Hunters of the Red Moon Read online

  Dane said, "I'm sorry. This is too much for me to take in. You mean your ship really does come from the stars?"

  She said, "As nearly as I can figure out, we've covered about thirty star-systems. The slave quarters are almost full; I expect they'll be heading for the Mekhar marts quite soon now. It's rare for them to pick up only one person on a planet; does your world have good guard systems against slave raids?"

  "None of us on my world have any idea such things exist," Dane said wryly. "People who talk about ships from the stars are usually locked up—or laughed at, anyway, as lunatics. I was sailing alone in a small boat."

  "Out of sight of land? That explains it, then; they just swooped down and grabbed you up, probably expecting to find eight or ten people aboard," the redheaded woman said. "Somebody in the control room is probably getting a clawing-out right now."

  "The Mekhars? Are they the lion-faced things I saw?" He hesitated, reflecting that she might not know what a lion was, but evidently the mechanical translator provided her with the nearest equivalent, for she said, "Yes, they're proto-felines, and I personally think they're the most savage people in the Galaxy. They've been five times refused membership in the Unity, you know. You—oh, excuse me, if your world is a Closed world, you probably don't even know what the Unity is. Do you have space travel?"

  "Only on a small scale. We're exploring our own moon and have had two or three manned expeditions to Mars—our fourth planet," Dane said.

  "Well, the Unity is—I suppose you'd say it's a loose Peace-and-Trade Federation. It was the Unity which first formulated the concept of Universal Sapience; before that the proto-felines looked down on us—the proto-simians—and proto-reptilians on both. And so forth and so on. You can catch up on that some other time. Tell me, what's your name?"

  He told her. "And yours?" he asked. "How did you happen to be captured? Doesn't your world believe in starships either?"

  She shook her head. "No. I took a calculated risk. I'm an anthropologist and I was exploring a deserted artificial satellite, under permit, for traces of a prehistoric technology. I was warned that there had been a Mekhar raid in the next star-system but it seemed to me a very small chance they'd make it their next stop. I took the chance—and lost. They killed my brother, and one of my three colleagues. One of the others is over there"—she pointed to where a heavyset man, with a strong ethnic resemblance to the woman, was deep in conversation with a tall frail-looking girl—"and the other was wounded in the raid and he's still in the ship's hospital. Unless they've killed him, too, as damaged merchandise." Her tone was indescribably bitter. Dane didn't blame her. "My name is Rianna. For all the good it does me now."

  She fell silent, and Dane looked around. Beyond the cage where he was, there were further cages, equally barred and half open, all filled with people as far as he could see. He said, "How can it possibly pay them to stop on a planet for one person?"

  She shrugged. "Normally it doesn't. Slaves are luxury merchandise and they usually take more. Before we were luxury goods, I gather we were not so well-treated, but now they go to great pains to keep us well and happy. They even equip us with translator disks, in spite of the fact that it permits us to talk and possibly even plot against them, because—they say—when we can't communicate with our fellow prisoners it's bad for our morale."

  There was a stir down the open corridor between the rows of barred cages, and a loud clanging sound. Rianna said, with a wry grimace, "Feeding time for the animals."

  Two of the lion-faced creatures were wheeling a large cart down the hallway. As they drew even with each door, one of them leveled a narrow black tube—evidently a weapon of some sort—at the doorway while the other unloaded several flat packaged trays from the cart, each tray in a different color, and carried them into the cell—or cage. Dane watched the proceeding without moving. When they had finished, the clanging sound came again and Rianna said, "We can go now and get the food. If anyone moves while they're unloading, he gets shot with the nerve-gun. It might not kill you, but it's set to maximum pain-stimulation and it's like being dipped in boiling oil." She shuddered. "I got in the way when we were captured; it was three days before I could move without wanting to scream."

  Dane had wondered about that, why all the prisoners in any one cage didn't rush the guards at once. He said, "Doesn't anyone ever try to get loose?"

  "Not twice," she said with a wry face. "And if you did get loose, where would you go? There are eighty Mekhars, all with nerve-guns, loose on this ship—maybe more." She moved to where the other cell-mates were taking up the food. Rummaging through the stacked trays, she found two color-coded with blue and green stripes. "This is Universal coding for proto-simian food. In a pinch you can eat the plain green or the plain blue. Never touch red-coded or orange-coded stuff; it hasn't the right vitamins. And the yellow-coded stuff will poison you; it's for insectivores."

  The redheaded man with the strong ethnic resemblance to Rianna came over to them, tray in hand. They dropped on the floor to eat. He said to Dane, "Welcome to the fellowship of the damned," as he tore open his package. "My name is Roxon. I see Rianna has been welcoming you."

  "Dane Marsh," Dane said. He slowly opened the package. Heated by some internal mechanism, the food was smoking hot, and, when he began to spoon it up, surprisingly tasty: some kind of mush, slightly sweet; some kind of crisp textured stuff, slightly salty; a soup-like liquid, somewhat bitter, but good. "At least these Mekhars, or whatever you call them, don't mean to starve us."

  "Why should they?" The squat creature with the leathery skin—at close range Dane could see that it was skin—came and hunkered down beside them. "Welcome, fellow thinker, in the name of Universal Sapience and Peace." His package was coded in yellow and red stripes. Dane caught a whiff of it; it smelled slightly sulphurous and decaying, but the leathery-skinned creature began to eat it with gusto, using his long prehensile fingers with extreme fastidious delicacy, allowing the food to rest only on the tips, and tearing it up with long strong teeth. "Why should they not treat us well? We are their profit. My world is a poor one and I am seldom this well-fed, but what does the Voice of the Egg—may his wisdom live till the suns burn out—say? Surely it is better to hunt flies in a stinking swamp, and live at peace, than to feast on fine foods in a great house torn by war and strife."

  Dane almost chuckled. To hear calm philosophy spoken by a huge and savage reptile—the giant, squat being turned, his teeth bared.

  "Do you laugh at the wisdom of the Divine Egg, stranger?" His voice was very soft and gentle.

  "By no means," Dane said, drawing back slightly. "There is a similar proverb in my own—er—my own race's Great Book of Wisdom; it says, "Better to live in a corner of the housetop than to dwell in a broad house with a brawling woman."

  "Er, hmmm," rumbled the lizard-man. "Surely all wisdom is one, my proto-simian friend. Even in slavery one may find material for philosophy, then. Yet share your laughter, friend."

  Dane said, fumbling for words, "Among my people, it is thought amusing when words of peace are spoken by—by anyone of—of a warlike and fierce aspect, and by my standards you look—er—fierce. No offense meant."

  "None taken," he said gently, "although surely it is the large and fierce person who needs to look and speak with peaceful wisdom, in order not to affront others, while the small and weak person proclaims his peaceful nature with his very appearance."

  "It doesn't always work that way on my world," Dane said. Not in his wildest dreams had he ever thought of discussing philosophy over a shared meal with a giant reptile—no; he was obviously a man of some sort. But it was mind-boggling, certainly a Mad Tea Party if there ever was one.

  "My name is Aratak," the leathery lizard-man said. Dane told the man his name, and he repeated it thoughtfully. "I know not what a Dane may be, but a Marsh is my home-place name, and we are therefore home-brothers, friend Marsh. Let us be brethren in misfortune, then, since all marshes are one marsh, as all seas are one sea, and
all swamps are one swamp within the Cosmic All."

  Dane Marsh scratched his head. There was an element of madness about this giant philosopher that he liked. "It suits me," he said.

  "We shall explore one another's spiritual philosophy at leisure," Aratak said. "As for me, I have proved what I knew, but never fully believed before; that Universal Sapience is a truth and not only a spiritual philosophy. I have learned in these weeks of slavery that true brotherhood can exist between men and humanoids. I had paid only lip service to it before; it seemed to me that no true intelligence could exist in proto-simians, for they must spend so much of their metabolic cycle enslaved to their reproductive needs. Simians on my planet are only good for pets, and I had never known one in the Fellowship of the Unity before. So to all of you"—Dane and Rianna ducked as his large-clawed gesture took them all in—"my eternal thanks for an enlargement of my spiritual growth."

  Roxon said somberly, "Let's hope we live long enough for the spiritual growth to do us some good in what's left of our lives," and they all fell silent again. Dane scraped his tray clean of the last morsel of food and put it aside. He felt better now. He knew where he was, and there was no immediate prospect of death or torture.

  Nevertheless the prospect was anything but pleasing. All his life Dane Marsh had been a man of action, in a modern world where that takes some doing. In modern society most men walk an orderly path from the cradle to the grave, not acting so much as being acted upon; Dane had spent his whole life breaking out of that mold, and now the enforced helplessness weighed upon him with an almost personal rage. Caught up without warning, caged, equipped against his will with the damned translator disk which made a thin painless lump against the skin of his neck—it made things easier, but still it was something that had been done to him against his will.

  Now that the food was restoring his strength, the infuriating sense of helplessness was turning rapidly to anger. These people, these citizens of a great Galactic civilization, might sit in their cages and wait for whatever the Mekhar slave ships did to them; he didn't intend to.

  He heard, outside, the clanging sound which he had heard first when the Mekhar came into the corridor to distribute the food. He filed it away for future reference; evidently a single mechanism unlocked all the cage doors when the feeding cycle began and locked them again when it was completed. The Mekhar were evidently pretty confident in their weapons, and the terror they inspired in their prisoners, to leave the cages unlocked so long. That knowledge might be useful later, but for the moment Dane decided to bide his time.

  The other captives in their cell—the hairy creature who gave the impression of more arms and legs than he should have had (Dane decided it was the curious way the limbs were segmented and jointed), a couple of ordinary-looking men and women, a tall narrow-faced creature who seemed covered with dark fur—were finishing their trays of food. One tray had not been touched, and Dane noticed it had the green-and-blue coding that identified human food. He looked around the cell. Yes; on a low bunk beside the wall, a slender form lay motionless, enveloped in a long white robe, the face turned away from them.

  Dane said, "What's the matter with that one? Hurt, sick, dead?"

  "Dying," Rianna said quietly. "She has refused food for ten meal-periods now. She is an empath from Spica Four; they prefer to die, when away from their worlds. It won't be long now. It's all we can do for her now—to let her die in peace."

  Dane looked at the redheaded woman with a throb of revulsion. "And you're all just sitting here and letting her starve herself to death?"

  "Of course," Rianna said indifferently. "I told you, they always die, away from their own world and their own people."

  "And it doesn't bother you!" Dane burst out passionately.

  "Oh, it bothers me." Her voice was quiet. "But why should I interfere with her chosen fate? Sometimes I think she is wiser than we."

  Dane's face set in lines of disgust. He scrambled to his feet and picked up the extra packet of food. He said, "Well, I'm not going to sit here and watch a woman die, if I can do anything about it." He strode across the room to where the woman lay. He was fuming. Just sit there and let her starve herself to death!

  She did not move as he approached her, and for a moment he wondered if she was already dead, or too far gone to be within his reach. He stood for a few moments over her bunk, looking down in a sort of wonder at the beauty of the girl who lay there.

  Formless thoughts cascaded through his mind: This is what I seem always to have been seeking, that elusive something I always thought must be just over the next mountain peak... beyond the next wave... at the end of the rainbow. I didn't know it could be a woman... or take a woman's form....

  And she's lying here dying, and we're both hopeless and in prison. Do I see her as all beauty only because it's too late...? Does the impossible dream come within reach only when it's forever out of reach?

  In a wonder that was beyond pain, he stood motionless, the food tray forgotten and hanging from his hand; then some faint, imperceptible movement like a soft breath made him aware that she was still alive. And at once his formless thoughts of impossible beauty receded in a wash of hard, practical sanity. Forget all that! She was just a girl, lying here slowly dying, but maybe not too far gone yet. The wonder and awe died away in a surge of purely human pity. He knelt down beside her and reached out, lightly, to touch her shoulder.

  Before his hand actually touched her, as if the very clamor of his thoughts disturbed her, she stirred and turned slightly toward him. Her eyes, deep-set beneath feathery dark brows, opened.

  She was so pale that somehow he had expected the eyes to be blue; instead they were deep russet-brown, the wide eyes of a forest animal. Her lips moved slightly as if she were trying to speak, but her voice was too weak to be heard; it was only a faint murmur of protest, of curiosity.

  He said in a gentle voice, "Here, I've brought your food. Try to eat."

  A murmured negative.

  "Now listen," Dane said firmly. "This is nonsense. While you're alive you have a duty to all of us: to keep up your strength, in case we have a chance for escape or something like that. Suppose we were rescued, or escaped, and you were too weak to move, and we had to carry you, and we were all recaptured because we had to stop and help you along? Wouldn't that be a dreadful thing to do to all of us?"

  Her lips moved again and somehow he had the impression of a faint smile, although the limp and strengthless features did not actually move. The words were so quiet that Dane had to bend low to hear.

  "Why should any of you... drink my cup... ?"

  "Because we're all human and all in this together," he said firmly. But he wondered, were they really? None of them had cared enough to keep the girl alive, and maybe it was that knowledge that had made her want to die....

  "Well, anyway, I care," he said, and his fingers sought her hand. "Come on. If you're too weak to feed yourself, I'll feed you." He tore open the package, watching the self-heating element gradually permeate it with steaming heat. He spooned up a little of the soupy liquid and put it to her lips. "Come on, swallow," he said. "Start with this, it's easy."

  For a moment he thought she would keep her lips obstinately shut; then she relaxed them and let the soup slip inside, and after a moment he saw her throat move and knew she had swallowed it. He felt a vast, wild sense of elation, but he was careful not to show it, only withdrawing the spoon and raising another careful spoonful to her lips. After two or three more reluctant mouthfuls she stirred as if she wanted to raise herself, and Dane put his arm around her and supported her shoulders; he fed her the soup and a little of the mush, then withheld the spoon when she nodded for more.

  "Not just now. You shouldn't eat too much right away after such a long fast; wait a little before you take any more," Dane advised, and she smiled faintly in comprehension as he let her slide down on her pillow. "Yes, try to sleep again now, and next time you'll be stronger."

  Her eyes were closing with weak
ness, but she opened them again with effort and whispered, "...are you?"

  "Just another prisoner," he said. "My name's Dane Marsh. We'll get acquainted when you're stronger. And your name is—"

  "Dallith," she whispered, and abruptly dropped into sleep again, as completely withdrawn from him as if she were dead.

  Dane stood for a few more moments watching her, then straightened, reclaiming what was left of the food tray and laying it on a piece of furniture.

  Dallith. How lovely, and how it suited her delicate face and wild-creature eyes. For the moment it was enough to know that she lived, that she had chosen to live. He turned away, seeing that the other prisoners had broken up into separate groups; but Rianna was still watching him As he came away she said with a deep bitterness, "You fool! What have you done?"

  Dane said, "I think she'll live. It only needed someone to care whether she did or not. Any of you could have done it."

  Rianna said with inexpressible wrath, "How could you do that to her? After she had given up, to wake her again to hope—and suffering—oh, you meddlesome fool!"

  Dane said, "It's not in me to sit and let anyone die. While there's life, there's hope. You're alive, aren't you? And by choice?"

  She only sighed and turned away from him. She said, not looking back, "I only hope you never know what you've done."

  CHAPTER THREE

  There was no way to measure time, in the Mekhar slave ship, except by meal-periods and by the periods when the ship, or at least the slave quarters, were darkened for sleep. Nevertheless Dane Marsh estimated afterward that some three weeks, by his own reckoning, passed without any major incident.

  The main event of this time, by his own awareness, was the slow return of Dallith from willful death to life. She slept, that time, for some hours, and when she woke Dane fed her again. The next time he encouraged her to sit up for a few minutes and, when she was able to stand and move around, he asked Rianna to help her to the bathing quarters set apart for the females in their section. He had made the request with some qualms—after all, Rianna had expected, almost wanted the girl to lie there and die, and he had halfway foreseen that she would refuse to involve herself at all—but to his surprise she agreed and thereafter she took over a good part of Dallith's daily care, with an almost motherly concern. Dane didn't try to understand it, but he accepted it gratefully.