by Ian Miller
As the transmission faded, van Lugt turned to the rest of the squad. "If anyone wants to quit, hare off down the slope now," he remarked. "No report will be entered. This fight is voluntary." Nobody moved. "Good," he nodded. "Now, let's arm ourselves. There's a number of javelins. Take as many as you want, but never throw the last one. Use it as a spear. There're four crossbows. Does anyone know how to use them?"
"We're in archery clubs," a couple of women volunteered.
"Take what you want. Crossbows only to those two. Two of you other women, learn how to load for them, and keep one loaded. Don't be disappointed. You've got the second most important job. Those things are our only long-range firepower, and we've got to keep them going to the maximum, and each bolt has to count.
"We'll form two squads. Harry, you lead one, with one pair of crossbows. I'll take the other. Now, let's not set about killing each other so identify your targets, and while you have to keep in broad groups, spread out. Don't become multiple targets for blasting weapons. Get as close as you dare, especially the crossbows, to cut down the path curvature, and if there's cover, use it. Now, let's go, and good luck."
Harry grabbed three javelins, and led his group out. To his slight surprise, he saw that van Lugt had taken a giant axe from above the fireplace. It was some imitation of an old Viking battle-axe, but as Harry later found out, someone had put some sort of edge on it, so that it could be used for ceremonial wood chopping.
The two parties made their way up the slope. During their exercises, extreme care had been shown; now caution was flung aside, and every effort was made for speed. In the distance, they could see three black ships enter the station. They seemed to be in luck, as the ships made their way down the slope towards the parties. Out towards the centre of the "sky", great clouds were billowing in torment, as the station centre continued to pour all the energy it could into evaporating water. But no storm broke.
It was then the parties began to realize why the ships were bearing directly down on them. It was almost as if they were the objective. While two of the ships closed in towards the party, the third ship moved out towards the centre of the station, turned, and fired some energy bolt. A shower of rocks flew out thirty metres ahead of Harry's party.
There was no second shot. The bolt had ionized a path through the air, and this was sufficient to trigger a gigantic electrical bolt that struck at the nearest object, the leading invading craft. In turn, this triggered the storm. From near calm the giant storm blew up, and then started to collapse on itself. As it collapsed, wind speed approached two hundred and fifty kilometres per hour. At first hail, then snow swept across the terrain. The parties could see nothing, as they held on for grim life to whatever they could.
Within twenty seconds of the storm breaking, they felt a tearing through their feet, which climaxed into a tremendous thud, and in turn was followed by an enormous explosion. A few seconds after that, a second tearing was felt, and another lesser explosion. Then, as quickly as it had started, the storm collapsed. The teams reassembled and marched as quickly as they could towards the explosions.
As they approached, Harry felt a tugging on his suit. He turned around, and saw Marisa gesticulating that he should move towards the right. He was about to shrug her off, and order her back into line, when she and the others started off in that direction anyway. Harry felt stupid, but he followed. He was, after all, their leader.
He was pleased he did. Marisa led them up a ledge where they clawed their way along a narrow path. Then suddenly, as the snow started to clear slightly, Harry saw the two ships crashed into the base of the ledge. A small group of aliens had assembled outside the forward ship, and were marching down towards where van Lugt should be approaching.
Harry looked back and saw two of the archers preparing to fire. He quickly signalled them to stop. He wanted them to get as close as they could to their targets. They crept carefully down the ledge, their white hoods covering almost all their faces. By now there was a good covering of snow, and they could hardly be seen. They crept down to the bottom of the ledge, then in behind the second ship. As they reached the rear fin, he saw briefly van Lugt come from nowhere, his white suit perfect camouflage. The great axe came up, to decapitate the leading alien.
A group emerged from the second ship, armed with heavy rifle-looking objects, and appeared to be aware of van Lugt's group, as they formed a line to advance on him. Harry signalled to his squad to form a line to launch the javelins. They spread out, and still the enemy seemed unaware of their presence. Then the second signal: advance and throw. Each had picked a target nearest to their position in the enemy line. Two quick paces and a throw, then quickly grasp the second javelin, two quick paces and a throw, then grasp the third javelin and charge. It was almost like a drill. The second flight of javelins was airborne as the enemy realized there was an attack from that direction.
Two javelins struck. One enemy fell to the ground, writhing, with the javelin apparently through its neck, while the second had collapsed, its leg pinned. At the same time two other enemies lurched forward, crossbow bolts embedded deeply in their backs. Harry landed on the back of the pinned alien as its weapon moved around; the weapon fired harmlessly into the cliff as Harry dug his javelin deeply into the alien's back. Harry scrambled from the black shape, pulled both the javelins clear, and looked around. Another enemy was approaching, and Harry dived to his left. The beam passed over his shoulder, but he heard a scream through his intercom. He thrust low, but upwards, and felt the javelin go deep. He yelled into the communicator. As ordered, the party immediately fell away from their approach route to give the archers a clear shot. A crossbow bolt lodged deeply in one of the remaining aliens, then another was felled. Harry pulled on his javelin, and thrust the slimy steel into another who was lying on the ground. Although seriously wounded, it had been determined to exact a price, and had already sent a beam into the back of one young soldier who had left it as defeated. He retrieved his javelin again, and turned to find Marisa struggling with yet another of the black-suited creatures, one with two crossbow bolts lodged in its side. She had lodged her javelin in the shoulder, and she was desperately trying to drive it deeper. Meanwhile the alien, although clearly in desperate pain, was attempting to swing a strange sword-like weapon around, while Marisa was trying to stop this by pushing harder on the shoulder with her javelin. Again Harry thrust, deep into the side, and the enemy collapsed.
He looked around. The fight was almost over. Three of alpha squad were lying in the snow, injured or dead. One remaining alien was attempting to re-enter the crashed ship, but it was felled by another crossbow bolt. Then, almost as quickly as it had started, the storm ceased. Harry looked down towards the other ship, and saw most of van Lugt's group running up towards them. Harry stepped forward, and raised his arms in a V sign.
What happened next was to totally puzzle Defence. The remaining attack ship appeared to trigger some destruct mechanism in the crashed ships, and these became incandescent. The viable ship then turned and fled, and returned to the more ugly of the two alien ships outside. These two ships were to be code-named slug and bird, after their relative appearances. Bird then turned towards the station, began to glow, and began firing what seemed like a weapon at the station. But about thirty metres around the station, the whole energy pattern spread and glowed, as if stopped by some invisible shield. Suddenly three jets began to emerge from the shield, very nearly, but on later analysis, not exactly towards the corners of an equilateral triangle, and these jets began to pulsate. Then slug began to fire every weapon at its disposal at the station, but the shield more or less held, and indeed the shield began firing back at slug. Suddenly the attack was called off, and the two alien ships turned and disappeared into deep space.
Overall, Columbus sustained only minor damage. Several cubic metres of rock had been lost, but the shell was intact and could be easily repaired. Inside the station, the defence had proceeded remarkably well, exactly according to plan, even t
hough the weapons were totally unplanned. Outside, the defence was also ideal, but nobody had the faintest idea as to why.
Alpha squad was unaware of all this. When the crashed ships became incandescent, everybody except Harry dived for what cover they could find. Harry's path to the largest outcrop he could see passed the body of the alien that he had killed while it was struggling with Marisa. The strange sword-type weapon was still in its hand, and on impulse Harry grabbed the body by the shoulders and dragged it to cover. He reached it, and lodged the body into a hole into the 'hill'. The alien ship circled, and blasted at the one dead alien in full view, destroying the body and the weaponry, then it continued to circle, but eventually, after giving further desultory blasts at poorly concealed squad members, it left.
When the 'skies' of Columbus cleared, the survivors of alpha squad re-emerged, tentatively at first, then with more enthusiasm as it gradually dawned on them that their first real battle was over, and they had survived. Then came the painful realization that some of them had not. Two more were found with moderate to serious wounds, and aerial ambulances were requested.
At first there was considerable puzzlement over why only one of the enemy bodies had been blasted, then it became apparent: the rest were Martian collaborators armed with weapons that were more or less conventional to Terrans.
"What a bunch of miserable little . . ." Shelley Winters muttered, as she dropped the body of a collaborator onto a heap, then she gave it a solid kick.
"What'll we do with them?" someone asked.
"Me, I vote we leave them, unidentified, for Columbus. They can make fertilizer out of them."
"At least they'll be good for that," Marisa agreed. For once she found everybody agreeing with her, which, as she noted wryly later, was a little sad: it needed the treachery of Martians to finally bring her into total acceptance with her Federation squad members.
"A pity we didn't have one of the aliens' weapons," van Lugt muttered to himself, as he finished collecting the last of the collaborators. These bodies were to be picked up later.
"Actually, we have one." When everyone turned towards Harry, he added, "I dragged the body of your alien," he explained, while nodding to Marisa, "and left it in a hole over there."
"A hole?" Van Lugt looked puzzled.
"There're at least twenty of them," Marisa explained. "Apparently," she added, almost apologetically as everyone turned to look at her, "one of the 'adventures' on Columbus is to be 'caught out in the open in a snow storm', and spend the evening in a cave."
"Presumably with your girlfriend," someone added.
"OK, whatever," van Lugt said. "Let's go see."
So Harry had to clamber into the cliff-hole, and drag the body out. He took off the power pack, and strapped it and the weapon to the top of the body, then, with a broad grin and an even broader gesture, waved and said, "Alien body ready and waiting, sir!"
"OK," van Lugt shook his head. "Get that alien down to the base. Harry, you take one end, I'll take the other."
Harry noted that van Lugt took the heavier shoulder end, leaving him the feet, which were remarkably light. As they marched down, Harry offered to change ends on a shift basis, but van Lugt would have none of it. Eventually they reached the base, and with no more than a questioning nod and an acceptance nod between them, they began to carefully take of the armour.
The face was strangely fascinating. The skin was hard and leathery, coloured green-brown. There were two large eyes, with a retractable transparent film that could cover them. This film was later found to filter out harder ultraviolet light, and apparently covered the eyes when outside, but retracted when under cover. Two large eyelids could further protect the eyes, and it appeared these aliens cried quite frequently, for they had the capacity to make tears to lubricate the eyes, but they also generated them to run down the outside of the eyelids. A subsequent study of their eyes showed that they would have good eyesight, although their colour range was different, and they had colour discrimination that included the near ultraviolet.
They had large ears, and when Harry re-examined the helmet, he noticed very large earmuffs within, with a communicator earpiece set in the centre. He later dismantled it, and found that, not unsurprisingly, it was not unlike comparable Terran equipment, except that, when he sent signals through it, the amplification was very low. It appeared that the M'starn had very sensitive hearing, and Harry speculated that the earmuffs were a defence against sonic weapons. Since Earth did not use sonic weapons, he assumed the M'starn did.
Protruding from the face was a large beak. Harry forced open the mouth, and as he held a torch over the cavity, Shelley Winters inserted a dentist's mirror and a thin spatula that she had found somewhere in the complex. The mouth appeared to be compartmentalized, with food being initially ground in the beak, then secreted through a heavy muscle into a further cavity, where a rather strange orange saliva was mixed with it. Later work showed that the M'starn life system was based on chemistry similar to that of Earth creatures; they used "nucleic acids", proteins, carbohydrates, but there were many differences in detail, and an initial study of the enzyme systems in their stomachs showed that most Earth food would be either indigestible or would poison their enzymes. The two life forms were not compatible.
There was silence as the creature was then removed from the suit. Their enemy did not seem so terrifying in one sense, yet in another there was a sense of awe. The creature before them might be an enemy, but it still represented what they had only dreamed about: life from another planet. The height of this M'starn was a little less than that of humans, and as was obvious, they had two arms, two legs, a neck and a head. The creatures breathed oxygen, and were carbon-nitrogen-water based. The muscle system was particularly strong in the hands and feet. The fingers had exceptionally powerful muscles, and there were extremely thick, retractable claws. The skin was hard, leathery, impermeable, and a dark green-brown. The clothing was also sodden.
"We've punctured his drinking tank," someone remarked.
"I don't think so," Harry countered. "If you look closely at the inside of this suit, there are small sprinklers, there're hoses that are intact, and there seems to be a small pump. It seems to be deliberate."
Shelly noticed that it was softer at a wound, and greener. She had found a scalpel from somewhere, and informed the squad that she was going to do a little dissection.
"Shouldn't you leave that to an expert?" van Lugt asked. His tone showed he was going to avoid all responsibility for what he was sure would follow from the powers that be on Earth.
"Probably," she countered, "but that would be a Defence expert, and that could take days. We have no idea how soon decomposition sets in, so now's the time to get a preliminary view."
"I don't know . . ." van Lugt muttered.
"I know what I'm doing," Shelley said. "I've been on the space medical training program, and while I'm not a qualified surgeon, I've got the emergency ticket."
"Don't remind me of those," van Lugt shuddered. One of the problems of space travel was that few space vehicles could carry a fully qualified surgeon, and in any case, few if any fully qualified doctors wished to spend their lives in space ships. As a consequence, a new profession had sprung up: emergency medical assistant. With robotic and computer guidance, even complicated surgery could be carried out in space. That was the good news. The bad news started with erratic diagnoses, and there were certain parts of the operation that still required the human. Several horror stories made the rounds of the Space Academies.
"She's right!" Harry grinned. "We've got to do this before it turns to mush, but we should wait until we get one of those video cameras set up. The experts can see whatever later."
"Should we broadcast it to Earth?"
"You gotta be joking!" Harry countered broadly. "One, the experts'd say no, because they'd want to be the ones to do it, and secondly, the M'starn'd pick up the transmission, and they might be a wee bit peeved to see us desecrating one of their sold
iers."
"Maybe the experts should be the ones to do it, all the same. We could mess it up . . ."
"Us? Mess it up? Give me another raw prawn!"
Eventually van Lugt yielded, much against his better judgment, as he would remind everybody for some time, and soon the M'starn body was laid out on a table, the arms and legs pinned, the camera recording, and, as he turned on the last of the lights he had rigged up, he called out "Lights on! Now, action!"
Meanwhile Shelley had placed her suit helmet on, and suggested others either do the same, or keep well away. They resuited, and Shelley made her first incision. The skin was very hard, and she made little progress.
"Try this," Harry suggested, and poured small amounts of water on the skin, and rubbed it in. To the other's surprise, the skin became suppler.
"How'd you know to do that?" Shelley asked in surprise.
"Logic!" Harry replied, then added, "Why do you think the inside of their suits is wet? And why have they got tear ducts on the outside of their eyelids? My guess was to make the lids supple enough that the eyes could be opened and shut, so . . ."
"Good deduction," van Lugt nodded. He was clearly impressed.
The incisions now proceeded more easily. Inside, the body seemed to have two fluid systems: a red liquid which was clearly the equivalent to blood, based on something chemically similar to haemoglobin, and a thick, mucilaginous greenish liquid, which had no obvious function, except that it accumulated near wounds.
"Wipe that up, but keep the sample," Harry offered. "I'll bet you whatever you like, that makes skin."
It was later found that Harry was essentially correct. There was a little more to making skin, but essentially the green liquid collected other material and set into a wound-healing scab, and it was also a component of the real skin. The liquid was apparently a defence mechanism to quickly repair skin and to avoid the loss of liquid; the creatures apparently came from a planet with a low air pressure. It also became apparent that the skin was built from the inside and the outside was essentially dead. The skin was also an extremely effective thermal insulator and had extremely good resistance to both heat and cold.
