Dane pulled his hood around so that his lips
were set against the interpreter’s mike.
“Brach—to the flitter!” He did not know where the
alien was. Perhaps he had already fled the camp. But if not, Dane had
to give him his chance. “To the flitter, brach!”
“Get going!” Meshler tried to shove Dane from the
cabin. But the Terran clung stubbornly to his seat and gestured the
ranger to go on.
“Brach—come to the flitter!” He signaled once
more while fending off a push from Meshler.
With a hot exclamation, the ranger elbowed past Dane and ran as
Tau had done, but halfway to the flitter, he turned and aimed a
pencil of blaster fire at the foreground, lashing a smoking trench
across the soil to slow those coming to take them.
“Brach!” Dane could wait no longer. He dropped from
the cabin and zigzagged a pattern toward the flitter with flares of
blasters cutting right and left. They were not aiming to take
prisoners—they were out to kill.
Before he reached the open door of the flitter cabin, something
streaked for the craft, and Dane, with a leap of heart, knew it for
the brach.
Somehow they tumbled in together, but this time Tau, having
reached the flitter first, was at the controls. He must have hit
the rise button full force, for they took off straight up with a
lift that had some of the power of a spacer’s take-off,
pinning them for an instant or two to the seats over which they
sprawled in a squirming mixture of men and brach.
Before they were sorted out, the flitter was screaming into the
early morning at the highest speed it could maintain in a wild race
to put distance between them and the camp.
“We’re away, I think!” Tau said as they
spiraled into a graying sky. “I didn’t see another
flitter, and unless they can draw us with another ground
beam—”
“Which they must have. Remember how they got us
before,” countered Dane. He expected every second to feel
that compelling drag on them once again, bringing them earthward.
Why did Meshler believe they could escape when that had happened
before? Now that he had time to think, Dane was puzzled. Surely the
ranger had not forgotten—
“North and east—” Meshler, as if believing
they had nothing to fear now, leaned over to inspect the direction
dial. Tau obediently adjusted their course until the needle hit the
proper marking.
The brach had subsided against Dane. He could feel him gasping
with the effort of that last dash. The alien was a weight on his
lap, and he drew the edges of his jacket about him.
“No ground beam—” Dane could not understand
how they had made so clean an escape.
“Not yet anyway,” commented Tau. In the subdued
light the expression on the medic’s face suggested that he,
too, expected momentarily seizure by that force. Nor did they relax
even as the minutes sped by and the pull did not clamp them.
“Get to Cartl’s,” Meshler said, but more as if
he were talking to himself than to them. “Beam in to port
with their com—”
“Report what?” Dane demanded. “Your
authorities must have some knowledge of all this—”
“But do they?” Tau cut in thoughtfully. “It
wouldn’t be the first time that research techs went beyond
the agreed-upon boundaries, and it wouldn’t be the first time
they got in deeper than they planned.”
“Or sold out—” Meshler added bleakly.
“Sold out to whom?” Dane wanted to know. “And
why?”
But the ranger merely shook his head. That he had been shaken by
the events of the past night was plain. His pragmatic approach at
the LB was long since lost. What he had seen here must have proven
that the story told by the Queen’s crew was true and
that there was far more going on in the wilderness of his own
planet than his service, pledged to the regulation and patrol of
that same country, knew.
“That force barrier,” he said now. “Can you
tell with that detect whether it is up again or not.”
“No. It will pick up radiation but not specify as to any
one kind. I cannot be sure without altering it which radiation is
the field.”
“There might be one way.” Dane turned his head to
speak into the translator. The brach still wore his twin mike
against his throat.
“The box—you left the levers so—”
“No, not could do—”
“How so?”
“Men come and go. Could find easy. Turn
back—so.” The brach dipped his head, pantomiming use of
the horn. “No box working now.”
Dane heard a harsh whistle of breath from Meshler when he passed
this information along.
“Cartl’s.” The ranger leaned forward as if by
the very force of his will he could hurl them even faster toward
their goal. “Have to get to Cartl’s with a
warning!”
Then the reason for his anxiety hit the two Terrans.
“Those monsters!” Dane exclaimed.
“How many of them—” Tau added.
Freed from the force wall, could they be rounded up again by the
men in the basin? Could such as the blob be handled—unless
they just blastered it? And as Tau had said, how many—or what
kinds—had been in there? Raised and tended perhaps? There was
that antline—had it been an earlier escapee wandering
north?
“How many and what kind are right,” Meshler said
grimly. “We shall have to warn all the southmost holdings.
And we have no idea of what they may have to face.”
“Unless you can get who’s responsible for it and pry
some facts out of him,” Tau returned. “This holding
does have a direct com to the port?”
“They all have,” Meshler answered.
Day was dawning, but it was not to be a clear one. Clouds drew
in between them and the weak winter sun, and then suddenly they
were curtained by sleet, icing quickly one outer shell of the
flitter. There was no visibility, and Tau pointed to the
altimeter.
“We are being forced down.”
“But we are still on course,” Meshler returned.
“Keep going.”
Not only did the waves of sleet break about their craft, but
there was also a wind coming in gusts, which pushed them off
course, so that Tau had to fight the controls to bring them back
time and time again. It was as if the weather was a weapon used
with purpose to keep them from their goal.
But such weather might also deter the monsters from wandering
too far from the cover the woods behind the vanished force field
offered.
Tau was watching the radar as well as the altimeter, his head turning quickly. “We may have to set down,” he
warned. “That or chance crashing.”
Dane had never been airborne in such a storm, and as the fury
increased, he could well believe they might be smashed to the
ground by one of those punishing gusts. He wondered if they
could set down safely. There was no way of telling whether
they were over wooded or open land.
“Here goes!” Tau waited for no agreement from his
companions. He battled the gusts, fighting the worst fury of wind
and sleet, watching the radar that was their only guide to what
might lie below. At least they were not in mountain country, though
Dane judged they were far off the course Meshler had ordered.
Instead of heading northwest, they were being pushed south.
At top speed for the flitter and at what altitude Tau could win
for them, they fled along the easiest path the storm would
allow—south. And how long that period of struggle in the
darkness of storm, none of them knew.
But the sleet finally vanished, leaving traces of its passing in
the icy casing on the cabin windows, so they were flying blind,
with only instruments to guide them.
“Set down while we can,” Tau urged. “If that
hits again, we may not be able to take it. We’re too iced up
to handle well aloft.”
“All right. If you can make it,” Meshler replied
grudgingly.
Dane’s shoulder ached with tension. He wanted the controls
under his own hands. Tau could pilot—every man aboard the
Queen could—but now to sit there without any chance
of changing destiny and wait for the end—He had to nerve
himself to be quiet.
The medic would have to hold them on hover and watch the radar
for a clear setdown. But to hold on hover in any kind of heavy wind
was near to impossible. The grim line of Tau’s mouth
suggested that he knew the worst of what might happen.
They went on hover, and straightway the craft nearly overturned
under a mighty gust. But luckily that was not followed by a second.
Meshler leaned far forward, his nose almost touching the radar dial
as if such proximity might actually force the reading to one they
must have.
“Now!” He barked out the order.
They were setting down, Dane knew that. With great willpower he did not look at the dials or watch Tau fighting the
controls. He had hooked the safety belt around him and the brach,
saw Meshler, for the second time since this venture had begun, hit
a button controlling safe-foam, and waited while that padding
fluffed up about them.
But the stuff did not have time to reach shoulder level before,
with a jolt that whipped them back in their seats, they touched
solid surface. With that thud a large section of the encasing ice
on the cabin windows cracked and fell away.
What faced them was a thick wall of vegetation, so near that the
branch tips appeared to be scratching at the cabin. Dane opened the
door to allow the safe-foam to spill out, and a lash of iced rain
cut in at them. He loosened the brach and pushed the alien into the
second seat of the flitter. Then, pulling up his hood and lowering
the visor, he climbed out to see just where Tau had brought them
down.
A moment later he stood frozen by more than the wind and rain,
by the sense of just how much luck had favored them, for when he
turned his attention to the tail of the flitter, he saw the lip of
a drop. They had reached ground on a wedge of rock that was thrust
out into a veiling mist and had come down facing a tangle of
growth. So small was that island of safety that Dane blinked and
blinked again, almost unable to believe they had made it at
all.
The rock under foot was treacherous with a skim of freezing
rain, but his space boots kept him upright as, with his gloved
hands on the flitter, he worked his way back to the tail and that
drop, not daring to approach the rim any closer than he needed to
get around the flitter and slip to the other side. That exploration
told him no more than he had discovered at first. They had made a
precarious landing on a wedge of rock protruding into space, with
thick vegetation before them. And already ice was forming to lock
the tripod of landing gear to the rock.
Meshler and Tau had begun the same crawl around the craft,
sloshing first through the foam, which piled in thick suds below
the door. That was beaten down by the rain but did not wholly
disappear, curdling rather into frozen strips. When the other two
reached Dane, Tau’s face was a little green under the visor,
and Meshler was slowly shaking his head.
“By all the Laws of Legester!” the ranger exclaimed.
“Such fortune I have never seen before. The length of my
hand, my foot, one way or the other—” He shook his
head, staring at the flitter against which he steadied himself with
both hands, as if he expected it to perhaps turn into a raging
antline or something of the sort.
“They say”—Tau’s voice sounded
remote—“that if a man is born to drown, he will not die
by blaster. It seems that there is reason to believe we are not yet
designed to die. Now”—he turned to Meshler and became
more brisk—“have you any idea of where we may
be?”
“Well away from our course—south and west. That is
the most I can say. And before we take off again, we shall have to
have better weather. How long that will be—” He
shrugged.
“If we take off,” Dane corrected. Using
great care, he had squatted down to peer under the belly of the
craft at the tripod landing gear. It was certainly icing up around
that, and some of the curdled foam had seeped there, adding to the
bulk of slush and freezing sleet. It must be that this wedge of
rock had a drain toward the center, where the flitter rested.
Before they took off, that would have to be defrosted carefully. He
pointed out that fact when the other two hunched down to see.
“At least it is an anchor now. The more it freezes fast,
the less chance we have of being swept off yonder.” Tau
gestured at the edge of the wedge. “We wait out the storm,
and then we can cut her loose and take off. But we’d better
get inside now.”
He was right. The cold pierced even thermo clothing. They shook
off all the moisture they could and climbed back into the flitter,
which now and again rocked ominously under the push of the wind.
Would any gust be strong enough to tear them from their frozen
anchorage?
Meshler shared out another tube of E-ration. And Dane, exploring
the storage compartment, found they were not too badly off for
supplies, even if the small pack Meshler had shouldered was
exhausted. There was an E-ration box and one of medical supplies, a
pair of distance lenses and some extra blaster charges.
“They did well by us,” he commented as he restored
most of what he had found to the compartment. “What about the com? Can’t you call that holding, give them the
information, and ask them to relay it?”
Meshler had taken the pilot’s seat on their return to the
flitter. Now he threw back his hood and loosened his jacket.
“This storm would blanket any call. But as soon as it is
over—We can sleep it out.”
It was only sensible. And, at the very mention of sleep, Dane
felt suddenly as if he must have it. It had certainly been more
than twenty-four hours since they had holed up between the rocks
for those cramped periods of rest. But as the flitter shuddered
under wind blasts now and then, he wondered if they could
sleep—knowing that they might be hurled over the drop.
But he did sleep, and so did the others. When he stirred into
wakefulness, it was a few seconds before memory caught up and he
knew where he was. The flitter no longer trembled under the wind,
nor could he hear the drum of rain on its surface. He elbowed his
way up, the warm weight of the brach lying across him. The alien
snuffled and made a small whimper of complaint. However, Dane was
able to see through the window—or he could have seen had not
a solid surface of sparkling frost curtained it. So bright was it
that he thought it must be sunlight, and if the storm was over, it
was time for them to be on their way. His movements jogged the
front seat, and Tau raised his head from its back, coughed, and
looked around.
“What—” he began, and then seemed to realize
his surroundings.
“Sun out there—maybe—” Dane pointed to
the window.
Tau slewed around and felt for the door catch. It resisted as if
the cold had formed an additional lock, then gave way. Tau pushed
the door open, and there was not only an intense cold that made
them gasp, but also sun that shone straight into their eyes.
The medic swung down a long leg and was half out of the cabin
when he slipped, grabbing desperately for the edge of the door.
Though he went with a bone-jarring thud to his knees, he kept his
hold, lying across the door opening.
With difficulty he wriggled around to look outside, and when
Dane saw his face, Tau had the expression of a man who had felt
blaster rays within searing distance. With infinite care he drew back, seemingly unable to move his legs,
drawing himself up with his arms until he was again on the cabin
seat. Then he jerked the door shut.
“Glare ice,” he reported. “I don’t think
anyone could stand, let alone walk, on that.”
Meshler forced open the door on his side and stared down at the
surface below. “Same over here,” he reported.
“The running gear will have to be loosened before we
lift,” Dane said. “Blaster fire at low level?” He
made that into a question.
“Need some kind of lifeline for the one doing it,”
Tau commented. “What about the supplies?”
Dane pushed the brach gently to one side and opened the cubby he
had explored the night before. He had not remembered seeing
anything of the sort, but it might have been there. Only there was
nothing.
“What’s that?” Meshler had squirmed around in
his seat and was pointing over Dane’s head at something
thickly rolled. The Terran pulled at it and discovered he had
tugged loose the end of a many times folded weatherproof plasta
sheet—perhaps intended to be pegged down over the flitter in
times of storm. The flitter in the Queen had not carried
such equipment.
“Cut this into strips, knot it, and we have our
rope.” Meshler brought a long-bladed, sharp knife from his
belt, ready to work.
But it was hard labor, since the plasta, tough enough to
withstand extremes of weather, did not yield easily even to so keen
a blade. The ranger sawed with patience until he had three unevenly
cut strips, which he knotted, the material again resisting, into a
crude and bulky rope. He, without suggesting any volunteering for
venturing out to burn off the landing gear, tied this in turn to
his own belt, snapped down his visor, tightened his overjacket
against the cold, and saw that Tau and Dane had good hold of the
other end of the line.
“It should not be a long job—with this.” He
had a blaster ready in his gloved hand. Once more he opened the
door and slipped out. Although he kept one hand on the frame to
steady himself, it was apparent he could not keep his balance.
Dane and Tau braced. The rope twisted about their wrists, their bare hands gripping the ragged edges. Meshler
tried to take a step, lost his footing, and disappeared from sight,
his weight pulling on them both as they tensed against that
tug.
The rope jerked and twisted, as if Meshler were wriggling about,
but the two in the cabin held it as taut as they could. How long
would it take him to melt away the ice? Dane felt the ache in his
arms. His wrists had gone white and were turning numb where the
plasta cut in.
Then, when the Terran thought the pressure was crippling him, an
arm showed at the door, a hand grasped a hold, and Meshler pulled
himself in, to collapse on his seat, while Dane leaned over and
banged the door shut. The ranger shook himself, shed his gloves,
and sat up. He thumbed the takeoff, and Dane was thrown back, half
on the brach, who let out a cry and tried to roll away.
They were up, rising steadily, though they could only guess that
by the feel. The frosted windows still held away the morning.
“We were driven south,” Meshler said.
“Therefore, we go north, though I am not sure how far west we
were pushed.”
“How about the com?” Tau asked.
Meshler detached the board mike and snapped the pilot’s
throat latch at his neck.
“Calling Cartl—Cartl—Cartl.” He made a
kind of song of the name.
As one they waited for any reply. But what came was a harsh
jangle of noise, almost as shattering to the ear, though not on the
same scale, as the screech of the monster.
“Interference.” Meshler dropped his finger from the
call button. “Nothing can get through that.”
“Normal?” Tau wanted to know.
“How can I tell?” The ranger’s old impatience
flared. His eyes were a little sunken, and his face was thinned
down, as if he had aged months since their meeting. “This is
new country to me. But that is so loud and persistent, I would say
it was intended.”
“They may be expecting us to broadcast a warning,”
the medic suggested. “Well, it’s up to us to go in
ourselves, as long as we can’t send a message.”
North because they had been driven south, east because Meshler
was sure they had also flown west. But how could the ranger be sure? There was no beam to ride. If he had managed
to get in touch with the holding, they could have used a broadcast
as a beacon. Now they had nothing but the ranger’s guessing,
and the country under them was unexplored wilderness—unless
it held some more surprises, such as the basin camp.
At least they had no storm, and as they went, the windows of the
cabin slowly lost their frost crust, so they could see it was a
particularly clear day. Meshler found a small visa screen, usable
in such weather, and focused it so that they could see the country
below.
Judging by the sun, they knew it was early morning, which meant
that they had slept away part of the day before as well as the
intervening night—a loss of time that worried Meshler, though
with all the territory lying between the basin and Cartl’s, he
surely could not expect any of the creatures released there to have
already covered that distance.
They caught no sign of the basin under the distort, nor were
there any other machines in the air, no sign of crawlers or crawler
tracks on the ground. There was a uniform landscape of patchy
forest cut by two rivers of good size, plus here and there open
rocky stretches—and no sign that this was anything but the
wilderness Meshler claimed.
Dane pulled his hood around so that his lips
were set against the interpreter’s mike.
“Brach—to the flitter!” He did not know where the
alien was. Perhaps he had already fled the camp. But if not, Dane had
to give him his chance. “To the flitter, brach!”
“Get going!” Meshler tried to shove Dane from the
cabin. But the Terran clung stubbornly to his seat and gestured the
ranger to go on.
“Brach—come to the flitter!” He signaled once
more while fending off a push from Meshler.
With a hot exclamation, the ranger elbowed past Dane and ran as
Tau had done, but halfway to the flitter, he turned and aimed a
pencil of blaster fire at the foreground, lashing a smoking trench
across the soil to slow those coming to take them.
“Brach!” Dane could wait no longer. He dropped from
the cabin and zigzagged a pattern toward the flitter with flares of
blasters cutting right and left. They were not aiming to take
prisoners—they were out to kill.
Before he reached the open door of the flitter cabin, something
streaked for the craft, and Dane, with a leap of heart, knew it for
the brach.
Somehow they tumbled in together, but this time Tau, having
reached the flitter first, was at the controls. He must have hit
the rise button full force, for they took off straight up with a
lift that had some of the power of a spacer’s take-off,
pinning them for an instant or two to the seats over which they
sprawled in a squirming mixture of men and brach.
Before they were sorted out, the flitter was screaming into the
early morning at the highest speed it could maintain in a wild race
to put distance between them and the camp.
“We’re away, I think!” Tau said as they
spiraled into a graying sky. “I didn’t see another
flitter, and unless they can draw us with another ground
beam—”
“Which they must have. Remember how they got us
before,” countered Dane. He expected every second to feel
that compelling drag on them once again, bringing them earthward.
Why did Meshler believe they could escape when that had happened
before? Now that he had time to think, Dane was puzzled. Surely the
ranger had not forgotten—
“North and east—” Meshler, as if believing
they had nothing to fear now, leaned over to inspect the direction
dial. Tau obediently adjusted their course until the needle hit the
proper marking.
The brach had subsided against Dane. He could feel him gasping
with the effort of that last dash. The alien was a weight on his
lap, and he drew the edges of his jacket about him.
“No ground beam—” Dane could not understand
how they had made so clean an escape.
“Not yet anyway,” commented Tau. In the subdued
light the expression on the medic’s face suggested that he,
too, expected momentarily seizure by that force. Nor did they relax
even as the minutes sped by and the pull did not clamp them.
“Get to Cartl’s,” Meshler said, but more as if
he were talking to himself than to them. “Beam in to port
with their com—”
“Report what?” Dane demanded. “Your
authorities must have some knowledge of all this—”
“But do they?” Tau cut in thoughtfully. “It
wouldn’t be the first time that research techs went beyond
the agreed-upon boundaries, and it wouldn’t be the first time
they got in deeper than they planned.”
“Or sold out—” Meshler added bleakly.
“Sold out to whom?” Dane wanted to know. “And
why?”
But the ranger merely shook his head. That he had been shaken by
the events of the past night was plain. His pragmatic approach at
the LB was long since lost. What he had seen here must have proven
that the story told by the Queen’s crew was true and
that there was far more going on in the wilderness of his own
planet than his service, pledged to the regulation and patrol of
that same country, knew.
“That force barrier,” he said now. “Can you
tell with that detect whether it is up again or not.”
“No. It will pick up radiation but not specify as to any
one kind. I cannot be sure without altering it which radiation is
the field.”
“There might be one way.” Dane turned his head to
speak into the translator. The brach still wore his twin mike
against his throat.
“The box—you left the levers so—”
“No, not could do—”
“How so?”
“Men come and go. Could find easy. Turn
back—so.” The brach dipped his head, pantomiming use of
the horn. “No box working now.”
Dane heard a harsh whistle of breath from Meshler when he passed
this information along.
“Cartl’s.” The ranger leaned forward as if by
the very force of his will he could hurl them even faster toward
their goal. “Have to get to Cartl’s with a
warning!”
Then the reason for his anxiety hit the two Terrans.
“Those monsters!” Dane exclaimed.
“How many of them—” Tau added.
Freed from the force wall, could they be rounded up again by the
men in the basin? Could such as the blob be handled—unless
they just blastered it? And as Tau had said, how many—or what
kinds—had been in there? Raised and tended perhaps? There was
that antline—had it been an earlier escapee wandering
north?
“How many and what kind are right,” Meshler said
grimly. “We shall have to warn all the southmost holdings.
And we have no idea of what they may have to face.”
“Unless you can get who’s responsible for it and pry
some facts out of him,” Tau returned. “This holding
does have a direct com to the port?”
“They all have,” Meshler answered.
Day was dawning, but it was not to be a clear one. Clouds drew
in between them and the weak winter sun, and then suddenly they
were curtained by sleet, icing quickly one outer shell of the
flitter. There was no visibility, and Tau pointed to the
altimeter.
“We are being forced down.”
“But we are still on course,” Meshler returned.
“Keep going.”
Not only did the waves of sleet break about their craft, but
there was also a wind coming in gusts, which pushed them off
course, so that Tau had to fight the controls to bring them back
time and time again. It was as if the weather was a weapon used
with purpose to keep them from their goal.
But such weather might also deter the monsters from wandering
too far from the cover the woods behind the vanished force field
offered.
Tau was watching the radar as well as the altimeter, his head turning quickly. “We may have to set down,” he
warned. “That or chance crashing.”
Dane had never been airborne in such a storm, and as the fury
increased, he could well believe they might be smashed to the
ground by one of those punishing gusts. He wondered if they
could set down safely. There was no way of telling whether
they were over wooded or open land.
“Here goes!” Tau waited for no agreement from his
companions. He battled the gusts, fighting the worst fury of wind
and sleet, watching the radar that was their only guide to what
might lie below. At least they were not in mountain country, though
Dane judged they were far off the course Meshler had ordered.
Instead of heading northwest, they were being pushed south.
At top speed for the flitter and at what altitude Tau could win
for them, they fled along the easiest path the storm would
allow—south. And how long that period of struggle in the
darkness of storm, none of them knew.
But the sleet finally vanished, leaving traces of its passing in
the icy casing on the cabin windows, so they were flying blind,
with only instruments to guide them.
“Set down while we can,” Tau urged. “If that
hits again, we may not be able to take it. We’re too iced up
to handle well aloft.”
“All right. If you can make it,” Meshler replied
grudgingly.
Dane’s shoulder ached with tension. He wanted the controls
under his own hands. Tau could pilot—every man aboard the
Queen could—but now to sit there without any chance
of changing destiny and wait for the end—He had to nerve
himself to be quiet.
The medic would have to hold them on hover and watch the radar
for a clear setdown. But to hold on hover in any kind of heavy wind
was near to impossible. The grim line of Tau’s mouth
suggested that he knew the worst of what might happen.
They went on hover, and straightway the craft nearly overturned
under a mighty gust. But luckily that was not followed by a second.
Meshler leaned far forward, his nose almost touching the radar dial
as if such proximity might actually force the reading to one they
must have.
“Now!” He barked out the order.
They were setting down, Dane knew that. With great willpower he did not look at the dials or watch Tau fighting the
controls. He had hooked the safety belt around him and the brach,
saw Meshler, for the second time since this venture had begun, hit
a button controlling safe-foam, and waited while that padding
fluffed up about them.
But the stuff did not have time to reach shoulder level before,
with a jolt that whipped them back in their seats, they touched
solid surface. With that thud a large section of the encasing ice
on the cabin windows cracked and fell away.
What faced them was a thick wall of vegetation, so near that the
branch tips appeared to be scratching at the cabin. Dane opened the
door to allow the safe-foam to spill out, and a lash of iced rain
cut in at them. He loosened the brach and pushed the alien into the
second seat of the flitter. Then, pulling up his hood and lowering
the visor, he climbed out to see just where Tau had brought them
down.
A moment later he stood frozen by more than the wind and rain,
by the sense of just how much luck had favored them, for when he
turned his attention to the tail of the flitter, he saw the lip of
a drop. They had reached ground on a wedge of rock that was thrust
out into a veiling mist and had come down facing a tangle of
growth. So small was that island of safety that Dane blinked and
blinked again, almost unable to believe they had made it at
all.
The rock under foot was treacherous with a skim of freezing
rain, but his space boots kept him upright as, with his gloved
hands on the flitter, he worked his way back to the tail and that
drop, not daring to approach the rim any closer than he needed to
get around the flitter and slip to the other side. That exploration
told him no more than he had discovered at first. They had made a
precarious landing on a wedge of rock protruding into space, with
thick vegetation before them. And already ice was forming to lock
the tripod of landing gear to the rock.
Meshler and Tau had begun the same crawl around the craft,
sloshing first through the foam, which piled in thick suds below
the door. That was beaten down by the rain but did not wholly
disappear, curdling rather into frozen strips. When the other two
reached Dane, Tau’s face was a little green under the visor,
and Meshler was slowly shaking his head.
“By all the Laws of Legester!” the ranger exclaimed.
“Such fortune I have never seen before. The length of my
hand, my foot, one way or the other—” He shook his
head, staring at the flitter against which he steadied himself with
both hands, as if he expected it to perhaps turn into a raging
antline or something of the sort.
“They say”—Tau’s voice sounded
remote—“that if a man is born to drown, he will not die
by blaster. It seems that there is reason to believe we are not yet
designed to die. Now”—he turned to Meshler and became
more brisk—“have you any idea of where we may
be?”
“Well away from our course—south and west. That is
the most I can say. And before we take off again, we shall have to
have better weather. How long that will be—” He
shrugged.
“If we take off,” Dane corrected. Using
great care, he had squatted down to peer under the belly of the
craft at the tripod landing gear. It was certainly icing up around
that, and some of the curdled foam had seeped there, adding to the
bulk of slush and freezing sleet. It must be that this wedge of
rock had a drain toward the center, where the flitter rested.
Before they took off, that would have to be defrosted carefully. He
pointed out that fact when the other two hunched down to see.
“At least it is an anchor now. The more it freezes fast,
the less chance we have of being swept off yonder.” Tau
gestured at the edge of the wedge. “We wait out the storm,
and then we can cut her loose and take off. But we’d better
get inside now.”
He was right. The cold pierced even thermo clothing. They shook
off all the moisture they could and climbed back into the flitter,
which now and again rocked ominously under the push of the wind.
Would any gust be strong enough to tear them from their frozen
anchorage?
Meshler shared out another tube of E-ration. And Dane, exploring
the storage compartment, found they were not too badly off for
supplies, even if the small pack Meshler had shouldered was
exhausted. There was an E-ration box and one of medical supplies, a
pair of distance lenses and some extra blaster charges.
“They did well by us,” he commented as he restored
most of what he had found to the compartment. “What about the com? Can’t you call that holding, give them the
information, and ask them to relay it?”
Meshler had taken the pilot’s seat on their return to the
flitter. Now he threw back his hood and loosened his jacket.
“This storm would blanket any call. But as soon as it is
over—We can sleep it out.”
It was only sensible. And, at the very mention of sleep, Dane
felt suddenly as if he must have it. It had certainly been more
than twenty-four hours since they had holed up between the rocks
for those cramped periods of rest. But as the flitter shuddered
under wind blasts now and then, he wondered if they could
sleep—knowing that they might be hurled over the drop.
But he did sleep, and so did the others. When he stirred into
wakefulness, it was a few seconds before memory caught up and he
knew where he was. The flitter no longer trembled under the wind,
nor could he hear the drum of rain on its surface. He elbowed his
way up, the warm weight of the brach lying across him. The alien
snuffled and made a small whimper of complaint. However, Dane was
able to see through the window—or he could have seen had not
a solid surface of sparkling frost curtained it. So bright was it
that he thought it must be sunlight, and if the storm was over, it
was time for them to be on their way. His movements jogged the
front seat, and Tau raised his head from its back, coughed, and
looked around.
“What—” he began, and then seemed to realize
his surroundings.
“Sun out there—maybe—” Dane pointed to
the window.
Tau slewed around and felt for the door catch. It resisted as if
the cold had formed an additional lock, then gave way. Tau pushed
the door open, and there was not only an intense cold that made
them gasp, but also sun that shone straight into their eyes.
The medic swung down a long leg and was half out of the cabin
when he slipped, grabbing desperately for the edge of the door.
Though he went with a bone-jarring thud to his knees, he kept his
hold, lying across the door opening.
With difficulty he wriggled around to look outside, and when
Dane saw his face, Tau had the expression of a man who had felt
blaster rays within searing distance. With infinite care he drew back, seemingly unable to move his legs,
drawing himself up with his arms until he was again on the cabin
seat. Then he jerked the door shut.
“Glare ice,” he reported. “I don’t think
anyone could stand, let alone walk, on that.”
Meshler forced open the door on his side and stared down at the
surface below. “Same over here,” he reported.
“The running gear will have to be loosened before we
lift,” Dane said. “Blaster fire at low level?” He
made that into a question.
“Need some kind of lifeline for the one doing it,”
Tau commented. “What about the supplies?”
Dane pushed the brach gently to one side and opened the cubby he
had explored the night before. He had not remembered seeing
anything of the sort, but it might have been there. Only there was
nothing.
“What’s that?” Meshler had squirmed around in
his seat and was pointing over Dane’s head at something
thickly rolled. The Terran pulled at it and discovered he had
tugged loose the end of a many times folded weatherproof plasta
sheet—perhaps intended to be pegged down over the flitter in
times of storm. The flitter in the Queen had not carried
such equipment.
“Cut this into strips, knot it, and we have our
rope.” Meshler brought a long-bladed, sharp knife from his
belt, ready to work.
But it was hard labor, since the plasta, tough enough to
withstand extremes of weather, did not yield easily even to so keen
a blade. The ranger sawed with patience until he had three unevenly
cut strips, which he knotted, the material again resisting, into a
crude and bulky rope. He, without suggesting any volunteering for
venturing out to burn off the landing gear, tied this in turn to
his own belt, snapped down his visor, tightened his overjacket
against the cold, and saw that Tau and Dane had good hold of the
other end of the line.
“It should not be a long job—with this.” He
had a blaster ready in his gloved hand. Once more he opened the
door and slipped out. Although he kept one hand on the frame to
steady himself, it was apparent he could not keep his balance.
Dane and Tau braced. The rope twisted about their wrists, their bare hands gripping the ragged edges. Meshler
tried to take a step, lost his footing, and disappeared from sight,
his weight pulling on them both as they tensed against that
tug.
The rope jerked and twisted, as if Meshler were wriggling about,
but the two in the cabin held it as taut as they could. How long
would it take him to melt away the ice? Dane felt the ache in his
arms. His wrists had gone white and were turning numb where the
plasta cut in.
Then, when the Terran thought the pressure was crippling him, an
arm showed at the door, a hand grasped a hold, and Meshler pulled
himself in, to collapse on his seat, while Dane leaned over and
banged the door shut. The ranger shook himself, shed his gloves,
and sat up. He thumbed the takeoff, and Dane was thrown back, half
on the brach, who let out a cry and tried to roll away.
They were up, rising steadily, though they could only guess that
by the feel. The frosted windows still held away the morning.
“We were driven south,” Meshler said.
“Therefore, we go north, though I am not sure how far west we
were pushed.”
“How about the com?” Tau asked.
Meshler detached the board mike and snapped the pilot’s
throat latch at his neck.
“Calling Cartl—Cartl—Cartl.” He made a
kind of song of the name.
As one they waited for any reply. But what came was a harsh
jangle of noise, almost as shattering to the ear, though not on the
same scale, as the screech of the monster.
“Interference.” Meshler dropped his finger from the
call button. “Nothing can get through that.”
“Normal?” Tau wanted to know.
“How can I tell?” The ranger’s old impatience
flared. His eyes were a little sunken, and his face was thinned
down, as if he had aged months since their meeting. “This is
new country to me. But that is so loud and persistent, I would say
it was intended.”
“They may be expecting us to broadcast a warning,”
the medic suggested. “Well, it’s up to us to go in
ourselves, as long as we can’t send a message.”
North because they had been driven south, east because Meshler
was sure they had also flown west. But how could the ranger be sure? There was no beam to ride. If he had managed
to get in touch with the holding, they could have used a broadcast
as a beacon. Now they had nothing but the ranger’s guessing,
and the country under them was unexplored wilderness—unless
it held some more surprises, such as the basin camp.
At least they had no storm, and as they went, the windows of the
cabin slowly lost their frost crust, so they could see it was a
particularly clear day. Meshler found a small visa screen, usable
in such weather, and focused it so that they could see the country
below.
Judging by the sun, they knew it was early morning, which meant
that they had slept away part of the day before as well as the
intervening night—a loss of time that worried Meshler, though
with all the territory lying between the basin and Cartl’s, he
surely could not expect any of the creatures released there to have
already covered that distance.
They caught no sign of the basin under the distort, nor were
there any other machines in the air, no sign of crawlers or crawler
tracks on the ground. There was a uniform landscape of patchy
forest cut by two rivers of good size, plus here and there open
rocky stretches—and no sign that this was anything but the
wilderness Meshler claimed.