The Women-Stealers of Thrayx Part 7

"Wait! I'll only believe your proof if I can hear it for myself!"

"Come along then and you shall hear it!" The thick lips slackened into a lascivious grin that sickened her, but she hastened to follow him.

And he did not see her as she scooped the jagged stone from the ground, thrust it into a tattered tool-pocket of her uniform.

Past the quiescent, sweat reeking bodies of the bull-muscled guards, into the dimly lit chamber beyond, Bruhlla half walking, half shambling before her.

She watched him as he switched the device into life; waited until its dull orange glow a.s.sured that it was ready for use. So much like the communications room of an ordinary s.h.i.+p of Earth, she thought. So like the familiar things of her life, yet so alien.

He had barely slipped the mentacom's headpiece on his skull and adjusted a simply calibrated control dial when she struck him at the base of his thick neck with the stone, all the force of her supple young body behind it.

Blood spurted as its ragged edges tore through flesh, bone and nerves, and slowly, Bruhlla crumpled from the rude chair that held his dying bulk.

Thought images as well as words, Kriijorl had explained during their flight so long ago in the helio. Language would be no barrier. Over the head, like this ... and this switch--

She twirled the large dial from its setting, watched a slender thread of light within a transparent sphere above it fluctuate in breadth as the dial twisted. And when it was at its widest, she gambled that it indicated the broadest transmitting beam of which the mentacom was capable.

And then she marshalled her thoughts, carefully chose the simplest words.

_Warning, Ihelos! There is an Earthman among you at work as a spy for Thrayx! I am a captive._

Over and over, the same words, the same thought images which they formed; of Cain, of this h.e.l.l-planetoid itself.

The orange glow pulsated as though itself alive with the desperation of her signal. And she heard the guard barely in time.

A howl of rage bellowed from him as she turned, twisted frantically just outside his grasp, darted headlong through the door.

And she was quicker than those outside; she was beyond them, running, the breath sobbing in her throat.

Away from the blood-soaked thing she'd left crumpled in death behind her, and toward the jungle's edge. Toward some new horror, perhaps, and toward a freedom that would be short-lived at best. For she had killed Bruhlla, and she knew they would not stop now until she had been run to earth.

The three men watched as the six s.h.i.+ps landed in the jungle clearing; emptied of the selected Thrayxite women who would in little more than a day's time re-enter them, the breeders' seed within their bodies, for the journey back to the mother planet.

It had been the same the day before, and the day before that, and in the distance, they had watched similar craft descend toward other of the many colonies with which the lush planetoid was dotted.

"Nuts!" Cain said. He turned to Mason. "What the h.e.l.l else is there to do? Sit here and rot? They won't kill us. They'll just let Nature take its course--"

"There's more to be done than simply make a run for it to one of their s.h.i.+ps," Mason snapped. "The mentacoms on them, Kriijorl's said a dozen times, haven't the necessary range."

"So what's your plan? Or don't I get to hear any of the details?"

Mason studied the big man's face. Captured in his attempt to rescue the Earthwomen, he had said. His explanation had been that simple.

New-UN hadn't believed Judith, but she had convinced him, and so he'd tried on his own responsibility, and simply hadn't made it. And then they'd brought him here, scarcely hours after Mason and Kriijorl had themselves been delivered to the teeming colony.

Logical enough, yes. Cain was the kind who would try such a crazy stunt, alone, with such supreme overconfidence in his own muscle power. Yet--

"We must not be impatient," Kriijorl interrupted his thought. He stood up, his blond head nearly touching the top of the plastifabric tent.

"We must be certain and wait for the best time, Mister Cain. For if we fail in our first attempt, there will not be a second. And it has only been three days. As yet, we have been left quite to ourselves; even my life has not been threatened."

Mason noticed the puzzled frown that was across the Ihelian's forehead. "Do you think--"

"I cannot even guess the reason for that," Kriijorl murmured, as though more to himself than in answer to Mason's question. "By all the rules of our conflict, I should be stretched naked for the jungle beasts by now."

"Forget it!" Cain broke in quickly. "You're alive now, and if we can have a little action around here maybe you'll stay that way. We've watched long enough. They don't guard those s.h.i.+ps at all. These breeders they keep drugged to the eyes, so why should they? I say we just grab one and blast off! Unless somebody's got a better plan, and I still haven't heard one--"

"Awfully anxious, aren't you, Mister Cain?" Mason asked.

"I'm not afraid of 'em if that's what you mean!"

Lance turned to Kriijorl. "Maybe he's right. We've watched for three days. What do you think?"

The Ihelian looked out across the colony of low, square-shaped enclosures and to its far side where the twisted jungle began; to the spot where the mentacom was housed in a squat, guarded dome of crudely-shaped steel. Then he turned back to the Earthman, and Mason saw the uncertainty in his eyes.

"We have gained far less than I had hoped by watching," he said slowly. "We have learned the number of their guards, and the period of their change, but perhaps that is all we shall learn. If you think that as soon as there is darkness--"

"About time!" Cain said sourly. "And it'll be straight for the--"

"To the mentacom first," Mason said quietly. "And after that, to the s.h.i.+ps if we can, Mister Cain." He felt strangely calm as his eyes met Cain's squarely. Somewhere within him, there was something changing.

"Take it from an ex-has-been, big man! That's how it's going to be!"

The camp was dark and silent as the three men left the tent. They walked as if from boredom, changing direction often as though at random; yet they moved with a deceiving swiftness, and each step brought them closer to the crude dome. The sound of their movements was as a whisper that lost itself with the quiet murmur of the night wind through the web of the jungle, and when they were close enough, they halted, to wait; to watch.

There was the soft clink of metal on metal and the mutter of dead-toned voices as the guard changed. Four hulking shapes walked at last in a tired shamble from the structure housing the mentacom. Four others prepared to take their posts.

And there was little to disturb the silence after that.

A m.u.f.fled grunt, a choked off curse lost in a brief rustle of undergrowth as though a sudden breeze had momentarily ruffled its languid calm. And that was all.

Four breeders lay dead outside the dome.

Mason felt the warm stickiness of blood on his face, and the sting of a deep cut somewhere upon it. He saw that Cain was straightening over a mangled form; that Kriijorl had overcome odds of two to one. The breeder at his own feet had died swiftly of a deftly broken neck, a reddened dirk still clutched in his stiffening fingers.

Then they were inside the dome, and Kriijorl was placing the head-unit of the mentacom over his matted yellow hair.

Mason watched in the half-light of the pulsing orange glow, listened to the heaviness of Cain's breathing.

And he saw Kriijorl's face stiffen suddenly. With a swift movement the Ihelian had handed him the head-unit, and with slippery fingers he fumbled the device into place over his own head.

Before he could think he had given Cain all the warning that he had needed.

"My G.o.d, it's Judith! Somehow she's--"

Kriijorl lunged too late. The man whom Judith's mentacom message had branded as a spy was already through the dome's door, running.

Mason moved more quickly than the Ihelian then. Ahead in the jungle there was a cras.h.i.+ng sound, and Mason tripped suddenly himself as he ran, fell. Kriijorl leapt past him in the darkness, as though he could somehow see through it, and then Mason had regained his feet and was following blindly.