The Women-Stealers of Thrayx Part 1

The Women-Stealers of Thrayx.

by Fox B. Holden.

_"And that is why you will take us to Earth, Lieutenant,"

barked the Ihelian warrior. "We do not want your arms or your men. What we must ask for is--ten thousand women."_

Mason was nervous. It was the nervousness of cold apprehension, not simply that which had become indigenous to his high-strung make-up. He was, in his way, afraid; afraid that he'd again come up with a wrong answer.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

He'd brought the tiny Scout too close to the Rim. Facing the facts squarely, he knew, even as he fingered the stud that would wrench them out of their R-curve, that he'd not just come too close. He'd overshot entirely. Pardonable, perhaps, from the view-point of the corps of scientists safely ensconced in their ponderous Mark VII Explorer some fifteen light-days behind. But not according to the g-n manual.

According to it, he'd placed the Scout and her small crew in a "situation of avoidable risk," and it would make a doubtful record look that much worse.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

The next time he'd out-argue Cain with his rank if he had to. Cain was big enough to grab things with his brawny fists and twist them into whatever shape he wanted when the things were tangible, solid, resisting. But R-s.p.a.ce was something else again. n.o.body knew what it did beyond the Rim.

He materialized the Scout into E-s.p.a.ce, listened for trouble from her computers, but they chuckled softly on, keeping track of where they were, where they'd been, and how they'd get home.

It was as though nothing had happened. But Lieutenant Lansing Mason was still nervous, his slender fingers steady enough, but as cold as the alien dark outside the s.h.i.+p they controlled.

"You look a little shot again, skipper!" Cain said, grinning like a Martian desert cat. "What's the matter, s.p.a.ce goblins got you again?"

A retort started at Mason's taut lips, but his third officer was already speaking.

"Here's a dope sheet from the comps, if anybody's interested in knowing just where outside the Rim we are," she said. "I make it just a shade inside the outermost fringes of the Large Magellanic Cloud."

Sergeant Judith Kent's voice had its almost habitually preoccupied tone, as though the words she said were hardly more than incidental to a host of more important thoughts running swiftly behind her wide-set, deep gray eyes. They were serious eyes, and in their way matched the solemn set of her small features and the crisp, military cut of her black hair and severe uniform.

"Our little boss-man knows where we are, all right!" Cain said.

Mason gave Cain's six-feet-two a quick glance, wondering as he always wondered why the big redhead's shoulders always seemed too broad for the Warrant Officer's stripes on them. "Sergeant Kent's right," he said. "Here's her comp-sheet. You can look for yourself. Fringe, Magellanic. And look at that while you can--" he jabbed a forefinger at the main scanner, its screen studded with unfamiliarly close constellations--"because we're on our way back. Set up a return on the comps, will you, Sergeant?" For all his tenseness his voice was low, and the words it formed were even and swift.

"h.e.l.l, Lance, this is the sort of stuff the brain trust pays us bonuses for."

"Not out here they don't. R-drive when you're ready, Sergeant!"

Cain turned from the deep control bank and gave his full attention to the scanner as the slender, efficient girl started feeding a tape of reversal co-ordinates into the computers.

Mason waited the few necessary seconds, pushed disarranged dark hair out of his eyes and felt the clammy dampness on his forehead, and wished silently to himself that opportunists like Cain were kept where they belonged--on the Slam-Bang Run out of Callisto. That's where the money was. That's where a Warrant like Cain ought to be.

"Ready, sir," he heard Judith saying quietly.

"Hey, skipper!" There was a sudden urgency in Cain's voice, and the equally sudden racket of an MPD alarm going off. Cain was gesturing at the scanner, stubby finger tracing a slewing pip of light. The alarm stopped, and Judith's cool voice was relaying information. "About a thousand miles," she was saying, "ma.s.s, approximately three hundred tons. Speed--"

But Mason wasn't listening. He was watching the pip of light as Cain got the scanner's directional going, tracked it. Suddenly there were others coming as though to meet it, and it swerved violently, obviously in flight. And now there were more yet, this time from the starboard quadrant of the screen.

"Radiation reading, Sergeant!" Mason clipped out.

While the two men watched, Judith read back the cryptic information interpolated by the s.h.i.+p's ma.s.s-proximity detector.

"That's not all engine junk!" Cain exclaimed as she finished.

"We don't know what drive they've got," Mason answered. "Could be anything--"

"Nuts! You wouldn't get that much from an old-fas.h.i.+oned ion-blast, skipper! That's a shooting war, that's what it is!" There was a glitter in Cain's narrowed brown eyes; a new edge on his heavy voice.

"Which side do we take, boss-man?"

"No side at all," Mason said, hardly moving his lips. "We're getting the h.e.l.l out of here."

"Look, Lance. We've got a crew of ten--we've got a couple of m-guns aboard because we're a Scout. No telling how one of those outfits may show their grat.i.tude if we pitch in, help their side out. That's what we're out here for, isn't it? Dig up new stuff for the double-domes to sink their slide-rules into? Think of the bonus, skipper! h.e.l.l, this is made to order--"

Mason turned a quick glance to the girl, but her face told him nothing. It never did when things like this came up between himself and Cain. And it was something he knew he had no right to expect. But he was tired ... too d.a.m.n much s.p.a.ce, and there was nothing else he knew how to do.

But this time Cain had a point. Aliens--extra-galactic, even if almost neighbors--and his help one way or the other could mean an engraved invitation, a key to the city.

He turned back to the screen, watched as the careening pips ma.s.sed, mixed, whirled in an insensate jumble. He didn't want any more mistakes. They'd ground him for good, tell him he'd had his limit of s.p.a.ce, and park him on one of the rest-planets with a pension for the rest of his life.

No, he had to think, and quickly.

Earth had only too recently gotten an entire history of wars out of her system. Perhaps for good, this time. And that was it; that was his answer. Better keep his nose clean--

"For G.o.d's sake, skipper," Cain snapped. "Come out of it! This is a natural, we'll clean up!"

"Sergeant Kent! R-drive!"

There was a moment's sensation of nothingness as the Scout made the Euclidean-Riemannian Transition; the scanner paled and the segment of the universe it framed twisted, changed.

Cain didn't say anything. He glowered, and Mason could feel the big man's contempt. But he didn't have time for it.

This time there wouldn't be any error. This time he'd be a step ahead of the situation and stay there. "Scratch those reversal co-ordinates, Sergeant! Set up to diverge thirty degrees!"

Cain's sarcasm was little disguised. "Mind if I ask a question?"

"Just stay at ease, Mister Cain, until we're out of this!"

Mason watched the scanner's distorted image as the Scout hurtled through a curved pencil of four-point s.p.a.ce; she didn't have a fraction of a powerful Explorer's speed, and her small powerframe physically limited her to that of light. Yet it could be fast enough, for the aliens might know nothing of Transition technique, or could be as wary as Earthmen of the Rim. His precautions could be needless. But he had seen them and they were war-like, and he had no intention of being followed, either back to the Explorer, or ultimately to Earth itself. He'd have to maintain the diverged course until he was certain.

There was a black pip on the fog-colored scanner. Judith saw it even as he did. There was a fleeting look of fright on her intent young face that she hadn't been able to mask.

Cain saw it too.