Collected Short Fiction (Jerry eBooks)

by J F Bone

  Inside, the supports holding the ice roof were warped and twisted from the slow flowing of the ice, and the broad tunnel into the depths that had once been straight was now crooked and bent. Our lights cast beams of brightness ahead of us as we cautiously made our way downward to what had once been the entrance hall from which passages had radiated outward to the various working and living levels. The hall was barely two-thirds its former size, its walls oddly twisted and warped. It looked fragile and unstable. Many of the supporting girders were buckled and useless. A great pile of broken ice lay on the floor, evidence of an icefall that could have happened years—or minutes—ago.

  Martinelli looked up at the jagged ceiling some ten meters overhead. “This will do,” he said. “There’s plenty of free drop here to get the crash and rattle that will be necessary. We can plant the microphone in the entrance and bury a couple of small charges under that bent pillar in the center of the room and see what happens when we touch them off.”

  “Nalton,” I said.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You’re the demolitions man. What’ll happen if we crack that pillar?”

  Nalton looked upward. “It’ll probably bring the whole roof down,” he said. “That hunk of duralloy is supporting about half the load on the center of the ceiling.”

  “How much plastic do you figure’s necessary for the job?”

  “About four hundred grams, sir. I wouldn’t care to use any less.”

  “Well—get about it,” I said, “and be careful. In air as cold as this, plastic’s tricky stuff so I’ve been told.”

  “I know, sir,” the youngster said. “That’s why I’ve been keeping it in a thermo bag. It should be hot enough to mold easily.”

  “Okay, it’s your baby. Get the charge placed. I’ll run the detonator wires back to the entrance. When you’re through, come up and join us. Then we’ll set it off. Martinelli and his two monkeys’ll handle the sound recording.”

  Nalton grinned, and I hoped that Able and Baker didn’t get the drift—but it was hardly probable that they would. I dropped the end of the wire beside Nalton and slowly climbed the long corridor to the surface, paying out carefully and doing my best to avoid the leads Martinelli had run from his microphones. When I arrived at the airlock, the three of them had already set up the recorder and had the tape running.

  MARTINELLI looked up at me. “Thought I’d better get this going just in case,” he announced cheerfully.

  “Just in case of what?”

  “You never know. That hall looked pretty fragile to me. That ceiling could come down any minute.”

  “Nice cheerful guy, aren’t you?” I asked. “Or do you know Nalton’s down there?”

  “I know and it worries me, but this is the only place we’ll get an audible icefall on this crazy world. There’s no sense in missing anything.”

  As though in answer the needles on the recorder jumped clear across the dial faces and a shudder rippled upward through the ice.

  “Icefall!” Martinelli yelped. “Nalton!” I shouted—and started down the passageway. A blast of frigid air swept up out of the depths and a whole section of passage in front of me buckled, twisted, and with horrid deliberation broke into huge blocks and shards that filled the passage with flying daggers! I stumbled back. There was sound this time, rumbling, grinding sound as millions of tons of ice shuddered, shifted, and crushed together. The shockwave from the icequake knocked me to my knees. Blind with panic I turned and crawled back to the airlock as shock after shock rippled through the cracked and shattered ice. Martinelli and the others were already standing outside, numbed by the violence of the quake, uncertain whether to run or stand still. The rolligon had been tossed nearly two meters from where we had parked it, and stood rocking back and forth on its flotons as the tremors passed with steadily decreasing intensity as the shifting ice obliterated the last trace of Old Station—and spaceman second class Tamashiro Nalton.

  I felt numb. Five minutes ago Nalton was alive—a nice kid with a sense of humor and a future. Now—my mind recoiled from the thought of what those millions of tons of shifting ice had done to him.

  Martinelli, Able and Baker looked at me. Martinelli’s face was frozen in horror—the two goons merely looked stupid. But one thing I was thankful for, they weren’t grinning. If they had so much as showed a tooth I think I’d have killed them. I liked Nalton. The boy was a morale lifter. We were all going to suffer from his loss.

  “I hope you got your damned sound,” I gritted as I faced Martinelli.

  He shivered and a measure of sanity came back to his eyes. “Oh God!” he said. Sweat stood out on his high forehead. “Oh God!—I’ve never heard anything so horrible—and Nalton’s screams!” He retched—something that no one should ever do in a spacesuit—and I could no longer see his face.

  SOMEHOW I managed to get Able and Baker moving. We packed the recording apparatus, led Martinelli back to the rolligon and headed back to Pluto Station across the ice hills that separated the old from the new base. I let Martinelli stew in his own digestive juices. At the moment I could do nothing else—and perhaps even if I could I wouldn’t. I couldn’t help blaming him for Nalton’s death, and every time I thought of that grinning cheerful kid I felt sick and angry—angry as much at myself as at Martinelli. I should never have let a man of mine go down into that death trap. Getting the sounds was Martinelli’s business, not mine or my crew’s. Next time—and all the rest of the times, he could damn well kill his own sloats.

  WE BLASTED off Pluto in a somber mood. Martinelli with his burned face, me with my guilt and resentment, the crew with their anger at the Solar Union technicians, and the technicians with their righteous air that was all the more sickening because it was right. They didn’t have to go on that trip that killed Nalton. The “Queen” wasn’t a happy ship as we hurtled sunward to intercept Saturn. Not even the fact that the recording of the icefall was better than Raposnikov could have wished helped very much. I couldn’t listen to it. The scream torn from Nalton’s throat just at the beginning was all I could take.

  We orbited Saturn on schedule, and the sight of the great-ringed world spinning below us was as heartening to the crew as a shot of euphoral. You could feel their spirits rise as we drove in toward the rings, killing our speed to make a landing on Titan.

  Like Pluto, Titan was an iceworld. Its surface temperature of minus 245 degrees centigrade was far too low to support unprotected human life, but it wasn’t too low to support the Corens, those peculiar amorphous entities with their silicon-based organic structure and their incredible capacity to withstand cold. Like most of the sun’s natural children that man had visited, the largest moon of Saturn supported life. Pluto, the captive planet with the eccentric orbit did not. Nor did Iapetus or the smaller airless satellites of Jupiter and Neptune. But Titan, with its atmosphere, was inhabited long before man came to share the world and plunder it of its natural resources of heavy metals. The Corens, semi-intelligent, partly civilized, and thoroughly unpleasant, had done their best to discourage immigration, and had succeeded remarkably well until the First Punitive Expedition reduced them to relative harmlessness.

  They still attacked isolated prospectors now and then, but they stayed away from the domes where Earthmen worked and were present in numbers. They had learned their lesson and were no longer a menace. A nuisance, perhaps, but mankind was big enough to stand nuisances, and we had no intention of committing genocide upon the original inhabitants. We had no use for the frigid surface of their world. Our interests lay in what was under the surface—the uranium, the thorium, and the other heavy elements that powered Earth’s atomic civilization. So there were probably as many Corens today as there were when the first prospectors arrived and they were still the wild, warlike, death-defying savages who would willingly sacrifice a hundred of their number to kill one human. The only difference between the modern Coren and his ancestors is that he doesn’t care to commit fruitless suicide attacking domes and spaces
hips.

  “Just how,” I asked Martinelli, “do you expect to get a recording of a Coren warcry? They avoid us.”

  “Simple,” Martinelli said. “We use a decoy.”

  “Who? Not one of my crew!”

  “Certainly not. We use Anderson. He prospected out here and knows the ropes. We put him down in a prospect hole, furnish him with an electronic fence, a communicator and an automatic rifle and await developments.”

  “Does he know what you’re planning for him?” I asked.

  “Naturally. I hired him on contract for this job.”

  “But that’s sending a man out to be murdered!”

  “He did it before, with less hope of reward.”

  “But”—I shrugged and shut up. Anderson knew what he was doing—what chances he took.

  “The greatest concentration of Corens, so I understand, is in the South Polar region,” Martinelli said. “We’ll land near there and break out one of the lifeboats. Anderson’ll set out and find some Corens. He’ll land about a day’s march away and set up camp, using the lifeboat as a base, and when the Corens come he’ll invite attack, record their warcry, and then come back here in the lifeboat. It’s simple.”

  Yeah—simple. But Martinelli didn’t know the Corens. He had no experience with their uncanny ability to camouflage themselves to look like natural rocks or siliceous vegetation. He didn’t know their incredible ferocity or tenacity of life, or their equally incredible patience. Probably Anderson did, but the man was hardly more intelligent than a Coren. It would be all too easy for him to become a second casualty, and I wanted no more. One death on this voyage was enough. As captain, I was responsible for both crew and passengers and I had no desire to explain to an Admiralty Court why I allowed a passenger to expose himself to possible death. Actually, I couldn’t stop him. Once on a planet my authority over passengers was nil, but I’d be the target of some pretty hard questioning if anything happened.

  “We’re going to tape this insane idea of yours into the ship’s log,” I said. “I want it on record that I’m opposed to this sort of thing and that it is your responsibility.”

  Martinelli shrugged. “As you wish,” he said indifferently. “I’ll have Anderson make a statement, too.”

  I sighed.

  ANDERSON took off in the lifeboat shortly after we landed and completed the usual security precautions. After searing a hundred-yard wide area around the base of the ship with the rockets on idling, we strung an electronic fence and hooked it to one of the auxiliary generators. The gun turrets were opened and our heavy weapons were checked to see that they were in operating condition. After that, two groups of crewmen covered every square foot of the seared area blasting any suspicious bump or bulge on the ground. Then, and only then, did we break out a lifeboat, provision and equip it, and send Anderson on his way. As he disappeared southward, I had the feeling we would never see him again.

  Half an hour later he reported in over the communicator. “Spotted about two hundred of the jellies—am circling them. Get a position fix.”

  Wagner, our astrogator, obligingly pinpointed him and gave him the data on his position.

  “Will now fly about thirty miles away and find a landing site,” Anderson said.

  “Some navigator,” Wagner said. “He doesn’t even know his position.” He flipped the transmitter switch. “Queen to Anderson. Will track you. Fly over your landing area until I pinpoint you.”

  “Okay, Queen.” The transmitter stayed on as Anderson circled.

  “You can set down now,” Wagner said. “I have a fix.”

  “Thanks.” Anderson’s heavy voice was flat. “I’ll contact you again as soon as I get my security up.”

  Regularly on the hour, Anderson reported. For the first 48-hour-period nothing happened. Then Anderson came on ahead of schedule.

  “They’re here!” Anderson’s voice crackled over the phone. “I have about 20 new rocks in my front yard that weren’t here yesterday. Looks like I’m going to have visitors.” His voice was almost happy.

  “Increase the charge on your fence,” I ordered. “There’s no sense in asking for trouble.”

  “I already have,” Anderson said. “I know these jellies as well as you do.”

  “And keep your communicator open,” I added. “You may not have an opportunity to open communication again. We’ll stand by here.”

  “I’ll do that—but there’s no need to worry.”

  “Don’t bet on that. The Corens are smart.”

  “Okay—but—” A wild eldritch cry came faintly over the communicator.

  “Well—that’s it,” Anderson said calmly. “They’ve decided to pay me a call. I’ll blast a couple of them to get things stirred up. Tell Martinelli he’ll probably get his warcry any minute now.”

  “Was that a Coren warcry?” Martinelli asked. He was leaning over my shoulder listening to our conversation.

  “No,” I said. “But keep your ear glued to this speaker and you’ll hear one. That was just their way of talking to one another. They have a tonal language, not an inflected one. They make sounds by forcing air from their air bladders through their breathing tubes. The principle is something like that of a horn. When you hear their warcry, you’ll recognize it.” I grinned thinly. “You can’t help it. It sounds like a traffic jam of homicidal maniacs on the Midcontinent Skyway.”

  Martinelli chuckled nervously.

  I turned to the ship’s annunciator. “Now hear this,” I ordered. “Prepare for blastoff.”

  “Why?” Martinelli asked.

  “We may have to help Anderson,” I said. “He just might not have firepower enough to get out of there.”

  Sound erupted from the communicator. It wasn’t exactly discord, but it had a nerve grating quality that made the short hairs on the back of one’s neck stand erect and icy prickles chase one another down one’s spine. There were harsh undertones of menace, overtones of shrill hate, and a full-bodied middle range of detestation. I’d heard it before, but never so loud. It had the volume and some of the tonal quality of the brasses in an orchestra—a metallic diapason of rage and hatred. The sound swelled and throbbed inside the “Queen’s” control room—and was suddenly punctuated by Anderson’s horrified voice. “My God! There’s thousands of them!”

  “Get out of there!” I ordered. “That fence won’t hold.”

  “I know,” Anderson said, “they’re all over the boat. They broke through the fence just like it wasn’t there.” His voice had become oddly calm. “I can’t take off—they’re weighting me down.”

  “Open the jets to full,” I said. “Spin the ship. Shake them off!”

  “I’ll try—but you’d better get here quick. I don’t think it’ll work and this boat won’t take much of that treatment.”

  “To hell with the boat,” I said as I hit the emergency blastoff alarm. “It’s your life I’m worried about.”

  “You’re worried,” Anderson said. “What do you think I am?”

  Fifteen seconds later we were airborne—heading for the fix Wagner had taken on Anderson’s position.

  “If you can get here in another 20 minutes, I think I can hold out,” Anderson’s tight voice came over the communicator. The background noises of his jets and the grinding of metal against rock indicated that he was taking my advice. “I don’t dare try to roll the boat over, but the jets are scorching enough of them to keep the pressure off. The hull’s bulging a bit but I think it’ll hold.”

  “We’re on the way,” I said. “Hang on.”

  “I haven’t any—” the communicator went dead. One of the Corens had probably ripped off the antenna.

  WE flashed across Titan’s surface, travelling low and fast. I don’t know how the crew felt, but I wanted to get to Anderson while he was still alive. The Corens were incredibly strong, and a lifeboat isn’t too ruggedly built. All they had to do was spring one plate and Anderson was dead.

  “He’s just over that next range of hills, skipper,�
�� Wagner’s voice came into my earphones.

  I threw the “Queen” into a vertical attitude, balancing her on the jets as momentum carried us forward. It was a dangerous maneuver, but I needed the jetblast. It was the best weapon we had. Sweat poured off me as I balanced the ship on her drives, using the jet to kill our speed as we swept over the hills and into the valley beyond.

  The entire floor of the bowl-shaped valley was crawling with Corens. The lifeboat was covered with them. As they sensed the “Queen” the gray blue blobs began splitting up and moving away with startling speed as they extruded limbs from their amorphous bodies and ran for safety. They had no desire to face a full-sized ship.

  But those covering the lifeboat didn’t run. They clung like limpets as we plowed stern first toward the seething mass of siliceous flesh, our tubes blasting fiery paths across the ground. Some of them died in the jetblast as I set the “Queen” down heavily in what was an arrival rather than a landing. Shock raced through the ship, slamming passengers and crew against safety webs and shock couches. For a moment we teetered dangerously as I stabbed at the steering jets, trying to keep us upright Below me the automatics in the three turrets that could be brought to bear began pouring low order solid and vibratory destruction into the Corens still covering the lifeboat while the fourth turret speeded the departure of those who were still within range in the valley.

  The “Queen” shuddered and steadied in a vertical attitude as Bernstein, acting without orders, opened the engine room hatch and dropped to the ground followed by five men carrying flamethrowers. At the sight of this easier prey, the Corens swarming over Anderson’s boat, dropped to the icy ground and came scuttling forward on their pseudolegs, trumpeting their warcry as they ran.