It was about a hundred feet up, almost stopped. The roar was making the horses nervous.
Jonnie kicked Windsplitter ahead and started straight for the compound.
The plane drew off, turned, and then with a shattering burst of speed dove on him.
The earth before the horses erupted in explosions of dirt.
Windsplitter reared and tried to spin away. Clods battered the horses.
Jonnie's ears ached with the explosions. He turned the horses in another direction, to the right.
The earth erupted in a long line in front of him.
Windsplitter began to plunge in terror. One of the pack horses broke loose.
Jonnie wheeled and began to race to the north.
In front of him the ground again erupted.
He tried to get his horse to go through the hanging curtain of dust. Windsplitter turned and tried to run away to the south.
This time the plane plunged down and settled across their path.
Terrified, Windsplitter reared. Jonnie got him under control.
Terl was sitting in the open door of the plane, laughing. He roared, moving back and forth, pounding his chest to get his breath.
With considerable trouble, Jonnie got the two pack horses together. He dismounted to straighten their packed meat.
“You looked so funny,” gasped Terl, straightening his face mask.
The horses were rolling their eyes, trembling. But Jonnie's eyes were not rolling– had they been blast guns, Terl would have been dead.
“I just wanted to show you how easy it is to stop you if you ever got out of hand,” said Terl. “Just one of those gun blasts, aimed at you and not in front of you, would have made you a pale pink mist!”
Jonnie had tied the pack horse lead ropes to Windsplitter's neck. He stood there, soothing Windsplitter with a stroking hand.
"I’m celebrating,” said Terl. “Send those horses back to the compound and get in.”
“I don't have an air mask,” said Jonnie, “and that interior will be breathe-gas."
“I brought your air mask,” said Terl, reaching inside and holding it up. “Get in.”
Jonnie had Windsplitter calm now. He took hold of the horse's ear. “Go to Chrissie," he said.
Windsplitter cast a glance at the plane and then, glad enough, started off toward the compound, pulling the pack horses with him.
Yes, Terl told himself. The animal did have a language with other animals.
Jonnie put on the air mask and pulled himself up into the plane.
Chapter 4
Badly as it had started, Jonnie could not believe the sensation of flight.
He was lost in the huge copilot seat and the belt that was supposed to keep him in would not contract enough to do so. But he braced himself with a grip on a handhold and watched the Earth race away from him.
He felt awe. Was this how it was to be an eagle? Is that how the world looked from the sky?
The panorama of the mountains to the west began to open in relief. And in a few moments he realized they were now higher than Highpeak, seen whitely in the cold clear air.
For fifteen minutes he was enthralled. They were at a height of about four miles. He had never realized there was so much world! Or that one could feel so thrilled.
Then Terl said, “You can operate any of the mine machines, can't you, animal? Now this is no different except that it goes in three dimensions, not just two. Those controls in front of you duplicate these. Fly it!”
Terl's paws came off the controls. The plane immediately flopped over.
Jonnie was thrown against the door. The plane staggered and began a sickening dive.
Jonnie had not paid any attention to what Terl was doing with the controls before. They were a maze of levers and buttons. He gripped the security belt and got himself into position to reach things. He started pushing buttons.
The plane went crazy. It soared, it swooped. The ground rushed up and sped away.
Terl's laughter cut above the roar. Jonnie began to realize the creature was a bit high on kerbango. Celebrating indeed.
With a steadying concentration, Jonnie looked at the controls. As on all Psychlo equipment, everything was marked. Some of the terms he didn't know. But he spotted an additional
button alongside every button familiar in mining machinery. He grasped that the third set was for the third dimension.
The main thing, he instinctively knew, was not to get too close to that ground! He found a button for altitude and punched it. Although the plane was staggering, the ground began to fall away.
This was too close to a win for Terl. "I’ll take over,” he said. “I got high honors as a pilot at the school. Watch me land on that cloud!”
A ragged top puff of cloud was ahead of them. Terl punched some buttons and stopped the plane on a flat place in the mist. “Trouble is, rat brain, you didn't watch what I was doing. You were too busy gawking at the scenery. But I guess if rats had been meant to fly, they'd be birds!” He laughed at his own joke, reached behind his seat, and unstrapped a sealed container of kerbango. He took a chomp on it and put it back. “First lesson. Don't ever leave anything adrift in a plane. It will fly around and bat your brains out. Not,” he added with more laughter, “that rats have brains!”
He took off and made Jonnie repeat the operation of landing and stopping. After the third attempt, Jonnie made it without being half down in the cloud.
Jonnie took off and started to fly toward the mountains. Terl instantly– and Jonnie thought a bit fearfully– batted his hands away from the copilot controls and with his own turned the plane back.
“Not while I’m with you,” growled Terl, his mood changed.
“Why not over the mountains?” asked Jonnie.
Terl scowled. “Whenever you fly over those mountains, just make very sure you got no breathe-gas loose anyplace. Understand?”
Jonnie understood. He suddenly understood a lot more than Terl thought he did.
“Why are you teaching me to fly?” asked Jonnie, more to distract Terl from his line of thinking than because he believed Terl would tell him. He was right.
“Any miner has to know how to fly,” said Terl. Jonnie knew that wasn't true. Ker could fly, he was sure, since Ker had said so. But Ker had also said other miners were only interested in going underground, not above it.
It was midafternoon when they landed the battle plane at the end of the row. Jonnie had been right. It was the twentieth plane. Terl inched it into precise position. He put on his breathe-mask, opened the door, and gave Jonnie a shove to get out.
“Don't get any ideas that you can start one of these things,” said Terl. “They require a special key to unlock the computers.” He dangled a key in front of Jonnie. “I keep the one to this plane right here beside the remote control box.” He took the box out and looked at it. “Yep, all switches still open.” He showed Jonnie the box. “And no dummy wires!” he laughed loudly. “That's pretty good. No dummy wires!”
Jonnie went off to round up his horses. Windsplitter had gone to Chrissie and the three horses were standing outside the wooden barrier.
Pattie yelped to see him. He realized they had been worried by the horse showing up without him.
“Got an antelope and a deer!” Jonnie called into the cage. “I was a little delayed looking for kinnikinnick. I found some, not very much, but it will flavor the meat.”
Chrissie was very pleased. “We can strip and smoke the meat,” she called across the two barriers. “There's plenty of ashes here and we can tan the hides.”
Jonnie felt better.
Pattie called, "Jonnie, there's a huge grizzly bear skin in here. Did you kill it, Jonnie?”
Yes, Jonnie had killed it. But he was not so sure that he hadn't killed the wrong beast!
Later that evening when Terl came to let him, supervised, into the cage, he gave the girls the skinned meat and hides to handle. He touched them reassuringly, hiding his wince at the way the collar
s chafed their throats.
When he came out and Terl had locked up and turned the juice back on, Terl said, "I’m just an animal attendant. But I don't wire dummy wires!”
He threw a stack of books at Jonnie before he rumbled away. “Get your rat brain around these, animal. Tonight. Ker will take up your instruction in the morning, so don't go chasing off on a rat hunt.”
Jonnie looked at the books. He was dimly getting an idea of what Terl must want out of him.
The books were: Beginner's Flight Manual and Teleportation in Relation to Manned and Drone Flight. The latter was clearly marked, Secret. Not for Alien Race Distribution. Could it be, thought Jonnie, that Terl was acting well outside the business of the company? If so, it was doubly certain he and the girls would be killed when they had served their purpose. Terl would not leave witnesses around.
Chapter 5
Jonnie and Ker were engaged in ferrying mining machines and equipment to the “defense base.” The order to do so had come early that morning from Terl.
The machinery freighter plane was parked with doors agape and ramps let down in the open field near the battle planes.
A remarkably cowed Zzt checked off a drilling machine as it was run up the ramp by Ker. He raised the ramps and closed the doors.
Jonnie buckled himself into the copilot's seat and Ker slid behind the controls. The freighter lifted abruptly and spun to the west. Ker flew low and kept the ship steady, for none of the machinery was lashed.
Jonnie did not even look at the ground flowing by– they had made this short trip several times. He was tired. For a week he had been practicing flying all day and studying all night, and it was beginning to show.
His headache, however, came from the text Teleportation in Relation to Manned and Drone Fight. The flight part of it was far less interesting than teleportation. He felt that if he could grasp that, he might be able to do something to avert the fate he knew would come someday.
The mathematics of the text were quite beyond him. They were Psychlo mathematics a long way in advance of what he had studied. The symbols made his head spin.
The history section at the start of the book was perfunctory. It simply stated that a hundred thousand years ago a Psychlo physicist named En had untangled the riddle. Prior to this, it was thought that teleportation consisted of converting energy and matter to space and then reconverting it in another place so it would assume its natural form. But this had never been proven. En had apparently found that space could exist entirely independent of time, energy, or mass and that all these things were actually separate items. Only when combined did they make up a universe.
Space was dependent only upon three coordinates. When one dictated a set of space coordinates one shifted space itself. Any energy or mass contained in that space thereupon shifted with that space shift.
In the matter of a motor such as this freighter had, it was just an enclosed housing in which space coordinates could be changed. As the coordinates changed, the housing was forced to go along, and this gave the motor power.
That explained why these planes were run by a switchboard and not a thrust through the air. They didn't have to have wings or controls. Much smaller housings in the tail and on each side had similar sets of coordinates fed into them to climb and bank. A series of coordinates were progressively fed to the main motor and it simply went forward or backward as the housed space occupied each set of coordinates in turn.
Teleportation over vast distances worked the same way. Matter and energy were pinned to the space, and when it was exchanged with another space, they simply changed too. Thus matter and energy would seem to disappear in one place and appear in another. They didn't actually change. Only the space did.
Jonnie could see now how Earth had been attacked. Informed in some way of its existence, possibly from some
Psychlo station in this universe, the Psychlos had only to fish in its coordinates.
They evidently used a recorder of some sort. They cast the recorder out to a test set of coordinates and then got it back and looked at the pictures. If the recorder vanished they knew they had sent it into the mass of the planet. Then they just had to adjust the coordinates for a new recorder cast.
In that way they had sent the killer gas. When it dissipated, they had followed it with Psychlos and weapons.
That was how Earth had been wiped out and conquered. But it didn't tell Jonnie how to reverse the process. Any Psychlo station out there could teleport new gas or even an army to Earth at will. That was the point that was giving him a headache.
“You're not very chatty,” said Ker, circling to land at the old defense base, going dead slow because of loose machinery. Jonnie came out of it. He pointed at the button camera that hung around his neck.
“Forget it,” said Ker to his astonishment. “They only have a range of about two miles.” He pointed at his work jacket pocket flap. A much smaller button camera with the symbol of the company on it was actually serving as a real button.
“Not five or more?” asked Jonnie.
“Crap no,” said Ker. “The security measures of this company are a pain. There's no recorder in this plane. I checked. What the splintered asteroid are we doing hauling this machinery over to this old defense base?” He looked down. “It doesn't even look like a defense base anyway.”
And it didn't. It was just some buildings, not even a landing field. No bunkers anyone could see. Some kind of a strange series of pointed things standing up at one end.
"Terl gives the orders,” said Jonnie, a bit resigned.
“Blast, no. These weren't Terl's orders. I saw them. They were signed by the head of the planet. Terl was even complaining. He said he wondered whether old Numph had gone off his computers.”
It gave Jonnie new data, but not what Ker thought. Terl was covering his tracks. This was Terl's project. It made him uneasy.
“This stuff,” said Ker, with a backward jerk of his head, “is supposed to be practice equipment. But for who? It 's perfectly good mining equipment. Hold on, we're going to land.” He punched the console buttons and the freighter crept down and landed easily and level.
Ker put on his face mask. “Another funny thing. There's no supply of breathe-gas with any of this stuff. Just what was left in their tanks. You're the only one I know that can operate these machines without breathe-gas in the canopies. You going to operate all these machines?” He laughed. “It’d sure run your butt off! Let's unload.”
They spent the next hour lining the machines up in an open field near the largest building. There were drillers and flying platforms, cable reelers, ore netters, blade scrapers, and a single transport truck. With the items brought in earlier loads there were over thirty machines now.
“Let's prowl,” said Ker. “We been fast. What's in this big building?”
It consisted only of rooms, rooms, and rooms. Each with bunks and lockers. There were what may have been washrooms. Ker was prowling for loot. But broken windows and wind and snow had not left much. Dust and indistinguishable debris were thick.
“Already been prowled,” was Ker's finding. “Let's look elsewhere.”
Ker clumped through the entrance of another building. Jonnie saw that it had been a library, but without Chinko protection it was mainly litter. A thousand years of cockroaches had dined on paper.
A queer, broken structure that once had had seventeen points– Jonnie counted them– seemed to have been some kind of a monument. Ker entered a door that was no longer there. A cross was still hanging on a wall.
“What's that thing?” said Ker. Jonnie knew it was a church cross. He said so.
“Funny thing to have in a defense base,” said Ker. “You know, I don't think this was a defense base. More like a school.”
Jonnie looked at Ker. The midget Psychlo might be thought dim-witted, but he was dead on the mark. Jonnie did not tell him there were signs all over the place that said “United States Air Force Academy.”
They wandered back
to the freighter. “I bet we're establishing a school,” said Ker. “I bet that's what it is we're doing. But who's going to be taught? Not Psychlos with no breathe-gas, that's for sure. Put up the ramps, Jonnie, and we'll get out of here.”
Jonnie did, but he didn't climb up to the cockpit. He looked around for water and firewood. He had an idea he'd be camping out here. Yes, there was a stream coming down from a
nearby snow-capped peak. And there was plenty of firewood in the trees.
He walked out and looked at the trench where the last battle had been fought against the Psychlos. The grass was tall and waving in a lonesome-sounding wind.
He climbed to the freighter cockpit, deeply troubled.
Chapter 6
At evening when he opened the cage, Terl sounded excited. “Tell your horses and females goodbye, animal. Tomorrow at dawn we're going on a long trip.”
Jonnie stopped with his arms full of the firewood he had been taking in. “How long?”
“Five days, a week. It depends,” said
Terl. “Why do you want to know?”
“I have to leave them food...a lot of things.”
“Oh,” said Terl indifferently. “Am I going to have to stand here and wait?” He made up his own mind. He locked up the cage again and turned on the juice. "I’ll come back later.” He rumbled off hurriedly.
Well, here it goes, Jonnie told himself.
What devilry was going to take place now?
Fortunately, that day he had gotten a fat young bull. He swiftly went about his work. He quartered it and rolled up two quarters in the hide, putting it outside the door.
"Chrissie!" he called. “Put me together enough smoked meat for a week. Also think about what you'll need for that time.”
“You're leaving?” Was there a trace of panic in Chrissie's voice?
“Just for a little while.”
Both girls looked apprehensive. They seemed so forlorn in there. Jonnie cursed to himself. "I’ll be sure to come back,” he said. “Get busy with the food.”
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