Pirates of the Thunder

by Jack L. Chalker

  Hawks thought about that. “That would mean Lightning, as well,” he said, referring to Clayben’s ship by their new name for it. “The camp would, in effect, be landlocked there. I’m not sure I like that.”

  “Of necessity, no matter where we settle. If a patrol came in close enough that it punched within a day or so of the planet, it would be impossible to pack everyone aboard and take off without being sensed, tracked, and quite possibly destroyed. We will establish a subordinate computer net down there and an effective communications system. There will be a substantial time lag, but I will be able to monitor you, and we can still contact one another. In a tight pinch, Lightning can be dispatched to take on and flank a patrol ship, but I would suspect that the best defense is to simply ignore it and it will go away.”

  “But wouldn’t any patrol craft spot us down there?” China asked, worried. She didn’t like the idea of being separated from Star Eagle for that long.

  “Unless you become a population of thousands, I would suspect not. It will be looking for indications of a spaceship and communications and transmuter-powered equipment. It’s not going to do a survey, only a patrol. You would show up in such a patrol in the same way as those life forms down there now, nothing more, nothing less, so long as you cut power. It is not going to spend a year on the suspicion that someone minus ship might just be hiding out down there.”

  Hawks nodded. “All right, then. I’ll still feel better if a couple of people go ahead to scout out the place first. We’ll need someone with good reflexes and skills with a gun. Any volunteers?”

  “I’ll go,” Raven said. “Warlock can handle things here. And I think maybe it should be Clayben who goes with me. I’ll handle the firepower and he can handle the science. If we get in over our heads, then, Manka, you and Nagy come after us with all the firepower you got.”

  Isaac Clayben was not exactly thrilled with the assignment, but he could not argue that he was not best qualified for the job. It also got him off that damned ship for the first time in countless dull weeks, and that was almost worth it.

  The modified fighter had established a small one-at-a-time transmitter station, which Star Eagle used once the Thunder was in a stable geosynchronous orbit over the chosen position. It was agreed that, as a first step, Raven and Clayben both would use the fairly comfortable pressure suits in spite of the planet’s clean bill of health.

  Neither Clayben nor Raven had ever before traveled by transmuter. In spite of his worldly cynicism and modern knowledge, the Crow had some deep reservations about this mode of travel that had nothing to do with its safety. For the life of him, he couldn’t see how this differed from being killed and having a duplicate manufactured elsewhere.

  “It is possible to look at it that way,” Star Eagle admitted, “although the energy matrix created here is isolated, unique, and self-contained. What I convert is what I transmit and all I use to reconstruct below. In other words, you actually physically go, just in a different form. In a sense, I almost wish it were the way you imagine. Then it wouldn’t matter what was transmuted; since everything would be a duplicate, I could change anything and anyone an infinite number of times at will. But I am not transmitting a formula. I am transmitting you.”

  Somehow that made Raven feel better.

  The Thunder’s transmuters—it carried one in each of the four cargo bays—were huge, but the receiver below, modification of a maintenance transmitter, was strictly a one-person affair. Raven, as security, had to go first.

  The transmuter was a circular disk that looked almost as if it were made of a solid piece of red brick, and a second disk above coated with some very shiny, black reflective material. Raven looked at it, hesitated, then took a deep breath, stepped onto the circle, and walked to the center. He had his pressure suit on, helmet and all, since the energy expense was too great to justify pressurizing an entire cargo bay.

  He stared nervously back at the others—most of the group had come down to see the volunteers off, with the exception of China, who was currently interfaced with Star Eagle, Silent Woman, who had no understanding or interest, and Reba Koll, who stayed away out of a sense of caution. There was no sensation, nothing. He felt something vibrate, and inside his suit he heard what could only be described as click! Suddenly he was alone in the dark someplace, and he felt as heavy as lead, so heavy that he almost buckled under his own weight. It disturbed him. What the hell?

  A hatch opened automatically in front of him and he looked out on a strange landscape. He drew his pistol and walked away and into it, frowning. “That’s it?” he said, mostly to himself. “Click and you’re someplace else?”

  “I had no idea it was that efficient.” Star Eagle’s unusual tenor came to him over his suit radio, as clear as if he were still aboard the ship. “That is very good to know. Any problems?”

  Raven was still a little shaken by his experience, but he was a pro. He looked around. He was standing on black rock with some whitish streaks in it; here and there it was interrupted by a small patch of growth in cracks or a moss-like plant in small dabs where the rock seemed to have been roughened. The surface was very uneven, but he had no trouble with his footing. About ten meters away the real growth started—a dense forest. The sky was mostly cloudy, but the exposed parts were blue—a slightly different blue than he was used to, but not enough to cause real alarm or disorientation.

  “Better tell Doc to bring an umbrella. I think it might rain.”

  Less than a minute later, the hatch opened again behind him, and the orange-suited figure of Isaac Clayben emerged holding a carrying case of some sort. He walked slowly, somewhat bent over, dragging his case as if it weighed a ton. “That—that is simply amazing,” said the scientist, who wasn’t amazed by very much. “With a sufficient number of those things each in line of sight you could have a near-instantaneous transport system covering the whole world.”

  “I wouldn’t like to try a system that big, Doc,” Raven replied. “Sooner or later one of ‘em would hav’ta go wrong.”

  “I have more equipment coming. We’ll wait for it, then I’ll need some help setting up.” He looked around. “It’s actually quite attractive. I have lived the past twenty years cooped up inside a giant rock or in the bowels of spaceships. I had almost forgotten what it’s like to have a sky, and greenery, clouds, and weather. It’s almost—disorienting. I didn’t expect this. I’m feeling somewhat phobic about wide open spaces.”

  Raven shrugged. “Better get used to it. You’re supposed to be the superior one, above all these weaknesses we mortals suffer, Doc. I think the rest of your stuff’s here. Let’s get it and get cracking. Jeez! I feel tired as hell. I’m havin’ trouble just walkin’.”

  “I, too. I’m in worse shape than you, I suspect. I haven’t been under more than six-tenths of a gee since before Melchior. I—I’m dizzy. I’m going to have to sit down for a moment.” He settled down on the rock and sighed. “Stupid of me. I never really considered this. I was too busy worrying about the transport.”

  Raven sat, too. He felt like he’d been working for two straight days at hard labor and he had only walked four meters away from the modified fighter sitting there on its leg struts on the rock just behind them. “Well, maybe we ain’t gonna do a whole hell of a lot real fast, Doc, but we can do something while sitting. Who wants the honor of being the first to breathe the new air?”

  “Be my guest,” Clayben responded.

  Raven sighed, adjusted his suit control to “maintenance mode,” then touched the fastener plates and cautiously removed his helmet. He took a breath, then relaxed and hooked the helmet on his neck strap. “Whew! Like gettin’ hit by a soakin’ wet wool blanket! Boy, is this hot! Crazy feeling. The suit’s still got some air conditioning and insulation, but my face is hot as hell. I’m sweating like a stuck Pig.”

  “The air—smells—all right?”

  “As a matter of fact, it doesn’t. There’s an undercurrent of something—a mixture of things—that smells a
little putrid. Not enough to make you sick or anything. I guess I can get used to it. Figure it’s from being on mostly oxygen?”

  Clayben wearily unfastened his helmet and took it off, then took a deep breath and wrinkled his nose. “I see what you mean. No, it’s not that. That is clearly salt water over there—you cannot imagine how long it has been since I’ve smelled that smell—and it’s mixing with the smells of the jungle.” He sighed. “Well, all I want to do is sleep for a week, but I think we’d better get things set up here and take our preliminary measurements. Then I think we should encamp and sleep in shifts until our bodies adjust to this gravity before exploring very much—if mine ever does adjust.”

  “I think they are birds, but they never come close enough to really tell.” Raven was clad now in an improvised loincloth, which consisted of two towels draped, one front and one rear, over his gunbelt.

  “We must go into the jungle at some point,” Clayben said. He was wearing a pair of shorts, a pullover T-shirt, and rubber-soled shoes. He was still terribly uncomfortable and very slow, and beginning to wonder if he’d spent too much time in low gravity to ever get used to full weight again, but he was still fascinated and excited about being on a new and remote world. Even during the night, agonized by muscle cramps, he still found it impossible not to stare up through holes in the clouds to a star field that was much denser than the one he’d known. “We will need more than these spore and insect samples, fascinating as they are. From my analysis, I suspect that those birds—or whatever they are—are not quite what we expect at all.”

  Terraforming was an incredibly complex science and one that Master System had had to learn from scratch. Mars had been far easier than planets like this one; there the process had involved mostly adding or transmuting to water, planting dense growth, and letting things take their course. But even there a complex chain of interdependent species of plants and animals had had to be modified and stabilized so that the ecosystem would remain in balance.

  Not a single one of the flying and crawling insects they’d managed to trap here was familiar, but they seemed to fill the same not-always-obvious roles that their Earth ancestors had back on the home world. Unfortunately, some of them bit, and of those some had defensive or offensive toxins causing itching, but none of the bites suffered by Clayben and Raven had been more than minor nuisances.

  The heat and humidity were still hard to take, and the gravity was murder, but at least they had grown used to the alien smells in the air and hardly noticed them anymore. Raven was certainly delighted about one thing: Finally he could smoke his cigars again without worry. His endless supply of half-smoked cigars had baffled Hawks until the latter had heard about and understood enough about the transmuters. Raven had a way of making the things duplicate his cigars, but the only model he’d had was the last half of one brought from Earth. He had a huge supply made from that half a cigar—and all were duplicates of it. He hoped that the others would never discover that he was using the food transmuters to make cigars, or that they wouldn’t mind if they did find out.

  By the end of the second day, Raven felt well enough to do some exploring, but it was clear that Clayben simply wasn’t up to it. He might, in time, adapt to a gravitational pull that was actually very slightly less than the Earth on which he’d been bora, but that was by no means certain and definitely not imminent. Unwilling to trust Clayben alone with the fighter and all his gear, Raven called for reinforcements. “I want Warlock and Nagy down here as quickly as possible,” he told them. “We need to get moving.”

  The newcomers, who arrived with fresh supplies, seemed to do a lot better with the sudden weight than the first two had. Nagy explained that in light of the problems, Star Eagle had induced a spin that gave some measure of gravity to the ship. Warlock and Nagy still felt some strain, but after a good night’s sleep in the makeshift tent, they seemed to be in as good shape as Raven was.

  It was a bright, sunny day. They had actually watched rainstorms in the distance over the water, but so far none of the clouds had given the interior more than a few drops. Raven opened up a security case and surprised Nagy by giving the spindly man a pistol.

  “You might need it to save one or both of our necks,” the Crow told him. “You’ll need a good knife, too. I had Star Eagle duplicate my best.” He handed him a huge flat blade and a gunbelt that had a notch for the knife.

  Nagy looked at the dense jungle. “I think a broadsword might be better, considering that stuff.” He hefted the knife, put it in the belt, then drew and aimed the pistol at the trees. “I—uh—guess this is some kind of test.”

  Manka Warlock’s stern expression did not change. “No test,” she said. “If Raven doesn’t come back, first I kill the doctor here and then I come for you.”

  Nagy shrugged and gave a “Who, me?” sort of look, then turned back to Raven. “Now’s as good a time as any, I guess. I’m not too thrilled about this, but it has to be done if we’re gonna stick around this hothouse.”

  Raven checked a small communicator that had been removed from one of the pressure suits and slipped into a special casing. “Thunder, are you reading me?”

  “Perfectly,” Star Eagle’s voice responded. “I have you on intercom as well. Doctor?”

  “No problems.” Clayben looked at the others. “Bring me back some specimens. Plants, insects, sea water, even one of those birds or whatever they are. And Arnold? Be certain you both return.”

  Nagy shrugged again. “Which way, O intrepid explorer?”

  “That way,” Raven said, pointing with his knife at a spot almost exactly between the two huge cloud-shrouded volcanic peaks. “It’s the shortest route to the sea if the map we saw was right.”

  They made their way carefully down to where the foliage met the rocky outcrop of ancient lava. “I don’t expect that there will be any really dangerous plants and animals in there,” the Crow said, “but you never know what a computer might throw into a prototype. Still, its mission was to preserve people, not get rid of them.”

  It was rough going almost from the start. The lava did not stop as it met the greenery, but there it had been more severely weathered, partly broken up, and overgrown with moss and vines. Much of the growth masked cracks and fissures in the ground that seemed designed to twist ankles and trip the unwary. The men used their knives as best they could and were thankful that they’d decided to wear the thick, heavy boots from their pressure suits.

  When they finally hit much older rock covered with humus the footing became soft and spongy. Their passage seemed to disturb the insect population; the air was thick with tiny flying things and a few very large, angry buzzing ones. “If Clayben wants his damned insect collection let him come and get ‘em,” Raven shouted angrily, swatting the air.

  After a while they came to a short but fairly steep drop, perhaps two meters, at which point the thick vegetation stopped and they found themselves on smooth, flat, and pretty solid gray-black sand cut with chasms. There was a great deal of driftwood on the beach, as well. Now, for the first time, they could see as well as hear the pounding waves and look out upon the ocean.

  “First time I ever seen a bloody red ocean,” Raven commented.

  Nagy walked toward the edge of the water perhaps fifty or sixty meters away, then knelt and looked at the water. “Not blood and not red. Not the ocean, anyway. It’s a thin layer of some kind of plant or animal stuff. Plant, I’d say. Some kind of modified plankton, maybe. Stuff must cover a lot of ocean. Ten to one the only reason it doesn’t cover all of it is the wind and storms. Only small tides here, what with no big moon.”

  Raven stared at him. “You a scientist?”

  “Naw, I’m like you. I pick up stuff. You never know when something’s gonna come up useful.”

  Raven stared at him. In occupation—and somewhat in personality—he and Nagy were twins, yet the Crow was far cruder in his approach, and Nagy far more intellectual. Raven suspected that in the jungle or in the bush, Nagy would be de
ad meat, but that in any sort of civilization Nagy might be even more dangerous than Clayben.

  “Nagy—I know why I’m here, but why are you?”

  “Maybe we ought to trade information,” the tall, thin man replied. “Fact is, I was about to ask you the same question. For me it’s simple-survival. We went to the same training schools. Survival is the first priority of an effective operative. I blew Melchior—thanks to you. The administrators don’t like that. The escape brought Master System down on us, as I knew it had to, which is why I personally directed the chase. I didn’t want to be there when the Vals crashed in the locks. The board, now, it can lay all the illegal stuff on Clayben and me. I was in a meat grinder. The way to get out is to run out—and the stars were the only place to run. So when Clayben pulled up in that souped-up custom interstellar job and took me off the Star, I was only too willing. Now, that’s simple enough. It’s you I don’t get. What was it? The lure of power? Those rings can get anybody sick with the god disease.”

  “No,” Raven said quietly. “I didn’t fail and I didn’t turn traitor and I didn’t run out. I’m just doing my job.”

  “Huh? Blowing Melchior? Springing this crazy assortment? Lugging everybody here? Stirring up Master System to what must be the closest thing to a frenzy a machine can experience? Who the hell can you be working for that would want that! Or deserved the kind of price we’re all paying?”