Camelot in Orbit Read online

  And then I told them what the Pug Boos had told me; making it as simple as I could so they’d at least understand a part of it: The Dark One was a single member of an alien life form. He’d been the first of his kind to pass through a space warp from his parallel universe to the Fomalhaut, binary system. The warp, or “gateway”-alien created-had been set up on Alpha, first planet of Fomalhaut H, now visibly blazing at some two billions of miles. As the first of a potential horde, the Dark One’s purpose was to search for proper hosts among Alpha’s life forms…

  But-strange quirk of fate, the Dark One had passed through the “gateway” and into the midst of a nuclear holocaust, unleashed by Alpha’s warring humanoids.

  Enter the Pug Boos, who consider themselves Universal Adjusters as opposed to our simple galactic status. Whatever. The Boos had been keeping a close eye on Alpha. At the very last moment they moved to transfer its humanoid remnants to Fregis, the second planet of Fomalhaut I. They sought three things, actually: to save the remnant humanoids whilst destroying their memories so they would be forced to evolve again; to destroy the first intruding, alien ship; and finally, to guarantee there would be no life of any kind for future aliens to occupy-they sterilized Alpha!

  Unbeknownst to the Pug Boos, however, the alien, which was the Dark One, had escaped its ship prior to destruction and had successfully occupied a single Alphian life form. The Boos had provided twelve great ships wherein the Alphians had crossed the void ‘twixt the two systems. The Dark One seized one. It landed in the far south-and Hish was founded. The great Reptilian Vuuns seized one-and thus their caretakers. One crashed, with a subsequent release of radioactive materials-and thus the mutant Yorns. Six of the remaining nine landed in the north, on the continent of Marack-thus the men of Marack, Ferlack, Kelb, Gheese, and Great Ortmund. The remaining three came to ground on the isles and southern shores of the River Sea-thus Kerch and Seligal. All ships were then destroyed by the Boos, as were all memories of Alpha. All this I told them, except I made no mention of the Pug Boo’s influence. The Alphian ships were theirs, I said, for such was their greatness then….

  I’d shifted the little scoutship nose-down, toward Fregis as It turned on its twenty-six hour, axial spin. I reached to take Murie’s hand. “Look now to your world,” I said, “for there’s nought like it anywhere. There are your ice caps.” I tried to explain this simply, too-“your snow lands, as you call them. And there, ‘neath the northern cap and winding about your northern hemisphere is your great land of Marack, and the countries of Marack, Ferlach, Kelb, and the others.” I pointed them out, and they marvelled. “And there,” I said, “beyond the mighty River Sea, is the southern world of Om. See all the isles between? Those are the Seligs wherein,” I forced a laugh, “I gained my spurs ‘gainst Selig pirates.”

  At my side I heard a faint but royal “Hmmmmmpppphhhh!”

  “The Om you see,” I continued, “is not so dark after all, is it? Indeed, much of it is a verdant land of jungle and great trees. And over there to the east are high mountains. And further to the east and south are the mountains of Ilt, where live the Vuuns. And directly south,” I said-and we were slowly drifting south-“all, too, is green. ‘Tis like Marack, except there be great moorlands, too, and sea towns alike to Klimpinge. And finally, there’s land like unto yours on the edge of the snow lands, in Marack’s province of Fleege.” I tipped Murie’s chin so that I could look into her eyes- “Remember?” I come from Fleege.” She whispered, “You come from the pits of Ghast, my love.” and sank her nails into my wrist.

  Oddly, Griswall was the only one to retain presence of mind as to our job. He asked calmly,

  “My Lord Collin, whereat is Hish, this foul one’s lair, who has troubled us so much these full five thousand years? I would see it, sir, a’fore we land to take it.”

  The sheer arrogance of his statement forced them from their reveries of the fairy world upon which they gazed. Rawl burst out laughing. Behind him I heard Charney’s and Tober’s hacking chuckles.

  But Rawl said seriously, “Collin-or whatever you are-“

  “Hold!” I said sharply. “I will ask you all to create no differences in your minds ‘twixt me and you-for there is none. I am what you are, no more, no less. My home is here, on Marack. But there is my home too-” and I waved a hand to the spheres, “as it is also yours!

  The answers to all questions, sirs, and my lady, will best be found in the doing of what we have to do. Now in terms of that, you’re pledged with me to go to Hish. To the men of Om, we’ll be as pirate princes, Rawl and me-come to seek more trade with Om. We’ll have good gold to prick their interest. We’ll display the heraldry of two lords of those Isles…. And we’ll spend our time ‘twixt now and sleep in an exchange of Selig and its ways.”

  Griswall asked bluntly, “What do we seek in Hish, my lord?”

  “The source of the Dark One’s power. Our task is to destroy it.”

  Rawl grinned, his humor returned. “And how will we do that, my heart’s friend?”

  I grinned right back so’s to add to the levity. I said, “In this adventure, sir, I’m not quite sure.”

  Murie said, “My lord? You do not know?”

  “Nay, my love. But it must be done in the next few days. If not,” and I looked to all of them, “then mayhap a beauteous world will die. Do you understand me?”

  I need not have said that. For they were warriors of Camelot-Fregis. More! They were also Alphians, my potential equal in every way. And too, that at least they would understand.

  For though having a potential for being my equal, I doubted much that even a fragment of what I had told them meant more than a beauteous fairy tale to a child at bedtime.

  The continents of Marack and Om wound round the planet in such a way that the greater part of the north was experiencing day whilst Om experienced night.

  I descended to treetop level on the west coast, even as twilight and darkness reached toward the city of Hish, some five hundred miles to the east. Our power source, Fregis-wise, was the use of anti-power; of a “faffing,” for lack of a better word, along the lines of the planet’s magnetism. We were in “null” plus “five,” which involved a distortion factor, producing something akin to invisibility. We turned inland from the seacoast town of Ceretz with its hundreds of dromonds, feluccas and trading and fishing vessels, to follow the narrow road to the Kaleen’s capital.

  We arrived within thirty miles of the city simultaneously with the sinking of great Fomalhaut I’s blood-red orb into the western sea behind us. All in that direction was now reds and purples, mixed with the striated colors of a southern borealis. The city of Hish lay dark-doubly so now for its new, protective bubble.

  We hovered, saw roads to the cardinal compass points; saw vague villages in forest clearings, moorlike savannahs; saw here and there a ghostly castle. In most ways it was not at all unlike the North.

  “We’ll need mounts,” I said, “so we’d best settle next a castle.”

  Rawl said, “Prisoners, too, for to ask the way of things. A question, Collin. We know of the Dark One’s power. Does yours match it?”

  I laughed, pleased at his blunt lack of guile. “Would that it did,” I told them.

  “But that of the lightning bolt, and Fairwyn’s death; ‘twas something new.”

  “Aye. But ‘twas a limited thing. The fact is that when you are near me, or in this ‘ship,’ you are safe from a ‘mind’ seizure, or ‘transference.’ But in no way can I protect anyone ‘gainst a purely physical attack. And I, too, with you, must suffer the threat of sword, spear, arrow, or stone from arbalest and sling.”

  Rawl grinned happily. “Well! We’ve a purpose after all. I’d have taken it poorly, Collin, had you brought us along to ‘mind your gear.”

  We grounded in a darkling vale hidden from the road on all sides by great trees and heavy underbrush. We dined on starship rations. They loved it; especially the Terran wines we used to wash it down. Griswall was particularly cheered. �
�By Ormon, Collin,” he announced, “I’d thought your province of Fleege to be a barren, one-crop land. But this”-and he held up a flagon of hearty Riesling-“reveals that you’ve much to tempt the palate.”

  But Murie looked only sad. And -I guessed that she’d sensed a thing she had never known before-that power does not necessarily lie in the hands of kings alone. And too, with me she felt a true estrangement, about which she knew not what to do.

  Giving Hooli to Griswall, I sent him and our student-warriors to sleep outside the ship.

  “If aught disturbs you,” I told him, “you have only to press upon this darkened circle.” I showed him where it was, one of four at the quadrant points of the door’s almost invisible line, an emergency entry.

  The bunk beds were in line, one above the other; thus providing for privacy…. Within minutes Murie’s hand reached from above to search for mine. She found it and lowered herself to join me. She was warm and sweetly naked. Thirst has no time for prattle, and we’d a full six months’ abstinence behind us …An eon later she snuggled against my naked chest to murmur, “Now tell me true, my love-what now will become of us?” as always-I be Harl Lenti, Marack’s ‘Collin,’ consort to the Princess Murie Nigaard Caronne, whom I will wed when this small business is over….”

  “Nay,” she said sharply. “Speak not in joke. I’m still a princess, sir, and not a child.”

  I leaned up on one elbow, my eyes but inches from her own. “List me good, my princess,” I said. “And keep it well within your head and heart. Though I be not from Fregis, still are we one and the same, you and I. For I have told you that you, too, are not originally from here. Didst ever pause to wonder that except for Pug Boos, all other animals of this world have six legs?”

  She frowned, screwed up her eyes. “No, my lord.”

  “Well, Murie, you also have but two. And-so do I-and there you have it.”

  (How’s that for brilliance in Adjuster parlance’?)

  “Have what, my lord?”

  “Why, the thing of the legs. It means that you, like me, do come from somewhere else.”

  “And a mooly-gog, sir,” she said with a cat-like, toothy grin, “has seven titties and gives milk. Where do they come from?”

  She was indeed a warlike Alphian.

  Dawn disclosed red Fomalhaut as hugely hanging in the east. Rain clouds, all shaped like ghostly ghouls ringed the horizon. We showered, the girls and Rawl marveling at soaps, colognes, and the like. Griswall and the others, having bathed in a rivulet that split the narrow vale, were fully armed and ready when we halled them. ‘Twas just then we found that Hooli had left us.

  Murie at first was too stunned to cry. Indeed, considering the veneration given Pug Boos by all Northerners, a soberness lay hard upon them all. There could be no greater portent of disaster than for a king to lose his Pug Boo. Hooli’s new clothes were scattered all about, causing Murie to finally burst into a paroxysm of crying-that he’d been eaten by some beast.

  “Nay, nay, my lady.” ‘Twas Griswall who hastened to calm her. “Tis not like that. In fact,” and he glanced to me before he snorted, hawked and spat, “there are more Boos in yonder copse,” and he pointed to a grove of great deciduous trees, “than ever there were in Marack.”

  -I watched them narrowly-They had to know it sometime-that Pug Boos did not come from Ormon’s “heaven.”…

  Following Griswall’s finger, they stared amazed. On almost every limb of every tree there sat a Pug Boo. Hooli had simply shed his clothes-to rejoin the herd.

  Great Ap, the Vuun, had told me in the long ago that the Boos were simple leaf-eaters who lived in the South. “And if the trees do not leaf properly,” he’d said solemnly, “the Boos but wait and stare, and finally fall to the ground, quite dead.”

  “They are that stupid?” I’d asked.

  “They are.”

  And he was so right. For when we walked among them, they showed no fear of us at all. They simply stared-and ate, and ate, and ate!

  “Murie,” I finally laughed. “They’re all alike. Consider then that all are Hooli! Pick a Boo-any Boo. We’ll get him for you.”

  “By the gods, Collin!” Her face was instantly white with anger, “I will not ‘pick a Boo’! If Hooli were there, he’d know me. Something has got him-and it’s your fault!”

  At that moment an intruding thunder of dottle paws sounded upon a distant road so that I quick looked toward the east, focusing my contacts. At six miles I espied a company of mutant Yorns, all streaming north from Hish. “There’ll be no time now for Hooli,” I said grimly.

  ‘We’ll seek him out when we return. Let’s to the road…”

  I had no plan, really, except to get mounts and quick. I phased out the scoutship, ignoring Murie’s still dark and angry looks and led them all on a quick climb to the road. If riders came by we’d either purchase their mounts, or take them. I doubted the latter would be necessary, however, since gold has a most salutary effect upon humanoids-everywhere.

  For the first time as we waited, I viewed the world of Om around me. I had thought it would be, hemispherically, exactly as Marack was, in summer. It was-but not quite. There was an extra “something” that made it different. Birds flew and twittered. Butterflies fluttered.

  Small animals peered at us from the safety of mouldering logs, thorned brush and trees. In the distance two fighting kottees-Fregisian grizzlies-roared. It was all so pastoral. Except that the clouds seemed much darker, more ominous; the water where Griswall and the others had bathed, less clear, more bitter in taste. And too, as I focused upon the great trees and the myriad flowers-I saw a “difference.” It seemed manifest in an odd lack of “control”: thick, heavy leaves; boughs and tendrils that writhed and grasped; riotous colors; cloying, heavy perfumes. The lightness, the sweetness of simple beauty was not there. The very atmosphere was morbid, oppressive. I was reminded of the words of the Keelian philosopher, Arditch, to the effect that, “Tyranny, on any world, will influence in manifest ways the physical essence of that world.” But somehow I think I’d known that no violets would grow in Omnian vales…

  Still, it was not too disquieting.

  There was a sudden hallooing then, toward the east, and an accompanying thud of dottle paws. From around the bend in the near distance a young knight came riding at full gallop. He wore only a light chain-shirt, was armed with sword and shield, and controlled his dottle with his knees. His displayed blazonry was the same as that which waved from the twin-turrets of a castle a mile or so to the west.

  His poor dottle was winded, lathered too, from blubbery nose to tail. It resembled a large laundry bag on wash day. Indeed, considering, I would not have stopped him. But young Charney, anxious to be the first to do a deed in Om, any deed, sprang to the road and literally flung himself at the dottle’s harness. That beast, true to its training, came to a skidding halt, panting as would a gog in heat, and waving its fat rump.

  The young knight attempted to flatten Charney with his shield’s edge, but my man was too quick for him. Hargis and Tober then dragged him from the saddle. He was strong and desperate. It was all the two of them could do to wrestle him to the ground.

  He’d hardly had time to shout, “By Hoom Tet, had I another sword arm, I’d take the lot of you,” when around the same bend came two more knights, six men-at-arms, and four great Yorns-all obviously in pursuit.

  Tober, glancing up from his perch on the Omnian’s chest, had the presence of mind to whistle a shrill halting order, causing the oncoming mounts to slow their pace somewhat.

  It was our turn-and we had no choice-for drawn swords on Fregis-Camelot will kill you first; ask questions later. And theirs were out and ready.

  They came on three abreast. We’d leapt to mid-road. Ducking the fat nose of the mount to the right, I came up to drive my sword full through the rider’s chest; upon which I jumped to plant my feet square on his dottle’s rump. Balanced solidly, I brought my greatsword around and back to take the heads of the first t
wo of the second three. I then skewered the last man of that trio by throwing myself full at him. My weapon freed, I seated myself in the saddle and whirled to face the others of the column.

  Rawl, on my left, had gone under the head of his adversary’s dottle to plunge his shortsword to the hilt in the man’s armpit. He too then hurled the body down, mounted, and came to join me. The canny Griswall had simply grabbed the center dottle’s tender nose, bent the squalling animal to its knees, whilst his blade went full over the neck-as the Terran matador to the bull-to take the rider through the throat.

  Six men we’d killed, in as many seconds-nay! eight! For Rawl, all blood-mad and heated-he was also under the eyes of his lady, or so he told me later-drove full on the halting column to take the head of one and the arm of another, who instantly fell screaming from the saddle to run into the woods. He’d obviously not last long. The hulking Yorns, half again in size and strength to true men, though slow in reflex and lacking much in brains, were the only ones left alive.

  Their leader, a contradiction, wisely led them in a mad dash across a field to a thick forest close to the road to the north where they ranged their mounts with their backs to the tree boles. We followed to confront them. ‘Twas obvious they’d sell their lives dearly.

  Our stalwarts rode up, the young knight with them; no longer complaining. Indeed, he was literally shouting his joy at his deliverance. “By Hoom Tet’s fat-thighed lover,” he yelled to me; he’d sensed I was the leader, “such sword-play, sir, I’ve never seen before. From whence came you all? Hey, But you’ve a strange blazonry indeed. Who are you?”

  His accent was difficult, Considering the distance from Otis to Marack, in space and years, we were lucky to understand him at all. Ignoring his questions, I asked, “What of these?” pointing to the Yorns.

  “Why, kill them, sirrah, They’re the Lord Haken’s boughten swordsmen from the ‘pack’ of Twill. They’re better than most.”

  “We want their dottles, not their lives.”