That was drastic action. On a space journey privacy is at once so difficult and so essential that nobody on a space expedition ever enters another’s private cabin. To look in Sattell’s cabin was a great violation of normal rules of conduct. But it had to be done now.
Borden went in the cabin and through Sattell’s possessions. He came out looking sick.
“I found something,” he told Ellen. “When we were coming in I looked at that white spot through a telescope. I didn’t see anything worth noting, but I snapped the telecamera out of pure habit. Then I forgot it. But Sattell didn’t. He made this.”
He showed her a photographic print. Sattell had made it from the infra red image on the full color photograph. It was an enlargement, showing more detail than Borden had seen with the naked eye. There were shadows on this print, the shadows of structures. There were buildings rising from the white. There were towers. There was a city on the white spot from which a heat ray had been projected at the Danaë out in space!
Quite as important, the threadlike lines they had noticed were here plainly highways leading away from it. One led north, judging directions from the shadows. It reached toward the polar icecap near which the small space ship was grounded.
“If Sattell really expects us to kill him,” said Borden, “he could have headed for that highway. He might expect to make a deal with our enemies by selling us out. Even if they killed him out of hand, the fact that he was an alien would make them hunt for us. So he could figure that he might make friends, but even if he didn’t he would be sure to ruin us. A win for him either way.”
Ellen paled a little. “And the drive’s pulled down and Jerry’s gone.”
“So there’s nothing to do but wait and see,” said Borden.
He tried to work on the space drive. All its parts were spread out on the drive room floor. When they’d repaired it before, it had been so thoroughly fused that a part looked good even if repaired to the accuracy of a bent wax candle straightened out by hand.
Now the repairs looked very bad. It seemed incredible that anything so clumsily made should have worked. But Borden couldn’t keep his mind on it.
“Just on the off chance, Ellen,” he said abruptly, “you will not leave the ship by yourself. We’d better replace the lock door fastening, too. If we do have visitors from the city on the white spot, that won’t stop them. But it might keep them from taking us off-guard.”
He opened the thief-proof locker where an essential part of the lock catch had been stored, to protect it from Sattell. It had a combination fastening, intended merely to prevent pilfering when the ship was in a space port.
Borden reached in. Then he went completely and terribly white.
“He’s got the star charts and the log! He got in here somehow!”
This was the ultimate in disaster. Because space is trackless. At fifty light years from Earth the Milky Way is still plain, of course, but the constellations have ceased to be. At a hundred light years one is lost. At a thousand light years—and the Danaë had passed that point months ago—a ship in space is in much the position of a canary whose universe has consisted of a cage in a single room, and has escaped out a window into the wide, wide world.
A space ship has to keep an infinitely precise log of bearings run and distances traveled in all three dimensions. It must make photographic star charts. And the accuracy of all its records must be perfect if it is to find the place it left nearly enough for the stars to become familiar again so it can locate the Solar System—barely four light hours in span.
“I think I made a serious mistake,” Borden said quietly, “when I didn’t kill Sattell!”
To find a spot four light years across in a galaxy a hundred thousand light years wide would be difficult enough with good maps. With no maps, they could spend the rest of their lives wandering hopelessly among the stars, of which not one in ten thousand had yet been named by men, landing on planets not one in a hundred thousand of which had known human footsteps. And they might search for months or years upon a planet where there was a human colony, and never discover its location.
Borden clenched and unclenched his hands. Sattell had been foisted upon him as a crew member while the Danaë was being fitted out for space. Borden was filled with a deadly cold fury in which regret for his own past forbearance was his principal emotion.
“Since he’s taken the log and charts,” he told Ellen icily, “he means either to bargain with us or to destroy us. And if I know Sattell, it’s six of one and half a dozen of the other!”
It would be. Sattell now had the power of life and death over Borden and Ellen and Jerry. He would not trade that power for anything less. In fact, he would not dare yield it at all, because he was so sure he would be killed himself if he did. The only bargain he could conceivably make would be one in which they surrendered themselves to him absolutely, armed him and disarmed themselves, and threw themselves on Sattell’s mercy. And Sattell had little mercy.
“You might try calling Jerry again,” said Borden “Once we’ve warned him, we can try to track Sattell by his footprints. His shoes have heels, and the ground is soft.”
Ellen picked up the walkie-talkie microphone again. “Jerry, Sattell’s disappeared. Come in, please … Jerry, Sattell’s disappeared. Come in, please …”
Her voice went on and on. Borden went grimly over the ship, looking for signs of what else Sattell might have busied himself with in the past twenty-four hours. He had believed that Sattell, being in the same boat with the rest of them—in the same space ship, anyhow—would automatically have thought of the group. No sane man did think of anything but cooperation with his companions in disaster.
But there exists a kind of human being, he knew, which may be a mutant, which makes a career of the gratification of all emotions, impulses, momentary desires. Which knows no purpose save personal satisfaction, and simply does not think like nonmutant human beings.
There were all too many specimens of this type among humans. Some ordinarily masked themselves, but if Satteil ever had, he now had been unmasked.
CHAPTER 4
Ellen called and called. Her voice grew weary and her shoulders drooped hopelessly as hours passed without reply.
Borden found where Sattell had crossed the wires so that if the ship took off and went out into space, the control board would show all air vents as safely sealed. But there would remain a small, steady drain of leakage of the ship’s air stores.
He also found a small alteration of the water recovery system. They would have run out of water on the way home. He found a cunning circuit arranged so that if the ship rose on interplanetary drive and set out on even a hopeless search for home, the instant it went into overdrive its power tanks would fuse and short, and it would be left driveless and powerless, to crash or drift helplessly until its occupants died or went mad of despair.
Borden came back to the control room with his face set in savage lines.
“We didn’t watch him,” he said bitterly, “so he took advantage. Right now he’s gloating, sure we have to accept any terms he demands, for the use of the log and maps to get home. And he’s gloating because he’ll have his revenge if we refuse, and if we do make a bargain he’ll tell us how many ways we’d have died if we had not made it. We’ve got to check every device and every piece of equipment in the ship before we can lift off this planet—even after we’ve got fuel!”
He looked out a port. The shadows were long and slanting. It was twilight. Night was near.
Ellen said drearily into the talkie:
“Jerry, Sattell has vanished. Please come in! … Jerry, Sattell has vanished. Please come in!”
Far away, a tiny figure appeared in the half light. It came hastening toward the Danaë. It was one of the furry bipeds, probably one of those that had accompanied Jerry. It came through the dusk at an agitated lope, using its long, furry arms to balance itself. It made an agitated leap at sight of the space ship and rushed onward more frantically than be
fore.
“Look!” cried Borden. “That looks like a messenger!” He went out the airlock door, his hand on the weapon in his holster.
The biped bounced at sight of him. Its fur flattened, but it came on at a tearing rush. It leaped and slid and came to rest before him, its trunk waving. He bent to scratch it, according to the custom that had become established in the past four days. But it did not wait. It stood up, making excited chirping noise and gesturing wildly. It made grimaces in the falling light.
Then Borden noticed blood on its fur.
* * * *
An hour later an almost unbearable bright light appeared in the distance, moving toward the Danaë. Jerry had carried a handflash, of course, but nothing equal to this. Judging by the wavering of the light, it was mounted on a vehicle of some sort.
Ellen’s voice said wearily for the thousandth time: “Jerry, Sattell’s vanished. Come in, please.”
“You can stop that, Ellen,” Borden told her. “The call’s answered. It looks as if the real natives of this planet are coming to call.”
He shrugged and turned to the furry creature which now was inside the ship. He’d bandaged its wound—a clean deep puncture in the flesh of its arm. He led it to the airlock.
“Get going,” he said. “Your masters are coming. They won’t like it that you’ve made friends with us. Scat!”
But the creature only blinked at the approaching light while its fur flattened. It went bouncing out and toward the swaying, lurching approaching light, racing joyfully to meet it.
Borden stared. Then he saw that other figures were about the approaching light beam—other furry, dancing, leaping creatures. They ran and gesticulated happily about the advancing vehicle.
It didn’t make sense. But nothing did make sense on this planet!
Borden waited in the airlock, with Ellen behind him and a blaster in his hand. In the darkness the vehicle came lurching onward with surprising quiet. Its light swayed, and it had moved as if to turn, when Borden threw on the outside lights.
A semicircle of the sparse green vegetation sprang into brilliance. Borden and his wife were relatively in shadow. They could see the vehicle clearly.
It was nearly thirty feet long and rolled on two curious devices which were not caterpillar treads, but not exactly wheels, either. A loping, wildly excited horde of bipeds—including the one Borden had bandaged—surrounded it, making way for it but escorting it in wild enthusiasm.
The thing was caked with dirt. It was not merely dusty. It was packed with dried clay, as if it had been buried and only recently exhumed. A round blister at the front which might be plastic had been partly cleared of dirt, but there were still areas in which clay clung and made it opaque.
It curved about and swung parallel to the ship. It stopped within twenty feet of the airlock. Then an oval window—which looked as if somebody had scratched caked clay off it with a stick—turned endwise, quite impossibly, and became a door. The door slid aside. The interior of the vehicle was dark.
Borden held his blaster ready. He wouldn’t shoot first, but there had been a heat ray flung at the Danaë …
And Jerry got out of the incredible vehicle and stood blinking embarrassedly in the light from the outerlock glare lamps.
Borden snapped, “Who’s with you?”
“Why, nobody,” said Jerry. “I tried to tell you by talkie, but it wouldn’t work. I’m afraid Sattell did something to it before I left. It’s dead.”
“What’s that thing?” demanded Borden. “That—that wagon?”
“It’s a ground car, sir,” Jerry said uncomfortably. “There are thirty or forty of them in a sort of valley about ten miles away. This one was half-buried in mud, and the others are the same or worse. The—er—creatures—took me there and dug this out for me. They apparently wanted us to have it.”
“And it runs!” said Borden. There was again no sense to anything. A ground car buried in mud should not run when excavated.
“Yes, sir,” said Jerry. “They dug it out for me, and I got in it and found the skeletons and the weapons.”
Ellen said, “Skeletons?”
Borden said, “Weapons!”
“Yes, sir. I tried to ask you for advice over the talkie, and like I said, it wouldn’t work, so I fiddled around a bit and the car showed signs of life, and I found out how to run it. So I brought it back. The weapons work too, sir. You point them at something and push a knob and they—well, they’re pretty deadly.”
Borden said flatly, “Sattell’s ducked out. With the log and star maps and food. One of the creatures just came in wounded. I thought Sattell had planned to ambush you and get your blaster. If he did trail you—”
Jerry blinked, “I didn’t see a sign of him. Just a moment, sir.”
He turned to his furry companions. Flushing a little, he pulled something out of his pocket and hung it onto his chin. It was a sock—one of his socks—partly filled with clay.
Borden was still unable to find any two things happening on this planet which added together to make sense. The sight of Jerry fastening a clay-filled sock to his chin seemed slightly more insane than anything else that had happened.
“I’ve found out how they talk, sir,” Jerry said shyly. “It’s a sort of sign language with their hands and trunk, and they make noises for inflections and tenses, sir. And emotional overtones. I’m not too good yet, but—”
The scene before the lock door was unique. The clay-caked, thirty-foot vehicle looked more like a land yacht than a ground car. It was made of a golden metal. Two dozen or more of the furry bipeds were regarding Jerry as he made gestures and every so often stopped to adjust the position of his artificial trunk. When he made sounds at them, their fur flattened. When he adjusted his sock trunk, although it far from resembled their own, they seemed entranced. When he finished, the creature with the bandaged arm made elaborate gesticulations accompanied by chirping sounds. Even Borden, now that he had the key, gathered a dim idea of what the biped was trying to say.
“He says, sir,” reported Jerry, sweating, “that a stick came through the air and stuck in his arm. He pulled it out and ran away. He kept on running. Then he saw this ship, ran to it, and you bandaged his arm for him.”
Borden snapped, “An arrow! Sattell’s made a bow and arrow. He sabotaged your talkie so you couldn’t be warned about him, and he probably hoped to trail you and kill you with an arrow, so he could take your blaster and come back and kill us! Maybe he was just practicing when he hit this poor creature. Anyhow, he seems to be trying everything all at once, to destroy us.” He added sharply, “But weapons! Jerry, from what you say there’ll be more weapons in those other wagons! If he finds them, and he probably will, since he was trailing you—”
Jerry said, “I worried about that, sir. So I got the creatures to dig down to the doors of all the wagons in sight. I thought we’d better have the weapons safe before—er—Sattell tried to help us find out about the vehicles. I’ve got all the weapons right here. But there weren’t weapons in all the wagons. In most of them there were just skeletons.”
Borden was again reminded of the great number of things which did not fit together into any coherent picture. He said impatiently:
“Then Sattell won’t get the weapons. But what’s this you keep on saying about skeletons? Did you bring any of them?”
Jerry said, “I left those in here undisturbed. If you’ll take the weapons as I hand them out, you can look them over. They’re just as I first saw them.”
He reached inside the vehicle, passed out objects midway between rifles and blasters in size. They were surprisingly light. They could have been aluminum, except that they were the color of gold or copper. There were three armsful of them.
Ellen took them inside and came back.
“Now I’ll look at those skeletons,” said Borden.
He took Jerry’s hand flash and climbed inside. Jerry said apologetically to Ellen:
“I got so excited about what I found th
at I forgot about eating. Do you think I could fix something?”
“I’ll do it for you, Jerry,” said Ellen.
CHAPTER 5
She took him inside. Sattell had carried away about most of the food in the current-use freezer, and the storage lockers were nearly empty, but she prepared an ample meal for him. She couldn’t even guess at the significance of what he’d found, but she knew there was meaning to it if only it could be found.
Jerry was eating contentedly and telling Ellen about his journey with the furry bipeds when Borden came in. He went to a tool locker, got out a small torch, and went out again.
Considerably later the outer lock door clanked. Then Borden came back into the cabin where Jerry was still talking with his mouth full.
“I’m beginning to get an idea of what’s happened on this planet,” Borden said grimly. “Jerry, was there any sign of a highway where you found this bunch of wagons?”
Jerry considered: “The front part of this one,” he offered finally, “was buried deeper than the back. It went into a sort of hill. And under the wheels there was flat stone. It could have been a highway, buried under the mud that partly covered up what you call the wagons, sir.”
Borden nodded. “I’ve brazed the steering tiller of that wagon so it can’t be steered,” he observed. “And I’ve replaced the lock fastener so Sattell can’t break into the ship. We can sleep tonight. Tomorrow we’ll go over to those wagons and disable them all. And then, in this wagon you brought, we’ll hunt Sattell down. I have an idea he’d better not have a wagon of his own. It might not be good for us.”
Jerry asked rather breathlessly, “What did you think of the skeletons, sir? I left them exactly as they were.” He hesitated. “I thought they were a lot like human skeletons. Is that right?”
“Quite right,” agreed Borden. “There is an extra rib on each side, and three fewer vertebrae, and their joints were a little different, but they were people, as I interpret the word. Were there skeletons in all the wagons you entered?”
“Yes, sir.”
The Murray Leinster Megapack Page 113
