03. Quest for the Well of Souls Read Online Free PDF Page B

them on the way down, but crashed three hexes away. Some of the Yugash had even risked traveling to Uchjin, although the surrounding races hated and feared them and made it difficult.
    Then suddenly the Yugash appeared, for the first time in any memory, at North Zone. They received reports of the Southern wars and read them avidly. They too started working on the problem, for their agents had told them that, though they could grow a creature to fly the ship, there was no one in the North who understood its operation. It was too alien for even the Entries.
    They had tenuous contacts with Trelig, Ortega, and Yulin, and that last had referred them to the Yaxa. The people of his own hex—mostly farmers—would have lynched him if they knew he still contemplated getting that ship.
    Suddenly, it had all come together. Yaxa theoretical research with the potential the Yugash believed they needed.
    The airlock door opened, and the Yugash walked in.
    Floated in was a more apt term. The creature looked strange, almost invisible in the light. Suspended a good fifty centimeters above the floor, a series of horizontal and vertical lines formed what appeared to be a red-pencil outline of a great hooded cloak—with no one in it.
    Even the Yaxa, whose vision had the best resolution of any on the Well, had trouble keeping the creature in focus. The creature might be very visible in total darkness, but almost any light, let alone the bright ones here, washed it out.
    The Yugash seemed to nod, but said nothing. It was one of the few creatures for whom a translator was totally useless; there was no place to affix it, for the Yugash had no material being.
    The creature floated slowly by the Yaxa and up to the blackness of the Well Gate. It turned, nodded again, and drifted into the Gate, sharply visible as a strange specter before it was swallowed up. The Yaxa followed, more nervous now than ever, and emerged from the South Zone Well Gate instantaneously.
    The Yugash floated up to it, touched it. The Yaxa felt an eerie, uncomfortable tingling, but nothing else. It was suddenly chilled, stuffy, nervous. Blending into the Yaxa body, the Yugash now vanished.
    There were a few other creatures about in Zone, but none gave the Yaxa much notice. The huge butterflies were cold and aloof always, and they inspired fear in some others. Only another Yaxa would have noticed how awkward the creature seemed, how unsure of itself.
    It entered the Yaxa embassy, almost bruising its wings on the doorway. Inside were the ambassador and several other Yaxa leaders—all females. The male of the species was groundbound, a soft, pulpy caterpillar designed for only one purpose, and it responded with abandon. The males were kept dormant until needed. The Yaxa female always ate her mate after.
    The ambassador looked concerned. "There is something wrong?"
    The newcomer stopped and wobbled unsteadily on four tentacles. Its voice was hard to understand, and it was unlike anything they had ever heard before.
    "I am the Torshind of Yugash," it mumbled. "You must forgive me. I am still learning to use this body. In Yugash we grow the bodies we need, and they are of good crystals and bred to their tasks. Yours is an incredibly complex creature, and there is also a great deal of resistance from the host."
    "Do you mean," one asked, "that you are a Northern creature currently occupying the body of our sister?"
    The strange Yaxa nodded. "Yes. Will you please instruct the creature not to resist me so? We cannot complete this test until I am in complete control of the cranial area."
    They all looked nervous, uncomfortable now, both from the implications of what they were seeing and hearing and from being called "creatures."
    "Please!" asked the Torshind again. "Do so or one of two alternatives will result. I shall either have to abandon the body, or there will be permanent brain damage!"
    That last got them. "Hypno!" one ordered, and soon a syringe to Yaxa requirements was