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seemed to leap away from him and, the capsule tumbling on its side toward the
hole, he slid within it, turned the wheel, and secured the hatch.
In a moment the capsule was tumbling through space, leaving the Alaria, and
the Ortung fleet behind, like specks in the night.
CHAPTER 15
"What are those sounds?" asked Janina, frightened.
"They are horns, hunting horns," said the gladiator.
"This world, then, is not uninhabited," said Janina.
"It would seem not," said the gladiator.
He kicked dirt over the small fire they had built on the bank.
"My clothes are not yet dry!" protested Janina.
"Put them on wet, or carry them," said the gladiator.
"I am exhausted," she said. "We almost died. I cannot move."
She looked up at him, pathetically. She knelt on leaves. Her hair had been
loosened, that it might be dried near the fire.
"Then I shall rope you to a tree and leave you behind," he said.
She rose to her feet and hastily began to gather her clothes from the cord
stretched between two trees.
"Forgive your slave," she said.
The gladiator stood very still, listening.
"What world is this?" she asked, rolling the garments of Princess Gerune into
a small bundle.
"I do not know," he said, softly.
"Forgive me, Master," she said, realizing she might have disturbed him.
The gladiator looked up at the sky. The descent of the capsule, last night,
might have been visible, particularly in the upper atmosphere. It might have
been mistaken for a meteor at first, a
falling star, perhaps even later, when the fearful rush in the atmosphere,
like a hurricane over the trees, was audible. But, too, there may have been a
visual contact, when the descent slowed and the capsule began to skim the
trees, the sensors searching for level surfaces, where the adjusting thrusters
would be activated for a landing. But then, too, perhaps not. How could one
know?
Again the horns sounded.
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The gladiator threw the last bits of the armor into the river. These, with
certain other supplies, he had salvaged from the capsule.
"Master, I cannot swim!" had cried Janina, last night, first waist deep in the
current, trying to help bring the capsule to the shore, then her footing lost,
falling, her hands slipping from the wet metallic surface, being swept
downstream.
The capsule, when it had left the
Alaria
, sped by the brunt of the decompression, had tumbled uncontrolled from the
rupture in the hull, and only moments later had the gladiator, within the
darkened, stifling cabin, been able to locate the launch release, the
engagement of which had two primary effects, the first being to activate the
clearance thruster, used for distancing the capsule from the mother ship, to
protect it in the event of explosions or radiation, and the second being to
activate, after the clearance burn, various systems internal to the vehicle,
which supplied heat, light and oxygen. This delay in activating the clearance
thruster kept the capsule cold when the first tracking shots left the Ortungen
fleet. Two missiles, which tracked from the ships themselves, by means of
monitors, not heat, had followed the capsule for over fifteen hundred miles.
Then it had disappeared from the monitors. The gladiator had, of course,
manually, disengaged the locating beacon, and turned off internal and external
lighting as soon as these devices could be located. He had also reduced the
noise level in the vehicle as much as possible, levering down even the life
support systems to minimum settings. The ship was then like a silent, dark
mote in a silent, dark sea, a mote which seemed to be nowhere, but might be
anywhere. A pursuit craft had been sent out, but it was soon recalled to the
mother ship. It paused only long enough to collect the two missiles, which had
then been disarmed by signals from the mother ship. It was not clear to the
gladiator why the pursuit had been so soon terminated. The capsule had
suffered damage in its emergence from the
Alaria
. This damage rendered accessible navigational equipment inoperative and
impaired the utility of manual devices for controlling the vernier thrusters,
used for course adjustments. In effect the ship was, manually, blind and
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