Four-Day Planet

by H. Beam Piper

  14

  THE RESCUE

  The scout boat from the _Pequod_ came in about thirty minutes later,from up the ravine where the forest fire was sending up flame andsmoke. It passed over the boat and the hut beside it and the crowd ofus outside, and I could see Oscar in the machine gunner's seat aiminga portable audiovisual telecast camera. After he got a view of us,cheering and waving our arms, the boat came back and let down. We ranto it, all of us except the man with the broken leg and a couple whodidn't have enough clothes to leave the fire, and as the boat opened Icould hear Oscar saying:

  "Now I am turning you over to Walter Boyd, the _Times_ correspondentwith the _Javelin_ castaways."

  He gave me the camera when he got out, followed by his gunner, and Igot a view of them, and of the boat lifting and starting west to guidethe ships in. Then I shut it off and said to him:

  "What's this about Bish Ware? You said he was the one who started thesearch."

  "That's right," Oscar said. "About thirty hours after you left port,he picked up some things that made him think the _Javelin_ had beensabotaged. He went to your father, and he contacted me--MohandasFeinberg and I still had our ships in port--and started calling the_Javelin_ by screen. When he couldn't get response, your father putout a general call to all hunter-ships. Nip Spazoni reported boardingthe _Javelin_, and then went searching the area where he thought you'dbeen hunting, picked up your locator signal, and found the _Javelin_on the bottom with her bow blown out and the boat berth open and theboat gone. We all figured you'd head south with the boat, and that'swhere we went to look."

  "Well, Bish Ware; he was dead drunk, last I heard of him," JoeKivelson said.

  "Aah, just an act," Oscar said. "That was to fool the city cops, andanybody else who needed fooling. It worked so well that he was able tocrash a party Steve Ravick was throwing at Hunters' Hall, after themeeting. That was where he picked up some hints that Ravick had a spyin the _Javelin_ crew. He spent the next twenty or so hours followingthat up, and heard about your man Devis straining his back. He foundout what Devis did on the _Javelin_, and that gave him the idea thatwhatever the sabotage was, it would be something to the engines. Whatdid happen, by the way?"

  A couple of us told him, interrupting one another. He nodded.

  "That was what Nip Spazoni thought when he looked at the ship. Well,after that he talked to your father and to me, and then your fatherbegan calling and we heard from Nip."

  You could see that it absolutely hurt Joe Kivelson to have to owe hislife to Bish Ware.

  "Well, it's lucky anybody listened to him," he grudged. "I wouldn'thave."

  "No, I guess maybe you wouldn't," Oscar told him, not very cordially."I think he did a mighty sharp piece of detective work, myself."

  I nodded, and then, all of a sudden, another idea, under _Bish Ware,Reformation of_, hit me. Detective work; that was it. We could use agood private detective agency in Port Sandor. Maybe I could talk himinto opening one. He could make a go of it. He had all kinds ofcontacts, he was handy with a gun, and if he recruited a couple oftough but honest citizens who were also handy with guns and built up aprotective and investigative organization, it would fill a long-feltneed and at the same time give him something beside Baldur honey-rumto take his mind off whatever he was drinking to keep from thinkingabout. If he only stayed sober half the time, that would be a fiftyper cent success.

  Ramon Llewellyn was wanting to know whether anybody'd done anythingabout Al Devis.

  "We didn't have time to bother with any Al Devises," Oscar said. "Assoon as Bish figured out what had happened aboard the _Javelin_, weknew you'd need help and need it fast. He's keeping an eye on Al forus till we get back."

  "That's if he doesn't get any drunker and forget," Joe said.

  Everybody, even Tom, looked at him in angry reproach.

  "We better find out what he drinks and buy you a jug of it, Joe,"Oscar's gunner told him.

  The _Helldiver_, which had been closest to us when our signal hadbeen picked up, was the first ship in. She let down into the ravine,after some maneuvering around, and Mohandas Feinberg and half a dozenof his crew got off with an improvised stretcher on a lifter and a lotof blankets. We got our broken-leg case aboard, and Abdullah Monnahan,and the man with the broken wrist. There were more ships coming, sothe rest of us waited. Joe Kivelson should have gone on the_Helldiver_, to have his broken arm looked at, but a captain's alwaysthe last man off, so he stayed.

  Oscar said he'd take Tom and Joe, and Glenn Murell and me, on the_Pequod_. I was glad of that. Oscar and his mate and his navigator areall bachelors, and they use the _Pequod_ to throw parties on whenthey're not hunting, so it is more comfortably fitted than the usualhunter-ship. Joe decided not to try to take anything away from theboat. He was going to do something about raising the _Javelin_, andthe salvage ship could stop here and pick everything up.

  "Well, one thing," Oscar told him. "Bring that machine gun, and whatsmall arms you have. I think things are going to get sort of rough inPort Sandor, in the next twenty or so hours."

  I was beginning to think so, myself. The men who had gotten off the_Helldiver_, and the ones who got off Corkscrew Finnegan's _DirtyGertie_ and Nip Spazoni's _Bulldog_ were all talking about what wasgoing to have to be done about Steve Ravick. Bombing _Javelin_ wouldhave been a good move for Ravick, if it had worked. It hadn't, though,and now it was likely to be the thing that would finish him for good.

  It wasn't going to be any picnic, either. He had his gang ofhoodlums, and he could count on Morton Hallstock's twenty or thirtycity police; they'd put up a fight, and a hard one. And they were alltogether, and the hunter fleet was coming in one ship at a time. Iwondered if the Ravick-Hallstock gang would try to stop them at thewater front, or concentrate at Hunters' Hall or the Municipal Buildingto stand siege. I knew one thing, though. However things turned out,there was going to be an awful lot of shooting in Port Sandor beforeit was over.

  Finally, everybody had been gotten onto one ship or another but Oscarand his gunner and the Kivelsons and Murell and myself. Then the_Pequod_, which had been circling around at five thousand feet, letdown and we went aboard. The conning tower was twice as long as usualon a hunter-ship, and furnished with a lot of easy chairs and a coupleof couches. There was a big combination view and communication screen,and I hurried to that and called the _Times_.

  Dad came on, as soon as I finished punching the wave-lengthcombination. He was in his shirt sleeves, and he was wearing a gun. Iguess we made kind of a show of ourselves, but, after all, he'd comewithin an ace of being all out of family, and I'd come within an aceof being all out, period. After we got through with the happy reunion,I asked him what was the situation in Port Sandor. He shook his head.

  "Not good, Walt. The word's gotten around that there was a bombplanted aboard the _Javelin_, and everybody's taking just one guesswho did it. We haven't expressed any opinions one way or another,yet. We've been waiting for confirmation."

  "Set for recording," I said. "I'll give you the story as far as weknow it."

  He nodded, reached one hand forward out of the picture, and thennodded again. I began with our killing the monster and going down tothe bottom after the cutting-up, and the explosion. I told him what wehad seen after leaving the ship and circling around it in the boat.

  "The condition of the hull looked very much like the effect of acharge of high explosive exploding in the engine room," I finished.

  "We got some views of it, transmitted in by Captain Spazoni, of the_Bulldog_," he said. "Captain Courtland, of the Spaceport Police, hasexpressed the opinion that it could hardly be anything but a smalldemolition bomb. Would you say accident can be ruled out?"

  "I would. There was nobody in the engine room at the time; we wereresting on the bottom, and all hands were in the wardroom."

  "That's good enough," Dad said. "We'll run it as 'very convincing andalmost conclusive' evidence of sabotage." He'd shut off the recorderfor that. "Can I get the story of how you abandoned ship
and landed,now?"

  His hand moved forward, and the recorder went on again. I gave a briefaccount of our experiences in the boat, the landing and wreck, and ourcamp, and the firewood cutting, and how we had repaired the radio. JoeKivelson talked for a while, and so did Tom and Glenn Murell. I wasgoing to say something when they finished, and I sat down on one ofthe couches. I distinctly remember leaning back and relaxing.

  The next thing I knew, Oscar Fujisawa's mate was shaking me awake.

  "We're in sight of Port Sandor," he was telling me.

  I mumbled something, and then sat up and found that I had been lyingdown and that somebody had thrown a blanket over me. Tom Kivelson wasstill asleep under a blanket on the other couch, across from me. Theclock over the instrument panel had moved eight G.S. hours. JoeKivelson wasn't in sight, but Glenn Murell and Oscar were drinkingcoffee. I went to the front window, and there was a scarlet glow onthe horizon ahead of me.

  That's another sight Cesario Vieria will miss, if he takes his nextreincarnation off Fenris. Really, it's nothing but damp, warm air,blown up from the exhaust of the city's main ventilation plant,condensing and freezing as it hits the cold air outside, andfloodlighted from below. I looked at it for a while, and then gotmyself a cup of coffee and when I had finished it I went to thescreen.

  It was still tuned to the _Times_, and Mohandas Feinberg was sittingin front of it, smoking one of his twisted black cigars. He had a big10-mm Sterberg stuffed into the waistband of his trousers.

  "You guys poked along," he said. "I always thought the _Pequod_ wasfast. We got in three hours ago."

  "Who else is in?"

  "Corkscrew and some of his gang are here at the _Times_, now._Bulldog_ and _Slasher_ just got in a while ago. Some of the shipsthat were farthest west and didn't go to your camp have been in quitea while. We're having a meeting here. We are organizing the PortSandor Vigilance Committee and Renegade Hunters' Co-operative."