Star Rangers (The Last Planet)

10. Battle

A sharp rap on the door froze both rangers.

"Kan! We're moving out now. Come along!"

But Fortus Kan was deep in a world of his own.

"Kan! You fool, come on!"

Kartr made mind contact. Out there was the young ship's officer he had met early in the day, two others — human, non-sensitive. They were impatient, impatient because of fear. And the fear won out. After some garbled conversation, which came through the door only as a murmur, they went on. Rolth glided to the window and studied what lay below.

"I take it that we have to move fast?" he asked without turning around.

"They were afraid — too afraid to linger very long. What's below?"

"Another roof outcrop, but so far down we couldn't hope to make it without a climber's sucker pads."

"We have a substitute for sucker pads." Kartr rolled Fortus Kan off the bed and set to work tearing its coverings into strips which Rolth caught up and knotted together. Working against time, but testing each knot, they produced a rough rope.

"You first," ordered the sergeant. "Then this." He touched Kan with the toe of his boot. "I'll come last. Over now — time must be running out fast or they wouldn't have been in such a hurry to clear out."

Rolth was gone almost before he finished speaking. Kartr hung over the window sill to watch but the Faltharian was so quickly hidden in the dark that only the movements of the rope told when he stopped climbing down and signaled a safe landing. Kartr pulled the clumsy line back into the room, his palms wet against the torn cloth. There was a terrible urgency goading him. He tied the cloth loop under Kan's arms and manhandled the secretary's limp body over the sill, lowering it as slowly as he could until a sharp jerk told him Rolth was in charge. Kartr did not even wait until Kan was untied before he was descending hand over hand.

And as his feet hit the surface of the roof below it happened. There was no sound at first. But the support under him danced. He fell flat and buried his head in his arms, not daring to watch what was happening above. Force bomb all right. He had once before been caught in the backwash of one. Had Zinga and Fylh escaped in time? Resolutely he shut that fear out of his mind. There was a faint moan from Kan. Rolth — ?

But on the edge of that thought came the Faltharian's voice.

"Quite a display! Cummi likes to play rough, doesn't he?"

The sergeant sat up. He was trembling — perhaps with reaction from that frenzied descent — but, he decided, mostly from the black rage which possessed him now whenever he thought of the Ageratan. A rage he must best or that other sensitive could turn it into a weapon against him.

"How do we get away from here?" He must depend on Rolth's ability to pierce the gloom. For it was real gloom which walled them in now. The dancing lights of the city were gone — they were crouched in the middle of a black blot.

"Window over there — not too high to reach. What about this prize package? Do we have to lug him along?"

"He'll wake by morning. Get him inside a room and leave him. I don't think they'll try another bomb."

"Not unless they want to bring the whole place down around their heads. Let's go. If you'll take Kan's legs, I'll heave his head."

Kartr stumbled along, trusting to Rolth to guide them. They reached a window, beat open the casement and crawled through with their unconscious burden.

"Aren't we in the wrong building now?" the sergeant wanted to know. "I thought we climbed down over there — "

"You're right. We're in a different one. But this was the easiest and quickest route out. Did the boys get away?"

For the second time Kartr tried to reach Zinga — sent out those shafts of thought. Once — for a single joyful second he thought he had made contact — then it was gone. He dared not try too long, the Can-hound — if that creature still lived — or even Cummi might be able to pick up his signal.

"No use," he told Rolth. "I can't make contact. But that doesn't mean we have to worry. They may be too far away — we've never been able to discover what governs mental reception or how far we can beam a call. And they may be lying low because the Ageratan is too near. But I did reach Zinga before the blast and they had several minutes more than we did to escape."

That was not much to pin any hope to, Kartr knew that. But with such veterans as Fylh and Zinga it was almost enough.

"Do we try to locate Smitt?"

"I think so. Or at least we can make contact with his rebels."

Kartr hooked his fingers in Rolth's belt and allowed the Faltharian to tow him through dark rooms and darker hallways, while he tried to keep some sense of direction.

"Street level," came the welcome whisper at last.

"I believe that we are facing the street which runs along the front of Cummi's headquarters — "

But, before Rolth could affirm or deny that, a brilliant bolt of fire snapped across the dark and both of them involuntarily ducked.

A blaster shot! And that was another from down the street. A third beam brought a choked, horrible scream in answer.

"The war's on!" Rolth pointed out unnecessarily. "And which is our side?"

"Neither, just yet. I don't want to guess wrong and be fried," returned Kartr grimly. "There's one to our left — about five feet away— He's crawling past us at an angle. I'll try contact as he goes by and see who he is — "

The lashes of fire continued to light up the sod-grown street at intervals. There were no more cries so either the aim continued to be poor, or very, very good.

The sniper crawled across their vantage point.

"No uniform," Rolth reported. "Looks like a civilian to me. But he knows blasters. Maybe the veteran of a sector war — "

"He's not a Cummi man but — " Kartr had no time for a warning.

No, the man out there was not one of Cummi's followers, but he had caught that tentative mind touch in an instant — something which had never happened to Kartr before. And his blaster swung around at the rangers.

"Patrol!" Rolth yelled.

The blaster aim wavered, and then held steady at them.

"Come out — with your hands up!" ordered a harsh voice. "I've set this on `spray' and I'll use it that way, too!"

Kartr and Rolth obeyed, hunking forward at a half stoop for there were other blasters busy farther down.

"Who in Space are you?" demanded their captor.

"Patrol rangers. We're trying to contact Smitt, our com-techneer — "

"Yeah?" There was deep suspicion in that voice. "Well, you're going to contact him now. Get going down in that direction and I'm right behind you if you try to run — "

They followed orders which brought them to a dark doorway some distance away.

"Stairs here," Rolth informed his companion.

"Sure," agreed the man behind them. "Go down them, and shut up!"

But five steps down brought them to a barrier.

"Knock on that four times quick, wait a second and knock again!" came the order of their guard.

Rolth obeyed and the portal moved aside. They blundered through a thick curtain and found themselves in a dimly lighted hall where two men eyed them with no pretense of friendship and blasters were pointed at their middles. But when the light touched their comets there came recognition and relaxation. One of the guardians stepped closer.

"Take off your helmets," he commanded.

The rangers obeyed and the blinked as a torch beam centered on them.

"It's okay. They're not Cummi's — they must be Patrol. Take them in to Krowli. How is it going topside?"

"We lie on our bellies and shoot — they do the same. At least we knocked out the robots' signal cables so they can't turn those against us again. Far as I can see it's stalemate," their late captor replied. "Okay. Let the old man out, boys — back to the firing line!"

"Get one of them for me, Pol!"

"I'll do that little thing. Fry him on a platter. Good landing!"

"And clear skies!" One of the guards closed the door and rearranged the folds of the improvised blackout curtain. The other jerked a thumb at the rangers.

"Down this way."

They went down the length of the hallway into a large room which was the scene of some activity. Several men squatted around some boxes digging machinery parts out of packing. Two others sat at a box table and three more were making a scratch meal at the far end of the room. The newcomers were waved toward the two at the table. One of them raised his head and then jumped to his feet. It was Smitt.

"It is stalemate all right." The com-techneer ran his fingers through his hair.

Kartr and Rolth studied the crude map which lay on the table top.

"We have them bottled up in the headquarters building. By the way, did they blow the tower? We felt some sort of a shock — "

The sergeant nodded without replying aloud. "If Cummi has disruptors," he said, "I don't see why he lets a handful of snipers pen him in. He could blow himself a path out any time he wants to."

"Well." The slim, middle-aged man who shared Smitt's table when the rangers had been brought in, stretched and grinned. "Cummi doesn't want to blow big holes in his nice city, not if he can help it. And snipers are hard to locate."

"Not for a sensitive," Kartr pointed out. "Give me five minutes out there and I can tag every one of your men. Cummi need only send out the Can-hound and — "

Krowli's grin vanished as if wiped off by a brutal hand. "You have a point there, Sergeant," he admitted in a voice of mild tone, but the emotions seething below it were anything but mild.

"Could it be," Rolth struck in, "that disruptor shells are not too many in Lord Cummi's armory?"

"That thought has also occurred to us," Krowli answered. "Only it is a little difficult to prove. Cummi has had all the arms under his control since the second day we landed. We have only personal side arms which he could not logically take from us. This whole rotten mess came about just because he was able to think faster than the rest of us. And be sure that he didn't overlook the point of holding all the guns he could! We might storm Cummi's headquarters, sure, but if the disruptors do work — that would be the end of the stormers. And he has two sensitives — we have — "

"Two also, if I can contact Zinga. Any more among your people?"

Krowli shook his head. "We are — were — about as ordinary a crowd of average citizens as you could find anywhere in Control territory. Cummi grabbed all those of use to him, along with the arms."

Rolth had been studying the map and now he dug a fingernail into the center of the square representing Cummi's hold.

"I notice you don't have the tube-tunnel marked — "

"What tube-tunnel?" Krowli wanted to know.

Smitt smashed his fist down on the box and swore at the pain. "I'm three kinds of a Domanti idiot," he shouted. And then Kartr's explanation interrupted him.

"It depends now upon whether Cummi has discovered those underground routes," the sergeant concluded.

"He doesn't know of them — I'm almost certain of that! None of us heard of them before — unless the techneers have discovered them and kept the secret."

Rolth looked up. "If they did just that we may be leading a forlorn hope right into a stinger's nest."

"And if they don't know" — Smitt was almost exultant — "we'll be in their midst before they are aware of it!"

"You've got to pick the right men for this," Kartr warned without any of Smitt's enthusiasm. "You're the right type, Smitt. They can't crack your mind shield. But the rest — we'll have to have men with whom the Can-hound and Cummi can't tamper. Now take that fellow who brought us in — he isn't a sensitive, at least he doesn't seem to be, yet he caught my thought beam and jumped us at once."

"That must have been Norgot. He has had good reason to learn how to protect himself against mind invasion. He was one of the Satsati hostages — "

"So!" Rolth paid tribute. "No wonder he was edgy when you tried to probe him, Kartr. He ought to be a perfect choice for the boarding party."

"Boarding party!" thought Kartr fleetingly. Odd how the space terms stuck in their speech even now when they were permanently earthed.

"Yes," he said aloud. "Any more of his caliber around?"

Krowli beckoned to one of the men who had just finished eating. "You're a sensitive, Sergeant. We'll leave the selection up to you."

In the end they assembled eight men with mind shields tight enough to make them possibilities. Kartr longed for Zinga and Fylh, but so far nothing had been heard from the Bemmy rangers, although the rebel patrols had been alerted to keep watch for them.

Together the party of ten descended one by one in the gravity well the rangers had first discovered. There was a single car at the platform and three was a very tight fit for the voyage. But they made it that way, with Rolth at the controls each trip forward and back. And at last they stood near the plate elevator under Cummi's headquarters. Kartr could see no indication that there had been any visitors there since the time he and the Faltharian had passed that way before.

It was those two other stops along the way, the ones they had sped by then, which interested him now. If there was any welcoming party waiting for them at the top of the shaft it might be well to make an earlier stop. So he pushed the lowest button on the wall. The five of them who had managed to crowd on the plate clung together as they were whisked up.

Their support came to a stop in darkness and Kartr marshaled his four companions off to let the elevator sink back. Then he dared to flash his beam about.

They were on a ledge from which a ramp ran up into the darkness. Underfoot was a coating of fine, gritty dust which Kartr believed had not been disturbed for centuries. And there was no indication of life other than their own, his perception assured him of that. Cummi must be ignorant of this breach in his defenses.

The swish of displaced air heralded the arrival of the plate again and then Smitt, Rolth and the other three rebels joined them. Rolth hung out over the well and surveyed the space overhead.

"Okay. It closed up when the plate hit bottom. Unless someone was up there watching at just this moment they'll never know."

Kartr switched off his torch and Rolth took the lead, each man grasping hold of the belt of the one before him, forming a chain to negotiate the dark through which only Rolth could pass freely. At first the angle of the ramp was a steep one, but it began to level off until they found themselves in a large room, coming around the base of a partition into a lighted space filled with the buzz of running machinery. The partition from this side seemed solid wall and Kartr did not wonder that the ramp and the shaft it led to had not been discovered. At the same instant he not only became aware of a man ahead but was able to identify him.

"Dalgre!"

The sergeant beckoned to Smitt. "Dalgre's ahead — with another — maybe a guard, unless he has joined Cummi. You might have better luck contacting him than I would. And I can cover you — "

The com-techneer replied with a short nod and signaled to his rebel followers to stay where they were. Then, together with Kartr, he ran from the shadow of one giant machine to another, until they were able to see into a pool of brighter light where Dalgre sat before the board of controls and a man in the rumpled uniform of a jetman lounged several feet away, a force beam projector cradled in his arm.

Kartr touched Smitt's shoulder and pointed to himself and then to the left, a path which would, with continued luck, bring him near the guard. He took it, moving like a gray wisp of fog around machines whose purpose he could not guess, until he came up behind the jetman. From where he crouched he could see the tip of Smitt's helmet ridge crest.

Then the com-techneer stepped boldly out and in that same instant Kartr sprang, bringing the butt of his blaster down on the guard's right arm. The man screamed and doubled up against the side of the control board, dropping the projector which flew across the floor. In a second Dalgre had scooped it up and was in a half crouch ready to fire. But Smitt's familiar grays were in his sights and he did not squeeze the trigger.

"Very neat," commented the com-techneer. "One would think you had practiced it. I take it that you are not a convert to Cummi, Dalgre?"

The Patrolman showed his teeth. "Is that likely? They needed me — so I'm still alive. But they blasted Snyn and the Commander — maybe Jaksan also for all I know — "

"What?" all three of the Patrol demanded almost with a single voice.

"Did it an hour ago. Last I heard Jaksan and the medico were barricaded in the west wing. This is a madhouse. About time we put some fear for the Comet back into these space-blasted fools! If it weren't for the Can-hound being able to find out where everyone is and what he's doing, I'd have tried to make a break before this — "

The jetman guard was tied with his own belt to the legs of the bench before the control board. Kartr looked over the array of dials there.

"Anything you can do to this that might put the odds in our favor?"

Dalgre grinned ruefully. "I'm afraid to chance it. I'm no real mech-techneer. And they gave me only a half hour's briefing before they put me here. If I pull the wrong lever I might blow us up. Too bad — because we might be able to shake them right out of the building if we only knew what all those gadgets mean."

"How do you get out of here?" one of the rebels wanted to know.

"Anti-gravity lift." Dalgre guided them to an alcove beyond the control board. "Only trouble is that they may have a guard on the upper level who will become suspicious if we rise before my shift is up."

"And how long will that be?"

Dalgre consulted his wrist dial. "A full half hour, planet time."

"Can't wait that long," Kartr decided. "Any other stops on this rise beside the one you are supposed to use?"

"No."

"But there is something else — " Rolth had been examining the walls of the shaft. "Here are holds for hands and feet — perhaps to be used in times of emergency. We can climb out — "

And climb they did. Kartr caught the message of a stranger ahead — the guard Dalgre had predicted. It was also Dalgre who had the answer.

"Let me hail him — "

The sergeant pulled back against the side of the well and kept only a single handhold on the climbing bars as the other Patrolman squeezed by him. A moment later they heard Dalgre hail whoever was at the top.

"Give us a hand — "

"What's the matter?"

"I'm no mech-techneer — send for one of your fellows — one of these blasted machines down here is running wild. It may blow us up or something!"

Dalgre climbed the last few feet out of the shaft and moved away from its mouth.

"Where's Taleng? Why didn't he come up with the message?" The guard was openly suspicious.

"Because — " Kartr heard Dalgre start to answer and then came sounds of a struggle.

The sergeant swarmed up the last rungs and out of the hole. Dalgre was fighting with the guard for the possession of a hand force-beam. Kartr did not try to reach his feet but sent his body plunging forward to bring down both men. They fell on him with force enough to drive the air out of his lungs in an agonized grunt.

Minutes later the foggy scene began to clear again. The guard lay bound and gagged close to the wall and Rolth kneeled beside the sergeant kneading Kartr's ribs to force the air back into him again. Smitt, Dalgre and the rebels had vanished. Rolth replied to the question the sergeant did not yet have breath enough to ask.

"I couldn't hold them back."

"But — " Kartr's words came between painful gasps, "Cummi — the Can-hound — "

"They don't honestly believe very much in danger from a sensitive's power," Rolth reminded him. "Even if they have seen a demonstration — they simply refuse to believe the evidence presented by their eyes. It's the way most humans are made — "

"How very true. Luckily for us — "

Kartr froze and did not finish his sentence. Instead he turned on Rolth and sent the Faltharian sprawling forward into a doorway beyond. "Get out there quick and see if you can stop those fools making targets of themselves. I know that there's trouble waiting for them ahead — "

He watched Rolth pick himself up and go. Because the trouble wasn't ahead he hoped that the Faltharian would not stop to ask questions. There was trouble, right enough, but it lay behind, coming closer every second.

Cummi was coming — and this time Kartr knew that it was to be battle between them, an all-out battle without quarter on either side — a battle fought on no visible field and for an untellable victory.