Double Contact

CHAPTER 27

From the deeply upholstered comfort of his control couch, which felt about as soft as a wooden plank due to the body tension required to make him appear relaxed to his subordinates, Captain Fletcher watched the image of the ships and aircraft of the spider landing force as it expanded in his forward vision screen.

Rhabwar was not a large vessel by Monitor Corps standards, but it was a little longer and its delta wing configuration gave it more width than the big, flattened, turtlelike ships of the opposition. The approach he had originally planned would certainly have caused maximum non-offensive confusion, if not utter havoc and demoralization, to the opposition. But he had remembered the words of Pathologist Murchison as she had been telling him how he should do his job.

His idea had been to go in low and fast and drag a sonic Shockwave along the length of the beach. He didn’t think that the ships would suffer or — except psychologically — their crews, but the thought of what the air turbulence created by a supersonic fly-past would do to those ridiculously flimsy gliders made it a bad idea. It wouldn’t be like shooting ducks, he thought, but more like blasting butterflies out of the sky.

“Decelerate,” he said, “and bring us to a halt one hundred meters above the beach midway between the station and the water-line. Deploy three tractor beams in pressor mode at equal strength in stilt configuration and hold us there.”

“Sir,” said Haslam, “the slower approach is going to give them time to begin landing their people on the beach.”

The captain didn’t reply because he could see everything that was happening as well as the lieutenant could and had arrived at the same conclusion.

“Dodds,” he said. “The opposition’s ships are highly flammable. When we’re in position, swing around so that our tail flare will be directed inland. Then put out one forward tractor to discourage the spider advance. Focus it to about ten meters’ surface diameter and change the point of focus erratically for maximum turbulence as you play it back and forth along the beach across their path. The idea is to create a localized sandstorm down there.”

“Understood, sir,” said Dodds.

“Power room,” he went on briskly. “We’ll be supporting the ship’s mass on pressor beams with no assist from the thrusters for a while. How long can you give us? A rough estimate will do.”

“A moment, please,” said the engineering officer; then, “Approximately seventy-three minutes on full power drain, reducing by one-point-three percent per minute until exhaustion and an enforced grounding seventeen-point-three minutes later.”

“Thank you, Chen.” said Fletcher, smiling to himself. The power-room lieutenant was a man who disliked giving rough approximations. “I’m putting this operation on your repeater screen. Enjoy the, ah, battle.”

The misty-blue light given off by their three immaterial stilts as well as that of the forward tractor beam would be difficult for the spiders to see in the bright sunlight, so it would seem that the ship drifting to a stop above them was virtually weightless, or at least very lightly built like one of their own flying machines.

“A suggestion, sir,” said Chen suddenly. “If your intention

is to make a blatant demonstration of power that will discourage, and probably scare hell out of the enemy without inflicting actual physical injury, this is the way to do it___”

“The spiders aren’t our enemy, Lieutenant,” said Fletcher dryly, “they just act that way. But go on.”

“But if they don’t discourage easily,” the other continued, “we could be faced with a siege situation so that balancing ourselves up here on power-hungry stilts would be a short-term activity as well as running down our power reserves. My suggestion is that we land and modify the meteorite shield to provide hemispherical protection widely enough to cover the station and ourselves. That way we can maintain the shield for a much longer period. Once we’ve made the point, which we have, that we are large, dangerous, and, if necessary, can float motionless in the air, there’s no reason to continue doing so. With respect, sir, I think we should land sooner rather than later.”

Exactly the same thoughts had been going through Fletcher’s mind, but saying so to Lieutenant Chen would have made the captain sound petty-minded in the extreme. But a development that the other had not foreseen, at least not yet, was that if a spider aircraft should fly into one of the pressor beams supporting Rhabwar’s weight, it and its pilot would be smashed flat into the ground.

“Thank you, Chen,” he said instead. “Your suggestion is approved. Haslam, take us down. Dodds, kill the pressors but maintain the forward tractor to keep that sandstorm going. Chen, how soon will the meteorite-shield modification be ready?”

“It’s difficult to be precise,” said Chen. “Fairly soon.”

“Try to make it sooner than that,” he said.

The gliders had sheared off at Rhabwar’s approach but now they were circling back again, possibly thinking that the grounding of the ship was a sign of weakness. All three of the spider vessels had run their prows up onto the beach and the nearest one had its landing-ramp lowered. The first few spiders were already crawling ashore with crossbows held at the ready. Dodds took a moment to check the focus of his tractor beam. The landing party now numbered close on twenty, with more of them coming down the ramps at intervals of a few seconds.

Directly in front of them a carpet of sand twenty meters in diameter and aboutthree inches deep rose high into the air and exploded into a cloud as the tractor’s point of focus was vibrated erratically in and out. A thick curtain of fine, powdery sand dropped in front of and a little on top of the spiders.

For a moment they milled about uncertainly. Then Fletcher saw a spider with a large speaking trumpet climb onto the superstructure of it ship to chitter loudly at them. At once they split into two groups that crawled rapidly along the beach in opposite directions. The sandstorm, its effect only slightly diminished by the fact that the line of targets was lengthening, followed them.

The other two ships were also disgorging spiders while the gliders were flying in tight circles above Rhabwar and the station, although fortunately not low enough for them to hit the meteorite shield when it came on.

“Sir,” said Dodds worriedly, “the sand doesn’t appear to bother them very much, especially now that all three landing parties are strung out along the beach. It looks as though they are trying move out of sight and circle round behind us. Shall I increase the power and area of focus, sir, to stir up more sand, or maybe try to box them in by—”

“Deploying another tractor would help,” Haslam broke in. “I’m not doing anything else at the moment.”

“—By pulling in some water instead of sand,” Dodds continued, “and splashing it down in their path? That might stop them spreading out sideways. They’d be caught between the sea and a wet place.”

Pleased with the lieutenant because this was an idea Fletcher had not already thought of himself, he said, “We’re told that water has a very bad effect on them and we are, after all, trying to be friendly. Try it, but be very careful not to dowse them.”

A few minutes later Dodds said jubilantly, “They certainly are afraid of the water; they’ve stopped in their tracks. But now they’re pushing inland again.”

“Haslam,” said the captain, “man another tractor beam unit — Dodds will give you the settings — and help him out. While he concentrates on the two farther parties, you take the nearest one. Keep moving up and down the line of spiders trying to advance on the station. Leave the waterplashing, if necessary, to Dodds. You shower them with sand only. Try to spoil their ability to see where they’re going, and generally make them feel uncomfortable, but don’t hurt them.”

“Yes, sir,” said Haslam.

More and more spiders were crawling down their ships’ landing ramps, but not spreading out because of the threat from the containing splashes of water. If the positions were reversed, Fletcher thought, he would have been wondering why they were not being constantly drenched by water instead of dusted with harmless sand, but then, their minds might not share the same rules of logic.

Suddenly they were changing tactics.

“Look at this, sir,” Dodds said urgently. “They’re beginning to weave from side to side, then darting into the falling sand. And when I’m dealing with one flank the other one pushes forward and gains a meter or so of ground. I have to keep changing the point of focus, narrowing it or moving the tractor beam back to keep from hitting them. Chen, we’re going to need that meteorite shield, like now.”

“The same thing is happening here,” Haslam said. “We’d need to drop a ton of sand on this lot to discourage them. They take turns at running in, zig-zagging at random, and… Hell, I hit one of them!”

It must have been the briefest of touches on one side of the spider’s body, but the tractor beam lifted it two meters into the sand-filled air and flipped it onto it back. It lay with its six limbs waving. Haslam withdrew his beam without being told as a few of the others gathered round their injured companion to lift it back onto its feet. Through the air which was now free of sand, Fletcher had a clear view of the spiders further up and down the beach beginning to move purposefully towards the station again. Then high on the superstructure of the middle ship of the three, the spider with the speaking trumpet began chittering loudly at them. The advance hesitated and slowed to a dead stop. Within a few seconds all three spider landing parties had turned around and were hurrying back to their ships, the injured one being half carried by two of its companions. The gliders were already coming in to land close to their boarding ramps.

“I’m sorry about hitting that one, sir,” said Haslam, “and I don’t think it was badly hurt. But it looks as though we’ve taught them a lesson because they’ve decided to pull out.”

“Don’t bet on that, Lieutenant,” said Fletcher dryly. He was raising his hand to point at the scene in the forward viewscreen when the communicator chimed and its screen lit with the image of Dr. Prilicla.

“Friend Fletcher,” said the Cinrusskin. “The traces of emotional radiation emanating from your crew have been characteristic of excitement, tension and concern, all of which feelings have suddenly diminished in strength. A long and tricky surgical procedure is about to be attempted — once, that is, we solve an associated non-medical problem. Can you tell me whether or not we can proceed without outside emotional interruptions or distractions?”

“Doctor,” Fletcher said, laughing softly, “you will be free of distractions for the rest of the day. Judging by the look of that sky there is a heavy rainstorm, not just a squall, moving in. The spiders are returning to their ships as we speak.”

They watched the dark grey clouds on the horizon expanding to fill the sky and the paler curtain of heavy rain rushing closer. The spiders and their aircraft were safely on board and the sail shields of the three ships were closed tight before the deluge arrived, but they could hear it rattling and bouncing off the flattened dome-like hulls which, he realized suddenly, looked very much like umbrellas.

“This must be the first time,” Haslam said, “that a battle was called off because of rain.”