THEIR MASTER

Nothing in the world had prepared any of them for what they saw when they crested the top of the pass and started down the other side. There was no doubt that it was the Valley of the Gods. The valley itself was a perfect place, long and broad, with a bright stream meandering down its length and a flat, irregular floor covered with a lush layer of meadow grass. It could have been a paradise except for the God that floated above it.

The God was huge. Harkaan found that he simply didn't have the language to describe its size. It shouldn't have been possible for such an enormous bulk to hang there in the air, just at the height of a tree. Its vast pair o shadows covered the whole center section of the valle floor. As far as Harkaan could see, the God was predom inantly made of metal-yet that was impossible. There was no way that so much metal could exist in the same place at the same time. The most metal that Harkaan had ever seen were the tiny arrowhead slivers that were kept in the Lodge of the Spirits. It was all the metal that th Ashak-ai owned, and they considered themselves wealthy.

If anything, the God resembled a giant platee. It was roughly the same flat disk shape as the spi

Harkaan was startled by the sound of impatient mounts; he felt as if he were being jerked out of a trance. The riders behind him were pressing forward. It was much too late to turn back or bolt. He dug his heels into the sides of his mount and started down the track, down Into the Valley of the Gods.

Three

"Poor little bleeders."

Topman Rance leaned back in the angle of two plasma ducts and braced his foot against a third, making himself as comfortable as possible. Over at the far end of Receiving Hold 3, the first of the new intake were starting to emerge from the lock that led to the sterile area. They looked like corpses in the blue light that spilled out from the lock, and they moved as if, to a man, they were demoralized and completely terrified. Arms were wrapped around chests and hands covered genitals, a few fingered their freshly shaved heads, and all peered uneasily into the shadows as if they expected some new awfulness to fall on them at any moment. Back in those shadows, Rance nodded. He liked them like that. Once the fight and the pride had been juiced out of them and they were about to jump out of their skins, they were also ready for him to rebuild them.

Perhaps the most disturbing thing on any star vessel was the noise. It was never quiet. There was a constant dull cacophony of sighs and booms and deep metallic groans. Discharging energy snapped and crackled, and escaping gases whistled and shrilled. Water dripped, and totally unknown things grumbled and murmured. Those who spent their lives on starships never thought of them as cold machines. It was like being inside, even being a part of, a vast living organism. Receiving Hold 3 on its own was quite enough to awe any newcomer. It looked like a place where gods might dwell, a huge cathedral space enclosed in a frame of arching power conduits like giant pillars and the meshed complexity of the plasma transmission. It was a place of dark, menacing spaces and mysterious blackness. It was also big enough to accommodate a dropcraft or an e-vac. At the opposite end, the towering bulkhead doors opened directly onto the emptiness of space.

"If those poor bastards knew that, they'd probably shit on the spot."

Rance remembered the first time he'd seen empty space. It was a moment he'd never forget. He'd been almost as raw as these suckers.

A plasma throwoff crackled and flowed down the wall. The whole intake cringed. Rance knew that it was almost time to show himself, but he held off for a few moments to give the debris in their minds a little longer to settle. As if it wasn't bad enough that they'd been ripped from their families, their culture, and their planet -from everything that might give them a familiar bearing-they'd also been given the datashot. The datashot may have been ultimately efficient, a complete education and military training in a single electric moment, but it was also ultimately cruel. Even the longtimers didn't like to talk about their moment of datashot. Men who'd spent a lifetime in combat and seen a dozen sets of friends killed, men who needed only the slightest of excuses to wade knee-deep in blood atrocity, still feared the memory of the datashot. All that one needed to know to be a ground trooper of the Therem Alliance was fused into the brain in a single jolting instant. The horror was a side effect of unimaginable pain. The machines that made the interface and the creatures that operated them had no idea that the agony they caused was quite literally unbearable. The illusion was one of the body being exploded into fragments. The spine would snap in a thousand places, the skull would be shattered, and bunches of nerves would be torn out by the roots as waves of burning images seared the passages of the mind. After the pain there was another horror. Suddenly, there were pictures inside each recruit's head like a new mind. They seemed to come from nowhere, memories in which the rememberer didn't exist, memories to which he had no right. The troopers knew things that there was no reason for them to know. They prayed that they'd go mad and that they'd stop trying to make sense of it all. Rance shook his head. After twenty years, the memory was still too close.

An atmosphere line valved off an excess of pressure with a shriek. The intake moved closer to each other as if looking for some kind of mutual protection. That was also good. It was never too early for them to start banding and forming ties. No one else was going to look after them. They were all out of the lock now, all twenty replacements, shaved and sprayed and irradiated. Even the bacteria of their home planet had been taken from them.

Rance swung down from his vantage point. His boots crashed on the steel floor, and the echoes bounced around the vaulted roof of the hold. The intake started to back away, back toward the blue-lighted sterile lock. What did they think they were going to do? Did they think the lock was the way back into the womb? He rapped out his first command.

"Stand right where you are!"

Without thinking, all of the intake halted. Some even came halfway to attention. The datashot had taken and was already starting to shake down into the normal brain patterns.

"Does everyone understand what I'm saying?"

It was actually too much to expect any of them to answer. They had the new language in their heads, but the use of it would require a little practice.

"If you understand what I'm saying, I want you to raise your right hand. This is a very simple order. If you understand what I'm saying, raise your right hand."

All twenty of them raised their hands. Two, however, raised their left. They would have to go in for testing. If the flip-flop persisted, they'd finish up on disposal. Rance tapped the switchbox on his belt. More lights came on in the hold. It made the place a little less intimidating. The intake still had their arms in the air. They probably wouldn't lower them until they were given the countermand. Rance assumed control. After the data-shot, they were like blank slates. He was the first thing that would be imprinted on them. There was nothing like a little discipline to help their minds shake down and start functioning.