Chapter V

He was roused by Tabak, the Caligan girl, shaking his shoulder. "Wake up!" she was whispering urgently, her violet-blue eyes shining with suppressed excitement. "Wake up, Wanderer-from-Beyond, and come with me!"

Jupiter sat up with a start. "How did you get in here?"

Tabak rotated her shoulder, and the yellow furred boj rippled like liquid light. "Through the door."

"But it was locked."

"It operates by telepathic control."

"Of course."

Jupiter scratched his beard. He'd known it all along. Nor was that all. If he would only concentrate, he could manipulate the lock himself!

To his growing amazement, he realized that he knew the city by the _Dra Dur_ as well as his home town of Venusport.

While he slept, his subconscious had integrated Tabak's fund of knowledge, made it a part of his own. He was changed. He didn't look at things quite the same. His own hard ruthless personality had become tinctured with something of Tabak's soft deviousness.

He didn't like it.

His fingers closed on the girl's shoulders, bit into the flesh. "What have you done to me?"

"I? I've done nothing. I've come to help you, Wanderer-from-Beyond."

"How?"

"Please," she said; "don't you believe me?"

"Why should I?"

She lifted her arms, touched his temples with her fingertips. "Come in," she said simply. "Come into my mind so that you can have no more doubts."

Almost against his will, he peered into her eyes, experiencing an odd frightening sensation of sinking into their wide, violet-blue depths. Down. Down. His very being seemed to merge with the girl's.

All at once, the room swam back into his vision, but from a different angle. Everything looked a little strange. Then he saw himself!

Literally!

Saw himself through Tabak's eyes!

With a peculiar sense of detachment, he observed his own lean, muscular, sun-reddened frame, his wiry red beard, tangled hair, half-closed green eyes. And all the time he was aware of Tabak's flow of thought--her emotions, sensations, the bubbling fluid well of her subconscious.

"Now do you trust me?"

Jupiter was acutely embarrassed. Their conjoining was more intimate than any physical relation could have been. Tabak's very soul lay naked before his mind's eye.

"Trust you. Yes. For Pete's sake, let me go!"

He staggered, blinked, realized that she'd thrust him out of her mind. He wiped the sweat off his forehead, stared at the girl curiously.

Her cheeks were pink with confusion, and she wouldn't meet his eyes.

"I--I've never done that with a man before," she said. "You believe me, don't you?"

"Yes. But how did you do it?"

"By means of the Anolyn that are attached to our necks. See." She turned her back, lifted her wheat-blonde locks with one hand.

Jupiter could see the tiny plum-colored lump. Tabak's neck was slender, delicately formed. He was struck anew by the contrast between her and Lete, the wiry, pagan-souled cave girl.

Lete was rawhide, tough, pliable, resilient. But this Caligan girl was a steel rapier. In that moment of intimacy he had glimpsed something of the truth.

For all her apparent softness, Tabak could be infinitely more dangerous!

* * * * *

The door opened instantly at Tabak's mental command. Jupiter followed her into the corridor, saw that it was empty.

"Where are the Anolyn?"

"They--they are occupied. Those here in the temple." Tabak shivered. "Come, it's on our way. I'll show you."

"On our way where? Show me what?"

She said, "I'd rather let you see for yourself," and started up the passage, her bare feet soundless on the hard composition floor.

Jupiter padded at her elbow. This was all familiar. He couldn't overcome the feeling that he'd been here before. It was Tabak's memory patterns playing tricks on him, he knew. The girl's experience had actually been implanted in his brain.

When they reached the ramp angling downward into the gloom, a vague alarm got hold of him, but he followed her onto it without protest.

The way led down and down. The air was dank. Moisture dripped from the walls. It grew slippery underfoot.

Abruptly, the ramp came to an end. He could see the glint of water ahead.

Subconsciously, he knew it was a canal running beneath the streets to the _Dra Dur_. He knew it just as he knew that there was a network of these canals like fingers reaching into every part of the city. Just as he knew of the ledge a scant foot above the water, even as Tabak crept onto it.

The living boj fur glowed with a pale phosphorescent light as she sidled into the vaulted aquaduct. It lent her a wraith-like appearance to Jupiter, a few paces behind.

"Shhh!" she cautioned him, coming to a stop. "Don't make a sound here!"

Jupiter's mouth felt dry. He could see nothing but the girl's vague luminous outline, hear nothing but the lap of water against the shelf at their feet.

Then Tabak clutched his hand, pulled him forward and into a bisecting passage running at right angles to the aquaduct. He could see the glow of light ahead.

The passage curved, the light bursting on his eyes, half blinding him. Together they crawled to the very end of the tunnel and peered out.

It was a courtyard that Jupiter found himself looking into. The orange sun beat down warmly on the flagstone pavement, on the large shallow pool in the center of the court.

There were Anolyn in the pool, fifty or sixty of them, floating like purple jellyfish. Humans, too. Pink-skinned Caligans, wild Kagans, fighting men and the stolid green porters. Even the tailed, ape-like Begans were represented. They moved with a dreamy apathy like sleepwalkers.

"Their minds are under the control of the Anolyn in the pool," Tabak breathed into his ear. "The Anolyn have entered into them. They feel and see and hear exactly what their human vehicles do."

Jupiter's face was drawn. He could hear music. The scale was all wrong, it registered discordantly in his ears. It was coming from one of the balconies that rose in tiers above the courtyard. Food and drink had been spread on cloths.

"They'll be here for days," Tabak whispered.

Hardened as Jupiter was, nevertheless he was sickened at the deeds being enacted under his eyes. They were unthinkable. His fists clenched.

He could bring himself to watch no longer. He turned his head away, said hoarsely: "Let's clear out of here."

Tabak was silent as she led him back down the tunnel to the vaulted canal.

"Can you swim?" she asked as they reached the water's edge.

"Yes."

The girl stripped off the boj, laid it on the ledge, dived into the canal like a slim, naked, sea nymph. Her head broke water a dozen feet out creating phosphorescent ripples.

Jupiter plunged after her. The water was black, cold, salty. He kept up with the girl easily using strong breast strokes.

At length she paused again, treading water near the opposite wall of the aquaduct.

"There's a tunnel here, a man's height below the surface. It leads into another chamber. Are you willing to try it?"

"Go ahead."

Tabak up-ended in a surface dive, the black water closing over her feet. Jupiter followed her down. He found the hole with his hand, swam into it. On and on--ten--twenty--thirty yards. His lungs felt as if they must burst.

Air began to dribble out his nose. He kicked furiously, driving himself ahead. Suddenly he realized he was out of the tunnel. He shot up to the surface, broke water, gasping air into his scalded lungs.

That had been close, too close. He floated on his back breathing deeply.

After a minute he rolled over and stared about him.

* * * * *

He was in a vast echoing chamber. Orange sunshine streamed in from open skylights. Steps led down into the water. Tabak, he saw, was already standing on the edge of the floor looking down at him.

He swam to the steps, climbed out. There was a faint odor of putrefaction in the air.

Tabak said: "These rooms are the laboratories. There are other entrances; but they're all guarded by Nehogans."

He frowned. "What was it you wanted me to see?"

"This way," she said and led him through dissecting tables, past shelves of fantastic creatures preserved in some liquid, and into a small office-like room at the side.

Spread out on a shelf were the contents of Jupiter's pack: the medicine chest, emergency rations, spare ammunition, testing apparatus, prospecting tools, his light carbine, the electroscope and geiger counter. It was all there.

Tabak's violet-blue eyes glittered with excitement.

"There are your weapons, Wanderer-from-Beyond! Now you can drive the Anolyn back into the sea!"

Jupiter's face didn't betray his consternation. The carbine was pitifully inadequate. In fact, so long as the horrible little parasite was fastened to his spinal cord, he knew that he would be incapable of using it against the Anolyn.

If he could only rid himself of the parasite, though, and get to his ship with even a chunk of that idol....

He narrowed his eyes as a new thought struck him.

"Tabak, we must get rid of these spinal parasites first. I--" He nearly said, "I think," but realized that he mustn't show any doubt. "I can do it. But I'll need your cooperation."

"Can you?" she cried in excitement and seized his hands, peering into his eyes. "Can you really? You _are_ the Wanderer then!"

He looked quickly away. He didn't dare let her glimpse what was in his thoughts.

"Yes."

"Let me come into your mind; let me be sure," she pleaded.

"Tabak, you'll have to trust me."

"Why?" her blue eyes clouded in suspicion. She released his hands, backed away. "What is it you want to do to me? What are you hiding? What are you afraid I'll see?"

He swore under his breath. There wasn't time to argue, even if he could overcome the girl's suspicions, which he doubted was possible unless he opened his mind to her.

Without the slightest warning he jumped for Tabak, grabbed her and swung her off her feet.

The girl screamed, twisted, kicked and bit, wild with terror. The thick walls confined her cries. She was soft and tiny like a small white kitten in his hands. A spitting, scratching, squalling kitten.

He imprisoned her arms and legs, carried her out into the main laboratory.

The Anolyn possessed no anaesthesia. The dissecting tables were equipped instead with straps to hold their victims motionless while they operated. Jupiter buckled the girl face-down on one of the tables.

"Please!" she begged hysterically. "Please!"

"I'm not going to hurt you," he growled and left her to get his medicine kit from the other room.

The kit had been devised to handle almost any emergency that might befall one of the Galactic Colonization Board's special corpsmen. Jupiter found the hypodermic syringe, sterilized it and filled it with exsrocain. The drug was the latest development in a spinal anaesthetic that deadened the nerves of the entire body, inducing a temporary state of suspended animation.

It was a delicate operation, but he inserted the needle between two of the girl's vertebrae, felt her flinch away from him. She lay on the hard slab, quiescent, crying silently.

"Won't hurt," he grunted, and ejected the exsrocain directly into the spinal fluid. Under his breath he counted: "One--two--three--four."

He felt for her pulse, but there was no sign of a heart beat. He found the mirror in the kit, held it before her nostrils. The mirror didn't cloud.

Sweat stood out on Jupiter's forehead. He wiped his palms on his thighs, lifted Tabak's wheat-blonde locks, exposing the small purple protuberance. It looked like a sea shell fastened to the back of her neck.

His hand was trembling. He had to pause and get a grip on himself. Then he grasped the Anolyn, pulled it gently but firmly away from the girl's skin.

For a moment he thought it was going to stick, then it slid free, the tentacles dangling like short, fine threads.

He examined the creature minutely to make sure no faintest spark of consciousness remained.

He felt weak with relief. The spinal anaesthesia had worked, putting the Anolyn into a state of suspended animation at the same time that it had the girl.

Suddenly he could contain himself no longer. He hurled the creature down on the hard floor with all his strength, smashed it into a shapeless blob, ground it into paste with the butt of his carbine.