Raiders from the Rings

by Alan Edward Nourse

  It was not unusual for a raid to be six or eight months in preparation. This particular raid had taken five months of intensive hard work before the Raid Commander was satisfied. At last the orbit ship, one of the great spherical inter-planetary cargo ships of the Spacer fleet, was commissioned for the raid and thrown into orbit toward the sun. And once again, as in so many raids before, the orbit ship and all the rest of the raiding fleet, from the tiny S-80’s to the twenty-man cruisers that handled the big null-gravity generators, began to take their places in a wide orbit around Earth, using the hidden side of Earth’s moon for a rendezvous point before the raid began.

  In the final gathering at rendezvous the ships maintained strict radio and radar silence, converging on the orbit ship for their last briefing. Up to that point the raid could be cancelled at any moment, either on order from the Spacer Council or on advice of the contact men on Earth. But once zero hour had arrived and the ships had begun their final drive down to the surface of the planet, there was no stopping. The raiders knew that from that point on they were on their own, that the success or failure of the raid was in their hands.

  Ben Trefon had seen many pictures of the verdant planet that lay in his view screen now. He had seen picture tapes of the rolling farm lands, carefully operated to provide the biggest possible food yields for the teeming millions of people living there. He had seen films of the huge steel caves, the great tiered cities that spread over the largest part of the planet’s surface, the hive-like homes of the Earthmen. He had seen pictures of the rolling roads that criss-crossed the planet to carry food and supplies from continent to continent, and of the undersea farms that grew algae and sea food, the staples of the Earthmen’s diet. From time to time he knew that Spacer raids had struck at the huge floating harvest rafts, many square miles across, which floated on the major oceans of the planet and tended the undersea crops.

  But try as he would, as he watched the planet approaching, Ben Trefon could not imagine what life on a planet such as Earth could be like. Earthmen were planet-bound; not only were their skills in space crude and feeble, they were bound by a fear of space as real as it was incredible to the Spacers. More than once Ben had tried to imagine what it would be like to have been born in one of the steel cities on Earth, to grow up in the underground nurseries and recreation halls, rarely seeing the brightness of the sun at the surface, or breathing the unprocessed air outside, living from birth until death bound to the surface of a single planet without a breath of hope of ever leaving it. More than once he had tried to imagine how Earthmen must feel, living in constant terror of invasion from the skies, with every movement of their lives dictated by a rigid martial law that barely left them freedom to breathe.

  But try as he would, he could not imagine it. Of course, he had never actually set foot on Earth before.

  He had never actually seen an Earthman, and he certainly had never talked to one. But he knew about them, he thought. He knew a good deal indeed. He had heard of their cruelty and viciousness, he knew of their world of cold steel and humming machines, of the clatter of firearms and the test-firing of their great anti-aircraft batteries. He knew of the Earthmen’s fear of space, even though he had never been able to understand it, and he had heard of the cruel retaliatory raids and disciplinary parties Earth had sent out into space from time to time in an effort to beat back the harassment of the Spacers. He had heard that the greatest bravery, the ultimate courage that an Earthman could exhibit was to shoot down a Spacer during a raid. He had heard other stories, too, stories that were hard to believe of civilized people, yet stories which fitted into the rest of the picture of Earthmen in his mind: stories of Spacers captured alive during raids, imprisoned in steel cages and hauled through the corridors and passageways of Earth’s cities like animals before they were finally burned in public executions.

  There had always been such stories, and the war between Earthmen and the men of space had dragged on as long as he could remember, with endless series of blows and counter-blows, endless successions of casualty lists following the raids, and the mournful singing of the maukis in memory of the men who never came back. Every Spacer knew that attempts had been made repeatedly to make peace with the men of Earth, to do away with the raids and to permit peaceful commerce and intercommunication between those who lived beyond the atmosphere of the mother planet and those who lived on the surface. Yet every attempt had failed, and the war continued.

  Static burst from the radio at his elbow, and Ben awoke from his thoughts. The planet nearly filled his view screen now, growing larger by the minute, and the raider ships were falling into an orbital pattern as the Raid Commander in the flagship broke radio silence. “All right, men,” his voice came through sharply.

  “They’re aware of us now. All hands stand by your tracer rockets. They’ll throw up a barrage as soon as they have us tracked. Now stand by for a final checkout.”

  Ben corrected his controls for drift in the squadron formation and turned his ear to the loudspeaker as the commander began running down the list of squads for the final make-ready check.

  “Cruiser squadrons, stand ready. Number one sound off.”

  “First squad ready, sir.”

  “Duties?”

  “Antigravity generators are fully functional, sir. We are warming up the gyros.”

  “Then check those couplings again. You won’t have time to fiddle with them when we reach the strike point. Next?”

  “Second squad ready, sir.”

  Ben listened as the fleet of ships sounded off in turn. They were entering a braking pattern now, nosing down into the thicker layers of the planet’s atmosphere. One by one the squad leaders answered muster, making no attempt at secrecy now. Ben heard his own squad leader, commanding about thirty ships, sound off in response to the muster.

  “Seventh squad ready, sir.”

  “Do your men have their target in mind?”

  “Yes, sir. Top level recreation hall near the south city margin. Five red flares to guide us in.”

  “Then good hunting,” the commander said. “And remember: no more violence than necessary. Use your tangle-guns. Those girls aren’t maukis yet. Don’t make it tough on the indoctrination crews.” Suddenly, down below, four flares of light appeared against the black disk of the planet, and a warning signal began to buzz on Ben’s control panel. The commander’s checkout was interrupted by a burst of static as another voice broke in sharply. “Now hear this, all ships! Stand by for missile barrage. Ready your homing shells. Those are big ones, and they’ll have warheads.” The flares on the surface of the planet seemed to grow larger, moving in a curving trajectory up toward the orbit of the Spacer ships. Then, one by one, the main boosters of the ground-to-air missiles burned out and the smaller guidance jets were flaring on and off as the missiles’ sensitive “noses” began searching out their targets in the onrushing fleet. Ben gripped his crash bar tightly, watching for some sign of Spacer counterfire. The missile flares were lost from view behind him now, but he knew they were still coming, moving up swiftly toward the carefully precalculated interception point, each carrying a cargo of death for any invading ship it contacted. There was another salvo of the great missiles from below, and then another, and still Ben watched and waited for the Spacer cruisers’ answering fire.

  And then it came: a dozen sparks of light appearing in the blackness around him as the dark Spacer ships let go their defensive barrage. A swarm of interceptor missiles carrying tracers zoomed down in a great arc toward the oncoming warheads. In his rear view screen Ben watched the silent panorama of red lights moving against the blackness. The Spacer barrage was late; already the warheads were within pickup distance of the lead ships. And if a warhead missile got close enough to enter the invading fleet’s approach pattern…

  Somewhere below there was a violent flare of yellow light, and then another. Two great fireballs appeared like apparitions in the blackness as Spacer rockets at last reached the attacking missiles and det
onated their hydrogen warheads harmlessly in space. Moments later came a third burst below them, too close for comfort, and a few seconds before interception point the fourth exploded. Against the enormous orange flash Ben could see the Spacer ships silhouetted as they moved relentlessly down into their landing orbit.

  Safe from the first four! But this was only the beginning. Missile flares were visible across the whole surface of the planet now, and on a sharp command five of the Spacer cruisers dropped out of formation, moving down to a rear-guard position twenty miles below and fifty miles behind the rest of the fleet.

  Every Spacer ship carried a variety of defensive and offensive missiles, both air-to-air and air-to-ground, but the cruisers were the defensive work horses of the Spacer fleet, prepared to stand off the most vicious ground-to-air attacks. Now Ben could see salvo after salvo of air-to-air missiles bursting from the bellies of the cruisers and zooming down to intercept the clumsy Earth weapons. Fleetingly, Ben thought of his father’s warning about some new defense plan the Earthmen had, and he smiled to himself. There was nothing new about this. The same slow, awkward missiles, the same laborious attempts at interception that the Earthmen always tried, with equipment so far outclassed by the swift, sensitive Spacer defensive weapons that it was almost laughable. Not quite laughable, because a few always got through, and a few Spacer ships always exploded in blazing flares of orange light, before the fleet got down below the tactical range of the great missiles. Even so, the defensive attempt was feeble and essentially fruitless, and that was fine, Ben thought. If they want to throw away their hardware this way, that’s up to them.

  Throughout the barrage, orders came for tactical maneuvering as the Raid Commander led his fleet deftly downward. Below a certain level they would be safe from the hydrogen warheads. As Ben moved his own controls to conform to the changing attack pattern, he saw a mighty flare up ahead—one of the lead Spacer ships was struck. The Earth missile hurled its tons of explosive violence into the very spearhead of the Spacer approach pattern, closely followed by a second. “All right, men,” the commander’s voice said. “They’ve spotted our pattern. Now take battle formation. Drop down and rejoin over the strike point.”

  Ben threw his control levers forward, veering his ship out of the vortex of destruction up ahead, and nosing it down deeper into the thickening atmospheric blanket of the planet. The little ship’s skin temperature began to rise, and he navigated on his own, trying to gauge his speed by the approach to critical skin temp. Speed and agility were essential now, but unwary ships had literally burned themselves to cinders by trying to move down too swiftly. This was the danger area, the missile belt where every Spacer ship had to rely on its own protective devices. In order to make as poor targets as possible, it was routine for raiding fleets to spread themselves over millions of square miles, each pilot taking a course with but one goal in mind: to drop down to the surface, decelerate as swiftly as atmospheric friction would allow, and somehow stay alive in the process.

  For all the great distances to be covered, the Spacer ships were coming in fast. The dark planet’s surface gave way to a twilight zone, and then full daylight as they moved around into the sun. Ben could see the fleecy white cloud layers clinging to the planet’s skin like a great fur coat. There was a rift in the clouds, and the shattering glare of water reflecting the sun struck his eyes. He was over ocean now.

  Moments later he was skimming into thicker atmosphere, one hand on radio control as he sent out feelers to locate the other ships in his squad.

  One responded; then another. Presently he could see the other ships, moving in with him to gather for their landing pattern, and the squad leader was calling signals. Now they were back across twilight to the dark side of Earth; the clouds opened up and they could see below them the pattern of surface lights outlining first the coastal cities of the western hemisphere northern continent, and then the vast blanket of light from the interior metropolis they were seeking, extending north and south for three hundred miles and east and west for two hundred: the city of Chicago with its seventy million people and the food storage warehouses designed to keep them fed.

  Ben smiled in satisfaction. They had moved in so fast that blackout had not even yet been accomplished. A slower operation and they would have had to search their way with flares and follow directional signals from their contact men below. Now Ben was following the signals of his squad leader almost automatically, obeying landing instructions as the anti-aircraft flack burst on all sides of him. One of his companion ships was struck and burst apart in air, but Ben did not falter at the controls. He worked his null-gravity controls now, leading the ship down in a descending spiral. Somewhere below bright red ground flares appeared in a pattern of a five-pointed star; moments later, with his null-grav engines whining Ben set his little ship slowly down in the center of the area marked by the flares, felt the ship jar as it gently settled to a stop.

  He was on target zero.

  Whatever Ben Trefon had expected to see when he landed his S-80 at the strike point designated for him, he was unprepared for the nightmarish scene that greeted him as he checked the tangle-gun at his belt and threw open the lock to step down on the surface of the planet Earth for the first time.

  Their approach had been so swift, and the landing flares set off so shortly before their ships touched down that blackout in the target area had been incomplete and, on the concourse outside, the raiding ships were faced by a panic-stricken and hysterical mob. Ben’s ship had settled down on a broad steel

  .thoroughfare lined with shops and gardens, with a great brightly lighted hall just across the strip from his ship. A dozen other S-80’s had landed in the vicinity, all but encircling the hall, and as Ben stepped down on the metal surface of the concourse, the frantic scurrying of people, obviously interrupted without warning in the midst of their evening business on the concourse, reminded him of a pack of space mice scurrying for cover in a cargo ship’s hold when the lights suddenly went on. Sirens were screaming in his ears as he jumped down, signalling his companions from the other ships, and somewhere in the distance he heard a rattle of gunfire and a series of explosions that seemed to shake the metal roadway.

  They had landed on a promenade, located at the surface level of the great steel Earth city, a metal strip that seemed to extend for miles in either direction, with open air shops, restaurants, recreation halls and solariums. Ben knew something of the ways of city life on this crowded planet; he knew that these surface promenades in the open air were largely the domain of the wealthy and influential on Earth, for there simply was not enough surface room on the planet to allow all members of society to have free access to the top levels of the city areas. Even so, the promenades were usually crowded with pleasure seekers in the evenings, and it was only the arrival of unexpected company that had created the pandemonium that greeted his eyes now.

  People were fighting and screaming to gain entrance to the buildings, to get under cover somehow from the attackers. Lights along the promenade were going out in rapid succession, and surface cars were scurrying up and down the thoroughfare and ducking off into secondary alleys like frightened beetles scurrying under rocks. Inside the recreation hall near-est to Ben’s ship there were shrieks and shouts as someone bellowed at the top of his lungs for order. Crowds of young people, who had been enjoying the freedom of the open air just a few moments before, were now rushing for the escalators and elevators leading down into the heart of the city, and people were trampling and fighting their way toward light switches in an effort to black out the hall and surrounding area.

  Ben snapped on the powerful searchlights on his S-80, flooding the entrance to the recreation hall with light. Two other raider craft had landed close to him: now searchlight beams appeared on the far side of the hall, and Ben knew that Spacer ships had encircled the place in landing. The pilot of the nearest ship waved at Ben, tangle-gun in hand, and ran across to meet him, panting.

  “Let’s get in there an
d stop those elevators,” he cried. “They’re going down the escalators like rats down a chute!”

  “Where are the others?” Ben said.

  “Coming in from the other side. But we’d better move. The place will be empty in a few minutes.” Ben nodded, and they moved toward the recreation hall entrance as two other raiders joined them.

  Ben held his tangle-gun at ready, fingering the grenades at his belt with the other hand. Two young men with terror-filled faces were blocking the entrance, unarmed, and Ben and his cohorts bore down on them. Ben caught the first man a full body block, shoving him aside with sheer momentum; the Spacers behind him followed close as he crashed through the entranceway. Once inside the raiders scattered to take up preplanned stations about the room.

  The escalators were their first concern. Already they were carrying loads of people down, a tangle of struggling arms and legs, but moving down inexorably. As they saw the Spacers crowd through the entranceway, some dove headfirst down the escalator chutes. Ben threatened the crowd at the escalator entrance with his tangle-gun, motioning them back until the moving staircase had carried its load down and stood empty. Then he tossed a grenade down the chute, and the escalator gears ground to a halt.

  There was another explosion as a grenade smashed the elevator doors and another as the cables were wrecked. In less than two minutes the hall was sealed up, with no exit unguarded. Two large men rushed Ben with angry shouts; he waited coolly until they were close enough, then triggered the tangle-gun, aiming at their feet. The egg-shaped gray pellet smashed on the floor beneath them, sending up twisting black tendrils of tangle web that stopped them as though they had been poleaxed. Both tumbled to the floor, struggling against the powerful adhesive of the tangle web, bound tighter and tighter as its molecular structure tightened the more they fought to extricate themselves. Nobody ever died from an encounter with a tangle web, but anybody caught in one would be held for hours in its tenacious tendrils, able to breath but not much more, until the molecular activation gradually seeped away and allowed the victim to release himself.