by Jerry
Suddenly some new arrivals added to the pack. The creatures who came up had red markings on their fur denoting that they were engineers. Their mechanical knowledge was probably very poor.
But the Iskarite engineers held ray guns in their paws. As soon as they got near the building hiding the Earthians, they began snaking the rays over the concrete.
It was actually a waste of radium, for the rays simply blew off a coat of dust off the concrete. But if the rays had touched a human a terrible burn would be inflicted.
“I don’t know what the Pogs are doing here,” gritted Dan Madoc. “But I can guess they’ve fought the other Earthians and somehow got control of their guns.”
He made guesses as to the presence of the Iskarites on Cirees IV, but the uesses would not help them out of the present situation.
All at once the pack of furry creatures withdrew. The red-marked engineers had barked orders. The pack shambled off down the street, in the direction of the X9. But some others parted from the main pack and made a track for a building on a knoll overlooking the sandy basin. Leading this party were the engineers.
Dan Madoc saw these moves from the upper window and wondered what was going on.
He came down to the others and rapped:
“The Iskarites are making for the ship. They have those ray guns, and I don’t know how we can fight them.”
“As long as they get off this planet, I don’t care if they take the ship,” growled one man.
“I’m not so sure they can get off Cirees IV,” remarked Dan. ” The Automatic needs re-setting and those Pog engineers couldn’t do it. They know that, too, I guess.”
“What do you advise, Dan?” asked another man, quietly.
“Well, the creatures are not immediately menacing us, so I think we ought to search the houses for ray guns in order to fight back if they attack again.”
It was a good idea, and the party of Earthians streamed out to search for guns. It was arranged to meet again near the house they had just left, and no one had to be away more than ten minutes.
Dan kept beside Alix. He did not want any harm to come to her. She was becoming something very dear to him.
He climbed to the flat roof of a house with the girl and he stared over to the X9. He saw the pack of Iskarites streaming all around the ship. Judging by their antics they seemed to be delighted with the appearance of the ship. He guessed they thought they could return to Iskar by the craft. But the Automatic would have to be re-set. And that task was too subtle for Iskarite engineers.
He suddenly saw the creatures re-appear from the building on the knoll. Five humans were dragged out of the building. Dan stared in surprise. So the Iskarites had kept some of the Cirees Earthians prisoner!
Dan forgot about looking for a ray gun. He pointed out the distant play to Alix. They saw the humans dragged to the ship. Dan realised what was brewing.
“The bear-people are taking those humans to the ship—probably to force them to alter the Automatic preset. They’ll want a warp to Iskar.”
Dan and Alix went down the stairs and crossed the road to the other house. They waited until all the party was assembled again. Only one ray gun had been found. Evidently the weapons had been hidden or destroyed.
Dan Madoc told the others what he had seen and his inferences.
“The Iskarites probably want to return to Iskar. The Earthian prisoners are being taken to the ship to alter the Automatic. Once that is done the Iskarites will leave this planet.”
“What’s wrong with that?” called a man surlily.
“Just that once the Automatic is preset again on a warp to Iskar the Earthians will be killed. We’ve got to do something to save the five men.”
We’ve got only one ray gun,” said the man. “They’ll wipe us out. Is it good that nineteen should die to save five?”
“Alix and I had the chance to escape from Iskar,” rapped Dan. ” But we spent some time in rescuing you. We succeeded. I think we ought to help those five Earthians. They are our own people. Give me that ray gun. I’ll go over to the basin, myself. I might surprise them.”
Alix Denyer was suddenly fearful for his safety and yet proud that Dan should decide to help the others.
Dan Madoc took the ray gun from the man who had found it. He started out but not alone. Alix came after him and most of the others, too. The men were armed with strong metal rods which had been taken from some ornamental railings.
The party of Earthians approached the ship, coming through a cleft in the rocks. Then they halted when they realised they had to cross flat ground to get near the ship. All around the X9 were the Iskarites. The five Earthians had been dragged inside. Dan’s hunch about the presetting of the Automatic Flight seemed very likely now. There was no other reason why the five humans should be taken on board.
“There is another point,” muttered Dan grimly to Alix. ” We might want to use the X9 to get to Earth, and those five men held by the Iskarites might be able to alter the Automatic for us. The ship was built here.”
In many ways it was important to tackle the bear-people before they succeeded in having the Automatic altered. For one thing, the five Earthians would be killed immediately the ship was set for a flight to Iskar.
“I wish we were invisible again,” said Dan grimly.
Alix laughed slightly and held his arm tightly.
Then Dan took her hand off his arm.
“I’m going to attack with this gun,” he said. “I might get some of those Pogs carrying the ray guns by surprise. If only we could get those guns, everything would alter.”
Swiftly, because he did not want her to detain him, he darted off.
Like a sprinter, he raced over the sand and he got within ray gun range before the Iskarites standing around the ship realised his presence.
He lanced the gun over the pack. The ray snaked out and burned horribly wherever it touched flesh. Sudden cries of pain and rage broke out.
Dan kept racing. A ray gun lanced to him but the ray missed, like a spray of water that is too slow. That was a peculiar fact about the ray gun: the ray was heavy and took an appreciable time to cover even a short distance. The radium ray did not move with the speed of light; in fact it was vastly slower.
Dan veered away from the ship, holding the ray gun over his shoulder so that if the Iskarites pursued, they would run after a ray that snaked viciously.
But some of the red-marked engineers leaped out of the X9 and gave chase. They had more ray guns. They knew how to use them, although the guns were Earthian manufacture.
Grimly, Dan raced in a wide circle for some rocks. He thought he had no doubt led the Iskarites away from the ship, but the price might be his life.
Still, the one-time prisoners of the Iskarites might now have a chance to run for the ship and rescue the five Earthians. Most of the pack of Iskarites were racing after Dan.
He thought there was no future now for Alix and he. In a moment the bear-creatures would overtake him and circle him. Then a ray would lance out and settle on him, burning horribly . . .
All at once the snarls of the Iskarites increased. Dan sensed the difference. This was not triumph; it seemed like increased anger. He whipped around, chancing the slight delay it caused.
From the rocky cleft about twenty more Earthians were pouring, and they all carried ray guns. Dan heard the shouts.
“We found these men locked in a cellar . . .” It was the voice of one of the ex-prisoners of Iskar. These men knew where to find hidden ray guns.”
Then the next thing was frightful snarls of agony as the Iskarites were sent on the run. The bear-creatures were outnumbered in guns. Dan wheeled and added his ray gun to the others already creating havoc. Suddenly, from out of the crowd, Alix came up and held his arm.
“Oh, Dan, I thought you’d taken too big a risk!”
“I’m all right,” he assured her.
The Iskarites suddenly raced away. The red-marked engineers were dead. They still held the guns. T
he brutes who had escaped had no guns.
The five men inside the ship walked out and the bonds were taken from their hands. It was then that Dan learned the history of events.
“The Iskarites first came here in a hired ship,” said the leader of the Cirees Earthians. “They said they wanted to trade. It was difficult conversing, but we managed. Then they tricked us like the wily brutes they are. They attacked and killed hundreds of our unarmed people one night. A lot of our folks fled to the hills, where they are at this moment. The Iskarites made some of us prisoner, mostly those who were engineers. Then the X9 left for Iskar, after the brutes had made one of us fix the Automatic. As you can see, a lot of the brutes were left behind. The ship was to return for them, but it did not come on the appointed time. The Iskarites on Cirees went mad, making raids into the hills just to kill. They lost a lot of guns on those raids, and many were destroyed when they did not know how to refill the radium charge. It’s a good thing two of your party got us out of the cellar in time. We knew where to find guns.”
“A good thing for me,” laughed Dan. “Another minute and I might have been roasted!”
It was Dan’s turn to tell their own chain of events. He ended: “The X9 landed badly on Iskar, and I think the brutes just decided not to return to this planet. Or maybe they were studying the problem. Anyway, it’s a good thing we escaped from the machine jail and took the X9 on its fixed course.”
“A good thing for all!” exclaimed the leader. “We can get our people down from the hills and round up the weaponless Iskarites. And you?”
Dan looked at Alix, at the clear eyes and smiling lips and knew the answer to that question.
THE END
TRIGGER TIDE
Wyman Guin
It was a strange planet—but there was nothing lacking in the thoroughness of the beating-up the political gang gave him. But their really deadly weapon was the tide—
That first day and night I lay perfectly still. I was often conscious but there was no thought of moving. I breathed shallowly.
In midmorning of the second day I began to feel the ants and flies that swarmed in the cake of mud, blood and festering flesh I was wearing for clothes. Then, through the morning mists of its tiny sixth planet that giant white sun slammed down on me.
I had been able to see something of the surroundings before they began working me over. After they had taken the hood off my head and while they were stripping away my clothes and harness of power equipment, the first orbit moon—the little fast, pale green one—shot up out of the blue-black sea. I had been able to tell in its light that we were on a tide shelf, probably the third.
Now burnt, lashed and clubbed I lay face down in the quick growing weeds of the hot tide shelf. The weeds were beginning to crawl against my face in the breathless air and dimly I realized a moon must be rising.
It had been the predawn of the tenth day of period thirty-six when the two of them stepped out of an aircar on Quartz Street and the girl I was walking home to the Great Island Hotel turned me over to them. If it was true that I had been lying here that day and night and this was the next midmorning, and if this was the third shelf, there would soon be a tide washing over me.
That tide was not easy to calculate. That it could be figured out is a tribute to the way they drill information into you before you leave The Central on an assignment. But the most thorough textbook knowledge of a planet’s conditions is thin stuff when you are actually there and have to know them better than the natives. I tried the calculation all over again with that great sun frying my skull and got the same answer.
In about an hour the big fifth orbit moon and the sun would be overhead. The equally big third orbit moon would be slightly behind. Together they would lift the sea onto the third shelf all through this latitude.
The kind of day it was these tides would come up smoothly and steadily. Through the buzzing of flies I could not hear the sea. That did not mean it was not a hundred feet away lapping rapidly higher on the third sea wall.
I lay perfectly still except for my shallow breathing and waited for the sea.
When the water came over me in a shall rush I strangled. Quickly, I refused to move. The water rushed over me again and again softening the clotted mud that had kept me from oozing to death. Finally when the surf receded it was still about me and I had to try moving.
I got to my knees and set to work with my right hand to get some vision. With the sea now washing higher about me I finally got the clot from my right eye and achieved a blurred view of daylight.
You have to have at least some luck. When you run out of it altogether you are dead. The fourth sea wall was about fifty yards away and looked as though a normal man could make it quite easily. How I made it was another story. I could barely use my legs and the left arm was useless. All the time I was reopening my wounds on the quartzcar formations of the sea wall.
That quartzcar is not like the familiar coral that forms some of the islands of Earth. It is made up from quartz particles that are suspended in the ocean water. It is a concretion in an intricate lattice which small crustacea pile up in regular patterns. The animals build their quartzcar islands from the quartz dust that rises in tidal rhythms off the floor of the shallow planetary sea. Consequently the islands come in layers with tide shelves that correspond to the height of various lunar tides.
The only land on that planet is the countless archipelagoes of quartzcar. On the sea walls or when you dig it up it presents a fine rasplike face that opened my wounds and left me bleeding and gasping with pain when I reached the top.
That afternoon I was not unconscious. I slept. It was dark when I awakened. Then slowly, magnificently it was light again as the fifth orbit moon rose over the sea, a great ball of electric blue. Only a short time later the little chartreuse first moon came rocketing up to catch and finally, a shade to the south, to pass the larger body on its own quick trip to the zenith.
Back at The Central the “white haired boys,” the psychostatisticians, can tell you all about why people get into wars. If they had not been right about every assignment they had plotted for me, I would never have lived to get beat up on this one. Sometimes their anthropoquations give very complex answers. Sometimes, as in the case of these people, the answer is simple. It was so simple in this case that it read like Twentieth Century newspaper propaganda. But lying there looking out into the glorious sky I didn’t believe in wars. There never had been any. There never would be any. Surely they would close The Central and I could stay there forever watching the great moons roll across the galaxy.
I reawakened with a sharpened sense of urgency. I got to my feet. There was going to be a war if I didn’t get on with the assignment. The fine part about this job was everyone wanted it “hush.” The ideal performance for a Central Operator is, of course, to hit a planet, get the business over with and get out without anyone ever guessing you were doing anything but buying curios. Generally those you’re up against try to throw you into public light—a bad light. These boys wanted it hush much worse than I did. It gave me a certain advantage tactically. I will not say the mess I had got myself into was part of my plan. But they were going to scramble at the sight of their mayhem walking back into the city.
I had to skirt half the city to reach my contact and a safe place to heal. To make it before morning I had to take advantage of every moment of moonlight.
After about half my journey I had a long wait in the dark before the fourth orbit moon came up and I was able to move ahead. I was skirting the city very close through the fern tree forest but, except for an occasional house and couples necking in aircars idling low over the fronds, I had little to worry about.
Toward morning the only light was the second brief flight of the tiny first moon and the going was much slower. But at least while it was up alone the vegetation did not move about so much. I finished the last lap to my Contact staggering and dangerously in broad daylight.
He didn’t say anything when he op
ened the door of his cottage. He didn’t show surprise or hesitate too long either. He led me in carefully and put me down on a bed.
Part of the time he was working on me I slept and part of the time I was wide awake gasping. It would have been just about as bad as when they worked me over except that he used some drugs and I knew he was trying to put me together instead of take me apart.
Then at last I slept undisturbed—that day and the next night. When I awoke he was still there staring down at me with no expression on his face.
It was the first time I had tried to form words with my mashed mouth. I finally got out, “How did you recognize me? You’d only seen me normal once.”
I got two shocks in rapid succession. He said, “I’m awfully sorry about your eye.”
It flashed over me that this man had gone sour as an Operator. No Central Operator is ever sorry for anything. Certainly no one ever says so when you’ve had “bad luck.”
I got the second shock and pulled myself up from the bed. I searched the blurred room till I made out a mirror and went to it without his help. It was only then I realized they had put out one of my eyes.
I don’t know whether it was just fury and determination to heal fast or whether he was right that there is some mysterious influence on that planet that accelerates healing. It took me only about three weeks to get back to the point where I felt I was in shape to tackle them again. The bones in my arm knitted very well and it was surprising how fast the burns healed.
He knew a lot about that planet, this Operator. He couldn’t stop asking questions about it. What made the vegetation move when a moon was up? Why did the animal life, including men, slow its activity at the same time? The only question it seemed he hadn’t asked was why he, an Operator for The Central, had adopted one of the major habits of the planet he had been assigned to. He wouldn’t move while there was a conjunction of moons at zenith. Instead he criticized me for exercising my scarred legs while a moon was up. You’d think it would have reminded him that being inactive at such times was only a planetary habit.