sort of

galactic frying pan.

His arms felt heavy and clumsy as he lifted them to haul on the ropes; then a curious

buzzing sound, a tingling, began to ring in his ears. He was possessed with a sense of frantic

urgency, but it seemed as if he were wading through a sticky pool of molasses; it was an effort to

lift his foot from the deck, and the growing sense of unreality swept him with renewed terror.

_Is this all a hallucination, then? A bad dream turning into a nightmare?

With savage effort, he twisted his head around so that he could see the great looming

ship. Slowly, slowly, a hatchway was opening, and a blinding light shining from inside, but Dane

Marsh hit the deck and lay there, clawing faintly as he struggled to rise.

By the time the deck swayed under the strange alien step, he was unconscious, still

struggling in his dreams.

They were off the jet routes and _way off the shipping lanes, and no other eye on Earth

saw the great ship before it winked out of normal space five miles above the central Pacific

Ocean. The _Seadrift was found, empty, drifting, five weeks later by a yacht bound for Hawaii . .

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CHAPTER

TWO

Dane Marsh came up to awareness with a savage pain in his throat, rising up out of

confused nightmares of wild beasts clawing at his jugular vein, of spurting blood and smells which

somehow roused an atavistic terror (lions, fresh blood, the faint rottenness of something dead),

and then, all at once, he was conscious. His eyes, flicking open, took in all at once the white

cold surroundings, the two forms (nightmare! Man-tall, but flat-faced, _furred-a lion's mane!)

bending over him. The

needles still in his throat. He ripped, tensed swelling muscles, straggled to cry out, but

only a tearing numbness lanced with split-second prickles of agony burst his throat

He was strapped down. Tied, hand and foot, not a muscle to move-

_Tortured!

He squeezed his eyes shut again, hi spasmodic horror, then, fighting for calm, slowly

opened them. His throat was numb, now, without pain; had they tried to remove his vocal cords? The

two lion-faced creatures had hands not too unlike human hands, working delicately about his

throat, but now he felt no pain at all, only an odd numbness. Well, whatever the hell they were up

to, he couldn't have moved an eyebrow to stop them, so they couldn't mean him all _that much harm

if they went to this much trouble to anesthetize him.

He looked around. Odd metallic things hanging from smooth bulkheads; unidentifiable, but

they'd have been equally baffling, he supposed, in a really up-to-date hospital. He studied the

two lion-faced things. They had hands with, he realized, a double thumb, moving with extreme deft

suppleness, and the hands were encased in thin cloth of some sort. They both wore coverall

garments of gray-blue fabric. He wished he could see what they were doing with his throat. There

was a sudden wrench as one of them twisted and adjusted something there, then he felt the painless

prick and tug; they were sewing him up. One of them touched him briefly with a long light-tipped

wand, and spoke aloud,

"You'd think sooner or later some of these savages would realize we're not trying to hurt

them, but they all fight like fiends," the first one said. "This one's not as bad as most. Is he

hooked up yet?"

Dane Marsh blinked. Were they speaking English? No, if he listened carefully he could hear

the curious guttural syllables, but they made sense....

"I think so, I'll try him," the second, slightly taller one said, and bent over Dane

Marsh. "Please don't struggle, and we will let you go; we don't want you to injure yourself. We

have simply equipped you with an implanted translator disk. See, now you can understand what is

said to you. Please tell me if you can hear and understand what I am saying."

Dane Marsh found that the straps holding him to the table were slackened slightly so that

he could sit up, although his wrists were still strapped down. He ran Ms tongue over dry lips. He

felt parched. His voice felt hoarse and strange as he said, "Yes, I can hear you all right. What-

where am I? How did I get here? What do you want with me?"

"All right," said one to the other. "Successful. I don't like the ones where they never do

understand, and we have to treat them like cattle. Nice work."

"Mmm, yes. Not much area for the disk in this one. I was afraid I'd cut a nerve. I haven't

had much luck with proto-simians. Okay, take him back to the rest, then."

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Dane shouted, "Answer me, damn you! What do you want with me? How did I get here? Who are

you people, anyway?"

One of the lion-faced things said, "This is the part that always gets me. When they start

asking for answers. It's a lousy job, all things considered." He prodded Dane with the light-

tipped wand; Dane flinched with the sharp, painful electric shock.

The other creature said, "No need for that, Ferati, he isn't one of the dangerous kind.

Anyway, there's a tangler field up there if we need it." He looked at Dane, warily loosing his

wrist straps and said, "It isn't our duty to answer your questions, but they will be answered in

due time. You have nothing to lose, and everything to gain, by being patient. In a few minutes

someone will come to take you back to your quarters. Now if you will go peacefully, perhaps we can

make you a little more comfortable. Is your mouth dry? That's only the aftereffects of the

anesthetic and the tangler field they used when they brought you on board. Here, try this." He

handed Dane a disposable cup of some liquid; Dane found he could move one hand. He sipped it

gingerly and found it was sour but remarkably thirst-quenching.

Over his head one of them said, "I wonder if he's going to be one of the more intelligent

and tractable ones."

"Hope so. The Old Man is always talking about getting a couple of real wild ones, but last

time-"

A speaker on the wall buzzed and one of the lion-faced creatures said without looking up,

"Right away," and, taking the cup from Dane, indicated that he should stand up. "Go over to that

door. Someone will be there to take you to your quarters...."

Dane dug in his heels stubbornly. "Not until I get a few questions answered," he said. "I

know I'm on board a spaceship. But why? Where do you come from? What are you going to do with me?"

_The being who had shocked him with the wand made a threatening gesture. "I already told

you; it is no part of our duty to answer your questions. Do as you're told and you won't get

hurt."

Dane put Ms head down and rushed. He actually seized the lion-headed creature with one

outstretched hand, giving a sharp judo twist

And the roof fell in on him and he disappeared.

When Dane Marsh woke again he was in. a cage.

That was his first impression; shadows of slanting bars running up and down between him

and the light, which was bluish-white and pale. A cage.

He stirred, sat up, dizzily clutching his head.

On second look, more prison than cage. A large barred room, lined on one wall with

sleeping bunks, netting crisscrossed in front of them-he supposed, to keep the occupants from

falling out during fast maneuvers. In the large room there were about a dozen people.

People; loosely. About half of them were human like himself, or with differences too minor

for him to see at once. None were the lion-faced breed he had met hi the place where he had

awakened before, which he supposed was a sort of ship's hospital. But about half of the occupants

of the room where he found himself were very much like himself. The others were-different.

There was a being at least eight feet tall, who reminded him strangely of a spider; gray

and fuzzy and with strange large- eyes; and he had a confused impression of more arms and legs

than there ought to be, although he couldn't quite figure out why. There was one who was squat and

powerfully built with leathery skin or leathery clothing and a face-mask of the same. It was too

much for Dane Marsh to take in all at once.

_My God, am I in a zoo? Just one of the animals?

"Not a zoo," said a woman, standing by his bunk, and Dane realized he had spoken aloud.

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The words sounded strange but Dane seemed to "hear" them resonating against the disk which the

lion-things had implanted in his throat He supposed it was a mechanical translator of some sort;

he couldn't even begin to imagine the technology which had created such a thing. "No, you're not

in a zoo. Not quite. You'd probably be better off if you were. This is a Mekhar slave ship."

He started to swing his legs over the bunk; the woman bent and helped unstrap the webbing

from the front. He said, "How long was I out?"

"A couple of hours. They must have used a tangler set to stun-they have one in the

hospital, and I imagine they captured you with one."

Dane thought back to the last moments on the deck of the _Seadrift. "Yes. My arms and legs

kept moving slower and slower and I finally must have passed out. It was a nightmare."

"It was real enough," the woman said somberly. She was about Dane's age, with red hair

waving loosely, uncombed, and wearing a sort of loose shirt and trousers which looked like what a

Russian or Israeli girl soldier would wear. "Are you from one of the worlds of the Unity? Slaving

is forbidden in any of the Unity star-systems, but the Mekhar ships do it anyway; it pays well

enough for them to risk it."

Dane said, "I'm sorry. This is too much for me to take in. You mean your ship really does

come from the stars?"

She said, "As nearly as I can figure out, we've covered about thirty star-systems. The

slave quarters are almost full; I expect they'll be heading for the Mekhar marts quite soon now.

It's rare for them to pick up only one person on a planet; does your world have good guard systems

against slave raids?"

"None of us on my world have any idea such things exist," Dane said wryly. "People who

talk about ships from the stars are usually locked up-or laughed at anyway, as lunatics. I was

sailing alone in a small boat"

"Out of sight of land? That explains it, then; they just swooped down and grabbed you up,

probably expecting to find eight or ten people aboard," the redheaded woman said. "Somebody in the

control room is probably getting a clawing-out right now."

"The Mekhars? Are they the lion-faced things I saw?" He hesitated, reflecting that she

might not know what a _lion was, but evidently the mechanical translator provided her with the

nearest equivalent, for she said, "Yes, they're proto-felines, and I personally think they're the

most savage people in the Galaxy. They've been five times refused membership in the Unity, you

know. You-oh, excuse me, if your world is a Closed world, you probably don't even know what the

Unity is. Do you have space travel?"

"Only on a small scale. We're exploring our own moon and have had two or three manned

expeditions to Mars-our fourth planet," Dane said.

"Well, the Unity is-I suppose you'd say it's a loose Peace-and-Trade Federation. It was

the Unity which first formulated the concept of Universal Sapience; before that the proto-felines

looked down on us-the proto-simians-and proto-reptilians on both. And so forth and so on. You can

catch up on that some other time. Tell me, what's your name?"

He told her. "And yours?" he asked. "How did you happen to be captured? Doesn't your world

believe in starships either?"

She shook her head. "No. I took a calculated risk. I'm an anthropologist and I was

exploring a deserted artificial satellite, under permit, for traces of a prehistoric technology. I

was warned that there had been a Mekhar raid in the next star-system but it seemed to me a very

small chance they'd make it their next stop. I took the chance-and lost. They killed my brother,

and one of my three colleagues. One of the others is over there"-she pointed to where a heavyset

man, with a strong ethnic resemblance to the woman, was deep in conversation with a tall frail-

looking girl-"and the other was wounded in the raid and he's still in the ship's hospital. Unless

they've killed him, too, as damaged merchandise." Her tone was indescribably bitter. Dane didn't

blame her. "My name is Rianna. For all the good it does me now."

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She fell silent, and Dane looked around. Beyond the cage where he was, there were further

cages, equally barred and half open, all filled with people as far as he could see. He said, "How

can it possibly pay them to stop on a planet for one person?"

She shrugged. "Normally it doesn't Slaves are luxury merchandise and they usually take

more. Before we were luxury goods, I gather we were not so well-treated, but now they go to great

pains to keep us well and happy. They even equip us with translator disks, in spite of the fact

that it permits us to talk and possibly even plot against them, because-they say-when we can't

communicate with our fellow prisoners it's bad for our morale."

There was a stir down the open corridor between the rows of barred cages, and a loud

clanging sound. Rianna said, with a wry grimace, "Feeding time for the animals."

Two of the lion-faced creatures were wheeling a large cart down the hallway. As they drew

even with each door, one of them leveled a narrow black tube-evidently a weapon of some sort-at

the doorway while the other unloaded several flat packaged trays from the cart, each tray in a

different color, and carried them into the cell-or cage. Dane watched the proceeding without

moving. When they had finished, the clanging sound came again and Rianna said, "We can go now and

get the food. If anyone moves while they're unloading, he gets shot with the nerve-gun. It might

not kill you, but it's set to maximum pain-stimulation and it's like being dipped in boiling oil."

She shuddered. "I got in the way when we were captured; it was three days before I could move

without wanting to scream."

Dane had wondered about that; why all the prisoners in any one cage didn't rush the guards

at once. He said, "Doesn't anyone ever try to get loose?"

"Not twice," she said with a wry face. "And if you _did get loose, where would you go?

There are eighty Mekhars, all with nerve-guns, loose on this ship-maybe more." She moved to where

the other cell-mates were taking up the food. Rummaging through the stacked trays, she found two

color-coded with blue and green stripes. "This is Universal coding for proto-simian food. In a

pinch you can eat the plain green or the plain blue. Never touch red-coded or orange-coded stuff;

it hasn't the right vitamins. And the yellow-coded stuff will poison you; it's coded for

insectivores."

The redheaded man with the strong ethnic resemblance to Rianna came over to them, tray in

hand. They dropped on the floor to eat. He said to Dane, "Welcome to the fellowship of the

damned," as he tore open his package. "My name is Roxon. I see Rianna has been welcoming you."

"Dane Marsh," Dane said. He slowly opened the package. Heated by some internal mechanism,

the food was smoking hot, and, when he began to spoon it up, surprisingly tasty; some kind of

mush, slightly sweet, some kind of crisp textured stuff, slightly salty; a soup-like liquid,

somewhat bitter, but good. "At least these Mekhars, or whatever you call them, don't mean to

starve us."

"Why should they?" The squat creature with the leathery skin-at close range Dane could see

that it _was skin-came and hunkered down beside them. "Welcome, fellow thinker, in the name of

Universal Sapience and Peace." His package was coded in yellow and red stripes. Dane caught a

whiff of it; it smelled slightly sulphurous and decaying, but the leathery-skinned creature began

to eat it with gusto, using his long prehensile fingers with extreme fastidious delicacy, allowing

the food to rest only on the tips, and tearing it up with long strong teeth. "Why should they not

treat us well? We are their profit My world is a poor one and I am seldom this well-fed, but what

does the Voice of the Egg say? May his wisdom live till the suns burn out. _Surely it is better to

hunt flies in a stinking swamp, and live at peace, than to feast on fine foods in a great house

torn by war and strife"

Dane almost chuckled. To hear calm philosophy spoken by a huge and savage reptile-the

giant, squat being turned, his teeth bared.

"Do you laugh at the wisdom of the Divine Egg, stranger?" His voice was very soft and

gentle.

"By no means," Dane said, drawing back slightly. "There is a similar proverb in my own-er-

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my own race's Great Book of Wisdom; it says, 'Better to live in a corner of the housetop than to

dwell in a broad house with a brawling woman."

"Er, hmmm," rumbled the lizard-man, "Surely all wisdom is one, my proto-simian friend.

Even in slavery one may find material for philosophy, then. Yet share your laughter, friend."

Dane said, fumbling for words, "Among my people, it is thought amusing when words of peace

are spoken by-by anyone of-of a warlike and fierce aspect, and by my standards you look-er-fierce.

No offense meant."

"None taken," he said gently, "although surely it is the large and fierce person who needs

to look and speak with peaceful wisdom, in order not to affront others, while the small and weak

person proclaims his peaceful nature with his very appearance."

"It doesn't always work that way on my world," Dane said. Not in his wildest dreams had he

ever thought of discussing philosophy over a shared meal with a giant reptile-no; he was obviously

a man of some sort. But it was mind-boggling, certainly a Mad Tea Party if there ever was one.

"My name is Aratak," the leathery lizard-man said.

Dane told the man his name, and he repeated it thoughtfully. "I know not what a Dane may

be, but a Marsh is my homeplace name, and we are therefore home-brothers, friend Marsh. Let us be

brethren in misfortune, then, since all marshes are one marsh, as all seas are one sea, and all

swamps are one swamp within the Cosmic All."

Dane Marsh scratched his head. There was an element of madness about this giant

philosopher that he liked. "It suits me," he said.

"We shall explore one another's spiritual philosophy at leisure," Aratak said. "As for me,

I have proved what I knew, but never fully believed before; that Universal Sapience is a truth and

not only a spiritual philosophy. I have learned in these weeks of slavery that true brotherhood

can exist between men and humanoids. I had paid only lip service to it before; it seemed to me

that no true intelligence could exist in proto-simians, for they must spend so much of their

metabolic cycle enslaved to their reproductive needs. Simians on my planet are only good for pets,

and I had never known one in the Fellowship of the Unity before. So to all of you"-Dane and Rianna

ducked as his large-clawed gesture took them all in-"my eternal thanks for an enlargement of my

spiritual growth."

Roxon said somberly, "Let's hope we live long enough for the spiritual growth to do us

some good in what's left of our lives," and they all fell silent again. Dane scraped his tray

clean of the last morsel of food and put it aside. He felt better now. He knew where he was, and

there was no immediate prospect of death or torture.

Nevertheless the prospect was anything but pleasing. All his life Dane Marsh had been a

man of action, in a modern world where that takes some doing. In modern society most men walk an

orderly path from the cradle to the grave, not acting so much as being acted upon; Dane had spent

his whole life breaking out of that mold, and now the enforced helplessness weighed upon him with

an almost personal rage. Caught up without warning, caged, equipped against his will with the

damned translator disk which made a thin painless lump against the skin of his neck-it made things

easier, but still it was something that had been _done to him against his will.

Now that the food was restoring his strength, the infuriating sense of helplessness was

turning rapidly to anger. These people, these citizens of a great Galactic civiliza tion, might

sit in their cages and wait for whatever the Mekhar slave ships did to them; he didn't intend to.

He heard, outside, the clanging sound which he had heard first when the Mekhar came into

the corridor to distribute the food. He filed it away for future reference; evidently a single

mechanism unlocked all the cage doors when the feeding cycle began and locked them again when it

was completed. The Mekhar were evidently pretty confident in their weapons and the terror they

inspired .in their prisoners, to leave the cages unlocked so long,, That knowledge might be useful

later, but for the moment Dane decided to bide his time.

The other captives in their cell-the hairy creature who gave the impression of more arms

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and legs than he should have had (Dane decided it was the curious way the limbs were segmented and

jointed), a couple of ordinary-looking men and women, a tall narrow-faced creature who seemed

covered with dark fur-were finishing their trays of food. One tray had not been touched, and Dane

noticed it had the green-and-blue coding that identified human food. He looked around the cell.

Yes; on a low bunk beside the wall, a slender form lay motionless, enveloped in a long white robe,

the face turned away from them.

Dane said, "What's the matter with that one? Hurt, sick, dead?"

"Dying," Rianna said quietly. "She has refused food for ten meal-periods now. She is an

empath from Spica Four; they prefer to die, when away from their worlds. It won't be long now.

It's all we can do for her now-to let her die in peace."

Dane looked at the redheaded woman with a throb of revulsion. "And you're all just sitting

here and _letting her starve herself to death?"

"Of course," Rianna said indifferently. "I told you, they _always die, away from their own

world and their own people."

"And it doesn't bother you!" Dane burst out passionately.

"Oh, it bothers me." Her voice was quiet "But why should I interfere with her chosen fate?

Sometimes I think she is wiser than we."

Dane's face set in lines of disgust. He scrambled to his feet and picked up the extra

packet of food. He said, "Well, _I'm not going to sit here and watch a woman die.

if I can do anything about it." He strode across the room to where the woman lay. He was

fuming. _Just sit there and let her starve herself to death!

She did not move as he approached her, and for a moment he wondered if she was already

dead, or too far gone to be within his reach. He stood for a few moments over her bunk, looking

down in a sort of wonder at the beauty of the girl who lay there.

Formless thoughts cascaded through his mind: _This is what I seem always to have been

seeking, that elusive something I always thought must be just over the next mountain peak . . .

_beyond the next wave . . . _at the end of the rainbow. I didn't know it could be a woman ... _or

take a woman's form....

_And she's lying here dying, and we're both hopeless and in prison. Do I see her as all

beauty only because it's too late . . .? Does the impossible dream come within reach only when

it's forever out of reach?

In a wonder that was beyond pain, he stood motionless, the food tray forgotten and hanging

from his hand; then some faint, imperceptible movement like a soft breath made him aware that she

was still alive. And at once his formless thoughts of impossible beauty receded in a wash of hard,

practical sanity. Forget all that! She was just a girl, lying here slowly dying, but maybe not too

far gone yet. The wonder and awe died away in a surge of purely human pity. He knelt down beside

her and reached out, lightly, to touch her shoulder.

Before his hand -actually touched her, as if the very clamor of his thoughts disturbed

her, she stirred and turned slightly toward him. Her eyes, deep-set beneath feathery dark brows,

opened.

She was so pale that somehow he had expected the eyes to be blue; instead they were deep

russet-brown, the wide eyes of a forest animal. Her lips moved slightly as if she were trying to

speak, but her voice was too weak to be heard; it was only a faint murmur of protest, of

curiosity.

He said in a gentle voice, "Here, I've brought your food. Try to eat"

A murmured negative.

"Now listen," Dane said firmly. "This is nonsense. While you're alive you have a duty to

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all of us; to keep up your strength, in case we have a chance for escape or something like that

Suppose we were rescued, or es caped, and you were too weak to move, and we had to carry you, and

we were all recaptured because we had to stop and help you along? Wouldn't that be a dreadful

thing to do to all of us?"

Her lips moved again and somehow he had the impression of a faint smile, although the limp

and strengthless features did not actually move. The words were so quiet that Dane had to bend low

to hear.

"Why should any of you ... drink my cup...?"

"Because we're all human and all in this together," he said firmly. But he wondered, were

they really? None of them had cared enough to keep the girl alive, and maybe it was that knowledge

that had made her want to die. . . .

"Well, anyway, I care," he said, and his fingers sought her hand. "Come on. If you're too

weak to feed yourself, I'll feed you." He tore open the package, watching the self-heating element

gradually permeate it with steaming heat. He spooned up a little of the soupy liquid and put it to

her lips. "Come on, swallow," he said. "Start with this, it's easy."

For a moment he thought she would keep her lips obstinately shut; then she relaxed them

and let the soup slip inside, and after a moment he saw her throat move and knew she had swallowed

it. He felt a vast, wild sense of elation, but he was careful not to show it, only withdrawing the

spoon and raising another careful spoonful to her lips. After two or three more reluctant

mouthfuls she stirred as if she wanted to raise herself, and Dane put his arm around her and

supported her shoulders; he fed her the soup and a little of the mush, then withheld the spoon

when she nodded for more.

"Not just now. You shouldn't eat too much right away after such a long fast; wait a little

before you take any more," Dane advised, and she smiled faintly in comprehension as he let her

slide down on her pillow. "Yes, try to sleep again now, and next time you'll be stronger."

Her eyes were closing with weakness, but she opened them again with effort and whispered,

". . . are you?"

"Just another prisoner," he said. "My name's Dane Marsh. We'll get acquainted when you're

stronger. And your name is-"

"Dallith," she whispered, and abruptly dropped into sleep again, as completely withdrawn

from him as if she were dead.

Dane stood for a few more moments watching her, then straightened, reclaiming what was

left of the food tray and laying it on a piece of furniture.

Dallith. How lovely, and how it suited her delicate face and wild-creature eyes. For the

moment it was enough to know that she lived, that she had _chosen to live. He turned away, seeing

that the other prisoners had broken up into separate groups; but Rianna was still watching him. As

he came away she said with a deep bitterness, "You fool! What have you done?"

Dane said, "I think she'll live. It only needed someone to care whether she did or not.

Any of you could have done it."

Rianna said with inexpressible wrath, "How could you do that to her? After she had given

up, to wake her again to hope-and suffering-oh, you meddlesome _fool!"

Dane said, "It's not in me, to sit and let anyone die. While there's life, there's hope.

_You're alive, aren't you? And by choice?"

She only sighed and turned away from him. She said, not looking back, "I only hope you

never know what you've done."

CHAPTER

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