Sargasso of Space

CHAPTER THIRTEEN: ATTACK AND STALEMATE

Dawn was hinted at with a light in the east, and still the Queen’s beacon had not changed its hue. The watchers did not expect it to now. Something had gone wrong—Rip had never reached the ship.

Unable to stand inaction longer, Dane crept from the improvised shelter and started along the cliff on which they had set up their lookout. It formed a wall between the entrances to two of the tongue-shaped valleys—the one in which Wilcox and Kosti were encamped, the other unknown territory.

Dane sighted a trickle of stream in the second. The presence of water heralded, or had heralded, other life in his experience of Limbo. And here and now that pattern held. For he counted ten of the small checkerboard spice fields.

But this time the fields were not deserted. Two of the globe creatures worked among the plants. They stirred the ground about the roots of the spice ferns with their thread like tentacles, their round backs bobbing up and down as they moved.

Then both of them stood upright. Since they lacked any discernible heads or features, it was difficult for Dane to guess what they were doing. But their general attitude suggested they were either listening or watching.

Three more of the globes came noiselessly into sight. Between two of them swung a pole on which was tied the limp body of an animal about the size of a cat. No audible greeting passed between the hunters and the farmers. But they gathered in a group, dropping the pole. Through the glasses Dane saw that their finger tentacles interlocked from globe to globe until they formed a circle.

“Sooo—” The words hissed out of the early morning murk and Dane, who had been absorbed in the scene below, gave a start, as Mura’s hand closed on his shoulder.

“There is a crawler coming this way—” the steward whispered.

Once more the group of globes had an aura of expectancy. They scattered, moving with a speed which surprised the Terrans. In seconds they had taken cover, leaving the fields, the stream bank deserted.

The crunch of treads on loose stone and gravel was clear to hear as a vehicle crept into the vision range of the two on the cliff. Just as Kamil had been the first to discover, the crawler was not the usual type favoured by Federation men. It was longer, more narrow, and had a curious flexibility when it moved, as if its body was jointed.

One man sat behind its controls. An explorer’s helmet shielded his face, but he wore the same mixture of outer garments as Rich and his men had affected.

Mura’s hand on Dane’s shoulder applied pressure. But Dane, too, was aware of the trap about to be sprung. Masked by a line of brush, there was stealthy movement. A globe thing came into the Traders’ sight, clasping close to its upper ball body a large stone. One of its fellows joined it, similarly armed.

“—trouble.” Mura’s voice was a thin whisper.

The crawler advanced at a steady pace, crunching over the ground, splashing through the edge of the water. It had reached the first field now, and the driver made no effort to avoid the enclosure. Instead he drove on, the wide treads rolling flat first the low wall, and then the carefully tended plants that it guarded.

The globe things hidden from their enemy, scuttling on a course which paralleled that of the vehicle. Their stones were still tightly grasped and they moved with a lightning speed. By all the signs the man on the crawler was heading into an ambush.

It was when the machine ploughed into the third field that the infuriated owners struck. A rain of stones, accurately hurled, fell on both crawler and driver. One crashed on the man’s helmet. He gave a choked cry and half arose before he slumped forward limply over the controls. The machine ground on for a moment then stopped, one tread tilted up against a boulder at an angle which threatened the stability of the whole vehicle.

Dane and Mura climbed down the side of the cliff. The driver might have deserved just what he had received. But he was human and they could not leave him to some alien vengeance. They could see nothing of the globes. But they took the precaution, when they had reached the valley floor, of spraying the bushes around the crawler with their sleep rays. Mura remained on guard, ready to supply a second dose of the harmless radiation while Dane ran forward to pull free the driver.

He lugged him back in a shoulder carry to the edge of the cliff where they could stand off an attack of the globes if necessary.

But either the sleep ray or the appearance on the scene of two more Terrans discouraged a second sortie. And the valley might well have been completely deserted as the two from the Queen stood ready, the limp body of the rescued at their feet.

“Shall we try it—” Dane nodded at the wall behind them. Mura contrived to look amused.

“Unless you are a crax seed chewer, I do not see how you are going to climb with our friend draped across your broad shoulders—”

Dane, now that it was called to his attention, could share that doubt. The cliff climbing act was one which required both hands and feet, and one could never do it with a dead weight to support.

The unconscious man groaned and moved feebly. Mura went down on one knee and studied the face framed by the dented helmet. First he unhooked the fellow’s blaster belt and added it to his own armament. Then he loosened the chin strap, took off the battered headcovering and proceeded to slap the stubbled face dispassionately.

The crude resuscitation worked. Eyes blinked up at them and then the man tried to lever himself up, an operation Mura assisted with a jerk at his collar.

“It is time to go,” the steward said. “This way—”

Together they got the man on his feet, and urged him along the wall, rounding the spur on which they had been perched all night, so coming to the hidden point where the other two of their party were camped.

The driver showed little interest in them, he was apparently concentrating on his uncertain balance. But Mura’s grip was about his wrist and Dane guessed that that grasp was but the preliminary of one of the tricks of wrestling in which the steward was so well versed that no other of the Queen’s crew could defeat him.

As for Dane, he kept an eye behind, expecting any moment to be the target of a hail of those expertly thrown rocks. In a way this move they had just made would lead the Limbians to believe them one with the outlaws, and might well ruin any hopes they had cherished of establishing Trade relations with the queer creatures. And yet to leave a human at the mercy of the aliens was more than either of the Terrans could do.

Their charge spit a glob of blood and then spoke to Mura: “You one of the Omber crowd? I didn’t know they’d been called in—”

Mura’s expression did not change. “But this a mission of importance, is it not? They have called many of us in—”

“Who beamed me back there? Those damned bogies?”

“The natives, yes. They threw stones—”

The man snarled. “We ought to roast ’em all! They hang around and try to crack our skulls every time we have to come through these hills. We’ll have to use the blasters again—if we can catch up with ’em. Trouble is they move too fast—”

“Yes, they provide a problem,” Mura returned soothingly. “Around here now—” He urged their captive around the point of the cliff into the other valley. But for the first time the man seemed to sense that something was wrong.

“Why go in here?” he asked, his pale eyes moving from one to the other of the Traders. “This isn’t a through valley.”

“We have our crawler here. It would be better for you to ride—in your shaken condition, would it not?” Mura continued persuasively.

“Huh? Yes, it might! I’ve a bad head, that’s sure.” His hand arose to his head and he winced as it touched a point above his right ear.

Dane let out his breath. Mura was running this perfectly. They were going to be able to get the fellow back where they wanted him without any trouble at all.

Mura had kept his clasp on their charge’s arm, and now he steered him around a screen of boulders to face the crawler, Kosti and Wilcox. It was the machine that gave the truth away.

The captive stiffened and halted so suddenly that Dane bumped into him. His eyes shifted from the machine to the men by it. His hands went to his belt, only to tell him that he was unarmed.

“Who are you?” he demanded.

“That works two ways, fella,” Kosti fronted him. “Suppose you tell us who you are—”

The man made as if to turn and looked over his shoulder down the valley as if hoping to see a rescue party there. Then Mura’s grip screwed him back to his former position.

“Yes,” the steward’s soft voice added, “we greatly wish to know who you are.”

The fact that he was fronted by only four must have triggered the prisoner’s courage. “You’re from the ship—” he announced triumphantly.

“We are from a ship,” corrected Mura, “there are many ships on this world, many, many ships.”

He might have slapped the fellow with his open hand, for the effect that speech had. And Dane was inspired to add:

“There is a Survey ship—”

The prisoner swayed, his bloodstained face pale under space tan, his lower lip pinched between his teeth as if by that painful gesture he could forego speech.

Wilcox had seated himself on the crawler. Now he calmly drew his blaster, balancing the ugly weapon on his knee pointing in the general direction of the prisoner’s middle.

“Yes, there are quite a few ships here,” he said. They might have been speaking of the weather, but for the set of the astrogator’s jaw. “Which one do you think we hail from?”

But their captive was not yet beaten. “You’re from the one out there—the Solar Queen.”

“Why? Because no one survived in the others?” Mura asked quietly. “You had better tell us what you know, my friend.”

“That’s right.” Kosti moved forward a pace until his many inches loomed over the battered driver. “Save us time and you trouble, if you speak up now, flyboy. And the more time it takes, the more impatient we’re going to get—understand?”

It was plain that the prisoner did. The threat which underlay Mura’s voice was underlined by Kosti’s reaching hands.

“Who are you and what are you doing here?” Wilcox began the interrogation for the second time.

The knockout delivered by the bogies had undoubtedly softened up the driver to begin with. But Dane was inclined to believe that it was Mura and Kosti who finished the process.

“I’m Lav Snall,” he said sullenly. “And if you’re from the Solar Queen, you know what I’m doing here. This isn’t going to get you anywhere. We’ve got your ship grounded for just as long as we want.”

“This is most interesting,” Wilcox drawled. “So that ship out on the plain is grounded for as long as you want, it it? Where’s your maul—invisible?”

The prisoner showed his teeth in a grin which was three-quarters sneer. “We don’t need a maul—not here on Limbo. This whole world’s a trap—when we want to use it.”

Wilcox spoke to Mura. “Was his head badly injured?”

The steward nodded. “It must have been—to addle his wits so. I can not judge truly, I am no medic.”

Snall rose to the bait. “I’m not space-whirly if that’s what you mean. You don’t know what we found here—a Forerunner machine and it still operates! It can pull ships right out of space—brings ’em here to crash. When that’s running your Queen can’t lift—not even if she were a Patrol Battlewagon she couldn’t. In fact we can pull in a battlewagon if and when we want to—!”

“Most enlightening,” was Wilcox’s comment. “So you’ve got some sort of an installation which can pull ships right out of space. That’s a new one for me. Did the Whisperers tell you all about it?”

Snall’s cheeks showed a tinge of dark red. “I’m not whirly, I tell you!”

Kosti laid his hands on the prisoner’s shoulders and forced him to sit down on a rock. “We know,” he repeated in a mock soothing tone. “Sure—there’s a great big machine here with a Forerunner running it. It reaches out and grabs—just like this!” He clutched with his own big fist at the empty air an inch or two beyond Snall’s nose.

But the prisoner had recovered a little of his poise. “You don’t have to believe me,” he returned. “Just watch and see what happens if that pigheaded captain of yours tries to upship here. It won’t be pretty. And it won’t be long before you’re gathered up, either—”

“I suppose you have ways of running us down?” Wilcox’s left eyebrow slanted up under his helmet. “Well, you haven’t contacted us yet and we’ve done quite a bit of travelling lately.”

Snall looked from one to the another. There was a faint puzzlement in his attitude.

“You’re wearing Trade dress,” he repeated aloud the evidence gathered by his eyes. “You have to be from the Queen.”

“But you’re not quite sure, are you?” prodded Mura. “We may be from some other spacer you trapped with this Forerunner device. Are you certain that there are no other survivors of crashes roaming through these valleys?”

“If there are—they won’t be walking about long!” was Snall’s quick retort.

“No. You have your own way of dealing with them, don’t you? With this?” Wilcox lifted the blaster so that it now centred upon the prisoner’s head rather than his middle. “Just as you handled some of those aboard the Rimbold.”

“I wasn’t in on that!” Snall gabbled. In spite of the morning chill there were drops of moisture ringing his hairline.

“It seems to me that you are all outlaws,” Wilcox continued, still in a polite, conversational tone. “Are you sure you haven’t been Patrol Posted?”

That did it. Snall jumped. He got about a foot away before Kosti dragged him back.

“All right—so I’ve been posted!” he snarled at Wilcox as the jetman smacked him down on the rock once more. “What are you going to do about it? Burn me when I’m unarmed? Go ahead—do it!”

Traders could be ruthless if the time and place demanded ice-cold tactics, but Dane knew now that the last thing Wilcox would do was to burn Snall down in cold blood. Even if the fact that he was Patrol Posted as a murderous criminal, with a price on his head, put him outside the law and absolved his killer from any future legal complications.

“Why should we kill you?” asked Mura calmly. “We are Free Traders. I think that you know very well what that means. A swift death by a blaster is a very easy way into the Greater Space, is it not? But out on the Rim, in the Wild Worlds, we have learned other tricks. So you do not believe that, Lav Snall?”

The steward had made no threatening grimaces, his pleasant face was as blandly cheerful as ever. But Snall’s eyes jerked away from that face. He swallowed in a quick gulp.

“You wouldn’t—” he began again, but there was no certainty in his protest. He must have realized that the competition he now faced was far more dangerous than he had estimated. There were tales about Free Traders, they were reputed to be as tough as the Patrol, and not nearly so bound by regulation. He believed that Mura meant exactly what he said.

“What do you want to know—”

“The truth,” returned Wilcox.

“I’ve been giving it to you—straight,” Snall protested. “We’ve found a Forerunner installation back in the mountains. It acts on ships—pulls them right out of space to crack up here after they move into the beam, or ray, or whatever it is. I don’t know how it works. Nobody’s even seen the thing except a few picked men who know something about com stuff—”

“Why didn’t it act on the Solar Queen when she came in?” Kosti asked. “She landed perfectly.”

“’Cause the thing wasn’t turned on. You had Salzar on board, didn’t you?”

“And who is Salzar?” it was Mura’s turn to ask the question.

“Salzar—Gart Salzar. He was the first to see what a sweet thing we found here. He got us all under cover when Survey was snooping around. We lay low and Salzar knew that if this world was auctioned off we’d be in real trouble. He took a cruiser we’d patched up and beat the Griswold back to Naxos, and then contacted you. So we get a nice trader all empty and waiting to load our stuff—”

“Your loot? And how did you reach here—crash?”

“Salzar did ten—twelve years ago. He didn’t make too bad a landing and he and those men of his who were still alive went snooping. They found the Forerunnner’s machine and studied it until they learned a bit about working it. Now they can switch it off when they want to. It was dead when Survey was prowling around here because Salzar was off planet and we were afraid we’d get him when he came in.”

“A pity you didn’t,” Wilcox remarked. “And where is this machine?”

Snall shook his head. “I don’t know.” Kosti moved a step closer and Snall added swiftly, “That’s the truth! Only Salzar’s boys know where it is or how it works.”

“How many of them?” Kosti asked.

“Salzar, and three, maybe four others. It’s back in the mountains—there somewhere—” he stabbed a finger, a shaking finger in the general direction of the range.

“I think you can do better than that,” Kosti was beginning when Dane cut in:

“What was Snall doing driving that crawler in here—if he didn’t know where he was going?”

Mura’s eyelids dropped as he adjusted the buckle of his helmet. “I think we have been slightly remiss. We should have a sentry aloft. There may be one of Snall’s friends along.”

Snall studiously studied the toes of his boots. Dane went to the cliff.

“I’ll take a look-see,” he offered.

To his first sight the situation on the plain had not changed. The Queen, all hatches sealed, rested just as she had at twilight the night before. With his glasses he could make out the small encampments of outlaws. But close to his own post he saw something else.

One of the strange crawlers had pulled away from the nearest camp. Seated behind the driver were two others and between them a fourth passenger, his brown Trade tunic not to be mistaken.

“Rip!” though Dane could not see that prisoner’s face he was sure the captive was Shannon. And the crawler was headed towards the valley where the bogies had ambushed the first!

Now was their chance to not only rescue Rip but make a bigger gap in the besiegers’ force. Dane crawled to the edge of the cliff and, not daring to call, waved vigorously to attract the attention of those below. Mura and Wilcox nodded and Kosti headed the prisoner into greater seclusion. Then Dane sought a vantage point and waited with rising excitement for the enemy crawler to enter the valley.