Empire of Two Worlds

There was a scraping noise as the Heshans drew up a bench for him to sit on. “My name is Becmath,” Bec drawled. “Sit down.”

The other did so. “You claim to represent a foreign power. Not on Earth?”

“No.”

“Or Merame?”

“No.”

“Mars, then? Venus? I have never heard of any journeying from those worlds.”

“We’re not from there either. We’re not from any world you can see in the sky. But enough of that. My quarrel with you is that you have destroyed this village, which I had taken for my own.”

“When your messenger first came to us,” the other replied, “we had taken his claim to be a lie, a desperate subterfuge, and so we meted out heavier punishment than we might otherwise have done. We have reasons not to make our destruction of the country too complete, but we must subjugate. Now that we have seen the effects of your weapons, however, as well as your un-Rheattic appearance. … It is very dark in here, yet you cover your eyes. Light hurts you, perhaps?”

“How would you like to have such weapons?” Bec said, ignoring the last question.

“Oh, we will. We will.”

The Meramite’s answer came as a surprise. I heard a choking gasp. Turning round, I saw the visitor sitting across from me, his knees drawn up, his thin lips bunched up in a smile that seemed to distort his flat, gigantic face. It was a smile of complacent triumph. Bec, Harmen and the two Heshans were folding up and falling to the floor.

At the same time something sharp thrilled in my nostrils and throat. My nerves tingled. I tried to move, but couldn’t. The Meramite had released some sort of gas into the bunker, a gas which left him unaffected.

My last thought as I passed out was that we had been outmanoeuvred. The Meramites knew some angles, too. We had been taken.

Eight

High-pitched voices. Mingled background noises. Chinking sounds coming from all round.

I opened my eyes to find myself trussed up and lying on the ground. Painfully I forced myself to a sitting position. Becmath and Harmen were already awake nearby, sitting upright with their hands tied behind their backs. Harmen, as so often, had withdrawn into himself, his head bowed. Bec grimaced as he saw I was conscious.

“I guess Hesha was harder to hang on to than it was to take,” he said.

My head cleared quickly. We were in one of the big meadows outside Hesha. Meramite troop carriers were parked all round us. The grey, lank soldiery went about their business with a peculiar loping gait, tending machines I hadn’t seen before, or merely stood around.

It seemed that the chinky sounds happened every time they walked. For the first time I noticed that they wore on their arms and legs a kind of open harness made of metal rods. As they moved the rods worked in a piston-like action. This puzzled me, but I didn’t stop to think about it at the time.

Smoke from the burning village blew over the scene. I coughed, then looked up to see the Meramite officer who had slipped us the knock-out gas standing over us.

I stared into his flat, grey face: thin lips, large, heavy jaw, wide vacant cheeks, oddly flat grey eyes that were without any trace of humour or expression, as if no mind lay behind them.

Suddenly the alk raised his head. “So this is what you understand by a flag of truce,” he said accusingly.

The Meramite’s lips curved in the faintest sneer. “Subterfuge is a weapon. We did not have to use it. We could have summoned heavier equipment to blast you out. But we wished to capture your weaponry undamaged.”

He paused, then continued: “We have searched the village for others of your kind, but found none. Despite that, the villagers have not been slow to talk. They say you have other forces which left a few days ago. Where did they go?”

“You’ll be hearing from them,” Bec said. His voice sounded faraway and unreal.

For the first time I began to feel a loss of confidence in Bec. He looked like an insignificant, squat figure alongside the looming Meramite. The other listened to his answer, stared as if he didn’t understand, then glanced over his shoulder. Following his glance, I saw something approaching from the distance, sailing low above the ground. It was a big cylinder, part silver and part copper in colour, bevelled at either end and finished off in flattened points.

“You will be taken to our main camp on the central plain of Rheatt,” our captor told us. “There your answers will be made more meaningful — you may even meet the persons of exalted rank you desire. I pity you. Merame has only one use for prisoners.”

The cylinder settled on the grass. “Here comes your transport. Now we shall see how you can be of service to the Rotrox.”

Cold, clammy hands lifted us and carried us into the cylinder. We sat on a metal deck, leaning against the curved walls, guarded by the gigantic soldiers. I felt the machine lift into the air with a slight droning sound.

“What do we do now?” I said hoarsely to Bec.

He shifted uneasily. “It all depends on whether the boys got to Blue Space Valley in time. If the Meramites got there first. …” He shrugged.