Otherwise, they were back to square one.
By the time he had finished, Erspia’s terminator line was approaching and the point-source sun was about to slip below the horizon. Histrina, when he returned to the cabin, was lounging on a couch, staring vacantly. On seeing him she smiled and invitingly opened her legs.
Laedo ignored the gesture. He moved to the control board, unlocked it, and keyed in the power. A fuzzy, high-pitched note sounded beyond the wall.
“What’s that?” Histrina asked, sitting up suddenly.
He pointed to the screen. “Watch.”
She clung to the couch as the view on the screen swung, dipped, then fell away. The ground vanished.
“What is it?” she screeched.
“We’re flying. Didn’t I tell you this ship could go to the stars?”
“You said it didn’t work any more.”
“Not to get to the stars. We’re going somewhere nearer.”
Unlike a normal planet’s, Erspia’s shadow cast an expanding, not narrowing, cone into space, as a consequence of the sun’s tiny size. Laedo had decided to make for the Ahrimanic projector rather than the Ormazdian one, so as to avoid approaching that sun, which at close range might well be dangerous.
The manoeuvring engine strained as it lifted the ship up the gravity well. Laedo became afraid that the small motor might not make it, but then the gravity field suddenly ended, cut off sharp in the manner typical of gravity generators. From now on there was only the natural attraction of the planetoid to contend with, and the ship accelerated easily.
He located the small disk of the projector, locked a course on it, then turned back to Histrina. She was still clutching the couch and staring at the screen, which now showed only stars, the sun having disappeared.
“It will only take a few minutes,” he told her.
“Where are we going?”
“Hoggora calls it Ahriman’s mouth.”
“Ohhh…” Her eyes opened wide in surprise.
He returned to the board, curious to see the object at close quarters. As it swelled, he became aware of a malevolent bubbling in his mind, like a spring of evil water breaking through from below. Conscious of Histrina at his back; he suddenly experienced thoughts concerning her that were so violent and disgusting that they shocked the more detached part of him.
He fought to push the feelings away—he had became adept at turning aside Ahrimanic suggestions. But the impulse grew stronger, became a gloating, rejoicing sense of wickedness which threatened to overwhelm him.
Of course! he thought. I imagined Ahriman was stronger by night because Erspia’s bulk absorbs the beam as it passed through. Instead it’s because one is nearer to Ahriman at night. The beam has to emanate in a cone if it’s to cover the whole planetoid. It’s more concentrated towards the apex!
A stinging blow in the back of his neck made him stagger. He spun round. Histrina was crouched, her face twisted in a grimace, a knife from the dining table in her hand. She had stabbed him in the neck with it.
Luckily it was not a very sharp piece of cutlery, neither had she used it very expertly. Feeling the blood trickle down his back, Laedo was momentarily seized with thoughts of what he would do to Histrina. He lunged, trapped her wrist, then twisted her hand till she dropped the knife. He put his hands round her neck and began to squeeze.
Oh, he was enjoying it! He squeezed harder, till her tongue edged out between her teeth. Then, with a supreme effort, he let her go and stepped back.
She collapsed, coughing painfully and holding her throat. But it didn’t take her long to get to her feet again. She threw herself at him, her fingers hooked into claws, the nails seeking to gouge out his eyes.
Laedo threshed with his arms, fending her off while tussling with the maddening impulses that were growing stronger by the second.
The thought projector was looming large. On the screen Laedo could see that the spherical surface was ribbed and striated. He attempted to get to the controls, but by now Histrina, howling in an ululating note of savagery, was on her knees, trying to mangle his testicles with both hands. He kicked her hard in the stomach.
She rolled over, retching. For some moments Laedo was torn between what he wanted to do and what he knew he must do. What he wanted to do was to get hold of Histrina and subject her to the worst experiences a totally depraved mind could devise. In the end, he did what he knew he should do. He moved a control wheel, and the ship swung aside.
Out of the path of the beam.
He sank to the floor, holding his head in his hands. Nausea overwhelmed him. It was as though a spring of evil-smelling liquid, that had soaked his feelings and driven him crazy, was draining back to where it had come from, into his censored unconscious, no longer prodded and awakened by Ahriman’s lance.
Histrina did not calm down quite so quickly. When her pain abated she continued to make animal-like gestures, clawing the air with her hands as though to strike at him, and hissing like a snake. But after a few minutes her gestures became mechanical and empty, then ceased altogether.
“Do you feel any better?” Laedo asked.
She nodded.
“We were too close to Ahriman,” he explained, noting as he spoke that her eyes still gleamed in a rather unpleasant way. “He was too strong for us. Ormazd’s influence is so weak out here.”
He adjusted the screen. The Ahrimanic sphere appeared in side view, the chute-like shaft projecting from it like the barrel of a gun.
He wondered what flying up the Ormazdian beam would be like. Paroxysms of benevolence, perhaps.
Carefully he scrutinized the sphere for some sign of an entrance, and spotted a circular crack that was, possibly, a hatch. If it would open he could presumably get inside without exposing himself to thought projection again. But he realized that his action in coming here had lacked discrimination, had been too subjective. He was now frightened of what he might find inside the Ahrimanic stronghold.
The sphere of Ormazd sounded safer.
He turned the ship away and set a course for the opposite side of Erspia. As they passed out of shadow the sun became visible, glaring against the stars.
“Don’t worry, we’ll be all right,” he told her without conviction. “We’re going to Ormazd instead.”
“Why are you doing this?”
As succinctly as was practicable, Laedo explained that he was seeking help to escape from Erspia and return to the world he had come from. “Or rather, worlds,” he ended. “There are hundreds of inhabited ones out there, all of them a hundred times bigger than the one you know. You’ll like it, Histrina. Erspia is like never leaving your own back yard. It’s amazing you’ve turned out as bright as you are.”
He could see the idea appealed to her.
The sun grew near, and the viewscreen automatically tuned down its increasing brilliance. Laedo took care to stay clear of the thought cone, and soon found himself facing a ribbed, striated globe that was, to appearances, identical to the one he had just left.
He pondered on how to gain entrance. There was a ploy for such situations which often worked on human space vehicles, but there was no clue as to whether this one was of human or alien manufacture.
The ploy was to hurl a mass of radio signals at the lock, if there was one, which would often respond by opening. Laedo had a recording of the most likely signals (such items could be purchased at any space port for a paltry sum) and he fed it into his transmitter.
Hopefully he edged his ship closer to the hatch. The sphere itself was large; several times the size of his own ship, and larger, in fact, than a decent-sized cargo vessel. Large enough, he reminded himself, to be manned.