Chapter 2

"Well, that's why I think the whole thing is--well, as you say, inconceivable from our point of view. Our culture, our women just aren't conditioned for such an existence."

"Think back two centuries, sir."

"You don't have to keep calling me 'sir' like that!" Mason said, feeling a sudden warmth at the back of his neck as he said it. And then, "Two centuries back. Yes. After every war, Earth's birth rate would go crazy. Mother Nature ruled the roost in those days, didn't she? Supply and demand, cause and effect. It's a wonder Man ever got anywhere."

"More wonder some men do--"

Mason looked up. But Judith's face was, as usual, quite calm and detached. "You say something?"

"I said I'd like to have you get Kriijorl to demonstrate that teleprobe thing of his for us, if you can, s---- Lance. How did he say it worked?"

"I still don't get it completely. A peculiar mixture of radio and the electroencephalograph, I think. He said it replaced radio on Ihelos and Thrayx centuries ago. You can communicate to a group or an individual with it in language, or in basic thought pictures. That's what they use it mostly for, of course, and as such, it's termed a mentacom. But he told me that it can also be used as it was on us as a teleprobe when the subject isn't screened. They use a specially tuned carrier wave of some sort, he said, that impinges on a thought wave pattern, but instead of registering the pattern's electronic impulse equivalents as does the electroencephalograph, it 'reflects' them. Like a basic radar system. And the receiver, it's a tiny thing, breaks the reflected pattern down into values equivalent to those in which the 'listener' thinks; amplifies, and that's it! Mind reading made easy, I guess."

Judith squirmed a little uneasily. "I'm glad they're not natural telepaths, anyway," she answered. "And even with a gimmick like that--"

And then the conversation was lost as Kriijorl, flanked by two New-UN guides, strode from the building. The stiff breeze at three hundred stories of what had once been called Nob Hill flicked his scarlet short-cape behind him and rippled the broad front of his black and silver tunic.

He climbed into the helio with a smiled greeting, seated himself to Judith's right as he knew Earth custom demanded, and the craft was lifting slowly over the central area of the ancient city before Mason spoke.

"Well, how did they treat you in there, sir?"

"Not as well as I had hoped," Kriijorl answered. "Your President-General spoke with me privately after the World Delegates Council met to question me, and he held out extremely little hope. However, the issue is to be debated. I think perhaps more out of diplomatic courtesy than actual consideration. I am to be informed of the official decision tomorrow...."

"There were scientists present, of course?"

"Yes; you have brilliant men on Earth, Lieutenant. They are good thinkers. I am certain they were interested in me for more than the sole fact that I am an alien of a race so precisely a replica of your own. But it is again the old factor, cultural difference. Your entire world simply regards women differently than we. I imagine my request, to persons less learned than those with whom I spoke, would be quite shocking anywhere on the planet."

"Perhaps," Judith murmured. "Yet somehow I wonder. Somehow I wonder how much two hundred years has really changed us. Our history in such things is not pleasant, Kriijorl. Many of our women once gave their bodies for money. Shock us? I'm not sure you really could. For your breeders simply give their bodies to produce the flesh for war. And there was a time when we did that, too."

There was silence between them for a while, and then Lance began directing the Ihelian's attention to points of interest as the air phase of the diplomatic tour got under way.

The blue-green beauty of the Pacific stretched lazily below them from the colorful California shore line to the west. Surrounding air traffic was light, and the tour proceeded smoothly eastward; over the Great Divide, and then swung north. Kriijorl seemed impressed and grateful for the momentary respite.

* * * * *

It was near the end of the tour's air phase that Mason remembered Judith's request, and Kriijorl obliged with an amused smile, producing a personal mentacom for Judith to examine.

"And the receiver simply fits about the head like earphones?"

"Like this," Kriijorl said. They were nearing Denver, and air traffic at their level had picked up, and the helio was proceeding more slowly so that Kriijorl's demonstration caused him to miss little of the tour.

He fitted the compact headpiece to his ears and flicked a small switch. It was suddenly bathed in a warm orange glow. "This way, the device functions as a limited range mentacom," he began. And then he flicked the switch again. "And now, as a teleprobe, you see, I could tell you, Lady Judith, just what--"

She flushed furiously, but Kriijorl had suddenly stopped speaking. His face had blanched, and a look of bewildered fury was suddenly in his eyes.

"Lieutenant! That air bus! There!" He pointed to a thick egg shaped vehicle speeding to the north. "Tell your chauffeur to pursue it at once! It carries a full passenger-load of Earthwomen!"

For a moment Mason thought the Ihelian was attempting some strange joke. But a look at the man's face told him that here was no joke; that here was something he was failing to understand.

"Earthwomen? Sure--"

"Plus two other beings, Lieutenant. Two others using Thrayxite probe screens!"

On Mason's order the government chauffeur swiftly heeled the helio about. "Those buses can make nearly a full Mach when they're wide open like that one," he told Kriijorl. "We can't overtake them, but maybe we can keep up. I'll have the chauffeur try for radio contact--"

"No, no! They'll be alert for any signs of awareness of their presence! Wait--" The Ihelian made a third adjustment on the mentacom, and it emitted a slight humming sound, and the orange glow vanished. "This will screen us for a short period, at least," he said. "And if we've not been already detected, perhaps we'll be able to follow. If you'll continue to help me, Lieutenant--"

"Looks as though they've got some of ours, doesn't it?" Mason said evenly. There was a strange heat in his veins now, and with the Ihelian, his nervousness was somehow evaporated. "But how the devil--"

"They are clever, Lieutenant. We were somehow followed here even as we at first followed you in your Scout ship. We may have been probed before you were taken aboard our screened destroyer."

"But you said nothing about destroying _their_ breeders," Judith said above the throbbing roar of the helio's fast accelerating jets. "Why would they want--" and she let the sentence die as comprehension snapped in her gray eyes. Her dark, slender eyebrows arched nearly together as she pushed the thought further.

The borderlands of Canada sped beneath them, and then there was pine forest, but the helio kept the fleeing bus in sight even as the shadows of a dying day crept inexorably from the east to engulf them. And then, abruptly, the bus had started down.

"They're hanging a neat frame on you, sir," Mason said. "Making certain you don't get the women you ask. By kidnaping some, they plan sure as hell to make it look as though Ihelian desperation is responsible. And bingo, your side's in the dog house in nothing flat. No deal!"

"They're damnably cunning," Kriijorl said. "It will not be the first time they have come near making utter fools of us. I can't understand that."

"But how would they have gotten those women?" Judith asked. The helio was slanting downward, and was now less than five miles distant from the fast vanishing bus. It began to skim the tree tops of a great tract of spruce, its chauffeur awaiting Mason's signal to drop quickly out of their quarry's line of sight.

"Video ads, of course," Mason answered quickly, straining his tensed eyes to estimate distance in the fast gathering darkness. "Some big deal. Spaceliner hostess at twice the going rate of payment. Anything like that...."

The bus finally vanished less than a half-mile ahead of Mason's helio, and there was a dark vertical shadow jutting just above the tree tops. He knew it was one of their shuttle boats, and from its apparent size would easily hold all the bus would be able to carry--perhaps a full three hundred. He gave orders quickly to the chauffeur, and then the helio was hovering inches above the tree tops, and he tossed a plastiweave ladder over the side.

"Don't use the radio," he snapped to Judith. "Just get back to New-UN headquarters. Inform them any way possible of what's going on, and then flash the air patrol and tell 'em to come gunning!"

He didn't give her a chance to argue. He simply swung over the helio's side, Kriijorl after him, and within moments they were on the ground, and running with what silence they could through the darkness toward the towering Thrayxite ship a quarter-mile distant.

"Their action is incomprehensible to me," the Ihelian grunted between gulps of air. "It violates the most basic tenets of the ancient Book of the Saints, sacred to us both--"

"Better save your breath for running," Mason told him, and they sprinted across the soft pine needle forest floor, shielding their eyes from treacherous, low hanging boughs, dodging the trees themselves as best they could in the moonlit darkness.

And they burst upon the clearing in which the Thrayxite ship had landed almost before realizing it.

Mason caught a glimpse of Earthwomen, being led as though drugged into the yawning flank of the silent vessel.

There was a sudden movement in the darkness to his left, and he heard the start of an outcry on the Ihelian's lips. But it was all he heard or saw. There was a quick knifing pain in his skull, and he crumpled to the ground.

III

"You may wait in here, sergeant," the New-UN orderly said. She was ushered into a small, comfortably appointed chamber adjoining the main conference hall, and the perfectly controlled coolness of her bearing was at its peak. To the casual glance of the orderly, perhaps, it flawlessly masked the vital convictions which had long seethed within her and made her the little known woman she was. The studied mask itself had made her the efficient Space officer she was. And at the moment she was glad for it, because it also concealed the anxious uncertainty that twisted coldly inside her.

She was to wait, the Council had informed her. Wait, while the information she had given them was analyzed, digested. As though, perhaps, what she had said was part of some insidious plot; as though it were too fantastic to be the truth.

They had not even immediately authorized the dispatch of a patrol cruiser to the spot where she'd left Lance and Kriijorl over two hours ago, and by now--?

She tried not to think or what the Earthman and the Ihelian might be facing, alone and in the darkness. Nor of the conclusions to which the Council, called into emergency session by the President General himself when her information had been rapidly relayed through the correct channels to him, might arrive.

She could only wait.

And her waiting was terminated with an abrupt suddenness that made the twisting cold thing inside her a churning confusion. It had been only minutes, hardly minutes.

Only one of them came into the small room where she sat. She rose quickly to attention. It was an aide to the President General himself; a brevet-Colonel wearing the uniform of the World Police.

"Sergeant Kent," he said, "it is the Council's decision that you be placed under temporary arrest. Your case will be heard at the next sitting of the martial court to which your unit is assigned. If you will accompany me, please...."

"May I ask, sir, what the charge against me is?" Her voice was steady by cultivated habit.

"You are to be held on suspicion of acting as accessory before and after the fact of conspiring to assist an alien power in the achievement of its objective within the governmental jurisdiction of Earth without official permission of the New United Nations."

"But the Ihelians have not done that, sir!" she protested. "It is a plot of their enemy, as I explained to the Council--"

"You will be given full benefit of due legal process, sergeant," the officer said. "You will come with me, please."

The Women's Detainment Barrack was not unpleasant, yet, Judith thought, it may as well have been a medieval dungeon. But her own problem, she knew, was nothing beside the cunning success of the Thrayxites.

The call-buzzer at the side of her bunk interrupted her thoughts; it meant she was wanted in the main guard room. She straightened her uniform quickly, and within moments presented herself before the barrack warden.

Roger Cain stood beside the warden's desk. There was something white in his hand, and she knew what it was.

"You're at liberty, Sergeant Kent," the beefy-faced warden informed her in a tone as casual as though she'd asked her for a cigarette. "Warrant Officer Cain has posted a release voucher; you're ordered into his custody until your trial. That's all. You may go."

She left the barrack with Cain, wordlessly. None of it made sense. Unless--

"Well, don't I even get a thank you?" the red-haired giant asked.

"Yes, Mister Cain, sorry. But I don't understand--"

"Why I did it?" He chuckled, and she didn't like the sound of it. "I'm only too glad to have you in my custody, young woman! And, you know, you're not supposed to be out of my sight any--that is, _any_ of the time!"

She felt her face redden, and spun about to face him. There was sudden anger at her lips and her coolness had evaporated.

"You contempti--"

"Easy there, sergeant! Always knew there was a little more to you than that ice cube exterior of yours! But tell me--d'you want to sit back there in that dump, or shall we stick our noses into the lovely mixup your precious Lieutenant Mason has set off?"

She stared up at him wordlessly, the blood hot in her cheeks. And she tried to think. This was Cain as she knew he was. This was Roger Cain, angling for a deal.

"I'm in your custody," she bit out. "I must stay within your sight. That is your responsibility."

He laughed at her, then gripped her elbow.

"Come on," he said. "I've got a R-IX waiting at the field. I think we should go on a little trip, sergeant. There are people I want to see!"

They were streaming for open Space within less than thirty minutes from the time Cain had freed her. She didn't ask him how he'd gotten permission for the fleet R-IX's use, or how he'd obtained her voucher, nor did she ask him how he had learned of what had happened to Lance and Kriijorl, yet she knew that somehow he was aware of the Thrayxites and their plot. Cain had ways of learning the things he wanted to learn, getting the things he wanted to get.

"Keep an eye on the scanner for me, will you, beautiful?"

"Yes sir."

"And forget that sir stuff! Look, Judy--"

"For what do you want me to watch, sir?"

Cain grunted, gave a shrug of his powerful shoulders and turned his attention back to the pursuit's compact control console.

"Two blips, honey. Tearing hell-for-leather out of old Sol's little family. One'll be chasing the other, if my guess is any good. We want the front one."

"But--but that would be the--"

"The Thrayxite crowd. Right?"

For a moment she was silent. She knew he could not mean to attack; not with a tiny pursuit, swift as it was.

"Mister Cain, I can only guess at what you intend doing. But it will be my privilege in court to testify concerning your conduct of custodianship--"

"You must be working on the assumption that we're going back there, sweetheart!"

"You--"

"A deal is where you find it! Watch for that front blip, sergeant. With what we know of Kriijorl and his crowd, this oughta be a natural!"

* * * * *

The cubicle in which he awoke was softly lit, and the painful throb Mason knew should be splitting his head apart was strangely absent. Kriijorl was bending over him, loosening the tightness of the military collar at his throat.

"They certainly were taking no chances with you," he said. His long Viking's hair was matted with blood just above the temple, yet he seemed to be suffering little pain, himself. "How do you feel?"

"O.K. I guess. Don't feel anything, really...." Kriijorl unbuckled the wide straps that held him solidly in an acceleration-hammock, and he sat up. The steel-walled room rocked for a moment, then steadied.

"The Thrayxites are not vicious, any more than we. If they do not kill outright, they apparently take medical precaution to see that their victims suffer as little pain as possible. We're captives, however, together with your Earthwomen. We've been in flight for about an hour; putting us well out of your system, if we're hyperdriving--moving in what you term R-Space."

"Then--"

"Apparently no help of any kind arrived in time, Lieutenant."

Mason remembered, then. Judith.... Somehow she hadn't made it. Or hadn't made them believe her. This trip, he was strictly on his own. Not just a space weary Scout Lieutenant any more.

"What'll they do with us?"

"Pump us for information, probably. Kill me afterward. You should be safe enough in that respect. You're an alien, not a part of our conflict. Their labor planetoid for you, I would imagine. It is a jungle covered sphere at the edge of their planetary ring; our scouts have sighted it on numerous occasions. A handful of men in each of its camps, mining, probably, for the ore used in Thrayxite engines. But it will be better than death."

"What are our chances, Kriijorl?" Mason felt the familiar nervousness returning to his wiry body, yet this time it was in some way different. Not the kind that ate your insides out from too much Space, for too long.

"Of escape, you mean?" Mason nodded. "There is no reason for you to risk--"

"Sure as hell is, friend. First because I believe you're my friend. Second, there were a couple of things you said awhile back that got me thinking. And third, I got myself shanghaied, and I don't think I'll like where I'm going!" Cain, Mason thought to himself, wasn't the only guy in the universe with a muscle!

The Ihelian grinned. "We'll watch for a chance of some kind, then. But I will not let you risk your life. We of Ihelos obey the Book, even if our enemy sees fit occasionally to violate the spirit in which it was conceived."

"Tell me something," Mason said. "This feud of yours. What's it all about? You mentioned that Book business once before, and it seems a people with your apparent piety and maturity and general advancement would certainly find a way to arbitrate such a dispute. What are you fighting about?"

Kriijorl's answering smile was thin, and there was a puzzled look in his craggy features.

"We fight because the Book of the Saints says we must!" he answered at length. "And further than that--"

"Yes?"

"Further than that, I'm afraid we do not know!"

Mason felt his features twisting into an incredulous expression despite his efforts to realize and appreciate the wide gap of cultural differences between them.

"Don't _know_! But you can't fight a war without knowing why! You--"

"It is in the Book of the Saints," the Ihelian said, "and, therefore, it is our command. And--" he looked into the Earthman's face with the slightest hint of a smile, "from what I've learned of Earth's history from your own lips, Lieutenant, what of your own past wars? Who among your own soldiery has really known why he fought?"

"Well, but--" And then Mason returned the smile. "No, it isn't so different, is it? But tell me more about this Book. Is it based on law, religion, ethics?"

And this time there was no smile on the Ihelian's broad face.

"Legend says all three," he replied.

"Legend? And yet you blindly obey--"

"We always have. Its writings, such as we understand them to be, have governed us for millenia, Lieutenant. The Book is our way, our life. We are told we could not be a civilization without it."

Mason was silent for a long moment. He did not want to question too deeply the beliefs sacred to another, yet it was so damnably peculiar. They fought bitterly, and they did not know why.

"Could you--would you let me see a copy of this Book, Kriijorl?"

"If I could I'd be glad to, Lieutenant. For I have often wished I could see the words it contains myself."

"You've never read it?"

"Never. Nor has any Ihelian or Thrayxite for thousands of years. There is, you must understand, only one Book of the Saints."

"Just one copy?"

"Yes. It has long been deemed sacrilege for mortal eyes to view the ancient writings. The single copy is kept in a great vault, built of indestructible metals, and protectively sheathed to last for all Time. The spot above its burial place is marked by a tall spire of stone. It is jealously protected."

"You said that its commands commit you and Thrayx to eternal battle. But if you could only read it, you might learn the basic cause of your conflict--and, knowing, certainly--"

"The thought has often occurred to me. But, there is even more prohibiting such an impossible undertaking than the powerful bondage of tradition and belief alone, Lieutenant. And that is the Book's very location."

"And that--?"

"The subterranean vault in which it rests is guarded in the Forest of Saarl. And the Forest of Saarl, my friend, is on Thrayx."

IV

"It is something completely beyond my understanding," the Ihelian was saying. The two men stood, each flanked by two guards, at the threshold of a great ramp which led from the main air lock of the Thrayxite ship to the reddish surface of the spaceport upon which it had landed but minutes before. Mason felt a chill of awed amazement, not because of the unexpected beauty of the verdant hills that rolled in a delicate blend of kaleidoscopic pastels on every side of the 'port and as far as the eye could see, nor was it even from the sight of the exquisite towers that rose as though from the heart of some fabled fairyland scant miles to the south.

"They're all--all _women_!" Mason breathed. "Not a single man!" And he looked quickly to Kriijorl. "You mean you did not know this?"

"Know? By the teeth of Jhavuul, we never so much as suspected, Lieutenant! We have not looked upon a Thrayxite face for five thousand years."

The guards spoke to them tersely in the common tongue of Ihelos and Thrayx, although peculiarly accented to Ihelian ears, and Kriijorl gestured with a slight movement of his head to Mason. At a quick pace they started down the ramp.

"We're sunk, kid," Mason said. And he saw the heaviness in the great Viking's face. "We'll never make it out of here in a million years. Even if we made a break for it; even if we had our hands free, where could we hide? Couldn't make a move. Two men among an entire female populace--"

He let the sentence trail off as he realized that Kriijorl wasn't hearing him. And as their brief view of Thrayx was terminated by their entrance into a smaller shuttle-ship, he saw the hint of a smile flicker at the corners of the Ihelian's lips.

Their captors strapped them into hammocks, and when they had gone to assist others in herding a portion of the Earthwomen aboard the same craft, Kriijorl finally spoke.

"I think for the moment their probes may be off us," he said quickly. "I was relieved of my own during my unconsciousness, so we're no longer screened. And the fact that we speak in your tongue does us little good. But hear me. If we are being taken where I hope we are, then they are playing into our hands almost as well as we could have asked. There will be a limited freedom there, and a chance, if we are clever enough, to get to a mentacom installation. A planetary unit of unlimited range."

"But among women?" Mason asked, and his throat was dry.