The Andre Norton Megapack - 15 Classic Novels and Short Stories

lights, nor did the dead carry them,” she said slowly. “What have those to fear? They can not be killed!”
    “If they are still there, that we can put to the test,” Torgul replied grimly, and a murmur from his officers bore out his determination.
    “And lose all the rest of you?” Ross retorted coldly. “I have met these before; they can will a man to obey them. Look you—” He slammed his left hand flat on the table. The ridges of scar tissue were plain against his tanned skin. He knew no better way of driving home the dangers of dealing with the star men than providing this graphic example. “I held my own hand in fire so that the hurt of it would work against their pull upon my thoughts, against their willing that I come and be easy meat for their butchering.”
    Jazia’s fingers flickered out, smoothed across his old scars lightly as she gazed into his eyes.
    “This, too, is true,” she said slowly. “For it was also pain of body which kept me from their last snare. They stood by the hall and I saw Prahad, Okun, Mosaji, come out to them to be killed as if they were in a hold net and were drawn. And there was that which called me also so that I would go to them though I called upon the Power of Phutka to save. And the answer to that plea came in a strange way, for I fell as I went from the shrine and cut my arm on the rocks. The pain of that hurt was as a knife severing the net. Then I crawled for the wood and that calling did not come again—”
    “If you know so much about them, tell us what weapons we may use to pull them down!” That demand came from Vistur.
    Ross shook his head. “I do not know.”
    “Yet,” Jazia mused, “all things which live must also die sooner or later. And it is in my mind that these have also a fate they dread and fear. Perhaps we may find and use it.”
    “They came from the sea—by a ship, then?” Ross asked. She shook her head.
    “No, there was no ship; they came walking through the breaking waves as if they had followed some road across the sea bottom.”
    “A sub!”
    “What is that?” Torgul demanded.
    “A type of ship which goes under the waves, not through them, carrying air within its hull for the breathing of the crew.”
    Torgul’s eyes narrowed. One of the other captains who had been summoned from the two companion cruisers gave a snort of disbelief.
    “There are no such ships—” he began, to be silenced by a gesture from Torgul.
    “We know of no such ships,” the other corrected. “But then we know of no such devices as Jazia saw in operation either. How does one war upon these under-the-seas ships, Ross?”
    The Terran hesitated. To describe to men who knew nothing of explosives the classic way of dealing with a sub via depth charges was close to impossible. But he did his best.
    “Among my people one imprisons in a container a great power. Then the container is dropped near the sub and—”
    “And how,” broke in the skeptical captain, “do you know where such a ship lies? Can you see it through the water?”
    “In a way—not see, but hear. There is a machine which makes for the captain of the above-seas ship a picture of where the sub lies or moves so that he may follow its course. Then when he is near enough he drops the container and the power breaks free—to also break apart the sub.”
    “Yet the making of such containers and the imprisoning of the power within them,” Torgul said, “this is the result of a knowledge which is greater than any save the Foanna may possess. You do not have it?” His conclusion was half statement, half question.
    “No. It took many years and the combined knowledge of many men among my people to make such containers, such a listening device. I do not have it.”
    “Why then think of what we do not have?” Torgul’s return was decisive. “What do we have?”
    Ross’s head came up. He was listening, not to anything in that cabin, but to a sound which had come through the port just behind his head. There—it had come again! He was on his feet.
    “What—?” Vistur’s hand hovered over the ax at his belt. Ross saw their gaze centered on him.
    “We may have reinforcements now!” The Terran was already on his way to the deck.
    He hurried to the rail and whistled, the thin, shrill summons he had practiced for weeks before he had ever begun this fantastic adventure.
    A sleek dark body broke water and the dolphin grin was exposed as Tino-rau answered his call. Though Ross’s