The X Factor Read online

  "We were—"

  Diskan jerked abound. She had moved on the bedroll and levered herself up with the use of her arms, manifestly fighting the muscle weakness left by the ray. "Please, help me up. Get the High One on the bed here. The bleeding must not begin again— I have no more plasta-skin or curb shots!"

  He aided her to sit with her back supported against the wall and then hoisted the Zacathan carefully to the improvised bed.

  "The Jacks shot him?"

  "In a way. They had begun to burn holes in the walls up there. They plainly knew something of what they were hunting for—some of the ship's people must have been made to talk. The High One was trying to watch them, and there was a break—he was caught under a wall fall. I think they believed him dead, and that was when I saw their captain, wearing that—" She pointed to Diskan's discarded parka. "Why they didn't come on down here, I can't tell. But they hurried away. I got the High One from under the stone; he didn't seem so badly hurt then. Somehow we came down the stair here, but later he collapsed, and ever since—" She spread out her hands in a gesture of helplessness.

  "And the dead man up there?"

  She shivered, covered her face. "Later, I went up— He came after me, and I fired— I never really knew what happened."

  "But they did not come down here?"

  "No. I—I thought you were one of them. The animals— they come and look at us, then go. I thought you were going to use them against us. I've—" Julha gave a shaky laugh. "I've tried to talk to them, but it's no good. They are intelligent, you know; the High One is sure of that. But we haven't been able to establish any method of communication."

  "You say these Jacks knew what they were after. Just what is that?"

  Julha did not answer immediately but caught her lip between her teeth, as if to muffle any speech while she thought it over. Then she must have made her decision in favor of trusting him, for she began to talk swiftly.

  "This planet was recorded about twenty years ago by a First-in Scout—Renfry Fentress." She stared at Diskan round-eyed. "Fentress—you?"

  Diskan shook his head. "My father."

  "Yes, I did not think you could be that old, unless you were mutant. Well, he vid-pictured the ruins as part of his report. And the Zacathan archivists became interested. They have the legend repository for this section of the galaxy, and every once in a while they think—and usually they are right—that they can uncover pieces of the Forerunners' history by exploring the base of such legends. This was one of those times.

  "And, as most always, the rumor got out it was a treasure hunt, especially since the High One Zimgrald was put in charge of the expedition. He's made two very rich and exciting finds in the past—the Shining Palace of Slang and the Voorjan grave sites. Both of those were fabulously rich, though their archaeological value was beyond price. These legend hunts are always a gamble—

  "Anyway, the Zacathans got exploratory rights here, with all claims to archaeological finds. They assembled a mixed staff according to regulations. I'm a Second Archaeological Techneer from New Britain, Mik was from Larog, and Captain Ranbo and his men, our two lab techneers, were all on loan from Survey."

  "A small expedition," Diskan commented.

  "Yes, but we were just to do the prelim survey, and then the real field force would come in, if and when our reports made it worthwhile."

  "And you thought it would be worthwhile?"

  "The High One did. We don't understand the whole process of legend tracing. The Zacathans are so much longer lived than We, and they have techniques of learning and mental storage we cannot equal. I know there is something here that excited the High One greatly. And I am sure we were traced by these Jacks because they are determined to loot what we do find. They can sell such treasure in any of a hundred or so undercover trading centers!"

  "But—where did they go?" Diskan sat back on his heels. "I found a place where a ship or ships had planeted, and near there was a survivor cache—with its broadcaster on."

  "But didn't that broadcast tell you who they were?"

  Diskan shook his head. "Not in Basic."

  "Then our people didn't leave it for us!" She folded her hands together. "I thought—perhaps they had to take off and had left it. Only they would have set a standard signal call."

  "No. I got this coat there. And there were a lot of sealed containers, personal locked. Must have been a dump for one special crowd."

  "Then, wherever they went, they intend to come back. But where did they go? And our ship—it must have gone also. Why?"

  Diskan considered those questions. Suddenly, he knew that for the first time in his life, he was thinking swiftly and clearly, able to translate thought into speech unhaltingly. And he had a lift of new self-confidence.

  "You said another ship was going to follow you here. Would they be waiting for some signal?"

  "Yes—oh, yes. They were to conclude the work on Zoraster. And if our report was negative, they would then return to home base."

  Diskan nodded. "There you have one possible explanation. Your ship could be used to deliver such a report. They might have this Captain Ranbo or some other member of his crew under hypo-control. Your second ship gets the negative and takes off for home base, leaving the Jacks free from interference, with plenty of time to clean up here."

  "And they could be coming again—now!"

  Diskan had picked up the com device from where he had laid it beside the tape reader. "What's this? And how does it work to track someone?"

  "We use those to check on our people while exploring. There's always a chance of an accident, a need for rescue. When we're in the field, one of those can be tuned to an individual." She took the dial from him, examined it closely, and then looked up, a shadow of fear in her eyes.

  "This has been select-set for me!"

  "And they must have found it on your ship?"

  She nodded.

  "And so they could have one set for him, too?" Diskan indicated the Zacathan.

  "I'm not sure, not without a lot of adjustment, which they may not know how to do. It works differently with Zacathans because they are telepathic."

  "But if they do have one, they'll head straight here."

  "Yes, but we can't get him up those stairs!"

  "No, only there is the passage running on from this room."

  "Mik went that way—" Julha's voice was very low.

  "We may have a lot of time," Diskan told her, "we may have very little. But staying here, we have no chance at all. Have you any high Sustain? Enough to get him on his feet?"

  "But moving him that way—it could kill him!"

  "And staying here might kill him, and us, too. Or—knowing who he is, they might not want to kill him. He'd be a tool for them—after they broke him properly." Diskan was brutally frank, and he saw her flinch from the thoughts his words brought ta mind.

  "The young man is entirely right—" Delivered in a slow hiss, that statement drew their eyes to the Zacathan.

  Though he still lay stretched on the pallet where Diskan had placed him, his eyes were now focused on his companions with the light of full understanding in them.

  "High One!" Julha came away from the wall. He raised one four-digit, talon-clawed hand.

  "He is right," Zimgrald repeated slowly. "These scavengers would like nothing better than to have such a key as me to turn in many locks. Thus, they must not have it—ever. Were it not that I can be, I believe, of some small service to our general purpose still, I would make sure of that myself. I do not think that I am unduly concerned with my own future when I say this to you. There is that here which perhaps can be swayed to your aid—if I can remain with you to aid— Your true help lies there—"

  With infinite labor, he turned his hand to point to the furred one, still lying across the threshold.

  "There is a way through these ruins that those know and use. Learn it from them, and you can hide indefinitely from any hunters. Haaa—"

  The call he uttered was l
ow, hissing, and directed to the furred one. The animal's head swung around, and it favored the Zacathan with one of those unwinking stares by which it, or its kind, had disconcerted Diskan in the past. Now the creature got to its feet and limped over to the Zacathan. Reptilian man and furred one matched stares for long enough to make Diskan uneasy.

  "I cannot touch thoughts with it directly," Zimgrald reported at long last, "but it is my hope that it now understands that we are in peril here and must go hence. Whether it will be our guide, I have no assurance.

  "Even with Sustain, High One, you cannot climb the stair," Julha protested.

  "That is also right. Therefore, we must take the other road—along the passage."

  "Mik—" Her lips shaped the name rather than uttered it aloud.

  "Mik, yes, he went that way and he did not return. But for all of us, there is little other choice. To climb those stairs might be walking straight into the arms of the enemy. Whereas"—his yellow lips curved in a half smile—"we may leave behind us here that which will discourage followers —even if only temporarily. There are tools that can be weapons at need. Now, do you do thus—"

  From the pallet, he gave quick yet clear directions. Things were sorted out of the general mass of the piled supplies and combined to his liking, though Diskan found that a measure of his old fumbling awkwardness returned. When the girl grew impatient at his ineptitude, the Zacathan sent her to make packs of the supplies they must carry. Under the alien's patient and concise exposition, Diskan became more sure.

  In the end, he had a framework of tubing, to which had been attached by wire the high-voltage ever-burn lamp. He did not understand just what the contraption would do, but the Zacathan's reliance on the queer assembly was high, and Diskan was sure that Zimgrald was certain of its efficiency.

  This was placed across the passage, a frail enough barrier. The furred one watched Diskan's actions with concentrated interest. When the young man returned to the room, Julha was on her knees by the pallet, about to administer a Sustain injection to the Zacathan.

  "It would be good to know," Zimgrald remarked, "how much time the Armored Spirit allows us before disaster swoops like a grahawk. But that is another of the puzzles past our solving. Do not hesitate, little one. I am as eager to be away from this hole as the twain of you!"

  His reaction to the reviving injection came swiftly, and when he got to his feet, he moved with only a small hesitation. Diskan swung the larger pack to his back; the girl took up the smaller. They went into the passage where the furred one lingered. As they came out, the animal turned and limped along the unknown way, Zimgrald at its heels with Julha, while Diskan brought up the rear. He glanced back once at the framework of the device he had set up in the corridor. According to the Zacathan, it would deter pursuit; Diskan had no idea how. He only trusted that it would.

  XII

  Zimgrald carried a torch but did not snap it on. The diffusion of light from the growths appeared to satisfy the Zacathan. Diskan could see no other sign that anyone else had trod this way before them. He began to marvel at the recuperative powers of the Hist Techneer, for Zimgrald was keeping a gliding pace equaling a fast walk for his two companions, while a little to the fore limped the furred one as guide.

  "High One." Julha touched the shoulder of the Zacathan. "That Sustain shot, it will wear off—"

  "All the greater reason, little one, for us to make speed now." There was an almost cheerful note in the alien's voice. "Do not concern yourself; our bodies are not alike. I shall perhaps surprise you with my ability to keep the trail. Fentress—" He raised his voice a little so the name boomed back at Diskan.

  "Yes?"

  "What is your knowledge of this world?"

  "Very little. My ship crashed at setdown and rolled into one of the mud pools. I had been in freeze and so was lucky, for the emergency ejector got me out. There was a rising ridge of solid ground, and I came along that. Then I found the survivor cache—"

  "And the city. But not without guidance. Now that is the truth, is it not? Guidance such as this." One of the four-digited yellow-gray hands gestured toward the furred one.

  "Yes—"

  "But you are the son of the Scout who first discovered Mimir. You must know more—" There was pressure behind that, Diskan knew. Perhaps the Zacathan had his own suspicions under his outward acceptance of Diskan.

  But Diskan was not going to spill all his own past history at the bidding of this alien, even if that would settle the other's doubts.

  "A First-in Scout visits many planets during his service. Not even he can remember them without a tape—" The minute he said that, Diskan knew he had made a mistake.

  "A tape—ah, yes. You crashed on Mimir. Yet this world is far from any transport lane, Fentress. It is not on any commercial or open-travel voyage tape. There would be no normal reason for you to visit Mimir."

  "I came for reasons of my own!" Diskan snapped.

  He could see the pale oval of Julha's face as she glanced back, though Zimgrald had not turned his head. And Diskan thought that, even in this dim light, he could see the wariness again in her eyes.

  "Reasons that might have something to do with those who seek us?" The Zacathan continued to probe.

  "Nol" Diskan hoped that the very explosiveness of that reply would carry the accent of truth. "Until my ship planeted here, I did not even know Mimir existed."

  "Yet your ship came on tape if you were in freeze." No hint of suspicion, yet Diskan knew that he must satisfy the other or those questions would chip away at him.

  "Yes, my ship was on tape, but I did not know the tape destination. It was blind chance that it was Mimir. I'm not a pilot; the ship was on auto. I don't even know why it crashed. I wasn't curious until it started the ride down and failed. Why the ship was on tape is my business, but I'll swear by any power you want to name that it had nothing to do with what you have met here!"

  To his own ears that sounded a little too quick, too emphatic. Under the circumstances, he was not sure that had he been Zimgrald, he would have believed it. He was sure that Julha did not, for she walked faster, close to the Zacathan, lengthening the space between them. And perversely, Diskan allowed her to do that. Let them believe it or not— he had told the truth.

  "You have satisfied my curiosity acceptably, Fentress. These oddities of blind chance do exist, as no one can deny. The X factor—"

  "X factor?" Diskan repeated. Had the Zacathan meant what, he said? Did he believe that Diskan was speaking the truth or was he only willing, for now, to accept the explanation, cloaking his doubts?

  "Yes, the X factor—that which comes of itself to throw askew equations, speculations, lives, history, that unknown twist or turn of small events that changes a man's personal future, the work he would do, or the future of a people and an empire from one possibility track to another. One may have a problem close to smooth solving. Then the X factor arises to make the simple complex, all calculations wrong. Thus, to Mimir you may be the X factor, and to you Mimir may be the same. So I believe.

  "This chance we cannot control or understand may have delivered you here at just this time. Ah—" There came a sound not unlike a human chuckle. "How interesting life may become without warning! This Mimir is a world of many puzzles; perhaps we shall add to that number. Now— what have we here?"

  The passage ended. Julha gave a little cry, which held an undercurrent of fear. Diskan moved up to join them.

  There was a vast expanse broken only by lines of huge blocks supporting a ceiling above, rising out of a weird marsh.

  Though Zimgrald switched on the lamp, sending its powerful beam down the aisles between the pillars, it revealed nothing but pools of murky water, the fungi growths, a nightmare of swamp. The furred one lowered its head to sniff at the edge of a pool reaching to their feet. It hissed, spat, made a lightning-swift dab with a forepaw. There were ripples on the surface of the water, sending bobbing several padlike plants floating there. Then the Mimiran animal sat up o
n its haunches to look at the off-worlders. In warning? Diskan wondered.

  Dare he try contact? He knew the danger of that reaching out, or thought he did. Why did it come to mind again now and with so strong an urge? He pushed aside fear and tried to reach the brain behind those burning eyes.

  There was a sensation of dizzy spinning, of being caught and whirled about by a power much stronger than he was.

  Diskan heard himself cry out. He was in a panic because no effort of his could free him from the spin. "Diskan!"

  His head bobbed loosely on his shoulders; he swayed in the grip of the Zacathan on the very edge of that poisonous pool. Still the furred one sat upright, watching, reaching. Reaching, that was it! Of his own free will, Diskan had opened a door and through it something had reached for him, almost sucked him out into an unknown so appalling that he shuddered with the sickness the thought of it aroused in him. Had he been lost in that unthinkable, he would never have returned.

  With the Zacathan's hands still on him, Diskan backed away from the animal, feeling as weak as if he had survived, just barely survived, some indescribable ordeal.

  "What happened?" Zimgrald's voice in Diskan's ear was very steadying, as if he leaned his whole trembling body against a solid and sustaining support.

  "I—I tried to make mental contact with—with that!" His hand rose almost of itself and pointed stiffly at the furred one. The outthrust fingers might have been a stunner he was aiming in his own defense. "Contact? You are a xenopath?"

  "I—sometimes I can make an animal, or a bird, do as I wish. Before I was afraid, but I did it now, I don't know why—!"

  "And you found far more than you expected." No question, a brisk statement of fact. "Yes, these are telepaths to a high degree, though not of any order I have had previous knowledge of. But, again, this is luck. If you can establish better communication with them than I have been able to do—"

  Diskan twisted free from the other's hold. "No! Never again! I tell you, it—it would take me!" He tried to explain, and his old inability to fit words and thoughts neatly together made him stammer. He was ready to defend himself from such a risk with a stunner—with his bare hands if need be!