“What is going on?” Dane turned to
Rip, wedged in beside him.
“What isn’t?” returned the other, ambiguously,
but then he explained. “We don’t know it all yet, but
the Trosti foundations, here and apparently on other worlds, too,
have been engaged in double work. The surface stuff is all that has
always been accredited to them, what their reputation is founded
upon. But underneath that, well, the Patrol has evidence now that
they are the power behind at least four planetary governments in
widely separated sections and that they have been building up an
undercover net of control—”
“Who are they?” Dane interrupted.
“Trosti is gone—or is he?”
“That’s just one of the mysteries, though there are
two explanations for that. One is that he is still very much among the
living and the brain behind this all, or else the brain who has
selected the brains, for the conspiracy is a composite effort, and
not only of one species either. The other suggestion is that Trosti
was never anything but a front for a devious and diverse
organization who used clever publicity to promote him as a romantic
figure to center attention.
“Anyway the Trosti foundations are a form of shadow
government by now, though apparently the Patrol has been suspicious
for some time. But it was only when they made the slipup on the
Queen that enough of their plans were revealed here to
give the law a loose end.”
“I know they have an outlaw experimental station here with
the retrogressed monsters,” Dane said. “But is that
all?”
“It might have begun so. Then they discovered
something else.”
“The rock!”
“Ore,” corrected Rip, “and a very special
kind. It is useful in esper work—a conductor for low-level
telepathy, able to step up that and other esper talents to a
remarkable degree. It exists on several planets, but it was not
recognized until they built the retrogress machines and probably is
one of those chance discoveries that happen as a side effect of a
main experiment when the scientist in charge is intrigued enough to
follow it up. There is reason to believe that most of this
experimentation had been going on right here. They wanted
Trewsworld. The holdings were a threat to any open work. Hence the
monsters, which were developed and released gradually to drive the
settlers out.”
“The Patrol knew this and didn’t
act?”
“The Patrol suspected. Then we came in. The Trosti man at
the port wanted us silenced. But short of killing us off, he
couldn’t do that. The captain appealed to the Board of Trade
representative, and since the Patrol was in on that appeal, they
had their opening. Though the Trosti had the Council here very much
tied to them, they did not have any control over the Patrol. Where
the Council tried to make things hot for us, once the captain had
made his statement, the whole thing blew up in their faces, like a
gas ball.
“And, as a gas ball, it was a knockout for them. They
probably knew it, thought they could buy some time to ship their important records off-world by loosing the
monsters—”
“We did that—or rather the brach did.” Dane
cut in with his story of the force field barrier and the fact he
had overheard the jacks’ talk of the monsters being drawn
north by the other box. “But those
prospectors”—he remembered suddenly—“if
they weren’t Trosti men, how did they—Or,” he
ended, “did they know about the rock?”
“Our guess is that they had some kind of new detect, and
it registered enough of the unusual radiation from the ore to make
them believe they had found something. They took samples, but it
must have been from a vein the Trosti crowd had mapped, and they
were killed, the rock taken. It was a quick job and another botched
one. I would say that lately the Trosti has not been too well
served by its people. That elaborate affair of shipping the box on
the Queen—”
“Yes, and if they already had the ore and such boxes here,
why take the chance of shipping another in?”
“One of the minor mysteries. Perhaps, this—our
box—was from another one of their labs, sent in for checking. And
it must have been from a place where there was need for extra
cover, so that it had to be sent so. It was their bad luck that we
had the brachs and the embryos in the cargo and that their man
died. If he had made it undetected to port, all he would have had
to do was rip off the mask and disappear. But it was a chance, and
there must have been some pressing need to take it. When the Patrol
backtracks we may know why someday—unless this will all be
top security.”
“Trosti—hard to believe that Trosti—”
“That statement will be echoed on a good many different
worlds.” One of the Patrolmen broke into their exchange.
“Trouble is that the discoveries they did make for the
benefit of the worlds on which they set up are generally so
beneficial that we will have to have direct proof that those were
only a cover or we can’t go against public opinion—plus
the fact that they will summon top legal talent and be able to
fight a delaying action in every court we take them to. We are
hoping that this, now being the most open of their secrets, will
give us evidence—records, tapes, enough to smash this
foundation, with clues to uncover leads to others.”
“If we get there in time,” Dane pointed out.
“They could ship out the most important material and destroy
the rest.”
His head was starting to ache again. Perhaps the remedies of the
Patrol medic were not as long lasting as he hoped. He could
understand the need to conquer time, which was driving the captain,
all of them on board. Also, they had no idea of what defenses
beside the distort were in the basin. There was the control beam
that had negated the power of the other flitters and brought them
down at the will of the enemy. And such could be used to
deliberately crash a ship. The jacks need only have one of those in
order, and their pursuers would lose before any fight began.
There were plenty of other weapons to snap them out of the sky
at the press of a button. Unfortunately, memory presented too many
in all their savage details to Dane. But once more it might have
been that his thoughts were as plain to his companions as if his
forehead was a transparent visa-screen.
“They can’t use a control beam if they are readying
for a takeoff,” Rip observed thoughtfully. “That would
interfere with a blast, set them off course from the first
fire-down—”
“Even if they don’t use that, I
can name about five other defenses,” Dane returned bleakly.
He leaned his aching head back against the wall and closed his
eyes.
“Have a suck.” Something was thrust into his hand,
and he glanced down to see he was holding a tube of E-ration; the
heat cap had been twisted off so that a small thread of steam
arose. For the first time Dane realized he was very hungry. He
raised it to his mouth, his hand shaking a little, and squeezed the
paste, warm enough to spread a welcome heat as it passed downward,
into his mouth. It was a very long time, he thought, since that
meal at Cartl’s holding, even longer since he had eaten
regular food at established intervals.
But the E-ration, though it gave a man nothing to chew on and
lacked much flavor, did banish hunger. And this time he was not
limited to a quarter of a tube. He had a whole one to himself,
while those about him were eating, too.
“The brachs?”
For once memory worked as he swallowed the first mouthful.
“Have theirs.” Rip nodded toward the rear of the
cabin. The light was limited, but Dane could see an E-tube
protruding from each horned snout.
“What about them?” he asked a little later as he
squeezed the last drop from the tube and rolled it into a tight
ball.
“The kits are at the lab, being given Veep
Treatment,” Rip answered. “But the female insisted upon
coming with us. There has been a lot of excitement over them. If
the brachs are degenerate intelligent life, then Xecho is going to
have a problem. And it would seem that is true. It will probably be
obligatory to do what can be done to return them to their proper
intelligence—upsets a lot of history and will be quite a
headache to all concerned.”
“Are they esper at all?” Dane wondered.
“We don’t know just what they are—yet. The lab
has dropped all other experiments and is concentrating on them. It
may be, since the principle of the retrogress machine is linked
with the esper-inducing ore, that anything with a slight degree of
such power has that power heightened. That’s another
headache—”
“Ha—” That was the Patrol officer. He held out
his wrist, and on it was a detect, not unlike the one Tau had
carried, except more compact and much smaller. “Radiation of
the right type, two degrees west—”
“Right!” Jellico made the correction in their
course. “How far?”
“Less than two units. It is leaking through a
shield.”
Dane saw the captain’s head give a little jerk. A moment
later Jellico reported, “The brachs say there’s a
ground transport of some kind, two of them, moving under
us.”
“Could it be they are still pulling in men?”
suggested Finnerstan.
“Pulling in men,” Dane thought, and yet just this
flitter load proposed to go up against what might be a thoroughly
warned, armed, and well-defended base. Yet, looking about him from
face to face, he saw no concern. They might have been making a
routine flight. Though he was no longer hungry, the pain in his
head remained a steady throb, and he felt very tired. How long had
it been since he had had normal sleep? He tried to recall events
for the past days, days that now seemed to stretch to months.
Jellico was not noted for taking reckless risks unless the
situation was such he had no other choice. No Free Trader did and
kept a ship for long. But apparently the captain was determined on
this attack.
“Only one unit ahead now.” Finnerstan did not look
up from the detect.
“Radar nil on anything airborne,” Jellico replied.
“Mixed report from the ground, a lot of
interference.”
Dane turned his head and tried to stretch to the point where he
could look down from the cabin window. But it was physically
impossible to see the ground from where he sat, even if it had been
day instead of the dark of very early morning.
“No contact beam.” Jellico might be reporting to
them or only thinking aloud.
“I’m getting something new—maybe your
distort.” Finnerstan glanced back at Dane.
“All right, Thorson, what’s down there?”
Jellico demanded, and Dane pulled his thoughts together. This was
the time when he must justify his inclusion in his company.
“Spacer landing to the south.” He closed his eyes,
picturing in his mind what he had seen during their quick sortie
into the basin. “Then there are three bubble huts in a
cluster about seven field lengths north—beyond those two long
structures half buried in the earth, earth walls, turfed roofs—vehicle park by the bubbles. That’s it.”
“They will be expecting their men back in a captured
flitter perhaps,” Jellico said. “And that would come in
without hesitation. So, we try to do it that way.”
And maybe meet blaster fire dead center if there was some
recognition code, Dane knew. He wished vainly that he had some kind
of protective shell into which he could withdraw during the next
few minutes. But the Patrol officer made no objection to
Jellico’s wild plan.
“Look there!” Finnerstan was against the cabin
window on his side, staring down. But for the men behind him there
was no chance to see what had caught his attention.
“Down.” Jellico’s hands were busy on the
controls. “That must be the distort. Now, I’m going in
on hover—”
Dane saw movement about him. The Patrolman by the exit hatch had
his hands ready on the lock there. And the flitter began its
descent, straight down, using the slow speed of the hover.
There was an odd light outside the windows, light that
brightened suddenly, as if it had been turned from low to high.
Perhaps it had been the passing of a blanketing of diffuse lamps by the distort. But now they were apparently
descending into a camp brightly aglow to aid activity.
“Now!” Finnerstan rather than the captain gave that
order, only a second before the bump told them they touched
earth.
The Patrolman wrenched open the hatch, made the practiced roll
out and down, his neighbor following him in trained proficiency.
The spaceport policeman and rangers followed with less agility.
Finnerstan himself had already disappeared through the front
door. And now, before Rip and Dane pulled themselves out, the
brachs flowed away with a speed surprising in their stocky
bodies.
Rip jumped. Dane was the last to disembark, his reflexes slowed,
but he held a stunner in one hand. Jellico had vanished and was
probably on the other side of the flitter.
As his boots met the ground, the thump of contact transmitted to
his aching head, Dane looked about. It was light, but by some lucky
chance they had landed some distance from the scene of the
activity. The spacer still stood, its nose pointed to the stars.
Both its cargo hatches were wide open, and cranes were at work
loading. There was a line of robo carriers speeding from the two
earth-walled buildings, each bearing boxes and canisters, but their
burdens were small. They were taking only lighter, easily stowed
things, Dane judged with the eye of one only too used to handling
shipments. The rest they would probably destroy.
There was one crawler pulled up with two cages on board,
covered. But that stood by, and no one was there. The ramp leading
to the crew and passenger quarters was still on the ground
and—
Dane was startled. That ramp was under guard. Two men in crew
uniforms stood at its top, just within the open hatch. They were
both armed with blasters, and they were looking steadily down the
ramp. Now that he studied the scene, he could see in addition a
similar guard on duty by the two cargo-hold openings, both eyeing
the load the robos stacked to be taken on board.
So far no one on the field seemed to notice the landing of the
flitter and the disembarking of her passengers, but there was a
knot of men nearer to the ship. They just stood there, their hands hanging empty by their sides, staring at the
guarded ramp and the cargo holds.
“No room.” Dane heard Finnerstan’s low-voiced
comment. “The Veeps are planning to leave their underlings
behind. I wonder if they will agree—”
“They’re disarmed, sir,” one of his men
reported.
There was an addition to the clanking of the robo
carriers, to the general hum of the loading. It did not come from
the group of men bitterly watching the preparations for withdrawal
but from a distance. Then two more crawlers plowed on into the
bright light around the ship.
The first carried only three men, each with a pack or box he
supported against his body, as if to shield it from the jerks and
jostling caused by transportation across very rough terrain. The
second had one large, shrouded box amidships.
As the crawlers passed the waiting men, there was a confused
shouting, a slight surge forward as if they would have rushed those
transports. Then a lance of blaster fire cut across the ground,
laying down a smoking reminder to stay where they were. As they had
moved forward, so now they stumbled back, away from that searing
bar.
The crawlers did not halt, nor did their occupants so much as
glance at the rejected. Instead, they moved steadily forward until
they stopped by the ramp and the one cargo hatch. The lines of
robos had come to a halt. Most of them were shut down and stood in
a compact group, which grotesquely mimicked that of the frustrated
men. Only two were still activated, and they went to work
transferring the crate on the second carrier, working with
exaggerated care that suggested their burden was of great
importance. As they were making fast the lines for it to be lifted
into the hold, the men on the other carrier started up the ramp,
bearing their burdens with the same visible need for safety.
“About time for takeoff,” Jellico said. “We
have to move now—”
But someone else had the same idea. While they had remained in
the shadow of the flitter, watching the scene and trying to
estimate their best chance, the brachs had sped into action. Now
they saw the male rear on his hind quarters, holding a stunner in
his forepaws. He was at the foot of the ramp, and his ray beamed up in a back and forth sweep intended
to take out the two guards.
They must have been so intent on watching their human opponents
that they did not sight the alien until too late. The last man
carrying a package stumbled, fell back, sliding limply down the
length of the ramp, so that the brach had to leap out of the way.
While that victim had deflected some of the stunner, he had not
taken all the ray. From suddenly deadened hands above fell one of
the blasters. The other guard, momentarily startled, aimed not at
the brach but at those he knew were enemies, the group to be left
behind, his fire cutting into them so that those not directly
crisped by its beam scattered, some screaming.
Now those on guard in the still open hatch took up the fire,
before crumpling under stunners used by the brach, while the second
guard, still firing, fell at last, rolling in turn down the ramp,
his blaster yet emitting a beam, whirling its deadly lance right
and left as it bumped by him and then fell to the ground.
“This is it!” The Patrolmen, followed by the others
from the port, went into action, speeding for the ship. For
takeoff, the ramp must be in, the hatch closed. Now one of the
brachs darted out of hiding to reach for the blaster still
discharging its fire power along the ground. But he or she did not
reach it. There was a lance of fire from the hatch, poorly aimed,
for the alien was not hit, merely went to ground again.
However, the force of Trewsworld law closed in about the spacer,
centering their aim on the open hatches, picking off anything
trying to close that.
Dane stumbled along in the wake of the captain and Shannon. He
found it hard going, and they left him well behind. But neither of
the Free Traders were heading for the battle of the hatches.
Instead, their goal was the third carrier, the one with the two
cages on it. Rip reached it first, scrambled into the
driver’s seat, and was warming her for a start when the
captain hurled himself in on the other side, half standing, half
crouching, prepared to defend their capture. And defend it he did
as several of the rejected, who had survived the burn-off, tried to
rush the Terrans.
Jellico got two of them. Dane picked off the last, numbing his
leg with a stunner. Rip set the carrier on high and was bringing it around, aiming it. Now Dane understood what he was
trying to do. The weight of the carrier, if it was rammed up on the
end of the ramp, would anchor the ship to the ground. There would
be no takeoff because the safety factors of the spacer would not
permit it.
There was still firing by the spacer, and Jellico was alert,
watching for any sign of life at the hatch, any chance of
Rip’s being picked up out of the driver’s seat. The
assistant astrogator had the blunt nose of their vehicle pointed
straight on target now.
Dane saw Rip’s arm raise and fall, a stunner held by the
barrel so its butt could be used as a hammer. He was breaking the
controls. And with those gone, no one could turn the heavy machine
from its course.
Rip leaped out one side, Jellico the other, and the crawler
clanked steadily on. There was a grating, a crushing sound loud
even through the shouts, the crackle of blaster fire. The
carrier’s nose arose over the edge of the ramp, and the
machine hung there, its treads cutting more and more deeply into
the ground as it strove to push ahead and could not. But the anchor
the Free Traders had devised would hold, though the ultimate taking
of those in the ship might prove to be delayed. If help came from
the port, they might be able to use gas bombs.
With the ship so anchored, part of the besieging party rounded
up what was left of the men who had been scattered in the blaster
attack. But Dane trailed Jellico and Finnerstan on an inspection of
the base. Much of what had been there had been purposefully
destroyed. One of the earth-embedded structures was caved in by an
implosion bomb, and the others all gave the appearance of hasty
plundering. A well-equipped com station had been left without
destruction, and one of the port policemen slid into the seat
there, sought the channel, and beamed a call for assistance.
‘Trouble is,” commented Finnerstan, “if they
are really fanatical about secrecy, they will destroy what they
have in the ship.” He looked at the spacer as if he would
have cheerfully broken it open as one cracks an eggshell to get at
the yolk. “By the time we get help, they will have disposed
of everything we want.”
“Parley?” suggested
Jellico.
“Only give them more time to get rid of everything
suspicious. If this was a local operation, a true jack raid, we
might make a deal. But this is too big. They’ll have
information on board that must have threads out to perhaps half a
dozen other worlds, perhaps some we don’t suspect at all.
What they carry is more important than the prisoners.”
“What,” Dane asked, “about those?” He
pointed through the door of the com room to the men who had been
rounded up. “They won’t have any reason to support the
ship people, and perhaps they can give you some idea of what
is on board and whether they would readily destroy
it.”
Dane’s suggestion might already have been in the Patrol
officer’s mind, for Finnerstan was already moving to such an
interrogation. Most of the sullen men were uncooperative, but the
fifth he questioned gave them the lead they needed. Though the
others captured were mainly guards and workmen below the level of
third-grade tech, expendable, the fifth man brought in was a
reeling, half-conscious captive who had been rescued a few inches
from having his life crushed out of him by the crawler on the ramp,
the last one boarding who had been brought down by the
brach’s assault.
He was certainly of higher rank than the others. In fact, as the
guards brought him past those other prisoners, two of them lunged
for him, cursing. He was cowering, obviously badly shaken, when he
stood before Finnerstan.
The combination of the stun attack, his close brush with death
under the crawler, and the anger of his followers broke him. The
Patrol officer learned what he wanted. Under his direction they
dragged out of the wreckage in the base a tube by which they lobbed
gas bombs into the opened hatches. Those broke on contact,
spreading the sleep-compelling atmosphere. Masked guards from the
flitter went on board to gather up prisoners, leave them wrapped by
tanglers, then proceeded to put in safety all that had been about
to be transported off-world.
It was three days later in Trewsport that the crew of the
Queen were finally united for the first time since the LB
had taken off. The settlers’ government had been badly
shaken. There was an interim Patrol command in control, and specialists from off-world had been summoned to examine the
Trosti labs and the material taken from the ship.
Dane sat nursing a mug of coffee. His headache had gone at long
last, leaving him feeling curiously light. He had slept away some
twenty planet hours and was now able to summon alert attention to
what Captain Jellico said.
“—so as soon as they clean her out, she’s to
be put up to auction as contraband taken in the midst of an
unlawful act. There’s no one here planetside who wants a
spacer or would know what to do with her if they had her. We will
probably be the only bidders, as the Patrol is not going to go to
the trouble of flying her to another world just to sell her. I have
it on Finnerstan’s word that if we put in a time bid,
she’s ours!”
“We have a ship—a good ship!” Stotz protested
with the firmness of one not to be influenced.
“We have a good ship tied up by a mail contract,”
Jellico returned. “We have the mail fees, yes, but they are
small. And if we can build up a fund as a starter when the contract
is finished—”
It was a big step, expanding from the Solar Queen to a
two-ship holding. Very few Free Traders had ever done it.
“We
do not have to keep her long,” the captain continued.
“I do not even say deep space with her. Use her in this
system only. Trewsworld is an Ag planet. But if she can grow more
crops—short-term crops—than just the lathsmers, she
would be sooner ready for regular stellar trade. Now look
here.” He flashed a picture from a reader onto the wall.
“This is the Trewsworld system. Those captured charts show
that while there is some of that ore—they’re calling it
esperite—on this planet, there is much more on Riginni, the
next planet out. And that can be dome-mined but can’t be
terraformed. So, miners have to eat, and they have to ship back ore
to here for galactic transshipments. There’s a two-way trade
for you—steady, growing as the dome mines grow. And
considering that we had a good hand in breaking up this Trosti
mess, we can get the franchise. Profit all along.”
“And a crew?” Steen Wilcox asked that.
Jellico ran a
fingertip down his burn scar. “Mail run is
easy—”
“Easy,” thought Dane, but did not say it
aloud.
“We stagger our own men for a while. You lift her
the first time, Steen, with Kamil for your engineer, Weekes as jet
man. We hire on a local for steward. And, Thorson, since Van Ryke
is on his way in to join us on the Queen, you can take
cargo master. Next time around, Shannon can take
astrogator—we change back and forth. We’ll be
short-handed, but an inner-system run is easy, and you can get by
with robos and a limited crew. Is it agreed?”
Dane looked from one face to the next. He could see the
advantages Jellico had mentioned. That there would be difficulties
the captain had not mentioned, he could well guess. But when his
turn came, he added his assent to the others’.
They would bid on the spacer, begin a solar run from Trewsworld
to her neighbor, spread their crew thin over two ships and hope for
the best, be ready to face the worst as Free Traders so often had
to. And what was the worst going to be next time? No use in
allowing his imagination the chance to paint a dismal picture, Dane
decided. The Queen had survived much in the past. Her new
sister ship would have to learn to do the same.
“What is going on?” Dane turned to
Rip, wedged in beside him.
“What isn’t?” returned the other, ambiguously,
but then he explained. “We don’t know it all yet, but
the Trosti foundations, here and apparently on other worlds, too,
have been engaged in double work. The surface stuff is all that has
always been accredited to them, what their reputation is founded
upon. But underneath that, well, the Patrol has evidence now that
they are the power behind at least four planetary governments in
widely separated sections and that they have been building up an
undercover net of control—”
“Who are they?” Dane interrupted.
“Trosti is gone—or is he?”
“That’s just one of the mysteries, though there are
two explanations for that. One is that he is still very much among the
living and the brain behind this all, or else the brain who has
selected the brains, for the conspiracy is a composite effort, and
not only of one species either. The other suggestion is that Trosti
was never anything but a front for a devious and diverse
organization who used clever publicity to promote him as a romantic
figure to center attention.
“Anyway the Trosti foundations are a form of shadow
government by now, though apparently the Patrol has been suspicious
for some time. But it was only when they made the slipup on the
Queen that enough of their plans were revealed here to
give the law a loose end.”
“I know they have an outlaw experimental station here with
the retrogressed monsters,” Dane said. “But is that
all?”
“It might have begun so. Then they discovered
something else.”
“The rock!”
“Ore,” corrected Rip, “and a very special
kind. It is useful in esper work—a conductor for low-level
telepathy, able to step up that and other esper talents to a
remarkable degree. It exists on several planets, but it was not
recognized until they built the retrogress machines and probably is
one of those chance discoveries that happen as a side effect of a
main experiment when the scientist in charge is intrigued enough to
follow it up. There is reason to believe that most of this
experimentation had been going on right here. They wanted
Trewsworld. The holdings were a threat to any open work. Hence the
monsters, which were developed and released gradually to drive the
settlers out.”
“The Patrol knew this and didn’t
act?”
“The Patrol suspected. Then we came in. The Trosti man at
the port wanted us silenced. But short of killing us off, he
couldn’t do that. The captain appealed to the Board of Trade
representative, and since the Patrol was in on that appeal, they
had their opening. Though the Trosti had the Council here very much
tied to them, they did not have any control over the Patrol. Where
the Council tried to make things hot for us, once the captain had
made his statement, the whole thing blew up in their faces, like a
gas ball.
“And, as a gas ball, it was a knockout for them. They
probably knew it, thought they could buy some time to ship their important records off-world by loosing the
monsters—”
“We did that—or rather the brach did.” Dane
cut in with his story of the force field barrier and the fact he
had overheard the jacks’ talk of the monsters being drawn
north by the other box. “But those
prospectors”—he remembered suddenly—“if
they weren’t Trosti men, how did they—Or,” he
ended, “did they know about the rock?”
“Our guess is that they had some kind of new detect, and
it registered enough of the unusual radiation from the ore to make
them believe they had found something. They took samples, but it
must have been from a vein the Trosti crowd had mapped, and they
were killed, the rock taken. It was a quick job and another botched
one. I would say that lately the Trosti has not been too well
served by its people. That elaborate affair of shipping the box on
the Queen—”
“Yes, and if they already had the ore and such boxes here,
why take the chance of shipping another in?”
“One of the minor mysteries. Perhaps, this—our
box—was from another one of their labs, sent in for checking. And
it must have been from a place where there was need for extra
cover, so that it had to be sent so. It was their bad luck that we
had the brachs and the embryos in the cargo and that their man
died. If he had made it undetected to port, all he would have had
to do was rip off the mask and disappear. But it was a chance, and
there must have been some pressing need to take it. When the Patrol
backtracks we may know why someday—unless this will all be
top security.”
“Trosti—hard to believe that Trosti—”
“That statement will be echoed on a good many different
worlds.” One of the Patrolmen broke into their exchange.
“Trouble is that the discoveries they did make for the
benefit of the worlds on which they set up are generally so
beneficial that we will have to have direct proof that those were
only a cover or we can’t go against public opinion—plus
the fact that they will summon top legal talent and be able to
fight a delaying action in every court we take them to. We are
hoping that this, now being the most open of their secrets, will
give us evidence—records, tapes, enough to smash this
foundation, with clues to uncover leads to others.”
“If we get there in time,” Dane pointed out.
“They could ship out the most important material and destroy
the rest.”
His head was starting to ache again. Perhaps the remedies of the
Patrol medic were not as long lasting as he hoped. He could
understand the need to conquer time, which was driving the captain,
all of them on board. Also, they had no idea of what defenses
beside the distort were in the basin. There was the control beam
that had negated the power of the other flitters and brought them
down at the will of the enemy. And such could be used to
deliberately crash a ship. The jacks need only have one of those in
order, and their pursuers would lose before any fight began.
There were plenty of other weapons to snap them out of the sky
at the press of a button. Unfortunately, memory presented too many
in all their savage details to Dane. But once more it might have
been that his thoughts were as plain to his companions as if his
forehead was a transparent visa-screen.
“They can’t use a control beam if they are readying
for a takeoff,” Rip observed thoughtfully. “That would
interfere with a blast, set them off course from the first
fire-down—”
“Even if they don’t use that, I
can name about five other defenses,” Dane returned bleakly.
He leaned his aching head back against the wall and closed his
eyes.
“Have a suck.” Something was thrust into his hand,
and he glanced down to see he was holding a tube of E-ration; the
heat cap had been twisted off so that a small thread of steam
arose. For the first time Dane realized he was very hungry. He
raised it to his mouth, his hand shaking a little, and squeezed the
paste, warm enough to spread a welcome heat as it passed downward,
into his mouth. It was a very long time, he thought, since that
meal at Cartl’s holding, even longer since he had eaten
regular food at established intervals.
But the E-ration, though it gave a man nothing to chew on and
lacked much flavor, did banish hunger. And this time he was not
limited to a quarter of a tube. He had a whole one to himself,
while those about him were eating, too.
“The brachs?”
For once memory worked as he swallowed the first mouthful.
“Have theirs.” Rip nodded toward the rear of the
cabin. The light was limited, but Dane could see an E-tube
protruding from each horned snout.
“What about them?” he asked a little later as he
squeezed the last drop from the tube and rolled it into a tight
ball.
“The kits are at the lab, being given Veep
Treatment,” Rip answered. “But the female insisted upon
coming with us. There has been a lot of excitement over them. If
the brachs are degenerate intelligent life, then Xecho is going to
have a problem. And it would seem that is true. It will probably be
obligatory to do what can be done to return them to their proper
intelligence—upsets a lot of history and will be quite a
headache to all concerned.”
“Are they esper at all?” Dane wondered.
“We don’t know just what they are—yet. The lab
has dropped all other experiments and is concentrating on them. It
may be, since the principle of the retrogress machine is linked
with the esper-inducing ore, that anything with a slight degree of
such power has that power heightened. That’s another
headache—”
“Ha—” That was the Patrol officer. He held out
his wrist, and on it was a detect, not unlike the one Tau had
carried, except more compact and much smaller. “Radiation of
the right type, two degrees west—”
“Right!” Jellico made the correction in their
course. “How far?”
“Less than two units. It is leaking through a
shield.”
Dane saw the captain’s head give a little jerk. A moment
later Jellico reported, “The brachs say there’s a
ground transport of some kind, two of them, moving under
us.”
“Could it be they are still pulling in men?”
suggested Finnerstan.
“Pulling in men,” Dane thought, and yet just this
flitter load proposed to go up against what might be a thoroughly
warned, armed, and well-defended base. Yet, looking about him from
face to face, he saw no concern. They might have been making a
routine flight. Though he was no longer hungry, the pain in his
head remained a steady throb, and he felt very tired. How long had
it been since he had had normal sleep? He tried to recall events
for the past days, days that now seemed to stretch to months.
Jellico was not noted for taking reckless risks unless the
situation was such he had no other choice. No Free Trader did and
kept a ship for long. But apparently the captain was determined on
this attack.
“Only one unit ahead now.” Finnerstan did not look
up from the detect.
“Radar nil on anything airborne,” Jellico replied.
“Mixed report from the ground, a lot of
interference.”
Dane turned his head and tried to stretch to the point where he
could look down from the cabin window. But it was physically
impossible to see the ground from where he sat, even if it had been
day instead of the dark of very early morning.
“No contact beam.” Jellico might be reporting to
them or only thinking aloud.
“I’m getting something new—maybe your
distort.” Finnerstan glanced back at Dane.
“All right, Thorson, what’s down there?”
Jellico demanded, and Dane pulled his thoughts together. This was
the time when he must justify his inclusion in his company.
“Spacer landing to the south.” He closed his eyes,
picturing in his mind what he had seen during their quick sortie
into the basin. “Then there are three bubble huts in a
cluster about seven field lengths north—beyond those two long
structures half buried in the earth, earth walls, turfed roofs—vehicle park by the bubbles. That’s it.”
“They will be expecting their men back in a captured
flitter perhaps,” Jellico said. “And that would come in
without hesitation. So, we try to do it that way.”
And maybe meet blaster fire dead center if there was some
recognition code, Dane knew. He wished vainly that he had some kind
of protective shell into which he could withdraw during the next
few minutes. But the Patrol officer made no objection to
Jellico’s wild plan.
“Look there!” Finnerstan was against the cabin
window on his side, staring down. But for the men behind him there
was no chance to see what had caught his attention.
“Down.” Jellico’s hands were busy on the
controls. “That must be the distort. Now, I’m going in
on hover—”
Dane saw movement about him. The Patrolman by the exit hatch had
his hands ready on the lock there. And the flitter began its
descent, straight down, using the slow speed of the hover.
There was an odd light outside the windows, light that
brightened suddenly, as if it had been turned from low to high.
Perhaps it had been the passing of a blanketing of diffuse lamps by the distort. But now they were apparently
descending into a camp brightly aglow to aid activity.
“Now!” Finnerstan rather than the captain gave that
order, only a second before the bump told them they touched
earth.
The Patrolman wrenched open the hatch, made the practiced roll
out and down, his neighbor following him in trained proficiency.
The spaceport policeman and rangers followed with less agility.
Finnerstan himself had already disappeared through the front
door. And now, before Rip and Dane pulled themselves out, the
brachs flowed away with a speed surprising in their stocky
bodies.
Rip jumped. Dane was the last to disembark, his reflexes slowed,
but he held a stunner in one hand. Jellico had vanished and was
probably on the other side of the flitter.
As his boots met the ground, the thump of contact transmitted to
his aching head, Dane looked about. It was light, but by some lucky
chance they had landed some distance from the scene of the
activity. The spacer still stood, its nose pointed to the stars.
Both its cargo hatches were wide open, and cranes were at work
loading. There was a line of robo carriers speeding from the two
earth-walled buildings, each bearing boxes and canisters, but their
burdens were small. They were taking only lighter, easily stowed
things, Dane judged with the eye of one only too used to handling
shipments. The rest they would probably destroy.
There was one crawler pulled up with two cages on board,
covered. But that stood by, and no one was there. The ramp leading
to the crew and passenger quarters was still on the ground
and—
Dane was startled. That ramp was under guard. Two men in crew
uniforms stood at its top, just within the open hatch. They were
both armed with blasters, and they were looking steadily down the
ramp. Now that he studied the scene, he could see in addition a
similar guard on duty by the two cargo-hold openings, both eyeing
the load the robos stacked to be taken on board.
So far no one on the field seemed to notice the landing of the
flitter and the disembarking of her passengers, but there was a
knot of men nearer to the ship. They just stood there, their hands hanging empty by their sides, staring at the
guarded ramp and the cargo holds.
“No room.” Dane heard Finnerstan’s low-voiced
comment. “The Veeps are planning to leave their underlings
behind. I wonder if they will agree—”
“They’re disarmed, sir,” one of his men
reported.
There was an addition to the clanking of the robo
carriers, to the general hum of the loading. It did not come from
the group of men bitterly watching the preparations for withdrawal
but from a distance. Then two more crawlers plowed on into the
bright light around the ship.
The first carried only three men, each with a pack or box he
supported against his body, as if to shield it from the jerks and
jostling caused by transportation across very rough terrain. The
second had one large, shrouded box amidships.
As the crawlers passed the waiting men, there was a confused
shouting, a slight surge forward as if they would have rushed those
transports. Then a lance of blaster fire cut across the ground,
laying down a smoking reminder to stay where they were. As they had
moved forward, so now they stumbled back, away from that searing
bar.
The crawlers did not halt, nor did their occupants so much as
glance at the rejected. Instead, they moved steadily forward until
they stopped by the ramp and the one cargo hatch. The lines of
robos had come to a halt. Most of them were shut down and stood in
a compact group, which grotesquely mimicked that of the frustrated
men. Only two were still activated, and they went to work
transferring the crate on the second carrier, working with
exaggerated care that suggested their burden was of great
importance. As they were making fast the lines for it to be lifted
into the hold, the men on the other carrier started up the ramp,
bearing their burdens with the same visible need for safety.
“About time for takeoff,” Jellico said. “We
have to move now—”
But someone else had the same idea. While they had remained in
the shadow of the flitter, watching the scene and trying to
estimate their best chance, the brachs had sped into action. Now
they saw the male rear on his hind quarters, holding a stunner in
his forepaws. He was at the foot of the ramp, and his ray beamed up in a back and forth sweep intended
to take out the two guards.
They must have been so intent on watching their human opponents
that they did not sight the alien until too late. The last man
carrying a package stumbled, fell back, sliding limply down the
length of the ramp, so that the brach had to leap out of the way.
While that victim had deflected some of the stunner, he had not
taken all the ray. From suddenly deadened hands above fell one of
the blasters. The other guard, momentarily startled, aimed not at
the brach but at those he knew were enemies, the group to be left
behind, his fire cutting into them so that those not directly
crisped by its beam scattered, some screaming.
Now those on guard in the still open hatch took up the fire,
before crumpling under stunners used by the brach, while the second
guard, still firing, fell at last, rolling in turn down the ramp,
his blaster yet emitting a beam, whirling its deadly lance right
and left as it bumped by him and then fell to the ground.
“This is it!” The Patrolmen, followed by the others
from the port, went into action, speeding for the ship. For
takeoff, the ramp must be in, the hatch closed. Now one of the
brachs darted out of hiding to reach for the blaster still
discharging its fire power along the ground. But he or she did not
reach it. There was a lance of fire from the hatch, poorly aimed,
for the alien was not hit, merely went to ground again.
However, the force of Trewsworld law closed in about the spacer,
centering their aim on the open hatches, picking off anything
trying to close that.
Dane stumbled along in the wake of the captain and Shannon. He
found it hard going, and they left him well behind. But neither of
the Free Traders were heading for the battle of the hatches.
Instead, their goal was the third carrier, the one with the two
cages on it. Rip reached it first, scrambled into the
driver’s seat, and was warming her for a start when the
captain hurled himself in on the other side, half standing, half
crouching, prepared to defend their capture. And defend it he did
as several of the rejected, who had survived the burn-off, tried to
rush the Terrans.
Jellico got two of them. Dane picked off the last, numbing his
leg with a stunner. Rip set the carrier on high and was bringing it around, aiming it. Now Dane understood what he was
trying to do. The weight of the carrier, if it was rammed up on the
end of the ramp, would anchor the ship to the ground. There would
be no takeoff because the safety factors of the spacer would not
permit it.
There was still firing by the spacer, and Jellico was alert,
watching for any sign of life at the hatch, any chance of
Rip’s being picked up out of the driver’s seat. The
assistant astrogator had the blunt nose of their vehicle pointed
straight on target now.
Dane saw Rip’s arm raise and fall, a stunner held by the
barrel so its butt could be used as a hammer. He was breaking the
controls. And with those gone, no one could turn the heavy machine
from its course.
Rip leaped out one side, Jellico the other, and the crawler
clanked steadily on. There was a grating, a crushing sound loud
even through the shouts, the crackle of blaster fire. The
carrier’s nose arose over the edge of the ramp, and the
machine hung there, its treads cutting more and more deeply into
the ground as it strove to push ahead and could not. But the anchor
the Free Traders had devised would hold, though the ultimate taking
of those in the ship might prove to be delayed. If help came from
the port, they might be able to use gas bombs.
With the ship so anchored, part of the besieging party rounded
up what was left of the men who had been scattered in the blaster
attack. But Dane trailed Jellico and Finnerstan on an inspection of
the base. Much of what had been there had been purposefully
destroyed. One of the earth-embedded structures was caved in by an
implosion bomb, and the others all gave the appearance of hasty
plundering. A well-equipped com station had been left without
destruction, and one of the port policemen slid into the seat
there, sought the channel, and beamed a call for assistance.
‘Trouble is,” commented Finnerstan, “if they
are really fanatical about secrecy, they will destroy what they
have in the ship.” He looked at the spacer as if he would
have cheerfully broken it open as one cracks an eggshell to get at
the yolk. “By the time we get help, they will have disposed
of everything we want.”
“Parley?” suggested
Jellico.
“Only give them more time to get rid of everything
suspicious. If this was a local operation, a true jack raid, we
might make a deal. But this is too big. They’ll have
information on board that must have threads out to perhaps half a
dozen other worlds, perhaps some we don’t suspect at all.
What they carry is more important than the prisoners.”
“What,” Dane asked, “about those?” He
pointed through the door of the com room to the men who had been
rounded up. “They won’t have any reason to support the
ship people, and perhaps they can give you some idea of what
is on board and whether they would readily destroy
it.”
Dane’s suggestion might already have been in the Patrol
officer’s mind, for Finnerstan was already moving to such an
interrogation. Most of the sullen men were uncooperative, but the
fifth he questioned gave them the lead they needed. Though the
others captured were mainly guards and workmen below the level of
third-grade tech, expendable, the fifth man brought in was a
reeling, half-conscious captive who had been rescued a few inches
from having his life crushed out of him by the crawler on the ramp,
the last one boarding who had been brought down by the
brach’s assault.
He was certainly of higher rank than the others. In fact, as the
guards brought him past those other prisoners, two of them lunged
for him, cursing. He was cowering, obviously badly shaken, when he
stood before Finnerstan.
The combination of the stun attack, his close brush with death
under the crawler, and the anger of his followers broke him. The
Patrol officer learned what he wanted. Under his direction they
dragged out of the wreckage in the base a tube by which they lobbed
gas bombs into the opened hatches. Those broke on contact,
spreading the sleep-compelling atmosphere. Masked guards from the
flitter went on board to gather up prisoners, leave them wrapped by
tanglers, then proceeded to put in safety all that had been about
to be transported off-world.
It was three days later in Trewsport that the crew of the
Queen were finally united for the first time since the LB
had taken off. The settlers’ government had been badly
shaken. There was an interim Patrol command in control, and specialists from off-world had been summoned to examine the
Trosti labs and the material taken from the ship.
Dane sat nursing a mug of coffee. His headache had gone at long
last, leaving him feeling curiously light. He had slept away some
twenty planet hours and was now able to summon alert attention to
what Captain Jellico said.
“—so as soon as they clean her out, she’s to
be put up to auction as contraband taken in the midst of an
unlawful act. There’s no one here planetside who wants a
spacer or would know what to do with her if they had her. We will
probably be the only bidders, as the Patrol is not going to go to
the trouble of flying her to another world just to sell her. I have
it on Finnerstan’s word that if we put in a time bid,
she’s ours!”
“We have a ship—a good ship!” Stotz protested
with the firmness of one not to be influenced.
“We have a good ship tied up by a mail contract,”
Jellico returned. “We have the mail fees, yes, but they are
small. And if we can build up a fund as a starter when the contract
is finished—”
It was a big step, expanding from the Solar Queen to a
two-ship holding. Very few Free Traders had ever done it.
“We
do not have to keep her long,” the captain continued.
“I do not even say deep space with her. Use her in this
system only. Trewsworld is an Ag planet. But if she can grow more
crops—short-term crops—than just the lathsmers, she
would be sooner ready for regular stellar trade. Now look
here.” He flashed a picture from a reader onto the wall.
“This is the Trewsworld system. Those captured charts show
that while there is some of that ore—they’re calling it
esperite—on this planet, there is much more on Riginni, the
next planet out. And that can be dome-mined but can’t be
terraformed. So, miners have to eat, and they have to ship back ore
to here for galactic transshipments. There’s a two-way trade
for you—steady, growing as the dome mines grow. And
considering that we had a good hand in breaking up this Trosti
mess, we can get the franchise. Profit all along.”
“And a crew?” Steen Wilcox asked that.
Jellico ran a
fingertip down his burn scar. “Mail run is
easy—”
“Easy,” thought Dane, but did not say it
aloud.
“We stagger our own men for a while. You lift her
the first time, Steen, with Kamil for your engineer, Weekes as jet
man. We hire on a local for steward. And, Thorson, since Van Ryke
is on his way in to join us on the Queen, you can take
cargo master. Next time around, Shannon can take
astrogator—we change back and forth. We’ll be
short-handed, but an inner-system run is easy, and you can get by
with robos and a limited crew. Is it agreed?”
Dane looked from one face to the next. He could see the
advantages Jellico had mentioned. That there would be difficulties
the captain had not mentioned, he could well guess. But when his
turn came, he added his assent to the others’.
They would bid on the spacer, begin a solar run from Trewsworld
to her neighbor, spread their crew thin over two ships and hope for
the best, be ready to face the worst as Free Traders so often had
to. And what was the worst going to be next time? No use in
allowing his imagination the chance to paint a dismal picture, Dane
decided. The Queen had survived much in the past. Her new
sister ship would have to learn to do the same.