Invaders of Space

CHAPTER FIVE

EVERYTHING added up. When the Theban was again in space, this time headed for Carola, everything was perfectly clear to Horn. In ancient days, when in the course of human events a balance of trade was in favour of a nation which did not want to spend the balance in or lend the balance to a debtor nation, the debtor nation paid that balance in metallic gold. There was a tradition that gold was desirable in itself, and for centuries after the falsity of this idea was recognized, gold was nevertheless a medium of exchange.

After Buhl's law of the distribution of elements in planetary systems showed that first orbit worlds were always rich in heavy elements, there was a necessary adjustment of viewpoint. Gold was worth what it cost to get it from the inmost planets of most solar systems, and no more. So the interstellar credit note was invented and became the medium of exchange over all the occupied parts of the galaxy. Its value could be held stable because the quantity of credit notes could be controlled. This credit system was a highly complex, highly abstract, and thoroughly satisfactory way of balancing accounts and trade balances between worlds. And the notes were portable.

They were also avidly desired. It happened that the Danae was carrying forty million interstellar credits for the adjustment of debts and credits between two worlds some light centuries apart. This was not an extraordinary kind of cargo, but it was not publicized, usually, because it tempted thieves. If Larsen had somehow found out about the shipment, then everything that had happened was understandable.

Piracy in space was impossible, in any ordinary sense of the word. True, the Theban's engineer had been put aboard the Danae and that luxurious ship had been landed to be looted at leisure. But the Danae was a derelict when it happened. If there'd been anybody aboard they could have made the boarding impossible simply by putting the ship into overdrive for the briefest of instants. Then the Danae would have vanished, to reappear millions of miles away. Or the mere locking of all air locks and boat blisters would have left the engineer hopelessly marooned on the ship's outer skin, clinging there uselessly until the air in his space suit gave out.

The trick had been to cause the abandonment of the Danae. That required only that the liner's engines should appear to have blown. On a modern ship without engineers, deck officers knew how to turn the engines on and off, but hardly anything else about them. If Larsen had arranged for the Danae's engines to cut off by themselves, the liner's crewmen would know of no choice but to take to the boats or to wait helplessly to die in the ship itself. Evidently they'd taken to the boats.

Larsen would have needed to put a man of his own aboard the Danae, perhaps as a passenger. With a perfectly simple bit of apparatus the whole thing could be arranged. The device would need only to cut a power line at a predetermined instant, and at another predetermined instant to restore the circuit that had been broken. Such a device wouldn't be complex, and needn't even be worked by anybody still on board. It could have been installed by an ostensible passenger before the Danae landed at its last port of call before Carola and Hermas. The man who installed it could leave the ship there and the Danae would go on, doomed but unsuspecting.

Now Horn could picture the actual event with precision. When the Danae's engines went off, the ship naturally broke out of overdrive in between the stars. The ship's two officers would be incredulous. They'd try to put the ship back into overdrive again; it would take a long time for them really to believe that their engines had failed. Such things just didn't happen!

But eventually they'd be forced to believe that theirs had failed. They'd have marvelled. They'd have been astounded. But they'd have turned confidently to the auxiliary drive and switched it into operation. It wouldn't work either.

The shock would be great. But officers were trained to know what to do even in such unprecedented states of things. They wouldn't actually panic. Ultimately they'd move to abandon ship. The discipline would be admirable. They'd distribute the ship's company among the lifeboats, and take all the other measures officially recommended for such emergencies - which nobody believed could ever happen. In this case they'd even piously take with them the most valuable and portable part of the ship's cargo, the currency. It wouldn't occur to them that the money was the cause of the engines' failure.

Understanding what had happened, however, was no guide to what to do. Horn's main concern was, naturally, for Ginny. She was in a lifeboat attempting to make the beacon planet Carola. Therefore Horn had to go to Carola immediately. He might have gotten away in a Theban boat, though it would be a journey considerably longer than Ginny was having to make. But it was impossible. He was no astrogator. Conceivably he could set a course for Carola, but more than that might be needed. If the Danae's space boats refuelled on Carola and went on from there, they'd take the stored fuel and Horn could not follow. And besides, he had to stay with the Theban in Larsen's pursuit of the lifeboats, in order to turn that pursuit into a rescue.

A day passed, two, three. The Theban drove for Carola. Horn knew that the lifeboats would have landed on Carola by now, if they, were ever going to land anywhere. The Theban had two more days' journey in overdrive before it could reach the other beacon planet.

Horn saw the wizened little engineer from time to time, always in the act of disappearing from sight. The engineer showed all the signs of a man who knows he is doomed. Larsen had certainly intended to kill him on Hermas. He'd made him take the spine-chilling job of boarding the Danae from space. He'd never let the little man leave the ship on an inhabited planet because of what the engineer could tell. So even bottles couldn't comfort the small man now. He talked fearfully to this crewman and that, and squirmed out of sight whenever he saw Horn.

It was the ship's cook who revealed what was in the minds of the rest of the crew. He brought coffee to Horn in the engineroom without being asked to do so. Having delivered it, he did not go away. Instead, with his eyes on the companion ladder leading up to the control room, he said in a low tone:

"A lot of us are worried. We was there at Hermas to land that Danae when it turned up derelict, an' to loot it. But then the skipper found out somethin' and started off for Carola. Didn't give us time to pick up what was there waitin' to be took."

Horn nodded. He said dryly, "I noticed it."

"There's talk," said the cook in a lower tone still, "that it was cash money he was after. Interstellar credit notes from one bank to another that were bein' carried by the Danae."

"That sort of shipment," said Horn, "has been known to be made."

"They say," said the cook, almost in a whisper, "it was forty million credits! In cash! An' when the boats left the Danae, they took it with 'em. That's why we're goin' after 'em."

Horn blinked. He hadn't told this. Larsen and the red-headed mate were the only ones who had known it, originally, besides himself. But now it was known to the crew. They wouldn't have known even of the shipment unless told, much less its removal in the Danae's lifeboats. So -

"That could explain a lot," said Horn. He waited.

"It's a lot of cash," said the cook. He searched Horn's face and then said furtively, "D'you think the skipper'll divide it up if he gets it?"

"No," said Horn flatly.

"We're worried too," said the cook. "An' - we're worried about the engines. How about them?"

"They'll hold together if I make them," said Horn. "Not otherwise."

The cook looked again at the companion ladder and then said in extreme unease, "Uh - if the skipper gets that money -"

"If he does," said Horn coldly, "there'll be the devil to pay. If he keeps it in his own hands, you'll talk about mutiny and think you'll get up the nerve to try it and take it for yourselves. But you won't. Or if he divides it, you'll start gambling among yourselves. The first man to go broke will kill somebody who isn't broke and start gambling again. The odds are that Larsen will keep the money and finally kick you out and keep it for himself. That's what I'd do!"

The cook still looked enormously uneasy, but not as uneasy as before. Something close to gratification diluted his unease. He nodded as to a fellow conspirator. "That's right! That's right! That's what he'll do if he can!" He paused for a long minute and then said confidentially, 'We'll talk about this some more, huh? We'll see what we can work out?"

"No," said Horn sardonically. "You tell the skipper you sounded me out, but that I'm not joining any schemes to murder all but the members of a small, select group, who would then begin to murder each other. I'm not joining up with anybody. Not yet!"

The cook's mouth dropped open. It was amazement that Horn had penetrated the actual meaning of his proposed plot. But it was the most obvious thing in the world, to Horn, that conspiracies and counter-conspiracies must begin when the size of the Danae's treasure was known. It was even more certain that Larsen would be the first to start such conspiracies.

The cook went away and Horn turned back to the engines. He was engaged in as much of an engine overhaul as was possible without cutting the drive. But Riccardo drives had been developed with the need for repairs in mind. Many of the engines' component parts had been installed in pairs, of which one could keep the drive going. It had been considered ingenious at the time, but in practice it made the engines inordinately bulky and complex. But Horn was grateful for it now. Because of the overhaul possibilities, if he could get Larsen and the others under control and Ginny and the rest of the castaways aboard, there might be a fair chance of reaching Formalhaut. But he painstakingly arranged that only he could keep the engines going.

The noises of the drive did not diminish, though they changed from time to time. Some of the new sounds were deliberately made by Horn. One or two had him sweating before he found their causes. The Theban's engines had been incredibly neglected. The little engineer had been bluffing when he signed on to keep them going. He'd never been a competent man. Perhaps he'd never actually been certificated. Horn suspected, and he believed that Larsen was now sure, that the engineer had got himself the post only because he needed money for his bottles, and that he would ultimately have sacrificed his own life and that of all the tramp's crew to his personal necessity for drink.

But it was not easy for Horn to keep his mind either on the engines or on other matters while he worried about Ginny. If the spaceboat she was in got on a course that was even trivially wrong, she'd never land on Carola. If it were landed unskilfully she could be killed. If by mischance it did not land at the beacon, but somewhere else on some other continent, it would be utterly hopeless even to think of finding her. And there might be deadly animals on Carola, or diseases just as deadly.

These worries seemed more important to Horn than the situation on the Theban. With unbelievable riches awaiting them - or so they thought - the crew began to feel that they were already rich. It immediately followed that they felt they would be richer if some fellow crew members were not around to claim shares in the treasure of the Danae. But soon they realized that their fellow members were thinking the same thing. The castaways, of course, would have to be killed when the treasure was taken. Then Horn must be considered. He couldn't be killed or they'd all die in the breakdown of the Theban. But except for him, the fewer others who left Carola to divide the loot of the spaceliner, the more would be left for those who survived.

The Theban became a ship of conspirators, making multiple plots against each other and against Larsen. But all needed to have Horn on their side.

Larsen came down into the engineroom and stood beside him, scowling. Horn made a very fine adjustment to the item he was working on before he looked up. Then he said pleasantly, "I've a feeling that a balance coil's going out before long."

Larsen said harshly, "Did you spread the word about that money on the Danae?"

"Not I," said Horn. "If I had, you'd know it. Only the three of us knew it at first, you and the mate and me."

"Somebody let it out!" rasped Larsen.

"Yes. Perhaps the mate. But I think it was you," said Horn. "Now, about this balance coil - "

"Why would I start it?" demanded Larsen, snarling.

"To start trouble," said Horn matter-of-factly. "To have everybody on the Theban ready to cut everybody else's throat as soon as the money's on board. If nobody knew about it until the money was picked up, they'd start conspiring and might mutiny. Knowing about it ahead of time, they've already started conspiring. But they won't act until they see the money, and then they'll all be at each other's throats instead of combined against you."

Larsen snarled but did not contradict him.

"And," added Horn, "I think you've come to make a deal with me that the two of us will help the others kill each other off, after we have the money, until there is only you and me left to split it."

Larsen growled, "You've got it all figured out, eh?"

"Yes," agreed Horn. "Up to the point where you figure that if the two of us land this ship somewhere, the instant the engines aren't needed any more you shoot me in the back and don't divide with anybody."

Larsen scowled. Horn shrugged and turned back to the engines. Then Larsen's manner changed. It became almost genial. "Look," he said amiably, "I need you and you need me. We let it go at that. I can't risk killing you. You can't risk killing me. Call it a deal, eh? We understand each other?"

Horn said composedly, "You're assuming we'll find the spaceboats on Carola and that you'll get the money from them. But you might not. They may have landed and refuelled and gone on to the next beacon planet. If they have, they may never arrive, but we've no chance of picking them up in space. Why make a bargain about something that may not happen?"

Larsen grinned and turned away without a word. He climbed the companion ladder back to the control room level.

Horn stared after him. Larsen's grin had said that his objection was foolish. And Horn saw instantly why. Every trace of blood left his face and he began to tremble all over. His eyes were flames. These signs, in Horn, were indications of fury of an entirely different sort from red-faced rage. A man whose face flushes with anger may be a nuisance, but he can be coped with. A man who turns white while his eyes burn is more than likely to cause considerable damage before he's through.

Horn turned back to the engines, forcing his hands to steadiness, and laboured painstakingly at the matter in hand. It was seemingly a detail of the overhaul of the Theban's engines, so far as that could be managed while they ran.

The device he worked on was a trivial thing, in a way. It was part of the system by which the absence of rudders in spaceships was made up for. There can be no rudder, because in space there is nothing for a rudder to act on. So a ship in space always travels along a line which runs through the centre of thrust of the drive plates - forward - and the centre of gravity of the ship. When a ship is properly balanced, its centre of gravity is in the ship's axis, and if the ship were hung up somewhere it would hang vertically like a plumb line. But if there is poor storage of cargo, for example, it will hang askew and will travel crabwise, not as it is aimed. A ship taking off after a change in cargo will always be balanced so it will travel straight instead of in some unpredictable curve. And to balance a ship there are pressure coils, balance coils, trim coils, to place the centre of gravity where it ought to be. Without such balancing an astrogator coming out of overdrive can find out where he is, but he can never know where he's going.

Horn was arranging the controls of the Theban's balance coils. He was preparing a booby trap, to take effect if Larsen attempted to sell out Horn and his crew and the Danae's castaways in one triumphant feat of duplicity. Somehow, he believed Larsen had something of the sort in mind.

He finished the job.

Next ship morning the mate came truculently to him.

"The skipper says," he began, "that you don't care to keep on living."

"I hadn't noticed it," said Horn.

"There are some deals going on about you-know-what."

"I know of some deals about if-we-find-the-money," conceded Horn. "They seem pretty silly to me. Because we may not."

He spoke calmly, but he found cold anger surging up inside him. The more he considered, the less hope he could summon. So he was preparing various measures which would avenge what Larsen and his crew had done. But blind fury was always close under the surface in Horn right now. Larsen had grinned at the suggestion that the spaceboats might have refuelled on Carola and gone on from there. And Horn knew the significance of the grin. Among other things, it meant that Ginny had no chance at all of living unless he achieved the impossible very quickly. It was very likely that killing the mate would be one of the necessary steps towards achieving the impossible. Horn found his hand closing spasmodically on a two-foot steel wrench.

"The skipper and me," said the mate ominously, "we've got a deal. If you want in -"

"I don't," said Horn. "I've been offered other deals and I haven't taken them either, because if anything happens to me the engines will conk out in hours. And that will be the death of all of you! So if I get into a deal, I'll make it. And I'm not ready to make it."

"You're lookin' for trouble," rasped the mate.

"Now that you mention it, yes," said Horn. "With you!"

He stood up and moved towards the mate, swinging the two-foot tool. The mate snatched out a blaster - no mere stun pistol. He levelled it. Horn laughed at him, without mirth.

He saw the impact of his laughter. The mate could kill him, but he dared not. He dared not ever try to cripple Horn. Horn couldn't be forced into anything, because nobody could tell whether he'd done anything to the engines or not. It was a complete reversal of the state of things intended when he was shanghaied. Then he'd been classed as a captive who would be used as long as he was needed, and then disposed of. Now his death would be the ultimate disaster for them. But his escape from them would destroy them also.

It was a situation which seemed to have no possible solution. Horn, still laughing, moved towards the mate with the wrench swinging, and the mate held a blaster pointed at his middle. When Horn raised the wrench as if for a murderous blow, the mate fled. He scrambled up the companion ladder, swearing in panic, and Horn flung the wrench after him.

It didn't hit him. It clanged and fell back to the floor of the engineroom. Horn picked it up and went back to his work.

It became continually more difficult to keep his mind on the work, though. He thought of Ginny. The Theban would presently break out of overdrive, and there would be the usual tedious business of manoeuvring to the planet where Ginny might be aground or not, alive or not, in danger or not. If Ginny had died because Larsen wanted to loot a bank's shipment of currency - At that thought Horn went into a cold and terrible fury.

But he couldn't stop thinking of her, though all his imaginings were horrible or grisly or intolerable. She might be aground now, but the victim of unknown beasts or death from disease....

Then the Theban came out of overdrive at the solar system of which Carola was a member.

There followed a period of unalloyed torment for Horn. The landing of the Theban on Carola required that the engines function perfectly. Every ten seconds of engine failure during descent could mean a wreck instead of a landing. So Horn stood by the engines. He could picture the handling of the ship by the demands on the engines and the swinging of the hull. The Theban went ahead on interplanetary drive for a while, then decelerated for nearly as long. Then there were indecisive drives, freefall hoverings, and touches of power just sufficient to keep the ship aloft while searching for the beacon.

Horn could imagine with extreme vividness the look of a planet from space, with a sunset line curving across its surface. There would be colourings which would be vegetation, and there would be muddy-seeming areas which would be seas; perhaps ice-caps would be visible, and perhaps not. But somewhere down below a beacon ceaselessly broadcast, "Carola beacon! Carola beacon! Co-ordinates -" By straining his ears he could hear the mutter of the turned- down astrogation communicator, tuned to the Wrangel waves of the beacon's broadcast. "Unmanned refuge. Beacon only. Carola beacon! Carola beacon!"

Then the movements of the ship became purposeful. It drove and swung about. It hovered. And gradually, gradually, the use of power increased. The Theban would be descending, but increasing its lift as the surface of the world below it grew nearer. Horn bit his nails.

The engines wobbled, and their noise grew shrill. With iron-steady hands, Horn remedied the trouble. The Theban was descending. The beacon, then, would be on the now sunlit side of the planet. Even Larsen would not be so impatient as to land on unseen terrain at night. Being let down by a grid was another matter.

The quality of the ship noises changed subtly. There was air outside the hull. By the sound, it grew thicker. Presently the Theban seemed to wallow slightly, as if it had lowered itself into a jet stream in the air. Then there was a breathless time of waiting, and the power-demand needles wavered up and down and up and down. This was very delicate jockeying of the ship to a chosen landing place. Then the ship steadied suddenly. It was aground. Horn heard agitated stirrings in the control room.

He very deliberately twisted a wire here and broke a circuit and completed it in a new fashion there, and painstakingly threw an adjustment out of optimum position. Larsen and the red-haired mate came down the companion ladder, armed with blast rifles.

Larsen snarled, "Come along, in case you get ideas!"

Horn had intended to follow anyhow. Now he trailed along down to the air bank, air- freshener level, to the galley stores and messroom level, the crew's quarters. Then the holds. On the way down, faces peered out at them. The crew knew that Larsen was landing to seize forty millions of credits in interstellar credit notes. There was no man aboard who did not know that treachery and murder would begin the instant the treasure was found. But every man was involved in at least two conspiracies to seize the whole, and every man knew it was highly unlikely that more than one of their number would survive the murderous competition for the loot.

Larsen and the mate, with Horn close behind, clattered down towards the ship's bottom exit port. When Larsen saw a crewman starting, from his post for landing, he rasped, "Stay at quarters! If I want you outside I'll call you. Stay at quarters."

They continued to clatter downwards, past the holds. They reached the exit port - naturally, an air lock. Here Larsen stopped and threw off the safety catch of his blast rifle.

"They were here!" he rumbled thickly. "I saw 'em!" Fury seemed to exude from him. It was somehow like the ferocity of a carnivore who bristles over his meat. Because he expected to gather the fruits of a crime, Larsen was ready to add to it with atrocity. "But they saw us comin' down and they run off." To the mate he roared, "Open it!"

The mate unbolted the inner door, set the lock to "Aground" and undogged the outer door. Larsen raised the blast rifle. As the post swung open he opened fire, traversing his field of vision as the opening widened. Then he leaped out, rifle ready, peering ferociously for targets. He cursed luridly as none appeared.

The Theban stood slightly askew on an eminence which fell away on three sides to lower ground, and on the fourth direction went on, rising slightly, to a pattern of rounded, still-higher hills. About the landed ship there was a clearing of ground, sprayed to prevent the growth of any vegetation at all. There was the large, crimson-fluorescent cone of the beacon of this world. There were fragments of the same improbably lurid plastic on the ground a little distance away. There was jungle on every hand. But between the beacon and the jungle's edge there were the four lifeboats of the Danae.

They lay at random on the ground. The party had made it to Carola and had landed safely. Close by one of the boats there was a smouldering fire, as if someone had been cooking by it before the Theban appeared in the sky. It meant that someone had been here only moments ago.

Horn felt a surge of incredulous hope. It was so strong an emotion that for seconds he could neither have spoken nor moved. There was now a real chance that Ginny was still alive! And - blessedly! - the fugitives from the Danae had been aware that a ship of space coming to ground on Carola might not be a rescue ship. They'd fled at the Theban's descent. Perhaps some of them watched from the edge of the jungle now.

Larsen went striding to a lifeboat, blast rifle in hand. He wrenched open its port and entered. There were noises from inside. Crashings. Larsen seemed to be wrecking the boat's interior.

The mate looked truculent but uneasy. He stood by the exit port, staring about him. It was still day, here where the cone-shaped beacon sent its monotonous message to emptiness. But sunset was near. There were reddish clouds and a section of the deep-crimson disc of a sun already partly below the horizon. There, by convention, the west must lie. Against the sunset, improbable trees rose above the jungle. Peculiarly angular branches held tufts of foliage, and other angular branches departed from those tufts to meet yet other clumps of eccentrically shaped leaves. There were spikelike growths which also showed in silhouette above the forests. They appeared to have no branches at all. Then there was a dense mass of growing stuff which rose like a wall about the edges of the clearing.

Larsen came out of the first spaceboat. He panted incoherencies as he went swiftly to a second. He entered it, and there were more crashings. There was the sound of devastation. Larsen came out and trotted, snarling, to a third boat. Again there were monstrous sounds before he ran to the fourth, cursing.

The sun edged down behind the tops of the preposterous trees. Deep shadows crept across the clearing. In the last spaceboat Larsen seemed to have gone mad; to be trying to pull the boat apart with his hands. Then the blast rifle went off repeatedly. He seemed to be attempting the total destruction of the spaceboats that had brought castaways nearly a light year and a half from the abandoned Danae.

The mate licked dry lips. Larsen came out of the fourth boat, bellowing, "They hid it! They got it hid! But I'll get 'em!"

He strode to the Theban, his features contorted. He seemed ready to froth at the mouth. "Get lights going!" he rasped, "so they can't come back an' get away with the stuff! Lights! Plenty of 'em!"

He plunged into the ship. The mate looked scared. It was notorious that when Larsen was in a bad mood, somebody was in for a bad time. Now he was practically an incarnation of murder.

The mate said uneasily, "Stay here. Yell if you see anything."

He went into the ship. Horn did not answer. He was almost sick with relief that Ginny was at least possibly alive. He leaned against the landing fin from which the exit port opened. Presently he turned his eyes around. Yes, those fragments of crimson-fluorescent plastic had been a cache cover like the one on Hermas. And, like the Hermas cache, this one had been broken into, smashed, and cast aside. The emergency food supplies for possible castaways had now been broken open.

Horn did not have to look into the cache to know that those stores had been destroyed on the previous occasion when the Theban had landed here. This was the cause of Larsen's grin when Horn suggested that the fugitives might have restocked and refuelled their boats and gone away from Carola. The cook had said the engines began to act up after the Theban left Carola and before it could land on Hermas. So the Theban had gone on to Formalhaut for emergency repairs the little engineer was incompetent to make. Horn had been shanghaied to make them. And the present state of things was brought about.

Night fell quickly, as it did in the tropics in all planets. Lights flashed into being halfway up the Theban's battered hull. They were meant to give light for landing cargo in spaceports. Here they flooded the ground all about with a pitiless white glare. Horn grunted to himself. He'd had minutes of darkness in which to reach the jungle's edge before the lights went on, but he'd been too dazed by hope to take advantage.

Now the jungle seemed black by contrast with the floodlights' brilliance. In a little while there was movement at the foliage edge. Tiny things appeared, blinking and fascinated by the lights. They hopped and squirmed and crawled towards them. Larger things came, gazing adoringly at the brightness. Finally there was a great stirring, and something huge crawled into view. It stared raptly at the lights. It was a large thing, thirty feet long, with many legs. It looked like something that had crawled ashore from an ocean.

More things came out. There was one, larger than a horse, with incredible backward-curving horns and flippers. It stared stupidly at the lights. More small things appeared, staring too. Things on whipping wings flapped into the glare, swirled crazily out to darkness, and came back again. One of them crashed into the Theban's hull with a loud impact. There were things the size of dogs, which were wholly unlike dogs, and things the size of donkeys which were in no wise donkey-like.

The clearing filled with light-dazzled animals. They stared at the lights, edged towards them. They made no sound. They did not attack each other. They did nothing but crowd out from the jungle's edge, fascinated and drawn and hypnotized by the brightness.

It occurred to Horn that if anybody were watching a vision screen inside the Theban and saw this herd of nightmares, he would have no eyes for a man working his way through them. Yet if the creatures did not attack each other because of their fascination with the lights, they should not be aware of the presence of a man.

Horn began to move towards the jungle wall, around the ship from the exit port. The animals were utterly silent as he wormed his way among them. He heard clattering footsteps in the ship. Larsen had looked in the spaceboats for the money they'd brought from the Danae, and he hadn't found it. Now he came with tools and crewmen to tear the boats apart to find the money. The lights were to illuminate the boats for that enterprise - and of course to make sure the castaways did not come back to claim possession.

But there were the animals. Horn forced his way between them. They seemed unaware of his presence. Once his shadow crossed the eyes of a rapt and fascinated horned creature and it tossed its head in alarm. It moved as if to rear up, but then the lights struck its eyes again and it continued staring. Horn pushed it out of his way as he went towards the jungle.

He heard Larsen cursing horribly. A blaster rasped. Nothing happened. The blaster fired again, and again. Horn reached the jungle's edge. Larsen, bellowing fury, tried to drive away the animals by blasting them. He failed entirely. The animals stood rapt and motionless, intoxicated and hypnotized by the lights. Larsen killed, and killed, and killed....

The animals still stood gazing at the lights. More of them came from the jungles, replacing those Larsen shot.

Horn made his way through thick growths in pitch darkness, his stun pistol ready for use, but taking - and he knew it - appalling chances. But he believed that Ginny was alive, that she was somewhere in this jungle, and that she needed him.

Nothing was more important than that.