Postmarked the Stars sq-4

by Andre Norton

  Dane’s blaster was ready. He measured the distance yet remaining, and then Meshler brought the nose of the crawler around, aiming it so that its body would provide them with shelter. The shouting from the other machine grew louder, more insistent. Then a vicious spat of blaster fire cut the ground warningly before their hose in a signal to stop.

  Tau slammed the door open. “Now!” He was out and running for the flitter.

  14.CARTL’S HOLDING

  From time to time the ranger tried the com, only to meet the crackle of interference. But suddenly he indicated an ice-edged river.

  “The Veecorox!”

  “You’ve seen that before?” inquired Tau.

  Perhaps, thought Dane, the medic was now as uneasy as he over their very vague route.

  “An expedition got this far last year.” Meshler settled back in the pilot’s seat with a relaxation that could have been relief. The ranger must have been just as disturbed as they about their unknown course.

  “We have only to follow this to where the tributary, the Corox, feeds in, then turn east. That is the beginning of Cartl’s land.”

  He banked the flitter and turned to follow the river. The land under them showed no signs that men had ever ventured this far.

  “Your southland is largely wilderness then,” commented the medic.

  “It is hard to clear land—to import machinery is wasteful. We cannot keep bringing in fuel and techs to service the machines or repair parts. And horses or duocorns from Astra or any of the off-world draft animals do not do well here—not in the first generation, anyway. They have been trying to breed some at the Ag stations, to develop a strain that can live here without being constantly cared for. There is a native insect, the tork fly, which goes for their eyes. So far we haven’t been able to build up any immunity in imports. There are no native animals that can be used for heavy labor. The result is that the holdings have machinery in community ownership and move the pieces from place to place for clearing. Then in some dry seasons they try a burn-off; only that must be controlled, which means an army of men on the job.”

  “So settlements have not advanced much since First Ship,” commented Tau.

  Dane saw the line along the ranger’s jaw tighten, as if he were biting back some hot and hasty comment, and then Meshler replied.

  “Trewsworld’s done enough to keep autonomous. We won’t go up for any resettlement auction, if that’s what you mean.” Then he paused, looked to Tau, and Dane saw a shade of worry on his face. “You think— that might be it?”

  “A chance, is it not?” Tau asked. “Suppose what you have so hardly won could be lost, or even a part of it? Enough so you could not claim autonomy any more?”

  Dane understood. Any planet under pioneer settlement had to grow, to show appreciable gains each year in size of population and then in exports, or else the Grand Department of Immigration could legally put it up for auction. Then if the settlers could not match an outside bid, they lost all they had worked so hard to gain.

  “But why?” asked Meshler. “We’re an Ag planet. Anyone else here would face the very same difficulties we have been fighting from the first. There’s nothing to attract outsiders—no minerals worth that much for exploiting—”

  “What about the rock from the sealed compartment of the prospectors’ crawler?” Dane asked. “They had found something they thought rich enough to lock in. They were killed, and that was taken. Perhaps there is more here on Trewsworld than you know, Meshler.”

  The ranger shook his head. “A mineral survey was run by detect on second survey. There are normal amounts of iron, copper, other ores, but nothing worth shipping off-world. We use what we can ourselves. Besides, those men may not have been blasted for what they carried but what they saw and the rock taken to confuse us. You said the antline was roaming near there. They might have run into a party trying to get it back.”

  “Perfectly possible,” agreed Tau. “At the same time, I would suggest that another minerals survey be run— if you are left time to do it.”

  “The basin camp,” Dane said, “was not a recent setup. How long have the Trosti people been here?”

  “Eight years—planet time.”

  “And how about any new holdings cut in their direction during that time?” Now Tau had given him the clue Dane was groping for.

  “Cartl—let’s see. Cartl had his clearing gathering in the spring of ’24, before grass growth. And this is ’29. He has the southmost holding.”

  “Five years then. How about other holdings—east, west, north?”

  “North is too cold for lathsmers. They have only a couple of experimental Ag stations north of the port,” Meshler answered promptly. “East—Hancron. Hancron cleared in ’25. And west—that was Lansfeld. He was in ’26.”

  “Three years since the last new clearing was established then,” Tau commented. “And in the years before that, how many?”

  But Meshler, prodded by their questions, was already reckoning the list, judging by his expression.

  “Up to ’24 we had one, maybe two, sometimes three new clearings a year. Had four emigrant ships come in ’23. Only one since then, and its passengers were mainly techs and their families to settle at the port. The push-out had stopped.”

  “And no one noticed?” Dane asked.

  “If they did, there wasn’t any talk about it. Mostly the holding people are self-sufficient and don’t come to the port more than once or twice a year—just when they have cargo to ship. There are five-six families to a holding under the signee who puts up the bond. They use self-repair robos for light field work, but robos of that size are no good for first clearing. Since the lathsmer trade has begun, it’s been easier. You don’t have to crop for the birds, just give them clear living space and put in one or two fields of smes seeds for extra winter food. They like the native insects and a couple of native berry plants and thrive on them. The buyers think that’s what gives them the unique flavor and makes them worth more. You can run lathsmers on ground that has been only partly cleared and patrol the field with robos to do the extra feeding. But it takes men and women to pluck for the down for export—and that comes in the late spring. Then they take the down, and it’s baled at the port.”

  “So you are getting to be a one-crop world?”

  Again Meshler showed uneasiness at Tau’s question, as if he might have drifted and never really thought of it before.

  “No—well, maybe, yes. They raise lathsmers more and more because they’re all that’s worth exporting. A one-crop world and no new holdings—” The grim set of his jaw was more pronounced now.

  “I’m a ranger. It’s never been my concern to do more than patrol, do some mapping and exploring, make the rounds of the border holdings. But, the Council—someone must have realized what was happening!”

  “Undoubtedly,” Tau agreed. “It remains to be seen if this situation wasn’t given impetus to go along on just the road it has been traveling. You saw how those dragons finished off the lathsmers—and they were developed via radiation from the modern lathsmer embryos. Suppose one of those horrors behind the force field, or that antline, were to overrun the perching fields? Or one of those boxes be planted in some outlying district to affect all the birds coming near it—”

  “The sooner we get to Cartl’s and the com there,” said Meshler, “the better!” And the note in his voice matched the set of his jaw.

  It was not long before the river formed a vee with its tributary, and Meshler turned the flitter to follow the smaller stream, which was ice-roofed in places. A little later they crossed the first of roughly cleared fields with a roost set up. But there were no lathsmers. And the light skim of snow on the ground was unmarked by tracks.

  That first field fed into another, also bare of life. Meshler turned the flitter and made a low run over the clearing.

  “I don’t understand. These are breeding fields—they are the main roosting sections.”

  Once more he thumbed the com and
sent out his futile call. But the interference, though not as ear- torturingly loud, was still present. He raised again to cruising level and sent the flitter ahead at the highest rate of speed.

  Two more fields—and in the last the birds were gathered, black masses of them, milling about. When the shadow of the flitter moved across them, they seemed to go mad with fear, rushing around, some of the smaller ones trampled upon as they wheeled and stretched their ineffectual wings, attempting to fly. The birds made a dark heaving mass, and then the flitter was past.

  “I suppose,” Tau said, “that such a gathering as that is not natural.”

  “No,” Meshler replied in a single curt monosyllable.

  There was a screen of one of those brush-woods and then more fields, which had been more carefully cleared than those for the lathsmers. Here the stubble of some kind of crop pricked through the snow. The river made a long curve and in its bend was the holding.

  It was not a house but rather a series of houses and buildings constructed in the form of a square. In the midst of that was a com tower, set well above the outer walls, and bearing halfway up its length the symbol that was Cartl’s brand, which would appear on all he sold.

  The houses were of stone blocks, but there were roofs of clay, their lower layers, as Dane knew from the inform tapes he had read, baked into tile consistency but overlaying that other earth, which was thickly studded with bulbs. In the spring those would bloom in colorful array, and in the fall their seeds were carefully gathered and ground into a powder that was the planet substitute for off-world caff.

  For a world without any native dangers, or so Trewsworld had been designated, Dane thought that the cluster of structures had the appearance of a fort. The houses, their doors all opening on a court within, were linked one to the next with clay walls again planted with bulbs.

  A smooth length of ground just outside the gate was the vehicle park. There was a crawler drawn to one side and a smaller scooter, which Dane would have thought too light to travel this rough and roadless country. Meshler set down their flitter there.

  The ranger swung out almost before the vibration of the motor was stilled. Cupping his hands about his mouth, he gave a loud hail.

  “Ho, the house!”

  It would seem that Cartl’s holding was as inexplicably empty of life as the first two lathsmer fields had been. Then from out of the wall before them a voice called thinly, “Name yourself!”

  Meshler threw back his hood so that his face could be clearly seen.

  “Wim Meshler, ranger. You know me.”

  The voice did not answer. They stood waiting in the cold, Dane holding the brach. Then the heavy door grated open only part way.

  “Come, and quickly!”

  The urgency in that was enough to make Dane glance over his shoulder. This place had all the marks of a fort under siege. But who—or what—had driven the inhabitants to this extremity? They had seen no living thing except the lathsmers, though the wild fear of those had been a warning that all was not well.

  He crowded through the narrow space the gate had opened. Then the man waiting there slammed the portal shut as if he expected death itself to follow in upon their heels and dropped in place a bar to lock it.

  The householder was a tall man, wearing a shaggy coat loose about his shoulders as a cloak, the empty sleeves flapping as he moved. He was of a different racial stock than Meshler, being dark of skin, as dark as Rip, his hair a wiry brush, as if encouraged to stand so from his head.

  He wore a shirt of lathsmer skin, the inner down left on, though rubbed away here and there by the friction of use, belted in with a wide belt that carried the customary two knives of the holdings men, one at the fore for eating and general use, the ornamentally sheathed one to the back as a sign of adulthood, to be used on the now rare occasions of honor-feud.

  His leggings and boots were of furred hide, and with the shaggy coat he seemed as well “feathered” as his lathsmers. But there was something new. In his hand he carried an old-time projectile gun, such a weapon as Dane had seen only in museums on Terra, or which was used on a few primitive worlds where blaster charges were too expensive for importation and the settlers had made their defenses of native materials.

  “Meshler!” The man held out his hand, and the ranger laid his beside it, so they clasped each other’s elbow in the customary greeting.

  “What’s going on?” demanded the ranger, not introducing his greeter.

  “Perhaps you can tell us,” returned the other as sharply. “Or rather tell Jaycor’s widow. He got back here last night just—And all he could tell us was a garbled story about monsters and men. He had been inspecting the far fields when they savaged him.”

  “Savaged him?” echoed Meshler.

  “Right enough. I never saw such wounds! We forted up when we discovered the com was ng— interference! Kaysee took the flitter to the port. But that was before we realized that Angria and the children weren’t back! I tried to reach them via com at Vanatar’s—no chance. Inditra and Forman took off in the big hopper for there.” He spilled it in a rush of speech as if he needed badly to tell someone.

  Meshler, who had kept the arm grip, now cut into that flow.

  “One thing at a time. Vanatar—then he is establishing his holding at last?”

  “Yes, they called us by com for a gathering to clear. I had the shakes again, but Angria, Mabla, Carie, and the children and Singi, Refal, Dronir, Lantgar—they all went in the freight flitter. Kaysee had to make the west rounds, Jaycor the east, and Inditra and Forman were setting up the new tooling shed. And what will I tell Carie—Jaycor dead! We set for the noon news from the port day before yesterday. Got only some story about criminals off a trader making trouble and then—slam—interference. We haven’t been able to get through since.

  “Kaysee got back all right. But Jaycor was late. Then we saw the crawler coming, weaving all over the place, as if it were running on its own. It just about was. Jaycor was in the driver’s seat, almost dead. He said something about men and monsters out of the woods—then he was gone!

  “We couldn’t use the com, so Kaysee said he’d lift in to the port. Inditra and Forman got the hopper to working and went off to Vanatar’s to see about the women. With these damned shakes I was no good for anything. Ya, here they come again!”

  The tall man began to shudder violently and instantly Tau stepped forward to steady him. “Vol fever!”

  “Not quite,” Meshler returned. “It acts like vol, but the reserbiotics won’t cure it. They haven’t found anything that will yet. Maybe you can do something for him.”

  The shudders that ran through the overthin body of the settler made him sway back and forth. His head rolled limply back, and he might have fallen to the ground had not the ranger and the medic held him up between them.

  “Get him to bed and warm,” Tau said. “Reser may not work, but warmth will help.”

  They half led, half supported him between them to the middle house opposite the gate, and Dane hastened ahead to throw open the door.

  That warmth was a remedy used by the settlers was plain, for there was a blazing fire in the wide, deep fireplace, and before it someone had pulled a cot with a tangle of thick blankets. They lowered the man to this, and Tau packed him in a cocoon of coverings, while Meshler went to a pot hanging on a rod that could be swung around to lower it over the flames. He sniffed at the steaming contents and picked up a cup from a nearby table and a long-handled spoon, which he used to transfer some of the contents of the pot into the cup.

  “Esam brew,” he explained. “It’s hot enough to warm up his insides. But he’s in for a stiff bout by the looks of it.”

  Tau braced up the well-covered man and, with Meshler’s aid, got a cupful of liquid down his throat. But when they lowered him again, he seemed to have lapsed into unconsciousness.

  Dane set down the brach, who padded over to crouch in the full heat of the fire. The alien gave such a sign of relief and pleasure that
Dane wondered how he had been able to stand the cold of most of their wayfaring.

  “He is the only one here?” Tau nodded at his patient.

  “The way he said it, yes. That’s Cartl. He must be half crazy, what with the shakes and knowing he daren’t try to reach the women himself. In this cold he would black out if he tried it.”

  “This Vanatar—so there is another south holding?” Dane asked.

  “I knew Vanatar had been talking about coming for about two years now but not that he had really decided. He must have made up his mind in a hurry. Anyway, I’ve been on detached duty and not on field patrol. Let’s see—”

  He walked to the left wall, and when Dane followed him, the Terran saw there was a map painted there. Portions with the more or less regular lines of such fields as they had flown over were colored yellow, the uncleared land gray. But to the east was the edge of another set of boundaries, these dotted in as if not permanent.

  “Vanatar had this surveyed about five years ago.” Meshler indicated the dotted area. “Then he was in two minds about ever taking it up. It lies east and farther south.”

  Dane examined the gray blot of the wilderness. Where in that was the wood of the force field, the basin?

  Or was that area on this map at all?

  “Vanatar would have no defenses. And a gathering—they would be spread out, working on field barriers all over, women and children watching. If those monsters came at them—” Meshler’s half-finished sentences needed no clarification for Dane.

  “Take our flitter and try to pick them up?” Tau suggested as he joined them.

  “Couldn’t take them all at one time,” but Meshler was thinking about it.

  “This com interference,” Dane asked, “how far do you suppose it reaches?”

  Meshler shrugged. “Who knows? At least when Kaysee gets to the port, he can bring help.”

  “There’s the LB,” Dane said. The LB with Rip and Ali—and that box planted near. What if those for whom it had been intended now knew where to look for it?