Sargasso of Space sq-1

by Andre Norton

  They were not given long for such preparations, the clinking passage of the crawler echoed ahead as a warning and the three Traders took to cover as the vehicle crept into sight across the uneven terrain. It crashed through bushes until the driver slowed to a halt. His helmet com-unit must have been on, for, while his natural voice could only have been an undistinguishable murmur to those in hiding, his words were loud in their ears.

  “There’s Snall’s wagon—piled up! What’s been—”

  One of Rip’s guards scrambled off the crawler as if to go forward and investigate. And in that moment Mura’s arm signalled Dane to attack.

  A stone thudded against the helmet of the would-be investigator, sending him off balance to clutch at the tread of the crawler for support. Dane slammed another in his direction and then aimed for the driver of the machine.

  They were yelling now and Rip had come to life. Though his arms were tied behind him, he threw himself at the man to his left, his effort carrying them both to the ground beyond. The driver turned on the power of the crawler so that it ground ahead through the rain of stones the three Traders hurled at it.

  One of the outlaws had pulled himself aboard again and now the other wriggled from under Rip’s body. He had his blaster in hand and he bent over Shannon with an evil grin. Then his face was smashed into a red pulp. He screamed horribly and reeled back. The one who had managed to climb aboard looked back in time to witness his fall.

  “Kraner—those little beasts got Kraner! No, don’t wait to collect that Trader! If you do they’ll get us!”

  The crawler kept on towards the mountains. For some reason the two on board it had not used their blasters to rake the bushes. The very unexpectedness of the attack and the loss of one of their company left them only with the thought of escape.

  They rounded the length of the stranded crawler and were out of sight before Kosti crept out of hiding and went down to Rip, where Dane joined him seconds later.

  Shannon lay on his side, his arms bound at a painful angle behind him, his face showing a closed eye surrounded with a dark bruise, a cut lip, raw and bloody.

  “You have been to the wars,” Kosti grunted as he knelt to saw at the cords with his bush knife.

  Rip’s words were mumbled as he tried to move his torn mouth. “They jumped me—I was almost to the Queen when they jumped me. They’ve the ship pinned here—some sort of ray which crashes any ship within a certain distance of the planet—”

  Dane slipped an arm under Rip’s shoulders and helped him to sit up. The other gave a grunt and a muffled exclamation as he moved, one hand going to his side.

  “More damages?” Kosti reached out to unseal Rip’s tunic but Shannon parried the investigating hand.

  “Nothing we can fix here and now. Think I’ve cracked a rib—or maybe two. But, listen, they’ve the Queen—”

  “We know. Picked up a prisoner,” Dane told him. “He was driving that crawler over there. Told us all about what’s going on here. Maybe, using him, we can make some sort of a deal. Can you walk—?”

  “Yes, it might be well to withdraw,” Mura stepped down to where they were. “They had their coms on when we jumped them. It is uncertain how much of the succeeding events have been overheard by their fellows.”

  Rip could walk, with support. And they got him around to their own crawler and Wilcox.

  “Any sign of Kamil?” Kosti wanted to know.

  “They have him all right,” Rip replied. “But I think that he’s with their main party. They have quite a few men. And they can keep the Queen here until she rusts away—if they want to.”

  “So Snall here has already informed us,” Wilcox observed bleakly. “He also says that he does not know where this mysterious installation is. I’m inclined to doubt that—”

  At that the bound and gagged prisoner wriggled and made muffled sounds, trying to indicate his sincerity.

  “Down that valley is one way in, at least in to their major supply depot and barracks,” Rip informed them. “And the installation can’t be too far from that.”

  Dane touched the wriggling Snall with the toe of his boot. “D’you suppose we could exchange this one for Ali? Or at least use him to get us into the place?”

  Rip answered that. “I doubt it. They’re a pretty hard lot. Snall’s life or death wouldn’t matter much as far as they are concerned.”

  And the look in those bloodshot eyes above the gag Kosti had planted, bore out that Snall agreed with that. He had little faith in assistance from his own companions unless his rescue was necessary to their preservation.

  “Three of us on our feet and able to go, and two crooks,” Wilcox mused. “How many men have they in the mountains, Shannon, any idea of that?”

  “Maybe a hundred. It seems to be a well organized outfit,” Rip replied dispiritedly.

  “We can sit here until we starve,” Kosti broke the ensuing silence, “and that won’t get us anywhere, will it? I’d say take some chances and hope for luck. It can’t all be bad!”

  “Snall could show us the way in—at least into the part he knows,” Dane said. “And we could scout around—size up the country and the odds.”

  “If we could only contact the Queen!” Wilcox beat his knee with his fist.

  “With the sun up—it is now—there is perhaps a way,” Mura began.

  His way entailed going back to the wrecked crawler in the second valley and unscrewing a bright metal plate which backed the driver’s seat. With Dane’s help, the steward got this to the top of the cliff. And they wedged their prize at an angle until they caught the sun on its surface and flashed the light across the mile or so of rugged territory which lay between them and the ship.

  Mura smiled. “This may do it. It should be as good as our torches in the night if it works. And unless those outlaws down there have eyes in the back of their skulls, it will not be seen except from control—”

  But once their crude com was in place they had other preparations to make. Wilcox, Rip, Kosti and the prisoner moved from the hideout in one valley on into the other. The strange crawler was righted and found to be undamaged and ready to move. And while the other four waited Mura and Dane climbed once more to the heights where they sweated over the plate until they laboriously flashed twice over their message to the Queen.

  Then there was nothing to do but stay to see if their code had been read. Only if the ship made the proper reply in action could they move.

  And that answer came just as Dane had given up hope. Round ports blinked like eyes on the sides of the Queen! There was a bark of sound and smoke arose by a hidden pocket of the besiegers—the one which lay between the ship and the valley. Their message had been read, those on the ship would keep the enemy bracketed while the party in the valley made their dash for the outlaw headquarters on a desperate attempt at surprise.

  They were all able to ride on this carrier, the prisoner sandwiched in between Dane and Mura, Kosti at the controls. It had what their own crawler had lacked, handholds, and they clung to these as the thing rattled along.

  Dane watched the bushy slopes they passed. He had not forgotten the bogy attack. It might be true that the creatures were nocturnal. But on the other hand, once aroused, perhaps the globes might still be in hiding there, waiting to cut off any small party.

  The valley curved and narrowed. Now under the jolting carrier the surface was mostly stream-bed and the water crept up to lap at the edge of the platform. There were signs here, as there had been in the valley near the ruins, that this way had been in use as a road—scratches on the rocks, tracks crushed in the gravel.

  Then before them the stream became a small falls, splashing into a pool and the valley ended in a barrier cliff. Kosti jerked the gag from Snall’s mouth.

  “All right,” he said in the tone of one who was not going to be put off, “what do we do to get through here, bright boy?”

  Snall licked his puffed lips and glowered back. Bound and gagged as he had been, helpless as he was
, he had regained a large measure of his confidence.

  “Find out for yourself,” he retorted.

  Kosti sighed. “I hate to waste time, fella. But if you must be softened up, you’re going to be—get me?”

  Something else got them all first. A stone missed Kosti’s head by a scant inch as he bent over Snall. And a larger one struck the captive’s body, bringing a sharp cry of pain out of him.

  “Bogies!” Dane fanned his sleep ray up a wall where he could see nothing move, but from which he was sure the stones had been thrown.

  Another rock cracked viciously against the crawler as Wilcox hit the dirt on the other side, pulling Rip with him to shelter half under the machine. Mura was using his ray, too, standing unconcerned knee deep in the pool and beaming the cliff foot by foot as if he had all the time in the world and intended to make this a thorough job.

  It was Snall who ended that strange blind battle. Kosti had dragged him to safety and must have cut his bonds so that he could move with greater speed. But now the outlaw flung himself out of shelter, straight for the controls of the carrier. He brought his fist down upon a button set in the panel and was rewarded by a high pitched tinkle—a tinkle which resounded in the Terran’s heads until Dane had to fight to keep his hands from his ears.

  The answer to this assault upon their eardrums was as preposterous as anything Dane had ever witnessed in a Video performance. The supposedly solid rock wall fronting the end of the valley opened, one piece of the stone falling back to provide a dark gap. And, since their captive was prepared for that he was the first through the door, darting from under Kosti’s clutching hands.

  With an inarticulate roar the jetman followed Snall. And Dane pounded after both of them into the maw of the cliff. From the sunlight of Limbo they were translated to a twilight grey, strung out like beads on a string, with Snall, proving himself a good distance runner, well at the head.

  Dane was inside the straight corridor before his common sense took command once more. He shouted to Kosti and his voice echoed in a hollow boom. Though he slowed, the other two kept on into the dusky reaches ahead.

  Dane turned back to the entrance, still undecided. To be cut off here—their party divided. What should he do, run after Kosti, or try to bring in the others? He was in time to see Mura come in at a walking pace. And then, to Dane’s horror, the outlet to the world closed! There was a clang of metal meeting metal and the sunlight was instantly cut to evening.

  “The door!” Dane hurled himself at the masked opening with the same fervour with which he had followed Snall into the corridor. But before he reached that spot Mura’s steadying grip closed on his arm, restraining him with a strength he had forgotten the smaller man possessed.

  “Do not be alarmed,” the steward said. “There is no danger. Wilcox and Shannon are in safety. They are armed with the sleep rays, in addition they know how to operate the horn to open the gate when necessary. But where is Karl? Has he disappeared?”

  Mura’s tone had a soothing effect. The little man gave such an impression of unruffled efficiency that Dane lost that panic which had sent him running for the entrance.

  “The last I saw he was still after Snall.”

  “Let us hope that he has caught up with him. I would be better pleased if we walked these ways with Snall under our control—not with him somewhere ahead to warn his companions.”

  They hurried on and discovered that the corridor made a sharp turn to the left. Dane listened, hoping to hear the sounds of running feet. But when the thump-thump did come it was made by a single pair of boots. And a minute later the jetman barged into view his face very sober in the wan light radiated from the smooth walls about them.

  “Where’s Snall?” Dane asked.

  Kosti grimaced. “He got through one of those condemned wall back there—”

  “Just where?” Mura went in the direction from which the jetman had just come.

  “The door snapped shut as I got to it,” Kosti protested. “We can’t follow him. Unless one of you brought that tootler off the crawler.”

  The passage stretched only a short distance beyond, ending in a wall as blank of any opening as the cliffs without. Though this was not of stone but of the seamless substances which made the buildings in the Forerunner ruins.

  “This wall?” Mura thumped the surface as Kosti nodded gloomily.

  ”Can’t see any opening there now—”

  The humming vibration, to which they had become so accustomed that they no longer consciously noted it, sang through the walls, through the flooring under their feet. How much that sonic resonance added to their feeling of uneasiness it was hard to tell. But the narrow corridor, the pallid light, fed their sensation of being trapped.

  “Looks as if we are stuck,” the jetman observed, “unless we go out into the valley again. How about that? Where’s Wilcox and Shannon?”

  Dane explained. But he, too, hoped that the others would use the horn and open the outer door. With the intention of getting back to the entrance he walked along the hall. That passage had run straight, he remembered, and then there had been a right angled turn around which Kosti had disappeared in pursuit of Snall—

  But when Dane came to that corner and made the turn he was fronted not by the hall he remembered, but a pocket of some three or four feet. He stopped, bewildered. There had been only one corridor—with no openings along its sides. Before him now should be a smooth stretch leading to the outer door. But instead here was another wall. He reached out and his nails scraped on its slick surface. It was there all right—no illusion.

  A muffled cry brought him about and he was just in tune to see another barrier appear out of the side wall to seal off a segment of the passage, one to cut him away from the others.

  Dane threw himself forward, barely getting through the narrowing space. And he might not have made it had Kosti not come to his aid and used his bull’s strength to wrestle against the sliding wall. But as Dane won to the other side, it clicked triumphantly into place and they were boxed in a six foot section of corridor.

  “Neat,” Kosti commented. “Got us shut up until they have time to attend to us.”

  Mura shrugged. “It cannot now be doubted that Snall got through with his alarm.”

  But the steward did not appear bothered. Kosti thumped the wall, listening intently as if he hoped to discover the trick of its opening by the sound he so invoked.

  “Remote control, of course,” Mura continued in his placid tone. “Yes, they will now believe that they have us safe—”

  “Only they don’t, do they?” Observance of Mura led Dane to that question.

  “That we shall see. The outer door is controlled by sonics. I heard Tang say that the installation interference lies partly in the non-audible range. So it may be we have an answer to this trap.”

  He unsealed the front of his tunic and groped in the inner breast pocket all Traders used for their most prized possessions. He took out a three inch tube of polished white substance which might have been bone.

  Kosti stopped his thumping. “Say—that’s your Feedle call—”

  “Just so. Now we shall see if it can be used for another purpose than to summon the insects of Karmuli—”

  He put the miniature pipe to his lips and blew, though no sound issued to be caught by Terran hearing. Kosti’s shade of elation vanished.

  “No use—”

  Mura smiled. “You have no patience, Karl. This has ten ultrasonic notes. I have only used one. Give me a chance to try the others before you are sure we do not possess a key to these doors.”

  There followed long moments of silence with no visible result.

  “Not going to work—” Kosti shook his head.

  But Mura paid no attention. At intervals he took the pipe from his lips, rested, and then tried again. Dane was certain that he must have tried more than ten notes, but the steward showed no sign of discouragement.

  “That’s more than ten notes,” accused Kosti.
r />   “The signal that opened the first door employed three. The same number combination may apply here.” He raised the pipe once more.

  Kosti sat down on the floor, obviously divorcing himself from proceedings he deemed useless. Dane squatted beside him. But Mura’s patience was infinite. One hour passed—by Dane’s watch, and they were well into the second. Dane wondered about their air supply. Unless it oozed through the walls as did the light, he could see no way in which it was renewed. And yet that about them was fresh.

  “That tootling,” Kosti sounded fretful, “isn’t going to do any good. You’ll wear the pipe out before you get through this—” he struck his hand against the side wall.

  And under his touch the section of wall moved, showing a dark crack a couple of inches wide extending from the floor to a point six feet up.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN:

  PRISONER’S MAZE

  “You’ve done it!” Dane cried to Mura as Kosti tore at the opening, forcing it larger—the door resisting as if it had not moved for a long time.

  “This isn’t the right way,” the jetman protested even as he pushed.

  “Not the corridor, no,” agreed Mura. “But this is a way out of our present trap and as such it is not to be despised. Also it is not one in general use, or so I would judge by its stubbornness. Therefore, an even better path for us. I must have hit upon a rarer sonic combination—” He wiped the tiny pipe carefully and put it away.

  Though Kosti forced the door open as wide as it would go, the resulting entrance was a narrow one. Mura negotiated it without trouble, but Dane and the jetman had to squeeze. And for one dangerous moment it seemed that the latter might not be able to make it. Only by shedding his bulky equipment belt and his outdoor tunic could he scrape by.

  They found themselves in a second corridor, one more narrow than that in which they had been imprisoned. The same grey light glowed from the walls. But as Dane stepped forward his feet were cushioned and he looked down to see that his boots stirred fine dust, dust thick enough to coat the floor an inch or more in depth.