This was, of course, the slug-fleet Howell had deduced must exist because patrolling slug-ships travelled in pairs. Of the pair first encountered, one had stayed out of the way of possible harm while its companion investigated and tried to destroy the Marintha. When that ship went to ground and Howell blew it up with a blaster-bolt down the throat of its lightning cannon, the survivor of the pair had bleated and hooted dismally, and then disappeared. Howell reasoned then that it had gone for help. Now it was back with a fleet of fighting ships that nothing could withstand. And as more and more of the ugly ships broke out and began to organize themselves, Howell was bitterly sure that this was the end of everything.
Then he heard the small-men. They made a tumult of triumph and rejoicing. They grinned at him, beaming. From doubt and disappointment, they’d changed instantly to hilarious anticipation. They believed that up to this moment he had seemed to flee so that no companion slug-ship would report that a new and ultra-deadly enemy was in action against its race. Because of that forebearance, they believed, he’d now assembled the now-present fleet to become the victims of his remarkable abilities. They grinned in ecstatic triumph as they waited for him to annihilate the slug-ship fleet.
And more and ever more slug-ships broke out of overdrive and drove to take their places in battle-formation.
Then a bleating, hooting outcry came from the all-wave receiver. A slug-ship was broadcasting something in the chlorine-breathers’ substitute for language. A sun-bright blue-white flame appeared from nowhere and flashed past the Marintha. It seemed to miss the yacht by inches. More of the monstrous lightning-bolts shot out—
CHAPTER EIGHT
Howell threw the overdrive switch. The vision-screens faded. There were the usual symptoms accompanying entry into the isolated, twisted-space cocoon which was an overdrive-field. But again the symptoms were mild. They were almost unnoticeable. They were as much fainter than those usually felt as the speed of the Marintha was now less than the rate at which overdrive usually carried ships between the stars. The yacht, escaping murder-weapons in space, fled at the slowest of crawls.
For one instant the yacht seemed to be surrounded by a buzzing, whining fleet of unseen enemies. Bleatings and hootings had begun all about her, as the nearest murder-ships relayed the detailed information their instruments gave them. Deadly missiles of ball-lightning flashed toward her, any one of which would end her existence.
Then the place where the yacht had been was empty. Instantly other ships—slug-ships—flicked into seeming nothingness to pursue her.
But they drove on full-power. Before they could recover from the anguish all overdrive entries produce, they had flashed far past the place where the Marintha could be said to be. They went on and on, seeking her trail in nothingness, light-weeks and even light-months beyond this planetary system which the Marintha hadn’t left.
It was pure recklessness for Howell to use overdrive amidst all the celestial trash that gathers and floats around a sun. It was far from conservative. No skipper is anxious to find out really what will happen if, in overdrive, his ship rams into an asteroid or even the nucleus of a comet. But the Marintha had no choice. She had to take to overdrive or be blasted in mid-space, and overdrive meant plunging blindly to nowhere with an escort of chlorine-breathing monsters who might—who might!—be able to crack her field and force her back into cosmos where she was helpless. If they could trail a ship in overdrive, they might be able to do more.
In the Marintha the small-men babbled. They were bewildered. They made incredulous gestures to each other. The Marintha had plunged into the very centre of a war-fleet of the slug-creatures, and then plunged out again! They couldn’t understand it! If Howell could blow up a grounded slug-ship with a hand-weapon, and if he could disarm booby traps equipped with killer-fields, in his repaired and refurbished ship he should wreak vast destruction on an enemy-fleet! But he hadn’t. Why?
The man with the red vest went to the garbage disposal unit. He lifted its cover and gazed inside. He shook his head querulously.
“Karen,” said Howell grimly, “come up here and get set to talk. Since the small-folk aground must have detected the slug-fleet, they may be getting set to get away. I’ve got to break out to locate the planet they’re on—if they’re still there. If they are there, I’ll risk landing to put these small-men aboard their own ships. I’ll try to turn you over to your father, to get away with them. Then I’ll make sure the Marintha doesn’t become a source of information for the monsters who’re after us.”
She protested, “But you won’t—you won’t—”
“Get set to call!” ordered Howell grimly. “Never mind what I’m going to do!”
He made ready as she picked up the communicator and turned it on. He said, “Breakout coming!” and threw the switch. He then became wholly intent upon his instruments and what he could see in the vision-screens. The green world was a vividly visible disk. Karen began to speak: “Marintha calling! Marintha calling ground! Come in! Marintha calling ground.”
The all-wave receiver yielded whinings, faint and very many of them. They sounded not unlike the infuriated buzzings of a nest of hornets. But they were far away now. Very oddly, they were too near to use overdrive for travel, especially with debris to be found in such quantities as appear about a sun. But they were too far away to overtake the Marintha on solar-system drive.
The all-wave receiver brought in Breen’s voice.
“Karen! What happened? There’s a slug-ship fleet on the way!”
“I know,” said Karen unhappily. “We’re going to land the small-men if their ships will wait for them, and—”
“Ask if the small-men will take the three of you on board their ships,” ordered Howell. When she protested, he snapped, “Do as I say!”
She obeyed, but her voice wavered.
“Come to ground,” boomed Breen’s voice in the speaker. “The small-men are dancing! They’re celebrating! One of their ships went aloft some hours ago, and since it came back I can’t get any sense out of them! But they say come to ground!”
Howell nodded, his features set.
“I’ve got our overdrive set so low I can make another jump,” he observed. “It’ll save hours. Overdrive coming!”
The vision-screens faded. Howell counted minutes and seconds. Then he said, “Breakout coming!”
The screens lighted. To the left there was a monstrous mass of utter blackness, blotting out almost half the firmament. It was the night side of the green planet. Howell swung the yacht’s nose about and dived for the blackness’ edge. As he saw the situation, he was bound to lose Karen and his own life in any case. The only long-range good he could hope to do would develop indirectly through Breen and Ketch—if all went well. If they were accepted as guests of the small-man race, in time they might persuade their hosts to search for the civilization that had produced the Marintha. Such an encounter would give warning to the Earth-human race. They might prepare. They might arm. They might meet and smash the chlorine-breathing monsters who had smashed the cities and the civilization of humanity’s forefathers.
If that happened, it would justify Howell’s own reluctant mission, to be carried out when the others were gone from the green planet and before the slug-ships arrived. He meant to drive the Marintha straight down into the deepest chasm of the green world’s oceans, until the stout hull of the space-yacht collapsed. He’d do this so the slug-creatures couldn’t learn from her of the race of which Karen was a member.
The night side of the booby trap world blotted out half the stars. The Marintha plunged on. Presently a thin faint rim of reddish light appeared ahead. The Marintha raced onward toward the brightness. It was the dawn-line, where day began at this time on this planet. Howell dived. Normally a ship coming in for a landing will make at least one orbital turn to lose velocity. But Howell swung the Marintha about and used full solar-system drive to kill her speed.
He was almost exactly over the peninsula when the yacht’
s rate of motion matched that of the ground. The space-yacht hovered for an instant, and then descended swiftly.
“Get your baggage set, Karen,” commanded Howell. “Pack up technical reference books too. Ketch and your father can translate them eventually.”
Karen said rebelliously, “I’m not going to go away with anybody while you sink the Marintha and you in it!”
There were creakings and crashings outside. Trees resisted the yacht’s landing. A tree trunk toppled and the Marintha touched ground. Howell strode to the exit-port and opened it The small-men who’d been his passengers went out in a subdued, bewildered fashion. Other small-men came running to meet them. There was eager, ecstatic exchange of news. There was wild hilarity. Those who’d been so disappointed because Howell in the Marintha inexplicably spared the ships of slug-creatures, and who just before landing had been quite bewildered—those same small-folk suddenly turned beaming faces back to him as he stood in the exit-port. They waved. They shouted. Those who’d come to meet them led the way back toward the globe-ships. But all the party turned to wave and shout joyously until they were out of sight.
“It would be interesting,” said Howell sardonically, “to know what they’re so pleased about!”
“My father will know,” said Karen. “Or Ketch.”
More tumult in the distance. Breen and Ketch came through the jungle, with an escort of the miniature men. Some members of the escort carried parcels. All wore grins wide enough to cut their throats. But Breen and Ketch didn’t seem to share their hilarity.
“You’re all right,” said Breen heavily, when he stood beside Karen in the exit-port. “I was pretty badly worried. I thought something had blown out in the engine room.”
Ketch said somewhat displeased, “What did happen? We thought you’d run into a slug-ship! The small-folk thought so too. They’d arranged to take us aboard, because they knew this fleet would be coming. They were ready to lift off, happy about something but disturbed about something else. Then Karen called. Then everything changed. Everybody was happy! Nobody was disturbed any more. They brought us here. Then—”
The small-men who’d escorted Ketch and Breen turned and made their way back toward their ships. But they turned and grinned happily and waved exuberantly. Then they disappeared.
Howell swore suddenly, under his breath. Ketch said suspiciously, “What’s the matter? What’s the program? What do we do?”
“I’ve got to sink the Marintha! We can’t let it be examined by the slug-beasts! You three have to go off in the globe-ships! Karen! Call the small-folk. It doesn’t matter what you say. Just talk urgently so they’ll come to find out what we want before they lift off!”
Karen disappeared into the yacht. Howell clenched and unclenched his hands. Ketch had daydreamed of heroism in the drama-tape mode, complete with dramatic gestures and posturings.
Breen had apparently taken everything that had happened on this planet in a completely matter-of-fact fashion, equally unsurprised and un-alarmed. Only Howell had seen the successive situations realistically, and only he had come to the conclusion that he must dive the Marintha to the depths of the sea until its hull was crushed by the pressure. From an abstract viewpoint, his decision might have seemed highly noble and heroic. But he didn’t feel that way. He was irritated. He didn’t feel even faintly satisfied with the idea of dying. And he couldn’t insist that the others join him in something he didn’t like himself.
Karen came back. She looked pale.
“They don’t answer, But—there are lots of whining sounds…”
Howell started up to try to call himself. But then Ketch uttered an angry cry, “Look there! They’re lifting off!”
And it was true. Above the jungle, a globe-ship rose. It cleared the giant trees that had hidden it. It hung motionless for a space, and then the second globe-ship came clear of the feathery, leafy branches that had concealed it and appeared also against the sky. The two ships swung forward, barely a hundred feet above ground-level. They floated over the intervening jungle and came to a stop above the Marintha.
The four of the Marintha’s company stared upward, incredulous. Ports in the two globe-ships opened. Small figures appeared and waved. Howell shouted furiously. Ketch bellowed.
The small-men, waving cordially, disappeared again. The two globe-ships went swiftly, serenely, confidently up into the sky. They dwindled. They became dots. Specks. They vanished.
“They took my ideas,” said Ketch darkly, “and now they’ll try to carry them out! But they won’t make it!”
He referred, of course, to his grandiose notions of space-battles in ships yet to be built, with armaments yet to be designed, which he would lead with splendid gestures.
Breen said querulously, “They brought all my botanical specimens. But—”
Karen said, “He thinks—” and she meant Howell, unmistakably, “he thinks he should sink the Marintha. Leaving us marooned—for those creatures to find! And—he intends to go down to the sea-bottom in the Marintha!”
Howell said with surpassing bitterness, “That was when I thought the small-folk would take you aboard. Not now! Now it would be murder, since they’ve gone. Get inside!”
Breen lifted his botanical specimens up into the port. Ketch, it appeared, had made something of a collection of the handmade weapons of the small-men. He got them aboard the yacht. Once within the small spaceship, the peevish, whining sound of slug-ship solar-system drives was loud and insistent from the all-wave receiver. There were many, many slug-ships in the fleet come to avenge the destruction of a scout-ship.
Howell went into the engine room. He changed the settings of the overdrive generator. He adjusted them to produce again the highest possible overdrive speed of which the Marintha was capable. He went back to the control room.
“Ketch! ” he called.
Ketch came indignantly.
“We’ve got one ingot in the fuel-chamber,” said Howell. “There’s room for more. Fill it up. And hurry!”
“But it’s not safe!” protested Ketch. “Do you want to take a chance on blowing up the ship?”
“Yes,” said Howell. “I do. Hurry up with it.”
He set the Marintha’s detectors to maximum gain. Tiny specks appeared on the radar-screen. The slug-fleet was an incredible thing. Howell had no idea how many of the small-humans there were, nor how many ships they could gather together in their furtive, desperate assemblies on worlds they could only hope the slug-ships would not find before they’d gone away. But this fleet must outnumber them many times over. It could have no purpose other than the hunting-down and extermination of the small-man race. It was a horde. Such a fleet could turn the whole surface of a planet into flame. It could sterilize a world, destroying all life upon it. If it came upon a human-occupied planet…
Karen came to the control room and stood beside Howell.
“If anything happens to you now,” she said evenly, “it happens to me too!”
“And the other way about,” growled Howell.
She nodded. He searched her features. Then much of the grimness left his own. He smiled very faintly.
“I haven’t acted very—romantically,” he said wryly. “Not since it turned out that we—feel as we do. Want to know why?”
“It might make me feel better,” admitted Karen.
“Because I figured the Marintha had to be destroyed,” he told her. “Which meant I’d have to go with it. And if I’d acted—romantically, I wasn’t sure I could.”
“That’s silly!”said Karen.
He stood up. He reached for her. She did not retreat. Minutes later Ketch called from the engine room. The fuel-chamber was filled to a dangerous degree. A glancing lightning-bolt had hit the Marintha once. It did damage, but no more than damage. If such a bolt hit the yacht now, there would be literally nothing left of it at all—which was still preferable to a less complete destruction.
Howell kissed Karen again and sat down at the instrument board. He said, �
�Lifting off!” and threw a switch. The Marintha lurched and lifted toward the sky. The horizon retreated while nearby objects—trees, the dead space about the booby trap, the shores on the peninsula, the sea itself and presently another continent showing at the edge of what was then visible—all things flowed toward and underneath the space-yacht.
Then, quite suddenly, it seemed that the horizon dropped down. From an apparently hollow bowl below, the world they were leaving became a visible, enormous ball. The sky overhead was dark by then and the sun was a blazing disk of flame. There were many, many stars.
Howell said soberly, “The nearest slug-ships are only a few thousand miles away. It would be entertaining to know if they’ve figured out that I dodged the first ones that started for us by going so slowly that they passed us without knowing it. They may try the same trick on us! I wonder…”
He glanced at the outside air-pressure dial. It said zero. He looked up at Karen and said, “You can tell them overdrive’s coming.”
Karen went to the control room door. She called. Howell threw the switch. It was a highly hazardous operation. The Marintha’s overdrive now made use of the full capacity of a capacitor she was not designed to use. Her circuits were not rated to carry the load. She could blow. And if she did, with a man-packed fuel-chamber, that fuel would blow also and there would be a momentary flare of hell-fire where the space-yacht had been. Then there’d be no more Marintha and the slug-ship fleet would have had a long journey in overdrive for nothing.
But the drive didn’t blow. And this time those aboard felt a monstrous vertigo and an intolerable nausea, and for a heartbeat they had the panicky sensation of falling headlong while in a spinning spiral. Because this time the Marintha went into full-power overdrive—higher power than she’d ever used before.
Space Gypsies Page 13
