Far rather would I have faced a dozen deadly black neemus than that single solitary scorpion!
So fast it was. One moment I saw the scorpion, the next the reddish-brown form vanished and the world turned a radiant blue.
In my helpless falling I had time for one thought, one thought only, as I was pitched out of Kregen and back to Earth.
Delia!
Chapter Seven
There was no sense in it!
No sense at all. That Opaz-forsaken cramph of a scorpion! One day I’d put my foot on the foul red-and-brown thing and twist and crush and so squash the thing flat! So help me!
Even as I raged thus to myself, and looked about the planet of my birth again, I knew the day would never dawn. I thought so then. I am not so sure now. If I did smash my foot down on the scorpion, and so deal with it in such wise as would kill a normal scorpion, would this messenger of the Star Lords die?
If I loosed a shaft at the scarlet-and-gold raptor, would that superb bird die?
I did not know. . I do not know. . All I knew then was that for some reason I had been flung back to Earth.
Oh, yes, I landed in a peck of trouble and sorted it out, and then haunted the night beaches, forever looking up toward that glinting spark of light upflung so arrogantly in the tail of the constellation of Scorpio. Up there, on a planet circling that twin star, four hundred light-years away, rested all I wanted in two worlds. Call me selfish, if you will. I do not care. Take the Prince Majisters, the Kovs, the Stroms, all the gaudy panoply of rank and wealth and privilege I had earned there on that perilous and profitable world of Kregen — take them all away. I hungered only for Delia, for my Delia and our twins, Drak and Lela.
A ghost of remorse would overtake me as I considered my friends there: Seg Segutorio, Inch of Ng’groga, Hap Loder, Prince Varden Wanek, Gloag, Turko the Shield, Kytun Kholin Dom, my friends of Valka and Djanduin, and Korf Aighos, and even Nulty; and there was my stepbrother-in-law, Vomanus of Vindelka, who wanted, I knew, to be a good friend and yet whose reckless ways took him off to the far corners of Kregen where he might swing a rapier with that raffish carelessness of his. Oh, yes, remorse would overtake me as I realized I would forgo all their friendship if I might once more clasp in my arms my Delia of Delphond, my Delia of the Blue Mountains.
And, hungering as I did, could I ever forget that I, Dray Prescot, was also a Krozair of Zy?
The days on Earth passed in gray despair. I had cleared up the trouble here. (I will concern myself in these tapes mainly with what transpired in my career on Kregen, except when something I believe will interest you occurred to match). Then partly to give myself something to do, thereby driving away the insanity that threatened, and partly because I was genuinely interested in finding out what I could of the Savanti, I set out on a little detective work.
The Star Lords, the Everoinye, seemed to me to be above inquiry.
The Savanti, those mortal but superhuman men and women of Aphrasoe the Swinging City, seemed subject to investigation.
I went hunting Alex Hunter.
Rather, since he was dead on a Valkan beach on far Kregen, decently buried by me with two prayers said over him, it was his memory I hunted, what there was to know about him in the minds of those who had known him.
Money matters were carried on for me by the descendants of that man, whose name I will not mention, whom I had met on the field of Waterloo. I was now remarkably rich. It meant nothing, of course; it still means nothing compared to the greater glory of Kregen. But my Earthly wealth gave me the means to carry out my search.
The trail began in Paris and took me to New York. After a month of inquiries, of checking public records, of following up leads in school and college and U.S. Army records, I felt I had indeed discovered the Alex Hunter who had been employed by the Savanti in their crusade to cleanse the world of Kregen.
As a grim old Army major said: “He was posted missing, Mr. Prescot. There was Indian trouble. There always is. But we had high hopes of the boy. You say you knew him?”
I dissimulated; but the picture became clearer. Alex Hunter had been a young shavetail whose career seemed marked for high command. Eager, alert, efficient, he had made a first-class officer. I remembered his fair hair, those keen blue eyes, the supple strength of him. How he had been recruited by the Savanti nal Aphrasoe, I did not know. But he had been taken to Kregen, and no doubt had passed his test down the River Aph with flying colors, as I remembered, as I remembered! Then the Savanti had appointed him a tutor, given him a genetic language pill, trained him in the martial arts. They had no doubt explained to him in full their plans for Kregen, plans at which I could only guess, for the Savanti had booted me out of the paradise that was Aphrasoe, the Swinging City.
What I did know without doubt was that Alex Hunter had appeared on a beach in Valka, charged by the Savanti to rescue a shipwrecked party of political prisoners from their guards. He had been doing well. He had fought gallantly; as he had said of my fighting, so I could say of his, that he had fought merrily. But his lack of experience had betrayed him. A cruel javelin had smashed its steel head through his body.
Either the Savanti themselves, employing me out of desperation, or the Star Lords with their infinitely more devious ways, had flung me onto that beach to save the situation. I had done so. And I had won my island of Valka. But the strangeness of walking a New York street, and of seeing all the wonders of mid-century America growing before my eyes, made me ponder long and long the reasons that most surely existed for all that the Star Lords did.
The Savanti, I felt sure, wished to make Kregen a civilized world. This is a laudable object. Just what the Star Lords wanted, I did not know. But it was clear their plans were long-term. The people I rescued from death at the behest of the Star Lords would be growing up now, and their fates must influence the fate of the world.
Here, on this Earth, how many people who vanished had been taken to Kregen by the Savanti to join their great crusade?
And I, Dray Prescot, had been found wanting and had been kicked out. Thoughts such as that would send the claws of madness striking through to me. Was I to remain for the next thousand years, left here to rot on Earth, to destroy myself in futility on the world of my birth?
I left the Western frontier, where I had felt strangely at home in the harsh conditions so similar to many of the Kregan frontiers, and I took a southeasterly swing and was in Virginia when the blue radiance took me — blessedly — back to Kregen.
Opening my eyes, I saw that I was naked. That was normal. I think the Star Lords knew of that tickling feeling I had that I would think the less of them if they provided me with a handy sword, or shield, or helmet, when they brought me to Kregen to untangle the latest problem hurled at me. The problem I had to sort out this time was so absurdly simple that I was sure the situation had been contrived by the Star Lords merely to bring me once more to Kregen. Maybe, I thought, as I stood up and stretched in the glorious mingled opaline light, maybe they required me to be here on Kregen. Certainly, facing a little four-armed Och, for all that he carried the small round shield of the Och, and a spear, and a thraxter belted to his waist, was not of the order of problems I had previously encountered. The Och was a slaver and he was driving a heavily chained coffle of Djan girls to the beach where a low two-masted vessel waited. Now the Djangs are an especial joy to me, as you know. They are apim, just like Homo sapiens, but they have four arms apiece. They are the most ferocious fighters. Their girls are exceptionally beautiful. They are much prized. They do not travel very far from their own country of Djanduin, which is situated in the southwest of Havilfar.