Solar Assassins
Page 10
The river that Mullon had discovered was less than a mile away. Mullon directed that the unloaded goods be brought halfway to the river and there houses started to be constructed out of the undamaged pieces of prefab materials that had been shipped along. Not quite half of the construction materials had been damaged by the crash. Temporarily the people were going to be living in close quarters with each other—more or less 10 per dwelling instead of 5. But that was inconsequential. Nobody felt uncomfortable.
Around the swiftly rising village, Mullon posted a ring of guards Nobody knew what kind of dangers lurked on this world. It was necessary to be on the alert.
The joint working effort of the True Democrats and the Nature Philosophers proved to be excellent. Both sides had come to understand that only by sticking together could the situation be mastered.
Hollander, who was conscious again but in the intensive care of physicians, maintained his silence. Mullon wag sure, however, that his pathological ambition had survived the recent catastrophe.
As soon as Hollander could stand on his feet, he would start to make trouble again.
• • •
The plain in which the Adventurous had made a crash-landing had an extensive grass coverage. It sloped gently upward from east to west. Mountain peaks towered into the blue-white sky at a distance of about 60 miles. Still farther away in the East began the darker mass of the jungle.
The river flowed down from the mountains and into the jungle country. In spite of its many meanderings, its waters rushed along swiftly due to the slope of the plain. It was a young and vigorous stream.
4 of the almost 40-hour days had passed. The little town had established itself. And Mullon had jumped his most difficult hurdle: to incorporate the former ship's crew into the community of the settlers. Altogether it had been easier than he had imagined it would be. Only a few of the former officers thought that the settlers should continue to be treated as convicts. Mullon pointed out the fact that crewmembers and exiles, alike were all in the same situation and he managed to break the resistance of even the most hardheaded amongst them without causing any bad blood between both sides.
The village had received a name: Greenwich. The thought association was obvious, green of course being related to the grass of the softly sloping plain. In all, Greenwich was a significant name rich with tradition. In fact, in honor of tradition the zero degree of the meridian was defined as running right through Mullon's house.
The sentinels that Mullon had posted in a wide circle around Greenwich observed a herd of giant animals toward the South. They never came close enough so that they could be more clearly observed; but by all appearances they were larger than elephants.
Early one morning when the pre-dawn darkness still lay over the land, there was sudden excitement. The ground thundered and the guards came running to proclaim that a herd of the giant animals was marching on the village.
Mullon placed his men south of the town. With a kind of gangling trot, the animals came thundering onward, as Mullon observed them through a telescope. Their pillar-like legs towered more than six or seven feet above the ground, at which point the mighty but comparatively graceful and almost slender torso began, which was in itself about 30 feet long. Forward from the torso was an almost endlessly long neck supporting a comparatively small head so that the level of the creatures' eyes was about 40 feet off the ground.
Fortunately there was no actual encounter. The herd made a detour around the village and gradually disappeared toward the North. The guards went back to their positions and Greenwich had a new subject of conversation: the elephantogiraffes or the giraffants—nobody had as yet come to an agreement as to a name for them.
• • •
Mullon had had an inventory taken of everything that was either still usable or that could be rendered useful with minor repairs. The results were not as frightening as one might have expected right after the crash-landing of the Adventurous.
Aside from the small auxiliary spaceship, for which Mullon of course could find no use at the present, there was a large selection of both tractor-tread and wheeled ground vehicles, all of them equipped with powerful, long-lasting fusion-engines. There was more than enough agricultural machinery and tons of seed corn. On the scientific side of things the Adventurous seemed to fulfill every need including an extensive library. There were also many kinds of instruments, such as devices for long-range measurement of temperatures, alien time-zone chronometers capable of showing the exact length of day for any planet, navigational gear for determining position. The magnetic field of the planet could be measured with magnetometers so that the North-South line of direction could be precisely determined. There were also medicines and enough medical equipment for furnishing two complete hospitals ready for operation, according to the doctors and physicians who were among the settlers.
There was also a helicopter. Originally there had been 10 of them but only this one had withstood the shake-up of the landing. It was actually an all-purpose vehicle. The helicopter blades could be detached and stowed away, in which case it could be converted into a straight airplane, a boat or an automobile—in accordance with the transportation requirement.
Mullon felt sure that with all these technical and scientific supplies the survival of the colony of settlers was fairly well secured. The imperative thing to look out for now was to provide for a continuance of human progress, for the preservation of the spirit and intelligence of their kind, so that in spite of all this technology they would not slip back into barbarism in the course of generations to come. Because Mullon had given up hope that his hypercom broadcast had been heard or that the position of the Adventurous had been observed.
"We are alone," he told a mass assembly of settlers seven days after their landing. "Probably most of you don't see any particular disadvantage to that, at least not yet. We are men and women in more or less equal numbers; on the average we are young, so most of you will ask—why shouldn't we be able to populate a great world like this?"
"But don't overlook one thing: we are missing the tremendous backup that is represented on Earth by billions of fellow humans. We must not neglect the quality of mind and spirit. Ours isn't the same situation as it was for the pioneers who settled the American West a few hundred years or so ago. They only had to retrace a thousand miles or maybe less before they were back in civilization again. In our case we are completely cut off. Instead of having to traverse a distance of a mere thousand miles or so, we are faced with thousands of light-years and we have no means of traveling that far.
"Therefore we're going to have to stick together! We have to realize that the only way we're going to be able to survive is to avoid splitting up again into a lot of independent groups with different objectives and different ways of looking at the world. Don't just go blindly and stupidly to your tasks merely to put out a lot of labor. Consider what labor should be accomplished and why it should be done. Have discussions, read the books we've brought with us. Keep mentally awake, remain industrious and avoid lethargy at all costs!"
• • •
The first life forms indigenous to the new world that the colonists had seen were the astonishing giraffants, as they had decided to call them, and already the great grey beasts had become part of the pioneers' heraldic symbolism. Called upon to name the planet, philologist Herbert Haeussler suggested the adoption from his native language, German, of the translation grautier, which to non-Germanic ears had a sufficiently exotic and interesting sound to be acceptable by the majority as the designation for their new home. Grautier.
Mullon had sent out patrols, sometimes with tractor reconnaissance vehicles and sometimes with the helicopter, in order to make a search for any signs of intelligent life.
But Grautier did not appear to harbor intelligent life. No trace of such development was found. The only intelligent beings on Grander were the inhabitants of the village called Greenwich. And for the time being they were entirely satisfied with that.
A few minutes later the disc took off. In another few minutes it was several million miles distant from Grautier where it went into hypertransition and with hardly any loss of time it arrived in the solar system of the Earth.
Mullon's hypercom broadcast had been heard. Having pressed the code signal button, he had released an automatic transmission that said: "Being attacked by alien ships. Help requested." Immediately an Earth patrolship had been hurried to the spot and, unnoticed by the passengers of the Adventurous, it had determined that this could not be a case of attack by alien ships.
The commander of the patrolship had come to a correct conclusion: somebody on board the colony rocket had simply pressed a button at random, hoping to attract the attention of a ship from Earth.
The Adventurous was followed. Its hypersensor readings left no doubt that something unusual had happened aboard for they recorded that rather than emerging from transition in the region of Rigel the ship had made reentry thousands of light-years distant.
When the Adventurous attempted a landing the patrol cruiser had been standing by for potential emergencies. The emergency materialized with the sudden collapse of the antigrav generator and the patrolship was preparing to protect the colony ship from crashing, by means of a tractor beam, when the antigrav generator began to function again.
The near crash and potential rescue had gone unnoticed because the most vital of all instructions the patrol commander had received was: under no circumstances, let the Anti-Socialist Free Settlers know Earth had not lost their trail.
The commander had sent five men down to the planet surreptitiously in a Gazelle class auxiliary vessel. One of these men had unobtrusively infiltrated the mass meeting in the village at which Mullon had made such a worthy speech. His historic words had been recorded on a 2-carat memocrystal...
• • •
Shortly after Mullon's memorable words were impregnated in the memocrystal, Perry heard them played back. After which he confessed to Bell in amazement, "I wouldn't have credited that fellow with so much leadership potential! In every sense of the word he's developing into a regular statesman!"
Rhodan's 'ear man' at the Greenwich meeting had picked up information about events during the flight of the Adventurous and Rhodan and Bell were now informed of the roles Hollander and Mullon had played. Perry was pleased. "It's worked out more favorably than I had at first imagined. Now we can observe how a human community conducts itself, isolated somewhat in the void with only minimal resources. A unique sociological experiment!"
SOLAR ASSASSINS
Copyright © Ace Books 1974
Ace Publishing Corporation
All Rights Reserved
THE SHIP OF THINGS TO COME
INVISIBLE ASSAILANTS!
Attacking an entire world! Kidnapping—or killing?—the inhabitants of a whole planet! Today, Mirsal 3—tomorrow, other worlds of the Arkon Imperium? Of the Solar Empire?
The Robot Regent of Arkon wants its domain protected from the invisible invaders. And Perry Rhodan is determined that they shall not threaten Earth and its companion worlds. You will be caught up in a whirlwind of excitement and a tornado of terror when you get involved in THE 57th PERRY RHODAN EPISODE, a masterpiece of mystery & menace worthy of our half-a-hundred issues Hallmark.
It all comes together with hurricane force in—
ATTACK FROM THE UNSEEN
by Clark Darlton