Deathworld (14 page)

“Drop that equipment and Kerk will undoubtedly pull both your arms off,” Jason said. “He’s over there now, looking as sorry as possible that I ever talked him into this.”

Skop cursed under the bulky mass of the psi detector, passing it up to Meta who waited in the open port of the spaceship. Jason supervised the loading, and blasted all the local life that came to investigate. Horndevils were thick this morning and he shot four of them. He was last aboard and closed the lock behind him.

“Where are you going to install it?” Meta asked.

“You tell me,” Jason said. “I need a spot for the antenna where there will be no dense metal in front of the bowl to interfere with the signal. Thin plastic will do, or if worst comes to worst I can mount it outside the hull with a remote drive.”

“You may have to,” she said. “The hull is an unbroken unit, we do all viewing by screen and instruments. I don’t think . . . wait . . . there is one place that might do.”

She led the way to a bulge in the hull that marked one of the lifeboats. They went in through the always-open lock, Skop struggling after them with the apparatus.

“These lifeboats are half buried in the ship,” Meta explained. “They have transparent front ports covered by friction shields that withdraw automatically when the boat is launched.”

“Can we pull back the shields now?”

“I think so,” she said. She traced the launching circuits to a junction box and opened the lid. When she closed the shield relay manually, the heavy plates slipped back into the hull. There was a clear view, since most of the viewport projected beyond the parent ship.

“Perfect,” Jason said. “I’ll set up here. Now how do I talk to you in the ship?”

“Right here,” she said. “There’s a pretuned setting on this communicator. Don’t touch anything else — and particularly not this switch.” She pointed to a large pull-handle set square into the center of the control board. “Emergency launching. Two seconds after that is pulled the lifeboat is shot free. And it so happens this boat has no fuel.”

“Hands off for sure,” Jason said. “Now have Husky there run me in a line with ship’s power and I’ll get this stuff set up.”

The detector was simple, though the tuning had to be precise. A dish-shaped antenna pulled in the signal for the delicately balanced detector. There was a sharp fall-off on both sides of the input so direction could be precisely determined. The resulting signal was fed to an amplifier stage. Unlike the electronic components of the first stage, this one was drawn in symbols on white paper. Carefully glued-on input and output leads ran to it.

When everything was ready and clamped into place, Jason nodded to Meta’s image on the screen. “Take her up — and easy please. None of your nine-G specials. Go into a slow circle around the perimeter, until I tell you differently.”

* * * *

Under steady power, the ship lifted and grabbed for altitude, then eased into its circular course. They made five circuits of the city before Jason shook his head.

“The thing seems to be working fine, but we’re getting too much noise from all the local life. Get thirty kilometers out from the city and start a new circuit.”

The results were better this time. A powerful signal came from the direction of the city, confined to less than a degree of arc. With the antenna fixed at a right angle to the direction of the ship’s flight, the signal was fairly constant. Meta rotated the ship on its main axis, until Jason’s lifeboat was directly below.

“Going fine now,” he said. “Just hold your controls as they are and keep the nose from drifting.”

After making a careful mark on the setting circle, Jason turned the receiving antenna through one hundred eighty degrees of arc. As the ship kept to its circle, he made a slow collecting sweep of any signals beamed at the city. They were halfway around before he got a new signal.

It was there all right, narrow but strong. Just to be sure he let the ship complete two more sweeps, and he noted the direction on the gyro-compass each time. They coincided. The third time around he called to Meta.

“Get ready for a full right turn, or whatever you call it. I think I have our bearing. Get ready —
now!
”

It was a slow turn and Jason never lost the signal. A few times it wavered, but he brought it back on. When the compass settled down Meta pushed on more power.

They set their course towards the native Pyrrans.

An hour’s flight at close to top atmospheric speed brought no change. Meta complained, but Jason kept her on course. The signal never varied and was slowly picking up strength. They crossed the chain of volcanoes that marked the continental limits, the ship bucking in the fierce thermals. Once the shore was behind and they were over water, Skop joined Meta in grumbling. He kept his turret spinning, but there was very little to shoot at this far from land.

When the islands came over the horizon the signal began to dip.

“Slow now,” Jason called. “Those islands ahead look like our source!”

A continent had been here once, floating on Pyrrus’ liquid core. Pressures changed, land masses shifted, and the continent had sunk beneath the ocean. All that was left now of the teeming life of that land mass was confined to a chain of islands, once the mountain peaks of the highest range of mountains. These islands, whose sheer, sides rose straight from the water, held the last inhabitants of the lost continent. The weeded out descendants, of the victors of uncountable violent contests. Here lived the oldest native Pyrrans.

“Come in lower,” Jason signaled. “Towards that large peak. The signals seem to originate there.”

They swooped low over the mountain, but nothing was visible other than the trees and sun-blasted rock.

The pain almost took Jason’s head off. A blast of hatred that drove through the amplifier and into his skull. He tore off the phones, and clutched his skull between his hands. Through watering eyes he saw the black cloud of flying beasts hurtle up from the trees below. He had a single glimpse of the hillside beyond before Meta blasted power to the engines and the ship leaped away.

“We’ve found them!” Her fierce exhultation faded as she saw Jason through the communicator. “Are you all right? What happened?”

“Feel . . . burned out . . . I’ve felt a psi blast before, but nothing like that! I had a glimpse of an opening, looked like a cave mouth, just before the blast hit. Seemed to come from there.”

“Lie down,” Meta said. “I’ll get you back as fast as I can. I’m calling ahead to Kerk, he has to know what happened.”

* * * *

A group of men were waiting in the landing station when they came down. They stormed out as soon as the ship touched, shielding their faces from the still-hot tubes. Kerk burst in as soon as the port was cracked, peering around until he spotted Jason stretched out on an acceleration couch.

“Is it true?” he barked. “You’ve traced the alien criminals who started this war?”

“Slow, man, slow,” Jason said. “I’ve traced the source of the psi message that keeps your war going. I’ve found no evidence as to who started this war, and certainly wouldn’t go so far as to call them criminals —”

“I’m tired of your word-play,” Kerk broke in. “You’ve found these creatures and their location has been marked.”

“On the chart,” Meta said, “I could fly there blindfolded.”

“Fine, fine,” Kerk said, rubbing his hands together so hard they could hear the harsh rasp of the callouses. “It takes a real effort to grasp the idea that, after all these centuries, the war might be coming to an end. But it’s possible now. Instead of simply killing off these self-renewing legions of the damned that attack us, we can get to the leaders. Search them out, carry the war to them for a change — and blast their stain from the face of this planet!”

“Nothing of the sort!” Jason said, sitting up with an effort. “Nothing doing! Since I came to this planet I have been knocked around, and risked my life ten times over. Do you think I have done this just to satisfy your blood-thirsty ambitions? It’s peace I’m after — not destruction. You promised to contact these creatures, attempt to negotiate with them. Aren’t you a man of honor who keeps his word?”

“I’ll ignore the insult — though I’d have killed you for it at any other time,” Kerk said. “You’ve been of great service to our people, we are not ashamed to acknowledge an honest debt. At the same time — do not accuse me of breaking promises that I never made. I recall my exact words. I promised to go along with any reasonable plan that would end this war. That is just what I intend to do. Your plan to negotiate a peace is not reasonable. Therefore we are going to destroy the enemy.”

“Think first,” Jason called after Kerk, who had turned to leave. “What is wrong with trying negotiation or an armistice? Then, if that fails, you can try your way.”

The compartment was getting crowded as other Pyrrans pushed in. Kerk, almost to the door, turned back to face Jason.

“I’ll tell you what’s wrong with armistice,” he said. “It’s a coward’s way out, that’s what it is. It’s all right for you to suggest it, you’re from off-world and don’t know any better. But do you honestly think I could entertain such a defeatist notion for one instant? When I speak, I speak not only for myself, but for all of us here. We don’t mind fighting, and we know how to do it. We know that if this war was over we could build a better world here. At the same time, if we have the choice of continued war or a cowardly peace —
we vote for war
. This war will only be over when the enemy is utterly destroyed!”

The listening Pyrrans shouted in agreement, and when Kerk pushed out through the crowd some of them patted his shoulder as he went by. Jason slumped back on the couch, worn out by his exertions and exhausted by the attempt to win the violent Pyrrans over to a peaceful point of view.

When he looked up they were gone — all except Meta. She had the same look of blood-thirsty elation as the others, but it drained away when she glanced at him.

“What about it, Meta,” he asked bitterly. “No doubts? Do you think that destruction is the only way to end this war?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I can’t be sure. For the first time in my life I find myself with more than one answer to the same question.”

“Congratulations,” he said. “It’s a sign of growing up.”

Jason stood to one side and watched the deadly cargo being loaded into the hold of the ship. The Pyrrans were in good humor as they stowed away riot guns, grenades and gas bombs. When the back-pack atom bomb was put aboard one of them broke into a marching song, and the others picked it up. Maybe they were happy, but the approaching carnage only filled Jason with an intense gloom. He felt that somehow he was a traitor to life. Perhaps the life form he had found needed destroying — and perhaps it didn’t. Without making the slightest attempt at conciliation, destruction would be plain murder.

Kerk came out of the operations building and the starter pumps could be heard whining inside the ship. They would leave within minutes. Jason forced himself into a foot-dragging rush and met Kerk halfway to the ship.

“I’m coming with you, Kerk. You owe me at least that much for finding them.”

Kerk hesitated, not liking the idea. “This is an operational mission,” he said. “No room for observers, and the extra weight — And it’s too late to stop us Jason, you know that.”

“You Pyrrans are the worst liars in the universe,” Jason said. “We both know that ship can lift ten times the amount it’s carrying today. Now . . . do you let me come, or forbid me without reason at all?”

“Get aboard,” Kerk said. “But keep out of the way or you’ll get trampled.”

This time, with a definite destination ahead, the flight was much faster. Meta took the ship into the stratosphere, in a high ballistic arc that ended at the islands. Kerk was in the co-pilot’s seat, Jason sat behind them where he could watch the screens. The landing party, twenty-five volunteers, were in the hold below with the weapons. All the screens in the ship were switched to the forward viewer. They watched the green island appear and swell, then vanish behind the flames of the braking rockets. Jockeying the ship carefully, Meta brought it down on a flat shelf near the cave mouth.

Jason was ready this time for the blast of mental hatred — but it still hurt. The gunners laughed and killed gleefully as every animal on the island closed in on the ship. They were slaughtered by the thousands, and still more came.

“Do you have to do this,” Jason asked. “It’s murder — carnage, just butchering those beasts like that.”

“Self-defense,” Kerk said. “They attack us and they get killed. What could be simpler. Now shut up, or I’ll throw you out there with them.”

It was a half an hour before the gunfire slackened. Animals still attacked them, but the mass assaults seemed to be over. Kerk spoke into the intercom.

“Landing party away — and watch your step. They know we’re here and will make it as hot as they can. Take the bomb into that cave and see how far back it runs. We can always blast them from the air, but it’ll do no good if they’re dug into solid rock. Keep your screen open, leave the bomb and pull back at once if I tell you to. Now move.”

The men swarmed down the ladders and formed into open battle formation. They were soon under attack, but the beasts were picked off before they could get close. It didn’t take long for the man at point to reach the cave. He had his pickup trained in front of him, and the watchers in the ship followed the advance.

“Big cave,” Kerk grunted. “Slants back and down. What I was afraid of. Bomb dropped on that would just close it up. With no guarantee that anything sealed in it, couldn’t eventually get out. We’ll have to see how far down it goes.”

There was enough heat in the cave now to use the infra-red filters. The rock walls stood out harshly black and white as the advance continued.

“No signs of life since entering the cave,” the officer reported. “Gnawed bones at the entrance and some bat droppings. It looks like a natural cave — so far.”

Step by step the advance continued, slowing as it went. Insensitive as the Pyrrans were to psi pressure, even they were aware of the blast of hatred being continuously leveled at them. Jason, back in the ship, had a headache that slowly grew worse instead of better.

“
Watch out!
” Kerk shouted, staring at the screen with horror.

The cave was filled from wall to wall with pallid, eyeless animals. They poured from tiny side passages and seemed to literally emerge from the ground. Their front ranks dissolved in flame, but more kept pressing in. On the screen the watchers in the ship saw the cave spin dizzily as the operator fell. Pale bodies washed up and concealed the lens.

“Close ranks — flame throwers and gas!” Kerk bellowed into the mike.

Less than half of the men were alive after that first attack. The survivors, protected by the flame throwers, set off the gas grenades. Their sealed battle armor protected them while the section of cave filled with gas. Someone dug through the bodies of their attackers and found the pickup.

“Leave the bomb there and withdraw,” Kerk ordered. “We’ve had enough losses already.”

A different man stared out of the screen. The officer was dead. “Sorry, sir,” he said, “but it will be just as easy to push ahead as back as long as the gas grenades hold out. We’re too close now to pull back.”

“That’s an order,” Kerk shouted, but the man was gone from the screen and the advance continued.

Jason’s fingers hurt where he had them clamped to the chair arm. He pulled them loose and massaged them. On the screen the black and white cave flowed steadily towards them. Minute after minute went by this way. Each time the animals attacked again, a few more gas grenades were used up.

“Something ahead — looks different,” the panting voice cracked from the speaker. The narrow cave slowly opened out into a gigantic chamber, so large the roof and far walls were lost in the distance.

“What are those?” Kerk asked. “Get a searchlight over to the right there.”

The picture on the screen was fuzzy and hard to see now, dimmed by the layers of rock in-between. Details couldn’t be made out clearly, but it was obvious this was something unusual.

“Never saw . . . anything quite like them before,” the speaker said. “Look like big plants of some kind, ten meters tall at least — yet they’re moving. Those branches, tentacles or whatever they are, keep pointing towards us and I get the darkest feeling in my head. . . .”

“Blast one, see what happens,” Kerk said.

The gun fired and at the same instant an intensified wave of mental hatred rolled over the men, dropping them to the ground. They rolled in pain, blacked out and unable to think or fight the underground beasts that poured over them in renewed attack.

In the ship, far above, Jason felt the shock to his mind and wondered how the men below could have lived through it. The others in the control room had been hit by it as well. Kerk pounded on the frame of the screen and shouted to the unhearing men below.

“Pull back, come back. . . .”

It was too late. The men only stirred slightly as the victorious Pyrran animals washed over them, clawing for the joints in their armor. Only one man moved, standing up and beating the creatures away with his bare hands. He stumbled a few feet and bent over the writhing mass below him. With a heave of his shoulders he pulled another man up. The man was dead but his shoulder pack was still strapped to his back. Bloody fingers fumbled at the pack, then both men were washed back under the wave of death.

“That was the bomb!” Kerk shouted to Meta. “If he didn’t change the setting, it’s still on ten-second minimum. Get out of here!”

* * * *

Jason had just time to fall back on the acceleration couch before the rockets blasted. The pressure leaned on him and kept mounting. Vision blacked out but he didn’t lose consciousness. Air screamed across the hull, then the sound stopped as they left the atmosphere behind.

Just as Meta cut the power a glare of white light burst from the screens. They turned black instantly as the hull pickups burned out. She switched filters into place, then pressed the button that rotated new pickups into position.

Far below, in the boiling sea, a climbing cloud of mushroom shaped flame filled the spot where the island had been seconds before. The three of them looked at it, silently and unmoving. Kerk recovered first.

“Head for home Meta, and get operations on the screen. Twenty-five men dead, but they did their job. They knocked out those beasts — whatever they were — and ended the war. I can’t think of a better way for a man to die.”

Meta set the orbit, then called operations.

“Trouble getting through,” she said. “I have a robot landing beam response, but no one is answering the call.”

A man appeared on the empty screen. He was beaded with sweat and had a harried look in his eyes. “Kerk,” he said, “is that you? Get the ship back here at once. We need her firepower at the perimeter. All blazes broke loose a minute ago, a general attack from every side, worse than I’ve ever seen.”

“What do you mean?” Kerk stammered in unbelief. “The war is over — we blasted them, destroyed their headquarters completely.”

“The war is going like it never has gone before,” the other snapped back. “I don’t know what you did, but it stirred up the stewpot of hell here. Now stop talking and get the ship back!”

Kerk turned slowly to face Jason, his face pulled back in a look of raw animal savagery.

“You — ! You did it! I should have killed you the first time I saw you. I wanted to, now I know I was right. You’ve been like a plague since you came here, sowing death in every direction. I knew you were wrong, yet I let your twisted words convince me. And look what has happened. First you killed Welf. Then you murdered those men in the cave. Now this attack on the perimeter — all who die there, you will have killed!”

Kerk advanced on Jason, step by slow step, hatred twisting his features. Jason backed away until he could retreat no further, his shoulders against the chart case. Kerk’s hand lashed out, not a fighting blow, but an open slap. Though Jason rolled with it, it still battered him and stretched him full length on the floor. His arm was against the chart case, his fingers near the sealed tubes that held the jump matrices.

Jason seized one of the heavy tubes with both hands and pulled it out. He swung it with all his strength into Kerk’s face. It broke the skin on his cheekbone and forehead and blood ran from the cuts. But it didn’t slow or stop the big man in the slightest. His smile held no mercy as he reached down and dragged Jason to his feet.

“Fight back,” he said, “I will have that much more pleasure as I kill you.” He drew back the granite fist that would tear Jason’s head from his shoulders.

“Go ahead,” Jason said, and stopped struggling. “Kill me. You can do it easily. Only don’t call it justice. Welf died to save me. But the men on the island died because of your stupidity. I wanted peace and you wanted war. Now you have it. Kill me to soothe your conscience, because the truth is something you can’t face up to.”

With a bellow of rage Kerk drove the pile driver fist down.

Meta grabbed the arm in both her hands and hung on, pulling it aside before the blow could land. The three of them fell together, half crushing Jason.

“Don’t do it,” she screamed. “Jason didn’t want those men to go down there. That was your idea. You can’t kill him for that!”

Kerk, exploding with rage, was past hearing. He turned his attention to Meta, tearing her from him. She was a woman and her supple strength was meager compared to his great muscles. But she was a Pyrran woman and she did what no off-worlder could. She slowed him for a moment, stopped the fury of his attack until he could rip her hands loose and throw her aside. It didn’t take him long to do this, but it was just time enough for Jason to get to the door.

* * * *

Jason stumbled through and jammed shut the lock behind him. A split second after he had driven the bolt home, Kerk’s weight plunged into the door. The metal screamed and bent, giving way. One hinge was torn loose and the other held only by a shred of metal. It would go down on the next blow.

Jason wasn’t waiting for that. He hadn’t stayed to see if the door would stop the raging Pyrran. No door on the ship could stop him. Fast as possible, Jason went down the gangway. There was no safety on the ship, which meant he had to get off it. The lifeboat deck was just ahead.

Ever since first seeing them, he had given a lot of thought to the lifeboats. Though he hadn’t looked ahead to this situation, he knew a time might come when he would need transportation of his own. The lifeboats had seemed to be the best bet, except that Meta had told him they had no fuel. She had been right in one thing — the boat he had been in had empty tanks, he had checked. There were five other boats, though, that he hadn’t examined. He had wondered about the idea of useless lifeboats and come to what he hoped was a correct conclusion.

This spaceship was the only one the Pyrrans had. Meta had told him once that they always had planned to buy another ship, but never did. Some other necessary war expense managed to come up first. One ship was really enough for their uses. The only difficulty lay in the fact they had to keep that ship in operation or the Pyrran city was dead. Without supplies they would be wiped out in a few months. Therefore the ships crew couldn’t conceive of abandoning their ship. No matter what kind of trouble she got into, they couldn’t leave her. When the ship died, so did their world.

With this kind of thinking, there was no need to keep the lifeboats fueled. Not all of them, at least. Though it stood to reason at least one of them held fuel for short flights that would have been wasteful for the parent ship. At this point Jason’s chain of logic grew weak. Too many “ifs”.
If
they used the lifeboats at all, one of them should be fueled.
If
they did, it would be fueled now. And
if
it were fueled — which one of the six would it be? Jason had no time to go looking. He had to be right the first time.