Kirin said, “Well, if you people know my reputation you must also know that I am a lone wolf. I work on my own; I never accept assignments.”
Temujin nodded unhappily.
“Exactly what I told the Elder Brothers,” he puffed. “But they pointed out that you should be badly in need of funds by now and probably spoiling for some action after three months of rotting in the jungles of Zha. They instructed me to give you this—” He undipped a fat purse from his waistband and tossed it over to Kirin, who caught it and pulled the drawstring. A pool of glittering fire poured out into his cupped palm. He sucked in his breath just a little. Pyroliths! The fabulous pyroliths of Chandala were rare and precious… and there were enough of the self-luminous firestones in that bag to purchase a princedom!
“—And this,” Temujin wheezed, handing over a sheaf of thick parchment, folded many times. The crisp paper crackled as Kirin opened the sheets and leafed through them curiously.
“The jewel we are after is called the Medusa,” Temujin wheezed, settling back. “It is concealed within a structure called the Iron Tower which lies amidst the barren wastes of the uplands, guarded by a maze of traps and deadfalls. We have, over centuries, and at frightful labor, obtained very precise and complete blueprints of the Tower. As you can see from those drawings, there is one safe route through the obstacles and hazards. It is clearly marked in red. There will be no danger. No danger at all…”
Kirin had to admit that everything looked to be in order. If the blueprints were correct, it should be child’s play to penetrate the magical defenses of the Iron Tower and steal the Medusa for the philosophers of Trevelon. The price was munificent and the project sounded exciting. But there were still a few unanswered questions that bothered him.
If it was so simple and easy, why did the Master Mages hire his services for so princely a fee, instead of performing the theft themselves? And for that matter, what was the Medusa anyway, and why did the Mages want it?
The softly modulated voice of the ship interrupted his thoughts.
“I have been under attack for the past 12.03 seconds,” the ship observed calmly.
Kirin jumped, spilled his drink, snarled a curse, and rapped: “What kind of an attack?”
“Energy weapons,” the ship murmured. “Two spaceships are in orbit with me. My deflector screens are thus far capable of sustaining the assault, which is in the gamma-ray frequencies, but my logic machines anticipate the use of disruptor tightbeams within a few more seconds.”
“Break orbit and take evasive action,” Kirin growled. Then, to the startled Temujin, “Must be those damned little dwarves again!” Raising his voice a trifle he said, “Ship! While you’re at it, you might as well pick a course to Pelizon and get moving.”
The die, as the ancient pre-space saying has it, was cast. And Kirin was on his way to steal the Medusa from the Iron Tower of Pelizon.
He had, of course, no slightest inkling that the fate of a thousand stars hung balanced on his decision…
CHAPTER 3
SPACE TRAP
Zha and Pelizon lay at opposite ends of the Wyvern Cluster, that group of several hundred suns that formed what was known as the Near Stars. Pelizon was a lonely little world on the further fringe, just beyond the Dragon Stars. Kirin commanded the ship to chart a course for Pelizon and settled down to study the blueprints of the Tower while the ship took care of everything else.
The ship was a superb example of the engineering miracles the Old Empire had been capable of. The New Empire was now building ships again, yes, and technology was on the rise, with new articles such as the rain-repelling weather-cloak Kirin had worn on Zha and his power gun. But even the technarchs of Valdamar could not create anything like Kirin’s ship.
Scarcely a hundred yards from prow to stern, it was as sleek and trim and swift a craft as ever plied the dark cold wastes between the stars. It was crammed with defensive and offensive equipment, remarkably well equipped for a small cruiser. Virtually a miniature fortress. And swift and nimble and elusive. At his command, it climbed above the complicated orbits of the nine moons of Zha and flashed out of the plane of the ecliptic—and vanished. Literally vanished.
For not only was the ship swift and strong, but in flight it could be rendered all but completely indetectible as well. A dense magnetic field could be built around the hull, a field whose lines of force were so powerful that they could bend even light rays around the ship, thus rather effectively making Kirin’s ship invisible to sight and to radar as well.
But there were other ways of detecting a ship in space. One was neutrino-emission; a star drive leaked neutrinos all over the place. Again, the Ancients had wrought cleverly and well. Kirin’s ship was fitted with a brace of neutrino-baffles that blocked heavy particle seepage to an irreducible minimum. In fact, about the only thing the ship could not disguise was its basic mass. Luckily, only naval warships of the Omega class carried mass detectors. They were not only immense and very heavy but delicate as well, and there were only a few Omega-class warships in the Near Stars.
So to all intents and purposes, when the ship lifted out of Zha’s solar system it vanished into thin air… thin space, rather.
Which made it all the more peculiar when the ship was attacked.
The first thing that happened was the brain went out of whack. The brain lost control of the ship. This was both remarkable, and alarming to boot—in fact, it was impossible.
The brain, a super-miniaturized computer robot of remarkable sophistication, supplied Kirin in lieu of a trained crew. It not only monitored the life support and power systems, but served as navigational computer and robot pilot as well, was programmed to interpret and act upon spoken commands and, lacking these, on its own judgment and the built-in Prime Directives.
* * * *
They were several hours out of Zha, relaxing over a late supper and getting to know one another a little better. While Kirin nursed a steaming cup of kaff, Temujin puffed on a small black oily pipe and was engaged in giving the thief some background information on the mysterious leader of the Death Dwarves.
“Frankly, lad, we know little about him,” Temujin was saying. “He came out of nowhere to enter the ranks of the cult, and once in, rapidly climbed to a position of dominant power. But he’s no Pelizonese, that’s for certain. He’s nearly seven feet tall and gaunt as a skeleton.”
“Facial characteristics?” Kirin inquired.
“Space knows, lad! Goes masked behind a bit o’ cloth—probably to make himself seem more mysterious. Calls himself Zarlak. The assassins call him ‘the Veiled One’ and think he is a prophet sent by their gods to lead them to greatness and power. All very odd and mystifying…”
“Then it was Zarlak who gave the command to have me killed?”
“Most likely. But we think there’s a bit more to it beyond just wantin’ to keep you from stealing the gem. We think Zarlak is after it himself.”
“Hmm. Just what is this Medusa thing, anyway, Temujin? Is it just a jewel or something more.”
Temujin winked mysteriously and laid a finger alongside his bulbous nose. “Something more, much more,” he hissed in a conspiratorial tone. “A talisman of great power… very dangerous in the wrong hands. Trevelon has known about it for ages, but so long as it was guarded by the superstitious Death Dwarves and protected behind the magical safeguards of the Tower, we cared but little. But now that Zarlak the Veiled One has appeared on the scene, we have become a mite worried. We suspect that Zarlak knows the secret of the Medusa, and is on Pelizon for the sole purpose of getting his hands on it. Hence your assignment to steal the thing. Trevelon wants it primarily so that it may be destroyed and thus kept out of malevolent hands. It could be very dangerous if it fell into the possession