He was being dragged inexorably toward an upright case-it could have been a mummy case-in the center of the room. It looked a good deal like KALI's launching case, and indeed worked on similar principles, except that it had no power to transport him into another dimension.
Krog said wistfully, «I have never been in one of these dream chambers myself, but I'm told the sensation is delightful. The Dreamers used to like it better than reality.»
Many hands pressed Richard into the case. He glimpsed Narlena's horrified face. Many hands began pressing the door of the case closed on him.
Why did he suddenly see an immense glowing passageway down which he was running? Blade thought. Was this… was this another of the Ngaa's illusions?
The case closed. Richard was in darkness, but he could smell the sickly sweet aroma of the gas that now began to hiss into his face, cool, soothing, gentle.
He thought, I must not sleep! I must awake! I must awake!
Richard Blade awoke with an agonizing headache.
The first light of dawn was dim, but even a dim light was painful. He closed his eyes, then opened them again. The sky over the distant white-capped mountains grew brighter. Soon it would be sunrise.
Blade sat up, yawned and stretched, then glanced around at his small band of comrades. All were asleep but one, Stramod the Mutant, who had stood the last watch. Stramod, with his bandy legs, long arms, large protruding ears, and white fringe of hair framing a whiskerless sea-blue face, looked more like a chimpanzee than a human, but he was dressed in fur tunic, breeches and boots and carried a sword and a long-barreled heavy flintlock pistol, and in his large brown eyes there shone an intelligence few normal men could equal.
«Good morning, Stramod. All's well?»
«Good morning, sir. All's well.»
Blade stood up and began moving from one to another of his friends, waking them gently. He had no need to waste time dressing: he'd slept in his clothes-the same tunic, breeches and boots combination that Stramod wore, that they all wore, whether man, woman or mutant.
«Wake up, Dr. Leyndt.»
Dr. Leyndt opened her eyes and drew back her long auburn hair from her face. There was a stern quality to her expression that made her more handsome than beautiful, but Blade knew that she had the passions of a woman when the occasion presented itself.
«Time to get up, Nilando.»
Nilando woke suddenly, his hand moving as if by reflex to the sword he wore even while sleeping. He was a young man with a blond beard and braided hair, and wore a chain of heavy brass links around his thick tanned neck. Only when he had assured himself that he was in no danger did his grip on his sword relax.
«Wake up, Rena.»
Rena was the youngest. She awoke with fear in her wide blue eyes, eyes that stared up questioningly at Blade from out of the tent of her long dark-blonde hair.
Four human beings. Five, if you could call Stramod human. Blade sighed, thinking, We are the only free humans left on this planet.
They ate a spartan breakfast; a few handfuls of uncooked meat and a swig of water from the canteen, then broke camp and continued their trek deeper and deeper into the jungle. Blade was weary, and he knew the others were too. For two weeks they had been moving at a forced march southward, further and further from what had once been civilization, further and further from the corpse-strewn smoldering ruins of Treniga, the Graduk capital, further and further from the blasted blackened island city of Tengran, from the radioactive crater of the Ice Master's former underground headquarters among the snowdrifts and glaciers. To the north there was nothing but death. To the south there was hope. To the south there was heat, and the enemy did not like heat. To the south there was jungle, miles and miles of thick vegetation that might-perhaps-shield them from alien eyes in the sky.
Shortly before noon, as they forded a narrow brook, blue-faced Stramod stopped abruptly and scanned the heavens. Stramod had the sharp senses of an animal, sharper even that Blade's.
«Hush,» whispered the mutant, finger to lips.
«What is it?» Rena whispered, clutching Blade's arm.
«The Menel,» Stramod answered softly, pointing.
Then Blade too heard the sound, the faint hissing roar of distant aircraft. He looked in the direction of Stramod's pointing finger, and saw four dots approaching from the north. The Menel! Blade had seen the creatures once, seen their giant stalklike bodies, their double-jointed eight-foot arms, their lobster claws, their pairs of two-foot tentacles, the snaillike pulsing suction disks upon which they glided with a stomach-turning sucking noise. The Menel! Alien monsters from some other planet, some other star-system, monsters whose technology was so far beyond mankinds' that there was no comparison and, in combat, no contest.
«Quick,» Blade snapped. «Under the trees!»
They waded ashore and dove into a thicket where they lay motionless, waiting. The rushing hiss grew louder, closer. Finally it was directly overhead.
Then, with the suddenness of a thrown switch, the sound stopped.
Blade lay on his stomach listening.
Nothing. Nothing but the cries of jungle birds, the hum of insects, the growl of some far-off animal. He waited a long time before venturing a little way out toward the stream.
He looked up, and his worst fears were confirmed.
Directly above him, motionless and silent, hung four Menel aircraft, not more than half a kilometer up. They were needle-slim, wingless, finless, exhaustless, made of a bright metal that blazed in the sunlight. They were in line formation, exactly equidistant.
Blade crept back to report to the others.
«They're up there,» he murmured.
«Maybe they don't see us,» Rena put in hopefully.
«They see us all right,» said Blade. «Why else would they pick this one place among all others to park?»
«Why don't they attack then?» Dr. Leyndt asked, frowning.
«They're playing with us,» Stramod answered grimly. His simian face, tilted upward, was an even darker blue than usual.
«Then let's give them a good game,» said Blade. «Come on.» He led them, crouching, deeper into the sweltering maze of greenery.
Five minutes later Stramod said, «They're following us.»
Blade glanced upward. The Menel craft had moved with them, and still hung exactly overhead.
«I don't understand…» Rena began.
«I understand,» Blade said. «The aircraft can't land in this thick foliage, so they are contenting themselves with marking our position for their ground party.»
«Ground party?» Rena's eyes grew rounder.
«That's right,» said Blade. «I think we can safely assume that someone is following us on the ground.»
«Listen!» Stramod stood rigid, head cocked at an angle.
A moment later Richard could hear it too, the crashing of falling trees, the crack of splitting wood, and finally the muffled thump-thump-thump of footsteps.
«The ice dragons,» Blade said.
Though they were still far away, he could tell there were several of them. They were huge beasts, like dinosaurs, as Blade knew only too well, and on the back of each would be riding an armored Dragon Master, a human slave of the Menel, while in the wake of each immense lizard would come a ragtag raiding party, more of the Menel's human slaves.
Rena, near hysteria, cried, «We don't stand a chance!»
«Not here, perhaps,» Richard mused. «But up ahead there's a steep hill, too steep for the dragons to climb though not too steep for us, and from the top we can roll rocks down on them.» He leaped to his feet and led the way through the dense undergrowth, hacking a path with his sword. Their progress was slow, dangerously slow.
The crash and crack and heavy thumping footsteps grew louder and louder behind them. Ahead they could occasionally glimpse through the trees the tantalizing rocky hill. Above them the gleaming aircraft continued to hold position, following them.