Postmarked the Stars

16.BAIT FOR A TRAP

Dane was thrown back by the sudden tilt of the deck. He slammed into the framework of the hoist, his head meeting one of the beams with a sickening crack. Perhaps the padding of the thermo hood saved his life, but from that second he lost all interest in the proceedings.

He awoke with pain filling his head, sending torturing fingers exploring down his neck and shoulders. So did that fill his world that he was only vaguely aware of sound—loud and intermittent—which arose beyond the red haze clouding his vision.

Then he was lifted, and the pain hit with acute force so that he cried out to be left alone. The impatient handling, for he was being pulled along roughly, made it worse, though he did not sink back into full unconsciousness.

He was dropped, rather than laid down, his head a little elevated. Then they did leave him alone. Slowly, blinking, he managed to see a little about him. A mass of wreckage pointed skyward, past his range of sight, for he could not raise his head higher. After slow minutes of capturing memory, he knew that for the flitter, which had apparently struck full on its tail. Scuttling back and forth across his line of sight between him and the stones was a robo waving flailing arms.

“Meshler?” The ranger’s name came out as harsh, croaking sound, but the face of the man leaning over him was that of a total stranger. He glanced at Dane casually but made no attempt to examine the Terran’s hurts.

“This one’s still alive,” he reported to someone.

“All the better. If he threshes around a little, it will make it more convincing. What about the others?”

“One dead, one still breathing. And the pilot?”

“He’s safe enough. With his feet in a tangle, he can flop to impress, too. Push him halfway under the wreck, and it will be all set. Now, give those dust grubbers the message—loud and clear—”

The words seemed to float in and out of Dane’s hearing. Some were sharp and clear and made sense.

Others were so faint that he could not be sure of them.

“You—up in the rocks !”

That was certainly loud enough to re-echo inside his skull as a frightening din.

“Listen,” shouted the same voice again.

Fainter—”We’re listening.” “We can make you an offer.”

“We’re listening—” Almost an echo of the first reply.

“Send a couple of your men out for a talk.”

“Send yours here—unarmed,” countered the other.

“Give them what they want.” Another voice, impatient, cut in. “We haven’t much time now. This has fouled up everything.”

“We come, no blasters, to that rock—”

“Agreed.”

The man who had stood by Dane moved away. As he passed the robo, the machine swung away from him, its persona detection device steering it from attacking a human. Another man came to join him. They stood with their backs to Dane, but he could see them. The haze was clearing more from his vision, and he could watch in a detached way, as if this had no meaning, for the only reality was his pain.

From behind the stones came two men in settlers’ shaggy outdoor clothing. They moved warily, and they did not come far, standing well away from the enemy.

“What do you want?” demanded one of them.

“Just out—off-world. We have a spacer we can lift in, but we need time to reach her—and we need transportation—a flitter.”

“So? Well, we don’t have one,” countered the settler. “And we can’t make one out of stones—”

“Give us a truce,” returned the other. “We call off the beasts, send them in another direction. There’s a broadcaster to the north they’ll drift to if we switch off ours. And we’ll send in a com for help. Whoever comes will see this wreck and set down by it. We’ll take over. Oh, not with blasters—with tanglers. Then once we’re out of here, you’re free. All we need is that flitter. We would have taken this one if it hadn’t fouled that blasted robo. You stay where you are, quiet and peaceful. Don’t try any tricks until we get the flitter. Then we’ll go—”

The settler turned his head to his companion. Dane saw their lips move but could not hear even a whisper of speech from where he lay.

“What about them?” The settler pointed to the wreck and Dane.

“They stay here until the flitter comes. After that you can have them. And to show you we mean what we say, we’ll call off the beasts, hold them back. If you agree, that is.”

“We’ll talk it over—” The settlers’ spokesmen withdrew, not turning their backs on the enemy, but edging along until they disappeared behind boulders large enough to give them cover.

The others tramped back, though they took no precautions against fire from the stones. Something beside the fury of pain moved in Dane. He understood the terms of the truce, but it did not mean much to him personally. Only a dim sense of alarm awakened. It was clear that the settlers did not trust these men, but would they agree? And if they did—

Bait! The explanation rang in Dane’s mind as if it were an alarm to awaken him to what this might mean in terms of his own survival. The fragments of talk he had heard on his first regaining consciousness made sense. He—the others who survived the crash—were to be left here as bait!

Another flitter might set down to give them aid. If the beasts had been called off and there was no sign of enemy activity, that could work. But suppose that the men among the stones made no move to warn off the newcomers—the trap could spring shut at once.

But would the strangers, once they had their means of transport, merely withdraw? Dane fought the steady throb of pain in his head and tried to think more clearly. Let the settlers believe that, and they were fools.

On the other hand, they were not well armed, and the robos were running down. The one that had been whirling back and forth behind the wreck of the flitter was just coming to a stop. It gave one or two more flails of its arms; then froze pointing straight out, as if to push away an enemy it could no longer attack.

So without blasters, with their robos run down, they would be easy meat for the monsters. And the refugees might just be desperate enough to take a chance at a bargain, believing that they could not be any worse off and that it might save them. Dane’s need to warn was giving him a kind of strength now. He tried to move, at least one hand. It came up slowly until he could see it hanging limply on his wrist, as if it were not his but another’s. Now he turned his will on his fingers. They were numb, without feeling, but they did move as he ordered.

Being able to wave a hand was not what he needed now, but more, much more. He concentrated upon sitting up. But when he raised his head from whatever slight support it lay upon, the world whirled in a spin about him, and he nearly blacked out again.

So he lay quiet, using what strength he had to move his other hand, one foot a little, then the other. At least he did not seem to have any broken bones so far. And the numbness was wearing out of the hand. Perhaps the knock on the head and a general drastic bouncing about was all the damage he had suffered,

“Do you think they’ll agree—”

Dane subsided at the sound of that voice, behind and quite close.

“What choice have they? After those robos short out, the beasts will swarm at them. They’re not that stupid. Let them take a little longer to argue about it, and then give them the ultimatum—now or never!”

“How long do you think we’ll have to wait for a flitter?”

“Well, that one bunch got away, and these came prepared for a pickup. Manifestly they knew what they had to do. So somewhere the alarm has already gone out. And Dextise got a message from the port. The Free Traders seem to have done enough talking to impress Largos and the Patrol commandant.”

“I thought Spuman was handling that so well—”

“He had it all tied up until this last shipment blew it. Grotler couldn’t have made more mistakes if he were deliberately trying to foul jets. A good thing he didn’t finish the voyage alive. Dextise would have taken him apart bone and muscle and fed the remains to one of his pets. This may well have finished the whole operation. It will if Spuman can’t use the Trosti cover. One man—just one man—plays it stupid, and we lose three years of work! And maybe the big cover into the bargain.”

“Grotler must have been sick. He died, didn’t he, during takeoff?”

“Let us hope that part of the story is straight. If he was helped out of this universe, then matters may be even worse than they seem. No, Dextise has the right of it now—cut our losses here, get off-world, and let these bird-tenders argue it out with the big ones. Dextise will turn on the agitators to send the monsters crazy and spread ’em out. The settlers will be so busy jetting around to pull their own people out of the jaws of this and that from Dextise’s pens that we’ll have time to cover our trail a little. You’ll learn there comes a time when you sometimes have to write off an operation.”

“You think this might blow the whole Trosti deal?”

“Who knows what the Patrol is going to find when it noses around? We could maybe have covered up Grotler and the Free Trader if that ranger and the traders hadn’t come snooping around, and if they hadn’t broken the force field and let the big ones out. Nothing to do after that but try to control them. And we couldn’t because of some counter call to the north.”

“Grotler’s?”

“What else? The trader didn’t bring it in. Last we heard from Spuman, they admitted they landed it in an LB somewhere in the wilderness and planted it where they thought it would be safe until some tech saw it. By the fourteen horns of Mablan, this thing fell apart right there and then! We tried to head them off, and what happens? We run into this—”

“Dextise said wipe ’em out. Let the rangers think the beasts did it.”

“I know, I know. Then what happens? Some of them get away! So then we have to wait around to make sure these won’t talk if help comes—and we lose a flitter. If you want to take a crawler back when you know some one of the beasts can open one of those like an E-ration tube and have you out as if you were rations—”

“So now we hope for another flitter.”

“Can you think of a better way? Eilik has killed the interference. He’s sending an SOS through on the port reading, purposely making it weak. Between here and the port, there’re four or five big holdings. Any one of them might respond—that’s settler custom. So we get a flitter, and then we turn the agitator on high, and with their robos not functioning, Dextise will still get his wish—nothing left alive to talk.”

Though there were still missing pieces in the ugly pattern, it made sense for Dane, more than anything had since he had seen the dead man in his bunk. Just as he had feared, these strangers had no intention of keeping their part of the bargain. How could he get a warning to the men at the stones?

“You—out there—” The refugees were the first to call this time.

Dane tried to make his body obey his will. If he could only call out! But when he tried it, the best he produced was a harsh croaking. One of the strangers, passing, looked down searchingly and then deliberately kicked at Dane’s outstretched legs, the jar of that blow running like flame up his body until he thought he was going to black out. When he recovered a little, he could see the strangers and the settlers again facing each other.

“We agree. You call off the things, and we’ll let you have the flitter—if it comes.”

“It’ll come,” the stranger returned. “We’re beaming a distress call north. You make no warn-off signal. We’re holding the beasts back. You do a warn-off, and we let them go. And they’ll get these first—” He gestured over his shoulder to the wreck and perhaps the other survivors Dane could not see. Was the brach among them?

Again he had half forgotten the alien. Since the strangers had not mentioned the creature from Xecho, it might be that the brach had been crushed somewhere in the flitter, a nasty end for the unusual comrade of this painful adventure. Dane’s hood was crumpled under his head, and when he inched around a little,

trying to see if he could reach the mike of the interpreter, a sharp point dug into his neck, so he flinched away. It felt as if the com had been crushed and was now reduced to broken metal bits. So much for that.

He could not summon the brach even if the alien was alive and had escaped injury.

But the Terran had other things to think of when the men came back from the stones and halted to stand over him. Both of them were of Terran or Terran colonial stock as far as he could judge. They wore thermo jackets not unlike his own, and their heads were hooded, though they had pushed the masking visors up and back. One of them squatted now on his heels, though he did not put out a hand to touch Dane.

“You heard that.” It was not a question but a statement. “All right, you don’t fire rockets now and throw this off course. If you do, we let our pets back there loose, and who do you think they’ll relish first?”

Dane did not reply, and the man seemed satisfied that he had thrown fear into a hopeless and helpless captive. He added, “We ought to take care of you anyway. You blasted traders got us into this mess. If it hadn’t been for you—”

“Come on.” His companion dropped a hand on his shoulder. “No use in planeting in on him with all that. Fact is—Grotler did it, not them. Grotler and what we could never have foreseen. He’s finished anyhow.”

They both vanished out of Dane’s range of sight, and he was left to stare at the wreck, the still robo, and the stones, with the words “finished anyhow” remaining in his mind. But something in him responded to that as if it were a lash laid unexpectedly on his back.

So they though that he was finished, that all that was left for him was to lie here, acting as bait in their trap and then falling to one of their monsters! If he could only see what lay behind him—What they had said earlier—that Meshler was all right, only they had put a tangler on his legs and shoved him under the wreck to play the roll of another victim—

There was no brach to free them this time. So, whatever could be done, Dane would have to do for himself. Once more, slowly, and with infinite care, he tried to move arms and legs. This time they responded better. It was almost as if that kick had removed some block. Also the pain in his head was now stabilized as an ache, fierce to be sure, but it no longer made the world whirl about him.

He tried to judge time by the look of the sky. The clouds of the morning had held. He had no idea how long before real dark. But surely the jacks would rig some kind of light to draw the help they thought would come. They would not waste their bait in darkness. How much light?

Dane listened as intently as he could. He could hear the clanking of the last two robo defenders of the stones and—just barely—a murmur of voices from some distance—not loud enough to distinguish any words.

Water—Spirit of Space—how he wanted water! It had been a nameless need at first, but now that he thought of it, his thirst was enough to swallow up his judgment if he allowed it to. Dane had always thought of himself as being tough—Free Traders were noted for their ability to take about the worst any planet could offer and, if not survive, manage to make a battle of it. There were techniques taught on Terra—survival methods that did not come out of kits, or supplies, but had to lie inside a man himself.

Dane had not been very good at them. He doubted whether he could be better now. But when there was only one road left, that was the way a man must go.

He went to work following the methods that had been so drilled into him, though his response then had often been the despair of the instructors. Mind over body—only he was no esper—

Thirst—he was thirsty. He felt as if he could lie in a pool of water and absorb it sponge fashion through every pore. Water! For a moment he allowed himself to think of water, of the dryness of his mouth, the ash-coated emptiness of his throat. Then he deliberately applied the right technique—or what his instructors half the galaxy away sitting comfortably before a class of aspiring spacemen declared was the right technique.

Water—he wanted it, so it followed that he must get it. To do that, he had to move. And to move, he must again be able to command his body. But he was hampered now by the fact that if he showed too much life, his captors might see to it that he was quiet again.

Dane’s arms lay by his sides, but his palms were against the ground. Stealthily, he exerted pressure. He lifted a little and discovered that more of his weakness had ebbed, and he could raise himself.

Could he counterfeit delirium? And dare the enemy treat him too roughly in sight of the stones? They had made a bargain, even if they did not expect to keep it. Suppose he tried to move and they attacked him. Those watching might believe they dared expect no better treatment. That kick had been delivered in passing and when to their sight he might have been unconscious. So—

Dane put pressure on one side. It also depended on where he was going to go. If he tried to roll toward the stones, they would stop him, but if he turned to the wreck? There was nothing left to do but try.

With what strength he could summon, he pushed, rolled on his side, and lay quiet, while once more pain and dizziness washed over him. But now he could see the wreck fully, and not far away lay another body sprawled out face down. It was the badly wounded man they had taken on board, and plainly he was dead. A little farther on was Meshler.

The ranger stared at Dane, and now he wriggled vainly. From the chest down, with both arms and legs out of sight, he lay under what had once been the hatch door, while leaning over him at a threatening angle was one of the hoist beams.

“This one’s moving!” Dane could not see the speaker, but the man must be close behind him.

“Water—” Dane thought it time to play his role. “Water—”

His voice was still harsh, hardly above a whisper, but he managed to articulate better this time.

“Wants a drink, he does.”

“Well, give him one. Don’t let them see us off beam now, or they might get ideas—”

Dane felt warm. He had been right in assessing the position. Then a grab at his shoulder brought him on his back, and he had time only to see the nozzle end of a space cup coming abruptly down to spray its blessed moisture into his mouth. The first spray was so delivered that he choked, and some of it spilled out of his mouth to run across his chin, into the folds of his hood. Then the nozzle was between his teeth, and he sucked avidly.

“Drag him over here,” came the order as the nozzle was pulled from his toothhold with the same brutal disregard for his pain as when it had been first inserted. “He’s too near the stones. Someone might have a bright idea about trying to get to him when it gets dark.”

Hands caught in his armpits, lifted him a little, and then dragged him back along the ground. He could only endure that jolting with what small store of energy he had left and hold on to consciousness as if that were a weapon someone was trying to twist out of his grasp.

When they let go, he thumped back against a surface that supported his head and shoulders much higher than before. And the squirming Meshler was almost within touching distance.

“Excellent—” Dane half opened his eyes. He was not playing a role now, he was living it. He could see blurrily a man come to stand before him.

Man? No, this was an alien like the one who had been in the camp below the ledge, if not the same one. He spoke Basic. At least that one word was in the Basic of the star lanes, but the accent was pronounced.

“Yes, well done, Yuljo. He is now a sight to wring the hearts of any rescue party. Doubtless he dragged himself hither to try to free his trapped comrade and then collapsed. Very well staged—since your breed on these frontier worlds is too much occupied with the thought that they owe a duty to one another when disaster strikes. If this weakness did not grip them, we could not hope to lay our little trap at all.”

He raised his head, encased in no thermo hood but rather in a tightly fitting helmet from the back of which projected an antenna—not a space helmet but perhaps an off-world com device. Now he looked to the north. Did they expect help so soon, Dane wondered? As far as he could judge, they were hours away from any northern holding, and there would not be another party come from Card’s.

“It would be well to set the lamps. There is no storm, but we face a dark night.”

Indeed, the gloom had increased since Dane had last noted it. But situated as he was now, he could view more of the scene. Of the other man they had rescued before the crash, he could see nothing. Perhaps he lay on the other side of the wreck. Meshler was still, though his face was turned to the Terran, and he gave Dane a sharp glance now and then.

Their captors were working with two camp diffuse lamps, making adjustments to their shades to throw a maximum of light—one on the wreck and the two men there, the other to mark out a landing site for the craft they confidently expected to entice in.

Why did they not use the control beam again, wondered Dane, and then found an answer for himself. They had tried that, and it had ended with a wreck. They did not want that to happen again.

Having set the stage with care, the alien gave a last-minute inspection. Two of his men took cover in the shadow of the wreck, using pieces of the flitter to give them protection from the sky. And each was armed with a tangler.

The alien came once more to stand before Dane and the ranger.

“Hope or pray to whatever gods you own,” he said, “that you do not have long to wait. We are holding off the beasts, but we do not have equipment here of any great strength, and how long we can so hold—who knows? This is a game of chance and one in which you and those fools behind the stones there have the most to lose. There goes their last robo—and how long will two blasters and a brace of stunners hold against what prowls out there—once it is loosed?”

He waved to the expanse of half-cleared land, and Dane saw that nightmare and horror did prowl there. Most of it was beyond his power of description but enough allied to perils he knew to make him understand just how black the future was—more so than a moonless night, for there were no stars to light it.