Looters Of Tharn

Tough stuff, this, thought Blade. He looked more closely at the belt in his hands. He'd be damned if this stuff wasn't almost identical to teksin, the ubiquitous material that the people of Tharn had made from the mani plant. Almost? He couldn't see any difference at all!

Could he be in Tharn?

The thought made his pulse race and his breath come more quickly. He couldn't help it. The idea that after all the failures he had finally returned to a particular dimension was too exciting.

Then the excitement faded. So far he had nothing to prove that he was in Tharn except a few pieces of something that looked very much like teksin and a few skeletons of warrior women. That wasn't enough. There was no reason why the people of some other dimension couldn't have come up with something identical to teksin. Nor were fighting women unique to Tharn. Until he had more to go on, he would assume that this was a new world, with a whole set of new dangers.

He turned back to examining the skeletons. They lay scattered every which way, and wind and time had broken some of them apart. But all the bones were intact, none of them broken or gouged. Some of the skeletons looked as though the people had simply lain down to sleep or fallen off their horses and never got up again. To Blade, those bones didn't look like those of people and horses who had died in battle. What had killed them, then?

Blade knew he could only guess for the moment. Meanwhile he would watch his step and his back even more carefully. He rummaged through the remains until he found a helmet and a breastplate that more or less fitted him. Then he tied two or three of the belts together at his waist as an improvised loinguard.

He looked toward the city again. He was armed and armored now. If any of the three peoples still lurked in the city, he felt he could give a good account of himself. But what then? None of these people could be the ones who had built the city. That was the relic of an advanced civilization. None of these people seemed much beyond early Iron Age.

But there was still that damned teksinlike stuff they used!

How did an Iron-Age people get that? Tharn had been a land of advanced if decadent science. These people-

Blade shrugged. Speculating in advance of facts was never a very good idea. It seemed even less a good idea in this dimension, which seemed to be throwing four or five mysteries at him all at once.

However, multiple mysteries didn't bother Blade. They just made him more curious and more determined to satisfy his curiosity. Hitching his sword into position for a quick draw, he strode on toward the city.

Closer to the city the grass seemed shorter and the ground firmer. Blade plunged along with long, powerful strides. In another twenty minutes he was more than a mile closer to the city, and stopped again.

Now there was more than that teksinlike material to make him wonder if he was back in Tharn. Seen closer up, a good many of the city's buildings were begi

Again, this could be coincidence. But two coincidences between this dimension and Tharn? Blade couldn't help wondering. He also couldn't help moving forward even faster than before, until be was almost trotting. He covered the next mile at that pace, then stopped again.

No, the resemblance to Urcit was just a coincidence, startling as it was. Blade couldn't see a single case of the phallic theme that had dominated art and architectural decoration in decadent Urcit, with its people of beautiful, sex-starved women. Several of the buildings bore large, complex designs in red. They looked to Blade more like three or four large snakes having an orgy than anything else. Definitely they weren't the magnificently explicit phallic themes of the people's art.

He felt almost disappointed. He remembered Zulekia's face hovering before him as the computer worked on his brain, thrusting him into this dimension. He would have liked to see the changes made in the time since he left Tharn. He had broken the mold in which both the people and their barbaric enemies, the Pethcines, had been trapped. He had given them-call it their freedom, for want of a better word. What had they done with it?

He doubted that he or anybody else from Home Dimension would ever find out.

He rose to his feet again and started forward. Then in the next moment he stopped, stared, and threw himself flat on the ground.

Out from behind a building on the edge of the city slid a gleaming metal machine. It rode some thirty feet off the ground, and the air blurred under it. With one glance Blade could see that it was a machine built for one purpose, and one purpose only.

War.

Chapter 4

The machine was so ugly that Blade couldn't imagine it being used for anything but war. It was swinging back and forth across a narrow arc as it moved cut from the building. The movement reminded Blade of a hunting dog in the field, casting about for a scent. Blade watched it move steadily closer, noting details as he made them out.

The machine must have been a good forty feet long, twenty feet wide, and ten feet from its flat silver belly to the domed turret on top. It looked like two half eggshells, flat side down, a smaller one perched on top of a larger one. At the rear of the main body was a railed platform.

From the front of the turret a long silvery tube stuck out, ending in a glowing purple lens. Seven ante

The machine closed to within a hundred yards of where Blade crouched in the grass. He stayed totally motionless. But he never took his eyes off the machine. It was obvious that whoever had built it was advanced enough to use antigravity. That meant comparably advanced weapons of some sort. Blade didn't want to find out the hard way just what they were.

At fifty yards the machine came to a stop, then sank until it was only a few feet above the grass. The four bulges on the bottom split open and four articulated metal legs unfolded, reaching for the ground.

The broad metal plates at the end of each leg touched the ground. Instantly the shimmering in the air under the machine faded away. With an audible creaking and clanking the machine settled down. Blade saw that the metal finish was not as polished and flawless as it had appeared. The underside was stained and discolored, and the upper hull and turret showed pitting and scarring. This was an old machine. As old as the city and built by the same people? Possibly. But the machine's age didn't necessarily mean that its weapons would be useless.

Slowly the machine's turret began to turn. The two projecting bulges on either side of the turret also split open. From one rose a blinking yellow white light. From the other rose a round metal disc. Both wobbled upward on jointed metal arms until they, were some twenty feet up.

Blade noticed that two more identical machines had slipped out of the city while he watched the first one. But these were not moving toward him. Instead they were drifting away to either side, riding their shimmering antigravity fields fifty feet above the ground. After a few minutes they came to a stop and landed. They formed a triangle with the nearest machine, a triangle more than a mile on each side.