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                         Transcriber's Note:

    This etext was produced from Planet Stories January 1954. Extensive
    research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this
    publication was renewed.


                     THE WOMAN-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.

[Illustration]

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.

[Illustration]

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-Space was something else again. Nobody knew what it
did beyond the Rim.

He materialized the Scout into E-Space, 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 ship they controlled.

"You look a little shot again, skipper!" Cain said, grinning like a
Martian desert cat. "What's the matter, Space 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.

"Hell, 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, "mass, 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 ship's mass-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-fashioned 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 hell 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 gratitude 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! Hell, 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 damn much Space, 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 massed,
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
Space, 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 God'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 Space; 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.

"You got a tail, skipper!" he said, and the grin was back on his big
freckled face.

Cain was right. The alien was capable of Transition. And he obviously
had little fear of the Rim. His ship grew larger in the scanner.

Mason felt his fingers grow cold again.

       *       *       *       *       *

Lance told the girl to eject the tape of co-ordinates from the
nav-computers, and he took over manually, hoping the comps would keep
up. It would be up to him where they went, and up to the comps to keep
track of the Scout's position relative to both the Solar System and
the Explorer.

His fingers played across the control-banks as though they were the
keyboards of a great organ, and he felt his insides writhe as he
slipped the hurtling ship back into E-Space, then back to R-level
again. He played the tiny craft between levels as though it were a
stone skipping across water, and altered course with each Transition
with no attempt at plan or pattern. Rivulets of ice water trickled
down across his ribs, and the flesh of his thin face was stiff.

"Wrong again," he heard Cain saying. "At least we can tell the brain
trust that their precious R-factor is constant beyond the Rim ...
maybe that'll be worth a buck or two. At least those kids back there
are playing around in this galaxy like it was their own front yard. Go
on, skipper, take a look yourself!"

Mason didn't have to look. He knew that he hadn't lost the alien; had
known somehow that he wouldn't be able to. Too apparently, their own
galaxy, near as it was to the Milky Way, was of the same Space, its
continuum forged in the same curvature matrices.

"Shall I order our m-guns placed, sir?" It was Judith, and he knew she
had grasped the implications of the situation as quickly as she always
did. Sometimes he wondered if she were a computer herself, clad in the
graceful body of a young woman rather than in a shell of permasteel.
And other times....

He didn't even think about his answer. The "No" was automatic.

"I'll give the order, then, myself!" Cain said flatly.

"As you were, Mister Cain!"

"So it's rank, now, is it?" And he was grinning that damn grin again.

"Take it any way you want. If you think three meson cannon will stop a
ship that's obviously built for battle, you're hardly thinking well
enough for the responsibilities of your post."

"Well listen to who's sounding off! So we're just going to let 'em
overhaul us; just let 'em blast us out of Space, or come tramping
aboard if they want to!"

Mason didn't reply. He looked at the scanner, and now the alien craft
was no longer a dot, but taking definite shape. It would be a couple
of hours, yet, perhaps. And then it would have to be the way Cain had
said.

The alien overhauled them hardly a billion miles inside the Rim, and
Mason offered no resistance when he felt their magnetics touch the
Scout and draw it gently to the flank of their great ship. It was
necessary to scale down the scanner's field to see the huge shape in
its entirety. Beside it, the Scout was like a sparrow's egg.

He punched the stud that would swing in the outer lock as the two
craft touched with but the slightest jar.

Cain's ham-like fists were knotted at his sides, and Judith stood
quietly, as though waiting for nothing more than the presence of an
inspecting officer. But her delicate face was white, and Mason
wondered if the brain under that crisp, dark hair was still
functioning as a well disciplined piece of machinery, or if it felt
the same fear that was in his own. He knew what was in Cain's
thoughts. But at least when he'd told their small crew the score, they
had accepted his decision--and his order to keep the m-guns where they
were. So maybe this time it was Cain who was wrong.

The three of them stood in the compact confines of the control bubble,
silent, waiting.

And when the alien stepped through their inner airlock port and faced
them, Mason knew he was not succeeding in keeping his surprise from
his features.

The alien could have been human. Even clad in his Spacegear, he was
little taller than Cain, and his hair and eyes could have been those
of an Earthly Viking of another day. Humanoid, so far as physical
appearances went But in thought--?

There was a smile on the Viking face as the alien removed the
transparent globe of his helmet. He seemed to realize instinctively
that Mason was the Scout's commander.

"I am Kriijorl," he said. "I extend the greetings of Ihelos." And he
proffered his right hand, Earth fashion, toward Mason!

Lance grasped it as he tried to organize the sudden scramble of his
thoughts. It was a strong hand. He could feel the sinews of it beneath
its gauntlet; like Cain's, yet different, somehow. "You are peacefully
received, and welcome," he said. But there was a hollow sound to his
words that he had not been able to help.

The smile still played on the alien's sun-darkened face.

"Thank you. I hope that I use your language not too clumsily. Our
teleprobes may leave something to be desired in the matter of
semantics. You will, I hope, forgive us for taking the liberty of
their use. But since you employed no protective screens, and because
of the necessity of our meeting--"

Cain broke in without hesitation. "I don't know what you've been up to
while you've been tagging us, mister, but I--"

"At ease, Mister Cain!" Mason snapped. "We must allow our guest to
explain his action and his mission."

The alien nodded slightly, glanced at Judith.

       *       *       *       *       *

"It was your woman officer aboard," he began. "When we became aware
that you also represented a bi-sexual race, as do we, we realized at
once that you afforded us an unexpected opportunity. Otherwise, we
should have remained at our business and spared you this intrusion.

"We of Ihelos, as you doubtless have noted, are at war. It is perhaps
not war as your culture understands it; it is perhaps more accurately
described by your word 'feud,' I think, and it has continued between
us and our only similar neighbor, the planet of Thrayx, for many
thousands of your years.

"We have been quite self-sufficient cultures for all that time, and
have taken great care that our conflict not infect any other area in
either our galaxy or yours, for neither of us, by inherent nature, is
war-like in the sense of aggressiveness. Our conflict is between us
and us alone.

"However, we of Ihelos recently received a staggering setback from our
traditional enemy due to a certain unexpected innovation in their
battle techniques, and we realized that our cause could end only in
eventual defeat. As it shall, unless your people will help us."

There was a moment of silence, and Mason found himself wondering how
often this had happened in Earth's own bitter past. It was, wherever
men lived, an old story.

"What," Cain was asking, "is in this for us?"

"Could you tell us," Judith said before the alien could answer Cain,
"just why you chose us? Certainly, you must have noticed our
techniques of warfare are quite inferior to your own. We have not
employed them for more than two hundred years--"

"Nor," Mason finished for her, "do we intend to again. You must seek
help elsewhere, sir."

"That, for us, would be quite impossible," the alien replied slowly.
"The chances of finding other life forms like our own are billions to
one, the immensity of both our galaxies notwithstanding. Had you not
ventured within range of our screens we would in all probability never
known you existed. And to organize a search...." and now the smile on
his lips was almost a sad thing, "a search of two galaxies--it would
take us aeons, even at a thousand times the speed of light, simply to
cover the vast distances involved, to say nothing of finding a similar
life and thought form. And we do not have aeons, Lieutenant. We have
but two--three, at most--generations.

"There is too little time to search for allies. We have no other
choice, as you can see, than to take what advantage we can of those
upon whom we may chance."

"But as my sergeant has already pointed out," Mason said, "our arms
would be worthless to you. And, more importantly, we wish no more part
in warfare. I am afraid, in that respect, you must excuse us, sir....
It has been a pleasure to have you aboard."

And suddenly, the smile was gone from the alien's face.

"I must demand of you, then--force you, if necessary--to take us to
your planet, Lieutenant. For you can quite obviously help us. It is
not your arms we want."

"I fail to understand you sir." Mason felt the icy sweat start again,
repressed a shiver as it trickled the length of his spare body.

"Our planet, as our enemy's, is encircled by a wide ring of floating
cosmic debris," the alien said. "In both instances, the rings are
remnants of what once may have been satellites. In the ring which
encircles us, we have successfully secreted refrigerated,
lead-sheathed stores of male sperm, quite impossible for our enemy to
locate. That is a necessity, of course, for any race that is
constantly at war and is obliged to take all possible safeguards to
insure its continued existence. We assume that Thrayx has done the
same.

"However, our cell stores are useless if they lack ova to fertilize.
On their last attack, Thrayxite ships succeeded in penetrating our
innermost planetary defenses, and heavily damaged a number of our
cities. Many of our women and young were victims.

"We therefore evacuated our planet's entire female population to an
uninhabited world far distant. It was a young world and covered with
thick forests, much like the labor planetoid which circles Thrayx, and
we believed our breeders would be quite sufficiently camouflaged."

"Breeders?" Cain broke in.

"Our philosophy concerning women is slightly different than your own,"
the alien said. And then he resumed, "But in our haste we
underestimated our enemy's cleverness. Thrayxite scouts located the
planet, destroyed it, our women, and our seeds.

"And that is why you will take us to Earth, Lieutenant. We do not want
your arms or your men. What we must ask for is--ten thousand of your
women!"


II

A Cepheid Variable winked tauntingly at the edge of the Milky Way, the
Large Magellanic Cloud strewn like diamonds in a vast cosmic spume
behind it. It corruscated in glorious display as, far off, a great
silvery ship of Space and a tiny jot of man-made metal resumed their
headlong motion through the mighty legion of the stars.

And then for an instant, the Cepheid's bright wink was dulled;
eclipsed. A tapering streamlined shape slipped silently across it, and
then was gone in the blackness, and the white dwarf resumed its
brilliant display.

But the commander of the Cepheid's interruptor had been giving little
time to appreciation of the myriad beauties in the great darkness that
had swallowed her ship. She had trebled her screens and had taxed her
craft's colossal power installation to its limit, forcing it to absorb
and reconvert every erg of radiant energy possible as it labored to
maintain the awful output necessary to cling to the very edge of
R-Space, barely clear of the E-continuum itself.

She might have been an Amazon of Earth save for the great intelligence
behind the high plane of her forehead, yet she was not without beauty,
nor were those of her ship's complement. On their close-fitting
uniforms were emblazoned the Planet-and-Circle insignia of their
homeland, for they were of the galactic hosts of Thrayx.

"They proceed toward a planet on the near side of this galaxy called
Earth," the second officer said. "Their mission is to replenish their
supply of breeders."

"You are certain of that?"

"I admit it is peculiar, for the breeders they seek are women of that
planet."

"_Women?_"

"Yes. However, the Earthmens' minds indicated a strong tendency to
refuse cooperation."

"I see. Do you think our probe was detected?"

"No. I withdrew it immediately when the Earthmen were taken aboard the
Ihelian destroyer."

There was a long moment of silence. The commander's eyes stayed
unwaveringly on the control sphere mounted in gimbals before her. They
remained concentrated on it when she spoke again.

"Women, you say. Hardly conceivable, Daleb, unless--unless it was
_not_ simply a penal planetoid which we destroyed!"

"A startling thought, Lady!"

"Yes. And the Earthmen, you say, did not have cooperative thoughts?"

"That is correct. They are not taking the Ihelian craft to their
planet of their own volition."

"That is difficult to understand, Daleb, for the Ihelians are like
ourselves in at least one respect. They are not aggressors. And if
they are refused their strange request, they will leave the planet
Earth peacefully. But if they are not refused it, perhaps the
Earthman's superiors will cooperate, Daleb! In which case--"

"Whatever their mission, it is our duty to prevent its success, Lady.
But to do this without violating the Book, without infecting a foreign
area of the galaxy with our conflict?"

"I think there is a way," the commander said. She twisted the sphere
slightly, and again the two tiny pips it held were caught squarely at
the intersection of the curving light traceries within it. "There is a
way," she said. "Give me a complete description of the clothing these
Earthmen wore, Daleb...."

A tapering, streamlined shape slid shadow-like across the face of an
undulating globular cluster, and then was swallowed quickly in the
strange gray void of hyper-space.

       *       *       *       *       *

Mason and Judith waited outside the towering New United Nations
building in Greater San Francisco, their chauffeured government helio
parked on a sky-ramp adjacent to the three hundredth floor.

They waited for Kriijorl; they had been assigned, as Earthmen best
acquainted with the alien, as his official hosts during his stay on
their planet. Mason had protested, but Judith had kept the protests
from reaching the wrong ears.

"You won't make any mistakes. You're home, now!" she had whispered.
"After all, he's only human!"

It had been the first time Mason had heard a hint of levity in her
voice, and he had liked it, and decided to take the assignment
gracefully. And, the orders said, Sergeant Judith Kent went with the
assignment. Without Cain!

He hardly felt nervous at all as they waited for the Ihelian to leave
the General Council chamber.

"Wonder how he made out?" he said idly, offering the girl a
self-lighting cigarette. "Been in there for hours...."

"We'll know soon enough," she said. "But I--I personally can't
conceive of it, sir. Of course, the New-UN is very practiced in
dealing with all kinds of cultures. Remember the time they had with
those awful five-legged things from Canis Major? Wanted to trade all
the tritium we'd need to blow up a planet just for trees; because they
worshipped trees! Any and all kinds of trees...."

Mason smiled. He was good looking when he smiled and the Space-tension
was gone from his slate colored eyes. "I remember. But it looks as
though they're going to have the toughest time with somebody just like
us--two legs, two arms, oxygen-breathing.... Women, the man said. Just
what the devil does he expect us to do? Draft 'em? Have an
international lot drawing?"

       *       *       *       *       *

She smoked quietly, and her gray eyes were thoughtful. "A matter of
view-point, sir," she said finally. "As it always is. To them, females
are for breeding only, to keep their war machine well stocked. From
what Kriijorl said, they do not understand love as we do. There's
simply one purpose...."

"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.

"That is the point," Kriijorl replied tersely. "We shall be among
males almost exclusively, save for the Earthwomen and those Thrayxites
who periodically will be sent to breed."

"You mean the planetoid that you talked of before...? But I--"

"Think a moment! Thrayxite is a matriarchy, something we of Ihelos
never suspected. And therefore we erred further--what we believed to
be a labor planetoid is not, of course!"

"Breeders!"

"Exactly. And if we can make it to one of their mentacoms, perhaps our
problem will be solved. Except that--" His voice hesitated, and Mason
saw doubt in the sudden frown. "I--I have no right to sacrifice your
life nor those of your women. If we were to get to a mentacom it would
be to contact my people, to inform them of the planetoid's true
nature, so that we may even the score for what was done to our own
breeders, and perhaps even form a plan to take prisoners to replace
them. But such a message would be intercepted, of course."

"Hell, we could dodge 'em long enough--"

"Perhaps we could, Lieutenant. But the ships I summon will be fighting
their way through a trebled Thrayxite guard--and once within range of
our enemy's breeder satellite, they will have little time to seek us
out and effect our rescue. Destruction will have to be immediate. Now
do you understand?"

Mason wet his lips. He understood. Death for the breeders. For the
Earthwomen. And for themselves.

"Nuts!" he clipped out. "That means that as far as you're going to be
concerned, I'm just another Ihelian private first class for awhile,
not a space-neurotic Earthman! And our girls ... well, I think--I
think they'd prefer anything to the living death in store for
them--the rotting away of their lives in some infested alien jungle.
Anyway, somebody's got to be judge. So let's get this damned thing
doped out!"

The Ihelian began a reply, but the words were stopped in his throat by
the sudden pressure of acceleration as powerful engines fumbled
suddenly to throbbing life and lifted the Thrayxite craft quickly
toward the eye of a great white sun.

       *       *       *       *       *

For the second time in her life, Judith Kent watched the warp
configurations of the Large Magellanic Cloud from the far side of the
Rim; somehow it frightened her, as though some awful deadliness must
lie within it.

Helplessly, she carried out Cain's orders, and as hopelessly, wondered
of the fate of Lance and Kriijorl. Captives, with the Earthwomen, in
the Thrayxite ship with which Cain was so rapidly closing? Or lying
dead somewhere, as she more than half believed, in the chill wilds of
northern Canada? The odds had been so great. She knew that to hope
without reason was folly, and yet not to hope was no longer to care.

She twisted away quickly from Cain's muscular arm.

"What's eating you, duchess? Your conscience giving you trouble, or
are you just plain scared?" When she didn't reply, he laughed shortly,
and gestured toward the scanner. In it, the slender Thrayxite craft
was growing steadily larger as Cain's swift pursuit gradually folded
the gap of curved Space between them. "In a couple of minutes, we'll
be ready to talk turkey, sweetheart. They ought to be aware of us
right this minute. I think they'll listen to what we have to offer."

"To what _you_ have to offer!"

He laughed again. "It's more than Mason ever had! You know, sometimes
I think you were torching for that space-happy has-been!"

She felt the burn of rising color in her cheeks and turned quickly
away from him.

"You don't get it yet, do you duchess?" his heavy voice was saying
behind her. "It's never occurred to you that there are other places to
be beside with your own flock; that there are other men among whom to
seek your fortune if the ones you were born among didn't offer the
opportunities you expected. What are we among the stars at all for if
it's not to find our destinies anywhere we think they might lie?
What's this Big Freedom for, if not to use to some kind of advantage?
And me, I'm sick of being a Warrant under worn out space-neurotics
like Mason! And I don't want to end up being one, either!"

Judith held her lips tight against the thing that surged hotly inside
her. There would have to be a way to stop this man. And if there
weren't--How the pampered friends whom she'd left so proudly to choose
this calling would laugh at her, would say "_that was what the
hot-headed little rebel deserved ... she had it coming if she couldn't
act like a lady_." And they _were_ wrong!

But this man was hideously twisting all the things she had thought
were good and right, worth hoping and striving for. All the priceless
things that had stood for more than the soft, idle and pointlessly
shallow existence to which she'd been born.

"But I guess you wouldn't get it," Cain was saying. "Born with a
silver shovel in your mouth, you don't have to worry about sweating
out your pile! Quit any time and there it all is after your little
adventure, still waiting for you to come home to! Maybe they'll even
want you to write a book! But me--my father wasn't a lucky
g-prospector."

A proximity alarm clanged, and Cain quickly turned his attention to
the control banks. He jacked out the auto control and took over
manually. And within seconds the pursuit was hovering over the great
whale-like back of the Thrayxite craft, and then was drawn slowly to
it as its powerful magnetics reached out, ensnared it. Then Cain cut
the pursuit's drive, and they both waited.

The airlock opened, and the two women stepped through. There were
weapons in their hands.

"I want to see your commander," Cain barked.

"I am the commander of this complement," the taller of the two said in
an almost unaccented English. "You will consider yourselves my
captives. Daleb...."

"What? Not all _women_." There was a curious look on Cain's face;
thoughts were racing behind the thin blades of his eyes.

"You are prisoners of the matriarchy of Thrayx," the officer called
Daleb said. "If you do not resist, you shall be unharmed."

"All right, come off that alien-meets-alien stuff," Cain said as
though the two briefly-uniformed women before him held toys rather
than weapons in their hands. "I didn't just tag after you at a billion
times the speed of light to get thrown into one of your dungeons! I've
got some information I think you can use. And--" and the curious look
was again on his face, "--there are some--shall we say--services, I
think I can profitably perform for you."

"Profitably, Earthman? Profitable to whom?"

"To both of us. To me--that's why I'm here--and to you."

Judith's face was white. Perhaps this was some clever trick of Cain's.
She could have been wrong.

"Tell me this information you have, Earthman."

"Let's dicker about price, first, Goldylocks!" He stood there,
confident, defiant, great muscles bunched beneath the fabric of his
tunic.

"You, Earthman, are hardly in bargaining position!" Only the woman's
mouth moved; her eyes bored straight into Cain's like fine diamond
drills.

"Chuck me," Cain said with a grin, "and you chuck the best chance
you've ever had to take your Ihelian friends to the cleaners. What
information I have concerning Ihelian plans is one thing." Judith
caught her breath. She knew Cain was lying now. Even Lance had learned
little of the Ihelian strategy, above Kriijorl's attempt to enlist
Earthwomen for Ihelian breeding colonies. It was all, she realized
suddenly, a colossal bluff, from which Cain planned to play his cards
as he went along! And now he had found a wedge of some sort, some new
bargaining point. There was still that curious look on his face, that
careless grin at his lips. "But what service I can render you," he was
continuing, "is quite another! Ladies, how good are your teleprobe
gadgets against an Ihelian screen? A big blank, aren't they? But I
still think you'd give those cute shirts of yours to find out what's
going on inside the thick skulls of our Ihelian friends."

A puzzled look flickered across the Thrayxite commander's face, yet
she remained immobile, and her weapon held steady.

"First of all, bright eyes," Cain said swiftly, "may you be the first
to know that they're all men! _All men_, get it?" There was a soft
gasp from Daleb, and the commander's eyes flickered, widened almost
imperceptibly. "And better yet, I'm a pal of Kriijorl, their commander
who picked us up just inside the Rim that time you followed us into
Earth. So think it over. It ought to be worth a fancy little pile to
you, ladies, since women agents would be kind of conspicuous in an
all-male civilization!"

"You expect us to believe this fantasy? Do you expect us to accept
your proposal on the basis of nothing more than words? And the
technique you describe. It has never been used, never even considered
as a legitimate method of battle!"

Cain laughed easily. "Then maybe you better consider it if you want to
come out on top! And as to the rest of it, if I was part of some
counter-plot against you do you think I'd've gone to the trouble of
bringing along some security?" And Judith felt something freeze inside
her as he threw a careless glance in her direction. "There she
is--Sergeant Judith Kent. Your hostage for this little operation! If I
misbehave, she should make a pretty good bargaining point with Ihelos.
From all I gather, they've got Earth sore enough at them as it is!"

There was an instant's silence, and then the commander said, "You have
not proven your statement that our enemy is a male enemy."

"What do you think they wanted women for on Earth after you blasted
that planetoid of theirs? A quilting party or something? Add it up."

The quiet in the small control bubble was electric. Judith watched the
Thrayxites' faces as they weighed the incredible thing that Cain had
said.

"I haven't got all eternity!" Cain snapped. "You think you can afford
not to believe me?"

"Very well. Our Book has never mentioned this technique of spying, and
therefore there can be no rule against it. As for the rest--that could
be immaterial. You could be of value to us. Outline your plan."

"That's better, girls. Only take it just a little slower. We both know
what we are, but let's haggle for awhile about the price, shall we?"


V

Judith shivered, partly from an uncontrollable terror and partly from
the pre-dawn dampness creeping from the thick jungle surrounding the
small clearing which held one of the breeder planetoid's many secluded
colonies. The camp and the tangled growth which bounded it was her
prison; a place in which there was freedom, yet where none were free.
To walk or to run or to hide--but where? And so it was with the
rest--the hard-muscled, obviously drug-clouded males who had never
known any other world than this; who never questioned from whence came
the periodic groups of Thrayxite women for them to fertilize; who only
glared dully at her, dimly understanding that she was to be, although
captive here, left to herself and unmolested. Yet despite her status
as hostage and Earthwoman, she was afraid.

The brute of a camp leader, Bruhlla.... Not drugged like the rest.
There was more to his sidelong glances than curiosity and vague
resentment. Too often, she could sense his eyes upon her. And she
wondered at the increasing frequency of his visits to the camp's well
guarded mentacom installation.

She had lost count of night and days under the white sun of Thrayx and
its ringed host. There had been two, perhaps, or three. Three days in
which Roger Cain had been doing what? Was he with Kriijorl and Lance
posing as their friend, their fellow captive, listening to their plans
against their Thrayxite captors ... remembering? Or would they be
freed, if indeed they still lived, in order that Cain could, with
them, learn even more of Ihelian stratagems on a far greater scale?

And the Earth girls--she had heard the cries of some, the desperate
curses of others.

Bruhlla, entitled to use of the mentacom for daily contact reports
with Thrayx as he was, was the only other alien being on the planetoid
who could converse with her. He had lost little time in probing her to
learn her tongue. And he had already hinted at the fate of the women
from her planet. In other camps on the planetoid, held in small
isolated groups, unmolested, Bruhlla had said. But prisoners, as was
she.

Somehow, the Ihelians would have to know.

For there was no Earth to which to turn now.

The shiver again shook her slender body, and her tattered uniform did
little to shield her from the damp cold.

"Still one apart from the rest of us, are you?" The growl of Bruhlla's
voice behind her startled her, and she turned quickly to face the
loose grimace of derision on his thick lips.

"I am to be left to myself," she said with what assurance she could
muster. "That is your order."

"I know my order, little one! No need to tell Bruhlla his orders! But
perhaps you will grow colder; perhaps you will grow hungry."

"You couldn't--"

"I have no order about feeding you, little one!"

Somehow she found the strength to voice her defiance. For she could
still think. And thought, Lance had once told her, was the ultimate
strength....

"You lie! There was such an order! But if you wish to bring the wrath
of your masters down upon your ugly head." She watched his unkempt
face, fanned the sudden puzzlement she saw growing in his red,
sadistic eyes. If his intelligence were blurred enough by the
self-made drug of his lust. "I myself heard such an order; and if you
can prove me mistaken you may do with me what you will!" _God, would
he stop to realize that she understood not a word of the Thrayxite
tongue?_

"Quickly proven, my little one! Quickly enough proven! And then if
what you say is untrue...." He left the sentence mercifully
unfinished, and turned toward the sturdily-built cubicle that housed
the colony's mentacom.

"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 assured that it was ready for use. So much like the
communications room of an ordinary ship 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 hell-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 ships 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 hell 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
ships," 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 ships 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
ships 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 muffled 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 God, 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 crashing 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.

And suddenly he thought of the empty ships behind them, and Cain's
abrupt uselessness to his Thrayxite employers. Then--

But the gamble was too great. Cain might not double back, but instead
plunge headlong further and further into the concealing morass before
him. No, Cain would not double back. Not now. For in Kriijorl he had
met an even match, and now he was afraid!

Fully an hour had passed when, his tunic torn and the exposed flesh
bleeding, Mason caught up with Kriijorl.

"He was nearly within my hands for a moment--" the giant whispered
hoarsely. He breathed with difficulty, and there were long slashes
gleaming redly in the darkness across his great muscles.

Mason stood silently for moments, toying with a thought that nagged
insistently at the edge of his brain. He knew Cain. He knew the man.

Then suddenly his thoughts were interrupted by the muffled sound of a
rocket blast, and within moments there was a vertical trail of fire
above them as a Thrayxite ship hurtled skyward.

"By Jhavuul--"

"No!" Mason exclaimed. "The blast was from in front of us, he didn't
double back! Must be another colony near our own, and he stumbled out
of this overgrown mess and right into it. There was simply an empty
ship--"

"Then the traitor has won!" Kriijorl's face was tilted upward, and in
the faint glow of the planetesimal belt that girdled Thrayx, it seemed
more than ever that of an heroic Viking king of ages gone.

"There's a chance he hasn't!" Mason breathed. He had the thought now,
pinned down, clear in his head. "If there has been no alarm back at
our own camp we may still have the mentacom to ourselves. We'll signal
Ihelos as you planned and then--then there is something else you will
say. Something else that I think will, as the saying goes on Earth,
kill two birds with a single blast."

Mason had lost track of time; perhaps it was as many as two hours
before they had fought their way through the clutching undergrowth
back to the mentacom at the fringe of their own camp. Several times
they had had to stop, for there had been sounds in the jungle other
than those they had made themselves. Animals, Kriijorl had said, who
had got the scent of their blood. But the noises had not been fast and
crashing--more those of stealth, as were those of their own steps. A
single animal, perhaps, with the scent of their blood; or that of the
breeder guard they had slain. And stalking.

The dome was still silent, and the stiff corpses outside it lay
undisturbed in the thick undergrowth. In the clearing the six empty
Thrayxite ships towered in the sleeping quiet, star-shine glinting
faintly from their polished hulls.

Wordlessly, they entered the dome, and it was as they had left it.

Kriijorl again adjusted the headset, and the orange glow pulsed and
waned as Mason watched.

And then at length, "If they are to know, they know now," Kriijorl
said. "And the Thrayxite host as well. What was there you wished to
add, Lieutenant?"

Mason spoke quickly. "Say that you have discovered that the
priceless--and you must say _priceless_--Book of the Saints is in the
Forest of Saarl on Thrayx. Say that we have discovered it to be less
well protected than is generally believed. Then give the location of
the subterranean vault as precisely as you can!"

"But my people are well aware--"

"I realize that, but our friend Cain doesn't!"

The Ihelian's face was still puzzled, but he projected the
thought-message Mason had dictated.

And then in seconds the Ihelian had hastily but thoroughly wrecked the
mentacom, and the two men left its silent dome for the empty ships
that beckoned so tantalizingly a scant quarter-mile distant.

They had run perhaps a dozen steps when the undergrowth behind them
ripped and tore, and Mason spun.

There was a muffled cry, and he had barely time to catch Judith's
bleeding body as she fell in exhaustion into his arms.


VI

The muscles in his arms and legs trembled with fatigue as he lifted
the semi-conscious girl up to Kriijorl, and then with what seemed an
impossible effort, hauled himself through the deserted ship's stern
airlock.

The Ihelian seemed to carry Judith as though she were a feather as he
climbed the narrow ladder above Mason, infinitely upward, the Earthman
thought ... an infinite distance to the ship's forehull, to its
control banks.

There was only the sound of his own hoarse breathing in his ears as he
climbed, rung after rung, and the hollow echo of Kriijorl's boots as
they mounted resolutely above him.

Then they had made it, and were strapping Judith into a hammock, were
taking their own shock-seats before the control-banks of the
Thrayxite shuttle-craft.

The Ihelian did not hesitate. His fingers deliberated for only a
moment above the firing studs in the blue-green glow of the banks, and
then they flicked home, and engines muttered, roared into terrifying
life.

Within moments, saying nothing, moving the swift, silent movements of
desperation, they had freed themselves of the grasping snare of the
jungle beneath them; were once more strong, liberated things in the
vast freedom of Space.

"And now Ihelos!" Kriijorl cried as they broke swiftly from the
ecliptic of the great spangled ring of Thrayx. "If we can but escape
their fleet. Any moment they should be on the scanner, forming to meet
the onslaught of Ihelian squadrons--"

"No!" Mason said, and his voice was like a solid thing clogging his
throat. "No, not Ihelos--not yet!" His eyes burned, and the red welts
that covered his body had begun to sting, to pain, and it was hard to
think.

He saw the frown forming on Kriijorl's face.

"Thrayx, and the Forest of Saarl," he bit from between teeth clenched
against the creeping agony in him. "The Book of the Saints, Kriijorl.
It is the key, don't you see. Key to all this, your feud."

For an instant the Ihelian said nothing, but groped in hidden pockets
of his battered space harness. His long fingers quickly produced a
tablet, thrust it into Mason's hand. The Earthman swallowed it and
almost at once energy coursed as though from some hidden well in his
body through his flagging muscles and nerves.

Then Kriijorl spoke. "I do not understand, Lieutenant. I know only
that it would be almost certain death. Intrusion near the vault would
bring a flight of guard ships within minutes."

"I know that," Mason said. "But perhaps not down upon us! And we must
have that Book. I've been thinking about it, comparing it with similar
writings in Earth's own past. Such books are not new, such motives,
such methods. Your Book is priceless in a way that even you don't
know, Kriijorl. I'm certain of it. For it must contain the reason that
you fight."

"And that reason?"

"A reason, if I'm right, that would end your feud once and for all. A
nasty bit of logic which the people of Ihelos and Thrayx were quite
deliberately kept from knowing from the beginning. I'd make book on it
that at one time both planets were very hungry places--"

"But if you are wrong, Lieutenant?"

Mason fastened his gaze straight before him on the diamond-studded
scanner, and saw that some of the smaller diamonds were moving in a
tiny echelon.

"Then I guess we die young," he answered the Ihelian. "Want to try?"

The Ihelian's face loosened into a wry smile. "Sometimes you ask
rather foolish questions, Lieutenant! I've been bred to such business,
and not given my life so much thought before this! But--"

"Yes. Judith."

And then they heard a woman's voice speaking behind them. "Thrayxite
acceleration hammocks could stand improvement," it said. "And when we
leave the Forest of Saarl, I think I'll just lie on the deck instead."

       *       *       *       *       *

Kriijorl's knowledge of the spot's location in the great forest was
far more accurate than he had given Mason reason to hope. And with a
deftness that matched that with which he had eluded the screens of the
Thrayxite fleet hurtling to protect its breeder planetoid, he brought
the ship to rest at Mason's direction, little more than a quarter-mile
from where the Book of the Saints lay entombed.

It was marked by two spires. One was of hewn stone, as Kriijorl had
said, immobile, with ancient symbols carven from its base to its
pinnacle.

And the other was smooth, and of metal; its gaping airlock testimony
to the haste with which it had been landed, unhidden by the natural
camouflage of the soaring trees with which the grass-carpeted clearing
was surrounded.

"Who--"

"Muscles," Mason answered her. The three were crouched at the
clearing's edge, waiting. "Thought he'd made it some way. Must've
ducked in before their fleet got into Space. Gambling that our signal
that he picked up wouldn't bring out a special reception committee
ready and waiting to meet him."

"But he has preceded us by many minutes," Kriijorl said. "I do not
see--"

"Not so many. He was in flight two full hours before you mentacommed
Ihelos. And if I know him, it was straight out of this galaxy at full
blast! So he had to back-track all that time and distance. He had to
risk a trap down here, as well as the Thrayxite fleet which he knew
would be rushing to protect its breeders."

"You had counted on those factors, Lieutenant?"

"Two birds with one blast, like I told you before," Mason said. "Ask
Judith, here. She'll tell you how well I know him." The girl was
silent, but her eyes voiced her thoughts more eloquently than her
tongue might have.

"Some will do anything to obtain the 'priceless'--" Kriijorl said
softly.

"Cain, any time!"

"You have laid a clever trap, Lieutenant."

"If it springs, sure. But where are those guard ships you were so
worried about? I was counting on them, too. They should be all over
the place by now."

And he was interrupted by the high-pitched scream of the flat, finned
shapes that hurtled suddenly over the tree tops, circled, slid quickly
downward.

"FLAT!" Mason yelled. And as they stretched prone, they saw Cain
running toward the ship from a great open shaft in the ground, a
round, shiny thing beneath one arm.

A probing needle of white hot flame stabbed out from one of the
descending ships, and there was a scream, and then Cain fell, a
charred skeleton, to the ground. The shiny thing he had carried rolled
lazily along the grass, teetered on edge, plopped silently over.

Mason was poised like a runner awaiting the starting gun. For a split
second he hesitated as the guard ships touched down, their weapons
momentarily screened by the lush foliage at the clearing's edge.

And then Mason was running, Judith and Kriijorl only steps behind him.

There were perhaps seconds before the armed women of the Thrayxite
guard detail would break from the forest's edge.

He stumbled, fell, and his outstretched hands touched the round, shiny
thing, and he could smell the reek of Cain's smouldering skeleton.

Kriijorl and Judith hesitated.

"Damn it, run!" and he felt his scream tear at his dry throat, and
then clutched the metal disk to him and regained his feet in a single
whip-like motion, and bolted after them toward the gaping air lock of
the ship that Cain had never reached.

There was a hissing sound and a wave of heat crackled behind him,
seared his flesh beneath his tattered tunic. And there was another,
inches before him, scorching smoking scars in the soft green turf, and
shouted orders filled the air scant yards behind him.

Then somehow he was at the air lock, and strong hands were pulling him
over its edge, and it swung to, glowed red as a bolt of raw energy
spent itself harmlessly against it.

"Now Ihelos!" Mason said as he fought for new breath.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was white, all white around him.

He tried to sit up but there was the touch of gentle hands that stayed
him, lowered him back upon the bed.

There were two of them--tall, like Vikings, and memory returned
slowly. There was a smaller one, too, standing straight and erect
beside him, like a proud queen from the pages of Earth's colorful
history.

Judith. And Kriijorl. And another. And in his hands there was the
silver disk. The can.

The can of records. The Book of the Saints.

He tried again to straighten, and then heard the voice of the one whom
he did not know.

"I am Yhevvak, Grand Liege of Ihelos," the voice said. "And I hold in
my hands, Earthman, the Book of the Saints. I have read it, and I have
broadcast to all of Thrayx what I have read. A truce delegation has
already departed from that planet to meet us here in Space."

"But--" the word stuck in his throat, and it was hard to think.

"Commander Kriijorl said that you suspected it was the key to our
great trouble. You were right.

"For it tells of a conference among the leaders of our two worlds many
millenia ago; a conference held in secret, because of the nature of
its subject--the very people of our worlds themselves. Secret, because
of the decision concerning them and their staggering number. Too
staggering for either planet any longer to feed. And the record itself
was then committed to this single microtape, and itself, kept in
secrecy since the day it was recorded.

"At first shrouded in deliberate mysticism, it was at length
remembered only as the Last Word of the Saints in the sudden wars
which so quickly followed its creation, the true cause of which was
skillfully falsified to the people of the time, and truly known only
to those who made the microtape I hold here.

"They were our greatest leaders; in them was invested the
responsibility for the welfare and livelihood of our two planets, both
materially and spiritually.

"When they lived, those records say, travel in Space beyond the speed
of light had not been accomplished; they believed such a feat an
impossibility imposed by a condescending Nature that could be
challenged too far. And they therefore knew no way of reaching beyond
the planets of Ihelos and Thrayx for the food and resources that
became so sorely depleted as both planets became, at length, stripped
nearly bare as their populations swelled beyond saturation point.

"Medical science had permitted the old to grow older; granted the
new-born an almost certain purchase on life once first breath had been
drawn. Yet its greatest offering was rejected by the people; there
were indignant cries at the merest suggestion that they intelligently
regulate their number, so that their posterity might live in greater
plenty than had they.

"There was but one solution for our desperate leaders. For although
warfare had long since vanished from our civilization as it had
matured, it took with it Nature's own unpleasant balance for her
overgenerous fecundity.

"The new balance, then, had to be of Man's making. And so it was made.

"Our leaders, our Saints, as we have come through the years to know
them, were of course adept masters at the many subtle arts of
propaganda, and they used those arts to the very limits of their
skill. They deliberately fomented, as their ancient record shows, the
wars, small at first and then ever larger, between Ihelos and Thrayx.

"They could not have foreseen that one day there would be conflict for
existence between the sexes; logically calculating intellect against
intuitive, wily cunning in a battle to determine the most fit, who
would then enjoy the right to survive.

"Nor could they have foreseen that one day, because of the very
conflict they fomented, the science of controlled genetics would at
last be recognized as a necessity of survival to both factions.

"Today we have our answer to the age old problem of keeping our
consumption within the limits of our ability to produce for it; we
have used it to survive. But to survive war, not peace.

"And that, as you apparently suspected, Earthman, is the key.

"We know now why we fought. And with the knowledge of the life forces
with which we insured our continued existence during our years of
battle, we may now become united worlds of peace again. For we shall
use that knowledge to take more advisedly of Nature's fruits than we
took before.

"Well done, Earthmen. And with our thanks, know that we shall be
always in your debt."

Then Yhevvak bowed low, and left just the three of them together in
the white hospital bay of his flagship.

Kriijorl was smiling, and there was a shininess in Judith's eyes.

Mason grinned. "I hope those Thrayxite babes get a wiggle on," he
said. "Those Earth gals gotta get 'em home! Their mothers'll be
frantic. Hey, girl, not in front of company!"

       *       *       *       *       *






End of Project Gutenberg's The Women-Stealers of Thrayx, by Fox B. Holden