The Altar at Asconel by John Brunner Read Free Book Online

the steel-tipped boots as it cracked against his ankle, and went slamming down to the floor. He had had no time to draw his sidearms, obviously—perhaps he’d mistaken the sound of the stranger’s approach for Spartak’s—but he’d done well in the first instance, for a short sword lay at the foot of the control board: his assailant’s, logically, which he had somehow contrived to dash from his grip.
    Horrified, Spartak saw the two antagonists crash to their full length, saw the stranger break Vix’s grasp on his right wrist and force his hand closer and closer to the redhead’s throat. Wild pleading showed in the green eyes, but there was no breath available for him to call for aid again.
    To renounce his oath so soon? To pick up the sword from the floor and drive it into the stranger’s back? It could be done, but—
    And then he remembered, as clearly as if he were hearing it in present time, the voice of one of his earliest tutors on Annanworld. “Always bear in mind that the need for violence is an illusion. If it seems that violence is unavoidable, what this means is that you’ve left the problem too late before starting to tackle it.”
    Spartak dodged the struggling men and made for the control board. As he scanned the totally unfamiliar switches, he heard a sobbing cry from Vix—“Spartak, Spartak, he’s going to strangle me!”
    Time seemed to plod by for him, while racing at top speed for his brother. But at last he thought he had it. He put one hand on the back of the pilot chair, and withthe other slammed a switch over past its neutral point to the opposite extreme of its traverse.
    Instantly he went head over heels. But he was prepared for this; in effect, he fell to the ceiling like a gymnast turning a somersault, and landed on his feet with a jar that shook him clear to the hips. The universe rolled insanely around him, and through a swirling mist of giddiness he saw that what he had intended had indeed come about. Locked in their muscle-straining embrace, Vix and the unknown had crashed ten feet to the ceiling as the gravity reversed, and now Vix was on top—and breaking free! For the force of the upside-down fall had completely stunned the stranger.
    Spartak reached out, clutching Vix by the loose baldric on which he normally slung his energy-gun, and reversed the gravity once more, restoring its normal direction. The attacker slammed to the floor again while he and Vix fell rather less awkwardly; this time, he moved the switch with careful slowness, not exceeding a quarter-gravity till he felt his soles touch the floor.
    And then he said, “Who is he?”
    “I—I—” Vix put his hands to his temples and pressed, breathing in enormous sobbing gasps. “What did you
do?
”
    “I put the gravity over to full negative.”
    “But—” Vix began to recover. “But—how? Do you know these ships, then?”
    “No, I’ve never seen one before. But it followed logically. There’s always an automatic gravity compensator on a starship, for high-gee maneuvering in normal space, and it seemed reasonable to expect a manual over-ride on a vessel like this which might get damaged during combat.”
    “You mean you just took a chance on it, while he was throttling the life out of me?” Vix exploded.
    Clearly the redhead had suffered one of the worst frights of his life. Spartak hesitated.
    “Why didn’t you just pick up his sword and run him through with it?” Vix blasted on.
    “Ah—well, if I’d done that,” Spartak countered in the calmest tone he could manage, “he wouldn’t have been able to tell us who he is and why he set on you. As it is,here he’s no more than stunned, and you’re alive to ask him the right questions.”
    “I guess so,” Vix agreed sullenly, and gave the dazed attacker a prod in the ribs with his foot. “I look forward to beating some answers out of him, at that. Here, I’l put some lashings on him before he wakes up.”
    He started to a corner chest in search