He hoisted the sail. It had been an awning, but it filled. The boat pulled out from the shore. It heeled a little in the breeze, but it made surprisingly little leeway. It was, in fact, a reasonably able small boat. The land fell rapidly behind. Jan looked at Stannard in marveling admiration.
“The Pasiki have telepathy,” he told her drily,” but can they tell where we are when they do not know themselves? Or what we do?”
“No-no,” said Jan. “But did you really send messages for
other spaceships to come to Pasik? That is wonderful!”
“Its a he,” Stannard told her. “A space-radio is a pretty delicate and complicated device. I couldn't make them out of stray parts manufactured by the Pasiki! But the Pasiki think I did! And it won't be long before they send word by telepathy, and our friends back there think all space is filling up with a howl for the cops?”
“Not long,” said Jan. “It will be very quickl But why?” “How will they take that?” asked Stannard drily. “Brent, for one, is wanted for piracy, murder, and assorted crimes. The others who came to Pasik by choice did it for similar reasons. They do not want the Space-Patrol here. And there’s nowhere else where they can be safe. The Pasiki don’t want other men here, either, but they daren’t touch those buried pots. How long before the men get busy finding those pots and digging them up to blast them before a message can be picked up from them? If they open one and find it a hoax, that won’t prove the others are! They have to find every one and smash it for safety’s sake!”
Jan blinked at him.
“But still,” she said plaintively, “I don’t see why . .
He told her, and she gasped in amazement. Then, with a curious grimness all her own, she looked over the blasters at her waist. Stannard grinned at her. She flushed.
“You can’t tell,” she said firmly. “Just because I didn’t kill Mr. Brent when I had the chance don’t mean I won’t kill anybody who tries to kill you!”
“I was grinning,” said Stannard, “because you once said you didn’t know how to act like a woman.”
But she did. She sat close beside him and shivered as the boat sailed toward the sunset.
The sky was barely paling to the east when the boat ran full-tilt aground. It had crossed the bay during the dark hours, and now Stannard was a litle worried because he might be many miles out in his calculations. The map Jan had drawn him couldn’t be expected to be accurate. But they forced their way through jungle, and found a Pasiki trail, and within a mile they came upon a little knot of three stick-men trotting along the path on their own private business. Stannard hailed them savagely, and they knelt to him. Their regular master demanded extreme respect.
They led the way to the space-port. Stannard walked boldly across the freshly jet-seared open space. The airlock door of the trader was open. He walked in with Jan crowding closely behind him. He closed the lock, by manual control for silence,
“They’ve no discipline,” he whispered in Jan s ear. “Trad-erl” There was scorn in the word. "Stay here. Blast anybody you see who isn’t me. I’m going to see how many of the crew's on board,”
But it was an anticlimax. Jan stood fiercely on guard until she heard his voice, very stern and very savage. Then there were scuffling footsteps and seared protestations. Two men only appeared, clad in the shapeless underwear of a space-trader s forecastle.
“Sh-shall I shoot?” quavered Jan,
“No,” said Stannard, behind them. “Only two men on board and they were fast asleep. All the others are out with parties of Pasiki, digging up the iron pots by telepathic instructions—which takes time—and blasting ’em, to get them all destroyed as soon as possible. Stand aside, Jan.”
He opened the airlock and drove the pair out.
He saw them running frantically for the edge of the field as the airlock closed again. He took Jan to the engine-room, and set the drive for control-room handling. Gazing—she barely remembered the spaceship which had brought her to Pasik—she followed him to the pilot’s cabin. He strapped her in the co-pilot’s seat and started the gvros, flashed the jets all around, and then slowly and gently lifted the ancient trading-ship off the ground. In fifteen minutes it was beyond atmosphere. In half an hour it was straightened out on a course for Sooris, which had been Stannard’s destination in the Snark. In an hour he locked the automatic controls and turned to Jan.
She looked queer. Somehow upset and disappointed. “What’s the matter? Hate to leave Pasik?”
“Oh, no,” she said uncomfortably, “Only it seems like
something’s missing. . . . We got all ready for a fight. I thought you’d have to kill people, and I was ready to kill anybody who tried to harm you and nothing happened.” “Except that we got away,” said Stannard.
He watched her for a moment. Then he said amusedly: “Anticlimax, eh? But I’d have done a rather poor job of it if I'd let it end in smoking blasters and corpses all over the place. The Space Patrol doesn't work that way when it can be helped.”
THE END
THE RULL
A. E. Van Vogt
Phofessor Jamieson saw the other space boat out of the comer of one eye. He was sitting in a hollow about a dozen yards from the edge of the precipice, and some score of feet from the doorway of his own lifeboat. He had been intent on his survey book, annotating a comment beside the voice graph, to the effect that Laertes III was so close to the invisible dividing line between Earth-controlled and Rull-controlled space that its prior discovery by man was in itself a major victory in the Rull-human war.
It was at that point that he saw the other boat, above and somewhat to his left, approaching the tableland. He glanced up at it—and froze where he was, tom between two opposing purposes.
His first impulse, to run for the lifeboat, yielded to the realization that the movement would be seen instantly by the electronic reflexes of the other ship. For a moment, then, he had the dim hope that, if he remained quiet enough, neither he nor his ship would be observed.
Even as he sat there, perspiring with indecision, his tensed eyes noted the Rull markings and the rakish design of the other vessel. His vast knowledge of things Rull enabled him to catalogue it instantly as a survey craft.
A survey craft. The Rulls had discovered the Laertes sun.
The terrible potentiality was that, behind this small craft, might be fleets of battleships, whereas he was alone. His own lifeboat had been dropped by the Orion nearly a parsec away, while the big ship was proceeding at antigravity speeds. That was to insure that Rull energy tracers did not record its passage through this area of space.
The Orion was to head for the nearest base, load up with planetary defense equipment, and return. She was due in ten days.
Ten days. Jamieson groaned inwardly, and drew his legs under him and clenched his survey book in the fingers of one hand. But still the possibility his ship, partially hidden under a clump of trees, might escape notice if he remained quiet, held him there in the open. His head tilted up, his eyes glared at the alien, and his brain willed it to turn aside.
Once more, flashingly, while he waited, the implications of the disaster that could be here, struck deep. In all the universe there had never been so dangerous an intelligence as the Rull. At once remorseless and immune to all attempts at establishing communication, Rulls killed human beings on sight. A human-manned warship that ventured into Rull-patrolled space was attacked until it withdrew or was destroyed. Rull ships that entered Earth-controlled space never withdrew once they were attacked. In the beginning, man had been reluctant to engage in a death struggle for the galaxy. But the inexorable enemy had forced him finally to match in every respect the tenacious and murderous policies of the Rull.
The thought ended. The Rull ship was a hundred yards away, and showed no signs of changing its course. In seconds, it would cross the clump of trees, which half-hid the lifeboat.
In a spasm of a movement, Jamieson launched himself from his chair. Like a shot from a gun, with utte
r abandon, he dived for the open doorway of his machine. As the door clanged behind him, the boat shook as if it had been struck by a giant. Part of the ceiling sagged; the floor staggered toward him, and the air grew hot and suffocating.
Gasping, Jamieson slid into the control chair, and struck at the main emergency switch. The rapid fire blasters huzzaed into automatic firing positions, and let go with a hum and deep-throated ping. The refrigerators whined with power; a cold blast of air blew at his body. The relief was so quick that a second passed before Jamieson realized that the atomic engines had failed to respond, and that the lifeboat, which should already have been sliding into the air, was still lying inert in an exposed position.
Tense, he stared into the visiplates. It took a moment to locate the Rull ship. It was at the lower edge of one plate, tumbling slowly out of sight beyond a clump of trees a quarter of a mile away. As he watched, it disappeared; and then the crash of the landing came clear and unmistakable from the sound board in front of him.
The relief that came was weighted with an awful reaction. Jamieson sank back into the cushions of the control chair, weak from the narrowness of his escape. The weakness ended abruptly as a thought struck him. There had been a sedateness about the way the enemy ship fell. The crash hadn’t killed the Rulls aboard.
He was alone in a damaged lifeboat on an impassable mountain with one or more of the most remorseless creatures ever spawned. For ten days, he must fight in the hope that man would still be able to seize the most valuable planet discovered in a century.
He saw in his visiplate that it was growing darker outside.
Jamieson took another antisleep pill and made a more definitive examination of the atomic motors. It didn’t take long to verify his earlier diagnosis. The basic graviton pile had been thoroughly frustrated. Until it could be reactivated on the Orion, the motors were useless.
The conclusive examination braced Jamieson. He was commited irrevocably to the battle of the tableland, with all its intricate possibilities. The idea that had been turning over in his mind during the prolonged night took on new meaning. This was the first time in his knowledge that a Rull and a human being had faced each other on a limited field of action, where neither was a prisoner. The great battles in space were ship against ship and fleet against fleet. Survivors either escaped or were picked up by overwhelming forces. Actually, both humans and Rulls, captured or facing capture, were conditioned to kill themselves. Rulls did it by a mental willing that had never been circumvented. Men had to use mechanical methods, and in some cases that had proved impossible. The result was that Rulls had had occasional opportunities to experiment on living, conscious men.
Unless he was bested, before he could get organized here was a priceless opportunity to try some tests on Rulls—and without delay. Every moment of daylight must be utilized to the uttermost limit.
By the time the Laertes sun peered palely over the horizon that was the northeast cliffs edge, the assault was under way. The automatic defensors, which he had set up the night before, moved slowly from point to point ahead of the mobile blaster.
Jamieson cautiously saw to it that one of the three defensors also brought up his rear. He augmented that basic protection by crawling from one projecting rock after another. The machines he manipulated from a tiny hand control, which was connected to the visiplates that poked out from his headgear just above his eyes. With tensed eyes, he watched the wavering needles that would indicate movement or that the defensor screens were being subjected to energy opposition.
Nothing happened.
As he came within sight of the Rull craft, Jamieson stalled his attack, while he seriously pondered the problem of no resistance. He didn’t like it. It was possible that all the Rulls aboard had been killed, but he doubted it mightily. Rulls were almost boneless. Except for half a dozen strategically linked cartilages, they were all muscles.
With bleak eyes, Jamieson studied the wreck through the telescopic eyes of one of the defensors. It lay in a shallow indentation, its nose buried in a wall of gravel. Its lower plates were collapsed versions of the orginal. His single energy blast the evening before, completely automatic though it had been, had really dealt a smashing blow to the Rull ship.
The over-all effect was of utter lifelessness. If it were a trick, then it was a very skillful one. Fortunately, there were tests he could make, not absolutely final but evidential and indicative.
He made them.
The echoless height of the most unique mountain ever discovered hummed with the fire-sound of the mobile blaster. The noise grew to a roar as the units pile warmed to its task, and developed its maximum kilo curie activity.
Under that barrage, the hull of the enemy craft trembled a little and changed color slighdy, but that was all. After ten minutes, Jamieson cut the power, and sat baffled and indecisive.
The defensive screens of the Rull ship were full on. Had they gone on automatically after his first shot of the evening before? Or had they been put up deliberately to nullify just such an attack as this?
He couldn’t be sure. That was the trouble; he had no positive knowledge. The Rull could be lying inside dead. It could be wounded and incapable of doing anything against him. It could have spent the night marking up the tableland with elled nerve control lines—he’d have to make sure he never looked directly at the ground—or it could simply be waiting for the arrival of the greater ship that had dropped it onto the planet.
Jamieson refused to consider the last possibility. That way was death, without qualification or hope.
Frowningly, he studied the visible damage he had done the ship. All the hard metals had held together, so far as he could see, but the whole bottom of the ship was dented to a depth that varied from one to four feet. Some radiation must have got in, and the question was, what would it have damaged?
He had examined dozens of captured Rull survey craft, and if this one ran to the pattern, then in the front would be the control center, with a sealed off blaster chamber. In the rear the engine room, two storerooms, one for fuel and equipment, the other for food and—
For food. Jamieson jumped, and then with wide eyes noted how the food section had suffered greater damage than any other part of the ship.
Surely, surely, some radiation must have got into it, poisoning, it ruining it, and instantly putting the Rull, with his swift digestive system, into a deadly position.
Jamieson sighed with the intensity of his hope, and prepared to retreat. As he turned away, quite accidentally, he glanced at the rock behind which he had shielded himself from possible direct fire.
Glanced at it, and saw the elled lines in it. Intricate lines, based on a profound and inhuman study of the human nervous system. Jamieson recognized them, and stiffened in horror. He thought in anguish: Where, where am 1 supposed to fall? Which cliff?
With a desperate will, with all his strength, he fought to retain his senses a moment longer. He strove to see the lines again. He saw, briefly, flashingly, five vertical and above them three lines that pointed east with their wavering ends.
The pressure built up, up, up inside him, but still he fought to keep his thoughts moving. Fought to remember if there were any wide ledges near the top of the east cliff.
There were. He recalled them in a final agony of hcpe. There, he thought. That one, that one. Let me fall on that one. He strained to hold the ledge image he wanted, and to repeat, repeat the command that might save his life. His last, dreary thought was that here was the answer to his doubts. The Rull was alive.
Blackness came like a curtain of pure essence of night.
Somberly, the Rull glided toward the man’s lifeboat. From a safe distance, he examined it. The defense screens were up, but he couldn’t be sure they had been put up before the attack of the morning, or had been raised since then, or had come on automatically at his approach.
He couldn’t be sure. That was the trouble. Everywhere, on the tableland around him, was a barrenness, a desolation unlike a
nything else he had ever known. The man could be dead, his smashed body lying at the remote bottom of the mountain. He could be inside the ship badly injured; he had, unfortunately, had time to get back to the safety of his craft. Or he could be waiting inside, alert, aggressive, and conscious of his enemy's uncertainty, determined to take full advantage of that uncertainty.
The Rull set up a watching device that would appraise him when the door opened. Then he returned to the tunnel that led into his ship, laboriously crawled through it, and settled himself to wait out the emergency.
The hunger in him was an expanding force, hourly taking on a greater urgency. It was time to stop moving around. He would need all his energy for the crisis.
The days passed.
Jamieson stirred in an effluvium of pain. At first it seemed all-enveloping, a mist of anguish that bathed him in sweat from head to toe. Gradually, then, it localized in the region of his lower left leg.
The pulse of the pain made a rhythm in his nerves. The minutes lengthened into an hour, and then he finally thought: Why, I've got a sprained ankleI He had more than that, of course. The pressure that had driven him here clung like a gravitonic plate. How long he lay there, partly conscious, was not clear, but when he finally opened his eyes, the sun was still shining on him, thought it was almost directly overhead.
He watched it with the mindlessness of a dreamer as it withdrew slowly past the edge of the overhanging precipice. It was not until the shadow of the cliff suddenly plopped across his face that he started to full consciousness with a sudden memory of deadly danger.
It took a while to shake the remnants of the elled "take” from his brain. And, even as it was fading, he sized up, to some extent, the difficulties of his position. He saw that he had tumbled over the edge of a cliff to a steep slope. The angle of descent of the slope was a sharp fifty-five degrees, and what had saved him was that his body had been caught in the tangled growth near the edge of the greater precipice beyond.
Adventures on Other Planets Page 14