Complete Venus Equilateral (1976) SSC

by George O. Smith

  “I can handle one like this with ease. I have fast reflexes and quick nerve response.”

  “It’ll take some time before you get all that there is in it out of it,” grinned the mechanic. “Mind signing an affidavit to the effect that we are not to be held responsible for anything that happens with the souping up?”

  “Not at all.”

  The mechanic went at the job with interest. His estimate was good, and within two hours the flier was standing on the runway, all ready to go. Cal returned from a shopping trip at about this time and packed his bundles into the baggage compartment. He paid, and then took off at high speed and headed south.

  Eight hours later the fog bank that marked the Vilanortis Country came before the nose of Cal’s flier. He plunged into the fog at half-speed and continued on for a full five hundred miles.

  He was about halfway through the vast fog bank when he landed and started to install the Key equipment for operation. The job took him a full day, and he slept on the divan in the cabin of the flier that night. He could have used the flier at night, for there was no choice between night operation and the thickness of the eternal fog of the Vilanortis Country. In neither case could he see more than a few yards ahead.

  While Cal slept, Benj dropped his flier on the edge of the fog country and waited. The detectors were installed and operating, and the black flier was all ready to surge forward on the trail as soon as Cal’s initial signal went forth. Having had more experience in this sort of thing, Benj knew how to go about it. He’d not follow the trail of Cal’s signal, but would turn and follow the answering, sympathetic oscillation from the resonant cavity at Murdoch’s Hoard. And with that same experience, Benj knew that he could beat Cal to the spot, and possibly be gone with Murdoch’s Hoard before his brother got there. He composed a sarcastic sign to leave on the spot for Cal to find. That, he liked. Not only would he have Murdoch’s Hoard, but he would be needling his hated brother, too.

  -

  Tinker had curbed her tongue. What was going to happen she did not know. Benj was quite intent on the mechanics of the chase, and hadn’t paid too much attention to her except to see that she was completely held. The idea of her—a sentient identity—being restrained with heavy handcuffs made her rage inwardly. Yet she kept her peace. She was not going to attract Benj’s attention to her.

  So she dozed on the divan in Benj’s flier while Benj catnapped at the wheel of the flier. He would be up and going at the first wink of the pilot light and the first thrumming whistle that came from the detector. He wanted to waste no time. Running down a source of transmitted signal was a matter of a few hours at most, even though it were halfway around the planet. He chuckled from time to time. He’d had Wally tailing Cal, and had a complete report on the flier and its souping up. His own flier was capable of quite a few more miles per hour than Cal’s, and Benj was well used to his.

  And so Tinker dozed and Benj catnapped until the first glimmer of dawn. Benj shook himself wide-awake, and took a caffeine pill to make certain.

  Reaching back from the pilot’s chair, he shook Tinker. “Pay for your board,” he growled. “Breakfast is due.”

  “I’ll poison you,” she promised.

  “There isn’t anything poisonous aboard” he said, roaring with laughter.

  It was more self-preservation than his threat that made Tinker prepare coffee and toast. Working with manacles on made it difficult, and she hated him for them again. She was carrying the hot coffee to the fore-cabin when his roar came ringing through the ship.

  “Grab on! Here we go!”

  The rush of the ship threw her from her feet, and the hot coffee spilled from the pot, scalding her. She screamed.

  “Now what?”

  “I’m burned.”

  “Coffee spill? Why didn’t you put it down?”

  “I wish I’d spilled it on your face,” she snapped. “Mind taking these irons off so I can get some isopicrine for the burn?”

  He tossed her the key. “If you run now, you’ll starve before you get anywhere,” he told her. “But stay out of my way. We’re on the trail of Murdoch’s Hoard.”

  The thrumming whistle came in clear and strong as Benj headed into the thick fog. And as they drove forward at a wild speed, Benj tinkered with the detector.

  He picked up Cal’s emitted signal easily and clearly, but was unable to get a response from the other source, He considered, and came to the conclusion that the other resonator might be outside of Cal’s range of transmission and therefore inoperative as yet. Knowing Hellion Murdoch’s personality by comparison to his own devious way of thinking, he knew that a worldwide broadcast of the response-signal would have been unnecessary. A general location within a hundred miles would have been good enough.

  So, having no goal but Cal’s signal, Benj turned the nose of his flier upon Cal’s sharp, vibrating tone and drove deeper and deeper into the fog blanket of Vilanortis.

  As for Cal, he had awakened by the clock and had tuned up his resonator before taking off. Immediately after making the initial adjustments, and tuning the Key a bit, the response came in strong and clear. Cal lifted the flier and began to trace the source. At almost full throttle, he went on a dead-straight line for Murdoch’s Hoard. He wondered whether his signal were being followed, and suspected that it was. He knew, however, that no one was in possession of the technique of receiving the response, and therefore he drove at high speed. If he could arrive before the others, he would be able to establish his claim on Murdoch’s Hoard, whatever it might be, or perhaps remove it if it were not too bulky.

  Once he established the direction of the response, Cal wisely turned his equipment off. That would forestall followers, and he could snap the gear on and off at intervals until he came close to the site of the famous Hoard.

  Benj swore as the signal ceased. But prior to its cessation, there had been a strong indication as to the relative motion of Cal’s ship. He continued by extrapolation and went across the chord of the curve to intercept the other ship at some position farther along.

  Tinker smiled openly. “Cal isn’t ignorant,” she said.

  “Turning that thing off isn’t going to help at all,” Benj responded. “I’ve got Cal’s original junk in the ship. I don’t know the technique of finding the real Hoard, but I’ve been thinking that following the Key in Cal’s ship might be possible. After all, that’s a cavity resonator, too, you know.”

  “Sure it is. But if you can’t follow the Hoard resonator, how can you follow Cal’s?”

  “Murdoch did something to his that makes it different,” explained Benj. “What, no one has ever known until that brilliant brother of mine unraveled the code. But if the Hoard had been a standard resonator, people would have uncovered it long years ago. There’s nothing tricky about getting a response from a resonant cavity.”

  Benj set the flier on autopilot and went forward into the nose of the craft with tools. He emerged a moment later with a crooked smile.

  “All I had to do was to hitch up Cal’s original junk. The detector is running as it always was, but now I can shoot forth a signal from Cal’s equipment, stop it, and receive on my own detector. We had a fistful of duplicate Keys around the lab. We can’t follow Murdoch’s Hoard, but we can follow Cal—who is on the trail of Murdoch’s Hoard.”

  He snapped a switch, and a thrumming whine came immediately.

  “That will be Cal’s response,” said Benj cheerfully. “No matter how he tries, he’ll lead us to the spot.”

  -

  Cal sped along in the thick white blanket of fog, not knowing that his own Key was furnishing a lead spot for another. Had he known, it is possible that he would have stopped and had his argument when the other arrived, or perhaps he could have damped the resonator enough so that its decrement was short enough to prevent any practical detection of the response.

  But Cal was admittedly no technician. He did not realize that his own resonator would become a marker. So he sped along through
the white at a killing pace. He snapped the switch after some time and listened to the response from Murdoch’s Hoard—as well as another signal that blended with his. The latter did not bother him as it might have bothered an engineer. Cal had no way of knowing what the results would be, and so he accepted the dual response as a matter of fact.

  It was in the third hour of travel that the inevitable came. By rights, it should have come easily and quietly, but it came with all of the suddenness of two fliers running together at better than five hundred miles per hour.

  Out of the whiteness that had blocked his vision all day, Cal saw his brother’s black flier. It came through the sky silently, skirling the fog behind it into a spiral whirl. It came at a marrow angle from slightly behind him, and both pilots slammed their wheels over by sheer instinct.

  The fliers heeled and cut sweeping arcs in the fog. Inches separated their wingtips and they were gone on divergent courses.

  Cal mopped his brow. In the other ship, Benj swore roundly at Cal, and mopped his brow, too. And Tinker sat on the divan, letting her breath out slowly.

  But Benj whipped the wheel around, describing a full, sharp loop in the sky. He crammed a bit of power on, and the tail of Cal’s ship came into sight through the fog. Cal saw him coming and whipped his plane aside. Benj anticipated the maneuver and followed Cal around, crowding him close.

  “What are you trying to do?” screamed Tinker, white-faced.

  “Run him down,” gritted Benj.

  “Kill him?”

  “No. He’ll glide out of power if I can ram his tail.”

  He followed Cal up and over in a tight loop, dropping into an ear-drumming dive instead of completing the loop. Cal pulled out and whipped to the left, and Benj, again trying to anticipate the action, missed and turned right. Cal was lost again in the fog.

  Cal waited for several minutes to see if he had really lost Benj, hoping and yet knowing that he had not. Yet there was quite a difference between knowing where he was and being within ten feet of his tail. In ten minutes, and one hundred miles later on the straightaway, Cal opened the throttle to the last notch and by compass streaked directly onto his former course.

  Benj streaked after him, the resonator in operation, as soon as enough distance had been put between them for the gadget to function. Then Benj started to overhaul Cal’s swift flier.

  Meanwhile, Cal tried the Key. The answering signal indicated that he was approaching the site of Murdoch’s Hoard, and not more than fifteen minutes later the direction indicator whipped to the rear. Cal had passed directly over it.

  He circled in a tight hairpin turn and went back.

  He forgot about Benj.

  The black ship came hurtling out of the fog just a few feet to his right.

  Before, they had been approaching on an angle, which had given both men time to turn. But now they were approaching dead on at better than six hundred miles per hour each. They zoomed out of the fog, brushed wingtips, and were gone into the fog again, but not without damage. At their velocity, the contact smashed the wingtips and whirled them slightly around.

  Like falling leaves they came down, and before they could strike the ground with killing crashes, they both regained consciousness.

  Benj’s ship was beyond repair. It fell suddenly, even though Benj struggled with the controls. It hit ground and skidded madly along the murky swamp, throwing gouts of warm water high and shedding its own parts as it slid. It whooshed to a stop, settled a bit into the muddy swamp, and was silent.

  Cal had more luck. By straining the wiring in his ship to the burning out point, he fought the even keel back and came down to a slow, side slippage that propelled him crabwise. He dropped lower and lower, and because there was nothing against which to measure his course, he did not know that he was describing a huge circle. His ship came to ground not more than a half-mile from Benj’s demolished craft.

  He set the master oscillator running in his ship and men put the field locator in his pocket. No matter where he went, he could return to his own craft, at least. Then he stepped out of his flier to inspect the damage.

  A roaring went up that attracted Cal’s attention.

  He turned, and started to beat through the swamp toward the noise.

  Light caught his eyes, and he came upon the burning wreckage of Benj’s flier. Benj was paying no attention to the burning mass behind him, nor was he interested in Tinker Elliott. He was working over Cal’s original equipment furiously, plying tools deftly and making swift tests as he worked.

  Tinker was struggling across the ground of the swamp, pulling herself along with her hands. Her hips and legs were following limply as though they had not a bite of life. Her face was strained with the effort, though she seemed to be in no pain.

  She saw Cal, and inadvertently cried: “Cal!”

  Benj leapt to his feet, his hand swinging one of the three-foot welding irons. He saw Cal, and with his other hand he whipped out the needle beam and fired. The beam seared the air beside Cal’s thigh.

  Cursing, Benj tried again, but nothing came from the beam. He hurled the useless weapon into the swamp and came forward in a crouch, waving the welding iron before him.

  Cal ducked the first swing and caught Benj in the face with a fist. It hurtled Benj back, but he came forward again, waving the white-hot needle-sharp iron before him.

  Cal couldn’t face that unarmed. He dropped below the thrust, and his hand fastened on the matching iron to the pair that went in every flier repair kit. He flung himself back, and came up in a crouch as his thumb found the switch that heated his own point.

  Silently, their feet making soggy sounds in the swamp, Cal and Benj crossed points in a guard of hatred.

  Benj lunged in a feint, first. That started it. Cal blocked the feint swiftly and then crossed his iron down to block the real lunge that came low. While Benj recovered, Cal thrust and missed by niches. Benj brought the hot tip up and passed at Cal’s face. Cal wiped the iron aside with a circular motion and caught Benj on the crook of the elbow.

  Smoke curled from the burn and Benj howled. It infuriated him and he pressed forward, engaging Cal’s point. Cal blocked another thrust, parried a low swing, and drove Benj’s point high. He dropped under the point and lunged in a thrust that almost went home. Benj dropped his white-hot iron and deflected the thrust. He jabbed forward as Cal regained his balance, and pressed forward again before Cal could get set.

  The mugginess caught Benj’s feet and slowed him. Cal was slowed, too, but his backward scramble to regain balance was swifter than Benj’s advance. The white-hot points made little circles in the foggy murk as they swung and darted.

  Benj wound Cal’s point in a circular motion and then disengaged to lunge forward. His point caught Cal in the thigh and the scar burned like living flame, laming Cal slightly. Cal parried, and then pressed forward with a bit of the fastest handwork Benj had ever seen. By sheer luck, Benj blocked and parried this encounter. The final lunge found Benj retreating fast enough to evade the thrust that might have caught him fair had he been slow in retreat.

  He regained and forced Cal back. His dancing point kept Cal too busy blocking to counterthrust, and Cal fought a stubborn retreat. The ground behind him grew harder as he went back, and so he took a full backward step to get the benefit of hard, dry ground. He made his stand on the bit of dry knoll, and fought Benj to a standstill.

  He fought defensively, waiting for Benj to come close enough to hit. Their irons danced in and out, and Benj circled his brother slowly. Partway around, Benj forced Cal’s point up and rushed him. Cal backed away three steps—and tripped over Tinker’s hips. He went rolling in a heap, curling his feet and legs up into his stomach.

  Benj leaped over Tinker and rushed down on Cal, who kicked out with both feet and caught Benj hard enough to send him flying back.

  Both men jumped to their feet, circled each other warily, waiting for an opening. Benj rushed forward and Cal went to meet the charge. The ring of the iro
ns came again and the white-hot points fenced in and out.

  Benj thrust forward, high, and Cal blocked him with the shaft of the iron. Their arms went up, shaft across shaft, and shoulder to shoulder they strived in a body block.

  “Steal my identity, will you?” snarled Cal.

  “Destroy it,” Benj rasped. “You’ve been asking for this.”

  Cal’s mind flashed, irrelevantly, to books and pictures he had seen. In such, the villain always spat in the hero’s face in such a body block. Cal snarled, pursed his lips, and spat in Benj’s face. Then with a mighty effort, he shouldered Benj back a full three feet and crossed points with him again.

  Benj wiped his face on his shirtsleeve and, raving mad, drove forward, his point making wicked arcs. Cal parried the dancing point, engaged Benj in a thrust and counterthrust, and then with Benj’s point blocked high he drilled forward.

  The white-hot point quenched itself in Benj’s throat with a nauseating hiss.

  Cal stood there, shaking his head at the sight, and retching slightly. His face, which had been set like granite, softened. He dropped his iron and turned away.

  “Tink!” he cried.

  “Nice job, Cal,” she said with a strained smile.

  “But you?”

  “I’m in no pain.”

  “But what’s wrong?”

  “Fractured vertebrae, I think. I’m paralyzed from the waistline down. That crash—”

  “Bad. Now what?”

  “Where’s your ship?”

  “Back there a half-mile or so,” said Cal.

  “Don’t carry me,” she warned as he tried to lift her. “Go back there and either bring it here or get something to strap me on.”

  “It’ll take hours. The ship won’t fly. I’ll have to radio back to Northern Landing for help.”

  “I … won’t last.”

  “You—” The meaning hit him then. “You won’t last?”

  “Not unless that vertebrae is repaired.”

  “Then what can we do?”

  “Cal …where’s Murdoch’s Hoard?”