John Rackham by The Double Invaders Page B

people must have some strange powers. All at once he heard a whooping
cry away to his left and one frantic glance showed him a whole pack of them
after him, running like deer.
    He wheeled away and fled down a side street
with the splatter of leather-shod feet loud at his heels. Scrambling around the
far comer he almost ran headlong into another swarm. Backing, sobbing for
breath, he wheeled away into another lane and ran on, hopelessly. Reason told
him to stand still and give up, but panic had his legs and kept them pumping
and plunging, dodging and staggering, with always the pad-pad of soft feet close behind. Until he could run
no more. . . .
    He
shambled to a wall, turned and set his shoulders against it, held out his
nine-inch blade and waited for the first one rash enough to come close. But
they weren't so easily drawn. They held off, ringed him, mocked him with feints
and gestures.
    One white-toothed blonde woman shook the hair
from her pretty face and jeered, "Surrender, Zorganl Surrender!" and
the rest took up the cry. He wasted no breath in trying to reply.
    Braced against the wall, he held the
razor-edged blade ready, heaved for oxygen, and waited for the first one to
come close enough. Then the wall crumbled at his back and a brawny arm went
around his neck, jamming his chin high and up. Something hard struck the back
of his head and all his thoughts went dark. It was all over....
    In such a moment, and with a man like Bragan,
the assumption of death is very strong. He came out of a painful darkness with
great reluctance, unwilling to believe that he was going to live again. It took
considerable effort to force the conclusion that he was not yet dead. They
hadn't killed him.
    Accepting
that, he worked at breathing, at gingerly moving his arms and legs, wincing at
the pain until he could gather it all together in one pounding lump and locate
it in his head. Then, by degrees, he established a few more things. He was lying flat on his back on something firm but
yielding. He was not bound or fastened in any way. He was in gloom but not
darkness, and on the inside of what seemed to be a stone box.
    Making
the effort, he sat up, swung his legs to a stone floor that was cool to his
feet. Investigating more, he found the walls smooth and hard to touch, with no
opening that he could see, but a steady fresh draft slid in from under the
shelf he had been lying on. The faint light came from a glowing panel in one wall. When he leaned on it, it gave fractionally,
indicating that it might be a door of some kind. Calling it a door, he found a
metal ring set in it, but it did nothing in response to pull or push or twist.
    He returned to his bed and sat, and tried to
think. He was a prisoner, in a solid
and substantial cell. That, all by itself, was a facet of the Scartanni people
that he hadn't known of, nor even suspected. He had no idea where he was, and
no point from which to start guessing. Nor had he any idea what was in store
for him, and no point in guessing about it, either. He sat and ached awhile. He
had no idea what had happened to the ships. He had no idea where the swarms of
Scartanni had come from, all of them so suddenly. In fact, he hadn't much idea
about anything anymore. He tried delicate fingers to the throbbing lump at the
back of his head, and felt cloth. A dressing of some kind? That was
reassurance, at least. A little.
    He
had almost dozed off, despite the pain in his head, when a light flared in the
roof of his cell, and seconds later the panel-that-was-a-door swung open,
outwards. In the opening stood a youngish woman. Her tabard-tunic, hip-long,
was dark blue. She held a tray and looked at him over a thin vapor that rose from the pots on it.
    "Will
you eat?" she asked, and the question had its wry side.
    "If it is all right,
yes, I would like to. You're very kind."
    She
came on in, set the tray down beside him and seated herself on the far side of
it. She looked at him curiously. "We have little experience