The smell of meat was becoming stronger. Falsen stumbled over the first of the corpses, a crew woman who had either jumped or fallen from the airship before the final crash. The cause of death was obvious — legs broken and the skull shattered on a rock. Falsen was tempted. He was hungry.
And Carlin?
She looked at the broken body, then at him.
She said — regretfully? — “There are emergency provisions aboard the airship … .”
She did not mention the possibility of there being survivors of the wreck. But there were no survivors, Falsen knew. The only smell carried by the light breeze from the tangle of metal and fabric was that of death.
They pushed on.
There were two more Doralan bodies, broken by their falls as the first had been. There was what they decided must be the remains of the giant leech. Its swollen body had burst on impact, spattering rocks and moss with blood — its own and that of its victims, still undigested.
There was the wreck itself.
They found a rent in the fabric long enough and wide enough to admit them. Carlin used her laser pistol, set for wide beam and low intensity, as a torch. She seemed to know where she was going. To Falsen the interior of the crashed airship was no more than a sort of maze, a tangle of tunnels whose walls were loose fabric from which protruded sharp points and edges of metal and plastic as a hazard to the unwary. Soon his shirt was ripped in several places and one leg of his shorts was shredded. Although she had the light and was in the lead, Carlin fared little better.
She said, her voice a high-pitched twitter, “We’re almost there … .”
“Where is ‘there’?” asked Falsen squeakily.
Was he losing his voice? he wondered. Was he suffering from a sudden attack of laryngitis?
“The galley,” replied Carlin, her voice so high as to be almost inaudible. She laughed shrilly. “The atmosphere in here must be almost pure helium. But it won’t kill us.”
“I hope,” said Falsen in a disconcerting soprano.
The noise of tearing fabric was normal enough as Carlin enlarged a rent. And then she and Falsen were standing in a little compartment where there was a recognizable microwave oven and a large urn for tea-making. There were cupboards, one of which Carlin opened, taking from a shelf two cylindrical containers with rip-off tops. She handed one to Falsen. The contents of the cans heated automatically once they were broached. About all that could be said in favor of the thin, sweetish mush was that it was hot.
Carlin threw the empty container into a bin. She handed her laser pistol to Falsen.
“Hold this,” she ordered, “while I disconnect the power cells from the appliances. It’s less trouble to carry them back to the car than to unship the radio and bring it here.”
That made sense, he thought.
Later, as he struggled up the hillside away from the wreck, burdened with a sack improvised from envelope fabric in which were not only the power cells but cans of food, he decided that, whoever was being saved trouble, it was not himself.
CHAPTER 20
They heard the spaceship long before they saw her, the distant, irritable mutter of her inertial drive drifting in through the almost still air, seeming to come from all directions at once. She had been maintaining a listening watch, it seemed, and had replied as soon as Carlin made her call on the now operable transceiver. Now she was homing on the signal from the wrecked control car. The mutter increased in intensity, became a grumble, a snarl beating down through the ruddy overcast. Standing outside the car with Linda and Pansir, Falsen stared upwards. He saw her at last, a silvery spindle dim through the cloud veil and then dropping clear of the vaporous ceiling. Her descent was rapid at first and then it slowed, slowed and stopped. She was hanging about a kilometer above the castaways. Suddenly, with the application of lateral thrust, the beat of the mighty engines rose to a crescendo. She moved slowly away, proceeding toward the main wreckage of the dirigible.
Carlin came out of the car.
She said bad-temperedly, “She says that she can’t land here.”
“Did you expect her to?” he asked.
“Why not?” Carlin made a sweeping gesture. “There are patches of ground that are big enough, clear of rocks … ”
“But none of them level,” Falsen told her. “I wouldn’t try it.”
She snorted, went back inside the car.
“A typical engineer,” said Falsen to Linda. “Knows more about navigation and shiphandling than any captain. But if I were in the Lady Mother’s shoes, I’d do just what she’s doing now. Find a nice level site in the big valley, near the airship, and set down there.”
The spaceship dipped from sight beyond the further ridge. The cacophony of the drive was muffled by the intervening tonnes of rock and soil, then ceased. She was down.
Carlin came out of the car again.
“She is sending helicopters for us,” she announced. She walked to where the pitiful remains of Dimilin were sprawled among the boulders. The skeleton was complete now, although the bones of one leg were bare, not covered by wrinkled skin. She stooped, caught hold of the thin integument, tugged, ripped. Ribs were exposed, and pelvis, and the bones of a clawlike hand. She said, “If we had known that her body would be so … mauled by scavenging animals, we would have kept her inside the car.” She looked sternly at Pansir and the two Terrans. “Remember now, all of you. There was no cannibalism. I’ve had words with Lur and Dorral, put the fear of Birrick into them. They won’t talk. They know that I know that they had a nibble of Dimilin’s leg during the night. As you did, Pansir. The Lady Mother is easily shocked. We don’t want her to know what we’ve been eating.” She laughed harshly. “It’s just as well that we brought those cans back from the airship. The empties are evidence that we haven’t been eating what we shouldn’t.”
Falsen felt argumentative. He asked, “But why bother to lie? It has always been held — in Terran law, anyhow — that in certain circumstances cannibalism is justifiable.”
She sneered, “And in your case, of course, it wasn’t really cannibalism, was it?”
How much does she know? Falsen asked himself.
• • •
The helicopters came, five of them, flying in line astern. They were flimsy machines, little more than open frameworks surmounted by whirling rotors. They circled the control car before they landed, looking for clear patches among the rocky outcroppings. They set down on the bare slope on which Carlin had thought that the Lady Mother would be able to land the spaceship. The pilots remained in their aircraft.
Carlin led the way to the waiting helicopters. Falsen looked at the one that was supposed to carry him and said, “I’d rather walk.”
“Do not be foolish,” Carlin told him. “Get in.”
Falsen sighed and insinuated his body into the tangle of structural members behind the pilot’s seat. She, he noted enviously, was sitting in relative comfort on a proper chair, protected by a curved windscreen. He had to make do with an affair of flimsy-seeming straps, like a hammock in miniature, that barely accommodated his buttocks. There were looped straps through which, he thought, he was supposed to insert his arms. There was a horizontal spar on which to rest his feet.
He looked around. Linda was seated. The uniform that she had taken from the dead Dimilin had split in several places as she had made the necessary contortions to get into the too-small seat; the hem of the short tunic had ridden up almost to waist level. She looked like a near-naked slave girl imprisoned in a metal cage.
Carlin was seated, as were Lur and Dorral. The radiowomen looked scared.
Overhead the rotors began to spin, the blades blurring to transparency. The helicopters sprang into the air. There was no canopy to block the downdraft over the passenger seats, but there was an arrangement of vanes which quite effectively deflected it.
Carlin’s aircraft in the lead, the helicopters rapidly flew across the col, passed over the ridge beyond which was the wide valley. There was the sp
aceship, a dull-gleaming tower not far from the untidy tangle of spars and fabric that was the wreckage of the dirigible. Looking at it, Falsen was reminded of something that he had once seen during a leave on Earth, a holiday that he had spent mainly in the bush. He had come upon the body of a bird — how it had died or been killed he never knew. It had been swarming with ants, many of which were carrying fragments of flesh back to their city.
So it was with the airship.
Like ants, the scarlet-uniformed spacewomen were all over her. Cutting torches were flaring, shearing through frames and longerons. Salvageable equipment was being carried out from the wreck. Envelope fabric was not being slashed haphazardly but cut away in neat rectangles and rolled up tidily and loaded onto little powered trolleys to be carried to the spaceship. From an open cargo port in her side a boom was extended, with a hoisting tackle. As Falsen watched, a roll of fabric was lifted and then swung inboard.
The helicopters came in for a landing.
While Falsen was disentangling himself, a junior officer came from the spaceship, talked briefly to Carlin. Carlin gave orders in her own language to Lur and Dorral, then said, ‘The Lady Mother wishes to see us.”
The five survivors walked to the spaceship, climbed the ramp to the after air lock. The elevator cage was waiting for them. They were carried swiftly upwards to the captain’s quarters.
The Lady Mother was waiting for them, sitting behind her big desk. She rose as they entered her day cabin — Carlin in the lead, then Pansir, then Falsen and Linda and, finally, the two petty officers. She motioned them to chairs and resumed her own seat. A stewardess came in with a big tray, poured cups of the inevitable aniseed tea.
A tremulous smile lightened the Lady Mother’s careworn face. She said, “I must congratulate you on your survival.” She repeated this in her own language for the benefit of the monolingual radiowomen. The smile faded. “But there were many who did not survive,” she said.
“They died well,” said Falsen tritely.
(Some of them, he thought, most surely had. Some, terrified, had gone screaming into the darkness.)
“They died,” said Carlin bluntly. “Others have died. It may well be that more will die.”
“Lady Carlin,” snapped the Lady Mother, “that was unnecessary.”
“Please accept my apologies, Gracious Lady,” said the engineer insincerely.
“I accept,” said the captain at last. “And now, while the dreadful events are still fresh in your memories, I wish to hear your stories. All that you say is, of course, being recorded. Do you have any objections Mr. Falsen? Miss Veerhausen?”
“No,” said Falsen, and “No,” said Linda.
“Very well. Perhaps, Lady Pansir, you will make your report first. I am sure that you are anxious to supervize the … taking apart of your airship and the bringing of the control car from where it was dropped. Would you mind using Standard English so that our guests will understand what is being said?”
Slowly, at times searching for words, the airship pilot told her story. It was a straightforward account of what had happened. There was only one omission, the dismemberment and eating of Dimilin’s corpse. Then she was dismissed and hurried from the day cabin, no doubt anxious to save what she could from the wreck.
Lur and Porral did little more than answer the Lady Mother’s questions and then were allowed to go.
“And now, Lady Carlin?” asked the Lady Mother.
“There is very little that I can add, Gracious Lady. My opinion is that the airship would not have been lost if the … leech had not intruded into the control car at a crucial moment. Until then the Lady Pansir was in complete control.”
“Mr. Falsen?”
“I’m a spaceman, not an airshipman, Gracious Lady. But I was impressed by Pansir’s competence.”
“Miss Veerhausen?”
“That thing should never have been brought aboard the airship, Gracious Lady.”
“So … ” The Doralan captain toyed with her empty teacup. “So … so the Lady Dimilin seems to be to blame for the disaster. But this is a strange world, with strange animals. We have to learn as we go along — too often the hard way. Lady Carlin, will you make a personal inspection of the inertial drive? It seemed to me that during our flight here from the first landing place it was not behaving as well as it should.
“Mr. Falsen and Miss Veerhausen, as you were among those aboard the airship, it will be fitting if you attend the funeral rites for those who lost their lives. The ceremony will take place just after sunset.
“Tomorrow morning we lift ship and return to our original base.”
“Why not stay here, Gracious Lady?” asked Falsen. “This is as good a location from which to explore, to carry out surveys, as any.”
“It is not, Mr. Falsen. There is something infesting the neighborhood of the first landing site, something that lurks in the caves and the lakes, something that has already killed too many of my people. If this world is to be made suitable for colonization, that something must be identified and brought under control — or exterminated.”
Yes, there was something, Falsen thought.
There was the thing that he knew about, that would be there no matter where the spaceship landed on this planet’s surface.
But there was something else.
CHAPTER 21
They stood there among the ship’s senior officers, their uniforms in bedraggled contrast to the gold and scarlet of the Doralans. (Linda’s discarded clothing had been found in the wrecked dirigible and returned to her.) The spacewomen were drawn up with military precision in a hollow square, in the center of which, on a slab of some dull metal, were disposed the bodies of those who had died in the airship disaster. They had been arranged with what decorum was possible, the more dreadful wounds concealed, limbs straightened.
The Lady Mother came out from the spaceship. She was wearing a somber gray uniform, not her usual scarlet. In her arms she was carrying what looked like a bundle of cloth, its colors, even in the fast-dimming light, bright, almost garish. As she approached the metal slab she shook this out, threw the ends of it from her, released it so that it settled over the bodies, covering them.
It was a silken flag, a banner of glowing crimson upon which was a design of interlocked triangles in gold and silver. The flag of Dorala, Falsen wondered, or of one of the major nations of that world? The ensign of the Doralan space service? Yes, that was it. He recalled having seen a chart displaying the colors of the various spacefaring powers.
The Lady Mother made a minor adjustment to the folds of the flag, pulling it slightly to cover one protruding foot. She stood there briefly, her head bowed, then walked slowly to the group of senior officers. She did not join them, although a space was made for her, but took position a little ahead of the rank.
She spoke, her voice high and clear. Eulogy or prayer? Falsen did not know, but even though the valediction was said in a language strange to him, he sensed the poetry of it, the measured cadences. She paused, and there was a response from the Doralans. She spoke again, paused again. Again there came the murmured response.
Suddenly her voice was sharper, crackling with authority. Under her gray cloak was a belted side arm. She drew it from its holster with a sweeping gesture. As one, her crew followed suit. She brought her hand down, aimed at the flag-covered slab. The spacewomen did likewise.
She fired, as did the others.
The almost invisible beams impinged upon the pyre. Banner and bodies flared, and it seemed that the corpses writhed in the midst of their smoky combustion. But it was all over in seconds, and on the incandescent surface of the slab, blue-white dimming to red, was no more than gray ash and a few fragments that could have been charred twigs. The smell of incinerated flesh was sweet and heavy in the damp air.
Linda sneezed loudly.
The Lady Mother reholstered her pistol. The other Doralans put away their weapons. The senior officers made way for the Captain as she walked slowly back t
o the ship, to the ramp, to the open air-lock door. The crew members broke ranks. Some of them brought a metal container, a cylinder with a screw top, from the foot of the gangway, set it down by the pyre. One put an experimental finger to the surface of the metal slab, no longer glowing, and withdrew it hastily.
Her voice very matter of fact Carl in said, “They will have to get the ashes into the urn as soon as possible in case any wind should spring up during the night. She has decided that the remains are to be taken back to Dorala and scattered in the atmosphere.”
“Are there any further ceremonies here and now?” asked Falsen.
“There will be the … wake. You have already attended one. I do not think that you should do so again; the last time that you did so it was felt, by many, that an outsider should not have been present.”
“I can understand that,” said Falsen. “After all, as far as you people are concerned, Linda and I are the aliens.”
“You are,” said Carlin. “Linda isn’t. It’s a matter of sex rather than of race. And your world should be represented at the ceremonies. By the Lady Linda.”
“Must I?” asked the girl.
“Yes,” Falsen told her.
“Yes,” said Carlin firmly.
CHAPTER 22
Falsen sat in his cabin, hunched up on the short, narrow bunk. He supposed that he might as well try to get some sleep; there was nothing to do to occupy himself, nothing to read. Presumably Linda would look in on him when the wake was over, but he did not know how long it would be. He was beginning to undress when he heard the tapping on his door.
“Come in!” he called.
It was Carlin.
“Is the wake over?” he asked.
“No. It will go on for hours. I’ve just finished checking the inertial drive; there was nothing wrong with it that a spanner couldn’t fix. And now I’m going to have a drink. Or two. And I don’t like drinking alone.”
“I’ve nothing here,” said Falsen.
Frontier of the Dark Page 11
