“Oh? For whom do you work?”
“At the moment, and indirectly, for the Dosey Asteroids Company.”
“Insurance?”
“No. After Farous died, Dosey Asteroids employed a detective agency to investigate the matter. I represent the agency.”
“The agency collects on the salvage?”
“That’s the agreement. We deliver the goods or get nothing.”
“And Dr. Egavine?”
Dasinger shrugged. “If the doctor keeps his nose clean, he stays entitled to half the salvage fee.”
“What about the way he got the information from Farous?” she asked.
“From any professional viewpoint, that was highly unethical procedure. But there’s no evidence Egavine broke any laws.”
Miss Mines studied him, her eyes bright and quizzical. “I had a feeling about you,” she said. “I . . .”
A warning burr came from the tolerance indicator; the girl turned her head quickly, said, “Cat’s complaining . . . looks like we’re hitting the first system stresses!” She slid back into the pilot seat. “Be with you again in a while . . .”
WHEN Dasinger returned presently to the control section Duomart sat at ease in the pilot seat with coffee and a sandwich before her.
“How are the mutineers doing?” she asked.
“They ate with a good appetite, said nothing, and gave me no trouble,” Dasinger said. “They still pretend they don’t understand Federation translingue. Dr. Egavine’s a bit sulky. He wanted to be up front during the prelanding period. I told him he could watch things through his cabin communicator screen.”
Miss Mines finished her sandwich, her eyes thoughtful. “I’ve been wondering, you know . . . how can you be sure Dr. Egavine told you the truth about what he got from Leed Farous?”
Dasinger said, “I studied the recordings Dr. Egavine made of his sessions with Farous in the hospital. He may have held back on a few details, but the recordings were genuine enough.”
“So Farous passes out on a kwil jag,” she said, “and he doesn’t even know they’re making a landing. When he comes to, the scout’s parked, the Number Three drive is smashed, the lock is open, and not another soul is aboard or in sight.
“Then he notices another wreck with its lock open, wanders over, sees a few bones and stuff lying around inside, picks up a star hyacinth, and learns from the ship’s records that down in the hold under sixty feet of water is a sealed compartment with a whole little crateful of the stones . . .”
“That’s the story,” Dasinger agreed.
“In the Fleets,” she remarked, “if we heard of a place where a couple of ship’s crews seemed to have vanished into thin air, we’d call it a spooked world. And usually we’d keep away from it.” She clamped her lower lip lightly between her teeth for a moment. “Do you think Dr. Egavine has considered the kwil angle?”
Dasinger nodded. “I’m sure of it. Of course it’s only a guess that the kwil made a difference for Farous. The stuff has no known medical value of any kind. But when the only known survivor of two crews happens to be a kwil-eater, the point has to be considered.”
“Nobody else on Handing’s Scout took kwil,” Duomart said. “I know that. There aren’t many in the Fleet who do.” She hesitated. “You know, Dasinger, perhaps I should try it again! Maybe if I took it straight from the needle this time . . .”
Dasinger shook his head. “If the little flake you nibbled made you feel drowsy, even a quarter of a standard shot would put you out cold for an hour or two. Kwil has that effect on a lot of people. Which is one reason it isn’t a very popular drug.”
“What effect does it have on you?” she asked.
“Depends to some extent on the size of the dose. Sometimes it slows me down physically and mentally. At other times there were no effects that I could tell until the kwil wore off. Then I’d have hallucinations for a while—that can be very distracting, of course, when there’s something you have to do. Those hangover hallucinations seem to be another fairly common reaction.”
He concluded, “Since you can’t take the drug and stay awake, you’ll simply remain inside the locked ship. It will be better anyway to keep the Mooncat well up in the air and ready to move most of the time we’re on the planet.”
“What about Taunus and Calat?” she asked.
“They come out with us, of course. If kwil is what it takes to stay healthy down there, I’ve enough to go around. And if it knocks them out, it will keep them out of trouble.”
“LOOKS like there’s a firemaker down there!” Duomart’s slim forefinger indicated a point on the ground-view plate. “Column of smoke starting to come up next to that big patch of trees!. . . Two point nine miles due north and uphill of the wrecks.”
From a wall screen Dr. Egavine’s voice repeated sharply, “Smoke? Then Leed Farous was not the only survivor!”
Duomart gave him a cool glance. “Might be a native animal that knows how to make fire. They’re not so unusual.” She went on to Dasinger. “It would take a hand detector to spot us where we are, but it does look like a distress signal. If it’s men from one of the wrecks, why haven’t they used the scout’s other lifeboat?”
“Would the lifeboat still be intact?” Dasinger asked.
Duomart spun the ground-view plate back to the scout. “Look for yourself,” she said. “It couldn’t have been damaged in as light a crash as that one was. Those tubs are built to stand a really solid shaking up! And what else could have harmed it?”
“Farous may have put it out of commission before he left,” Dasinger said. “He wanted to come back from the Hub with an expedition to get the hyacinths, so he wouldn’t have cared for the idea of anyone else getting away from the planet meanwhile.” He looked over at the screen. “How about it, doctor? Did Farous make any mention of that?”
Dr. Egavine seemed to hesitate an instant. “As a matter of fact, he did. Farous was approximately a third of the way to the Hub when he realized he might have made a mistake in not rendering the second lifeboat unusable. But by then it was too late to turn back, and of course he was almost certain there were no other survivors.”
“So that lifeboat should still be in good condition?”
“It was in good condition when Farous left here.”
“Well, whoever’s down there simply may not know how to handle it.”
Duomart shook her blond head decidedly. “That’s out, too!” she said. “Our Fleet lifeboats all came off an old Grand Commerce liner which was up for scrap eighty, ninety years ago. They’re designed so any fool can tell what to do, and the navigational settings are completely automatic. Of course if it is a native firemaker—with mighty keen eyesight—down there, that could be different! A creature like that mightn’t think of going near the scout. Should I start easing the Cat in towards the smoke, Dasinger?”
“Yes. We’ll have to find out what the signal means before we try to approach the wrecks. Doctor, are you satisfied now that Miss Mines’s outworld biotic check was correct?”
“The analysis appears to be fairly accurate,” Dr. Egavine acknowledged, “and all detectable trouble sources are covered by the selected Fleet serum.”
DASINGER said, “We’ll prepare for an immediate landing then. There’ll be less than an hour of daylight left on the ground, but the night’s so short we’ll disregard that factor.” He switched off the connection to Egavine’s cabin, turned to Duomart. “Now our wrist communicators, you say, have a five-mile range?”
“A little over five.”
“Then,” Dasinger said, “we’ll keep you and the Cat stationed at an exact five-mile altitude ninety-five per cent of the time we spend on the planet. If the Spy arrives while you’re up there, how much time will we have to clear out?”
She shrugged. “That depends of course on how they arrive. My detectors can pick the Spy up in space before their detectors can make out the Cat against the planet. If we spot them as they’re heading in, we’ll have around fifteen
minutes.
“But if they show up on the horizon in atmosphere, or surface her out of subspace, that’s something else. If I don’t move instantly then, they’ll have me bracketed . . . and BLOOIE!”
Dasinger said, “Then those are the possibilities you’ll have to watch for. Think you could draw the Spy far enough away in a chase to be able to come back for us?”
“They wouldn’t follow me that far,” Duomart said. “They know the Cat can outrun them easily once she’s really stretched out, so if they can’t nail her in the first few minutes they’ll come back to look around for what we were interested in here.” She added, “And if I don’t let the Cat go all out but just keep a little ahead of them, they’ll know that I’m trying to draw them away from something.”
Dasinger nodded. “In that case we’ll each be on our own, and your job will be to keep right on going and get the information as quickly as possible to the Kyth detective agency in Orado. The agency will take the matter from there.”
MISS Mines looked at him. “Aren’t you sort of likely to be dead before the agency can do anything about the situation?”
“I’ll try to avoid it,” Dasinger said. “Now, we’ve assumed the worst as far as the Spy is concerned. But things might also go wrong downstairs. Say I lose control of the group, or we all get hit down there by whatever hit the previous landing parties and it turns out that kwil’s no good for it. It’s understood that in any such event you again head the Cat immediately for the Hub and get the word to the agency. Right?”
Duomart nodded.
He brought a flat case of medical hypodermics out of his pocket, and opened it.
“Going to take your shot of kwil before we land?” Miss Mines asked.
“No. I want you to keep one of these needles on hand, at least until we find out what the problem is. It’ll knock you out if you have to take it, but it might also keep you alive. I’m waiting myself to see if it’s necessary to go on kwil. The hallucinations I get from the stuff afterwards could hit me while we’re in the middle of some critical activity or other, and that mightn’t be so good.” He closed the case again, put it away. “I think we’ve covered everything. If you’ll check the view plate, something—or somebody—has come out from under the trees near the column of smoke. And unless I’m mistaken it’s a human being.”
Duomart slipped the kwil needle he’d given her into a drawer of the instrument console. “I don’t think you’re mistaken,” she said. “I’ve been watching him for the last thirty seconds.”
“It is a man?”
“Pretty sure of it. He moves like one.”
Dasinger stood up. “I’ll go talk with Egavine then. I had a job in mind for him and his hypno sprays if we happened to run into human survivors.”
“Shall I put the ship down next to this one?”
“No. Land around five hundred yards to the north, in the middle of that big stretch of open ground. That should keep us out of ambushes. Better keep clear of the airspace immediately around the wrecks as you go down.”
Duomart looked at him. “Darn right I’ll keep clear of that area!”
Dasinger grinned. “Something about the scout?”
“Sure. No visible reason at all why the scout should have settled hard enough to buckle a drive. Handing was a good pilot.”
“Hm-m-m.” Dasinger rubbed his chin. “Well, I’ve been wondering. The Dosey Asteroids raiders are supposed to have used an unknown type of antipersonnel weapon in their attack on the station, you know. Nothing in sight on their wreck that might be, say, an automatic gun but . . . well, just move in carefully and stay ready to haul away very fast at the first hint of trouble!”
THE Mooncat slid slowly down through the air near the point where the man stood in open ground, a hundred yards from the clump of trees out of which smoke still billowed thickly upwards. The man watched the speedboat’s descent quietly, making no further attempt to attract the attention of those on board to himself.
Duomart had said that the man was not a member of Handing’s lost crew but a stranger. He was therefore one of the Dosey Asteroids raiders.
Putting down her two land legs, the Mooncat touched the open hillside a little over a quarter of a mile from the woods, stood straddled and rakish, nose high. The storeroom lock opened, and a slender ramp slid out. Quist showed in the lock, dumped two portable shelters to the ground, came scrambling nimbly down the ramp. Dr. Egavine followed, more cautiously, the two handcuffed Fleetmen behind him. Dasinger came out last, glancing over at the castaway who had started across the slope towards the ship.
“Everyone’s out,” he told his wrist communicator. “Take her up.”
The ramp snaked soundlessly back into the lock, the lock snapped shut and the Mooncat lifted smoothly and quickly from the ground. Liu Taunus glanced after the rising speedboat, looked at Calat, and spoke loudly and emphatically in Fleetlingue for a few seconds, his broad face without expression. Dasinger said, “All right, Quist, break out the shelter.”
When the shelter was assembled, Dasinger motioned the Fleetmen towards the door with his thumb. “Inside, boys!” he said. “Quist, lock the shelter behind them and stay on guard here. Come on, doctor. We’ll meet our friend halfway . . .”
THE castaway approached unhurriedly, walking with a long, easy stride, the bird thing on his shoulder craning its neck to peer at the strangers with round yellow eyes. The man was big and rangy, probably less heavy by thirty pounds than Liu Taunus, but in perfect physical condition. The face was strong and intelligent, smiling elatedly now.
“I’d nearly stopped hoping this day would arrive!” he said in translingue. “May I ask who you are?”
“An exploration group.” Dasinger gripped the extended hand, shook it, as Dr. Egavine’s right hand went casually to his coat lapel. “We noticed the two wrecked ships down by the lake,” Dasinger explained, “then saw your smoke signal. Your name?”
“Graylock. Once chief engineer of the Antares, out of Vanadia on Aruaque.” Graylock turned, still smiling, towards Egavine.
Egavine smiled as pleasantly.
“Graylock,” he observed, “you feel, and will continue to feel, that this is the conversation you planned to conduct with us, that everything is going exactly in accordance with your wishes.” He turned his head to Dasinger, inquired, “Would you prefer to question him yourself, Dasinger?”
Dasinger hesitated, startled; but Graylock’s expression did not change. Dasinger shook his head. “Very smooth, doctor!” he commented. “No, go ahead. You’re obviously the expert here.”
“Very well . . . Graylock,” Dr. Egavine resumed, “you will cooperate with me fully and to the best of your ability now, knowing that I am both your master and friend. Are any of the other men who came here on those two ships down by the water still alive?”
There was complete stillness for a second or two. Then Graylock’s face began to work unpleasantly, all color draining from it. He said harshly, “No. But I . . . I don’t . . .” He stammered incomprehensibly, went silent again, his expression wooden and set.
“Graylock,” Egavine continued to probe, “you can remember everything now, and you are not afraid. Tell me what happened to the other men.”
Sweat covered the castaway’s ashen face. His mouth twisted in agonized, silent grimaces again. The bird thing leaped from his shoulder with a small purring sound, fluttered softly away.
Dr. Egavine repeated, “You are not afraid. You can remember. What happened to them? How did they die?”
And abruptly the big man’s face smoothed out. He looked from Egavine to Dasinger and back with an air of brief puzzlement, then explained conversationally, “Why, Hovig’s generator killed many of us as we ran away from the Antares. Some reached the edges of the circle with me, and I killed them later.”
Dr. Egavine flicked another glance towards Dasinger but did not pause.
“And the crew of the second ship?” he asked.
“Those two. They had things I
needed, and naturally I didn’t want them alive here.”
“Is Hovig’s generator still on the Antares?”
“Yes.”
“How does the generator kill?”
Sweat suddenly started out on Graylock’s face again, but now he seemed unaware of any accompanying emotions. He said, “It kills by fear, of course . . .”
THE story of the Dosey Asteroids raider and of Hovig’s fear generators unfolded quickly from there. Hovig had developed his machines for the single purpose of robbing the Dosey Asteroids Shipping Station. The plan then had been to have the Antares cruise in uncharted space with the looted star hyacinths for at least two years, finally to approach the area of the Federation from a sector far removed from the Dosey system. That precaution resulted in disaster for Hovig. Chief Engineer Graylock had time to consider that his share in the profits of the raid would be relatively insignificant, and that there was a possibility of increasing it.
Graylock and his friends attacked their shipmates as the raider was touching down to the surface of an uncharted world to replenish its water supply. The attack succeeded but Hovig, fatally wounded, took a terrible revenge on the mutineers. He contrived to set off one of his grisly devices, and to all intents and purposes everyone still alive on board the Antares immediately went insane with fear. The ship crashed out of control at the edge of a lake. Somebody had opened a lock and a number of the frantic crew plunged from the ramp and fell to their death on the rocks below. Those who reached the foot of the ramp fled frenziedly from the wreck, the effects of Hovig’s machine pursuing them but weakening gradually as they widened the distance between themselves and the Antares. Finally, almost three miles away, the fear impulses faded out completely . . .
But thereafter the wreck was unapproachable. The fear generator did not run out of power, might not run out of power for years.
Dasinger said, “Doctor, let’s hurry this up! Ask him why they weren’t affected by their murder machines when they robbed Dosey Asteroids. Do the generators have a beam-operated shut-off, or what?”
Complete Short Fiction (Jerry eBooks) Page 93