Complete Short Fiction (Jerry eBooks)

by James H. Schmitz

  Forty feet down was a twisted branch, thickets near its far end. Nile pushed off, dropped, landed in moments, knees flexing, ran along the branch and threaded her way into the thickets. From cover, she looked back. Nothing stirred above or behind her. The tarm hadn’t followed.

  She moved on less hurriedly, stopped at last to consider what she could do. She was still stunned by the encounter. Scentlessness would have been no protection if she had come much closer to that lurking sea beast before she discovered it. And how could she get to the oilwood now? The tarm lay so near it that it seemed suicidal recklessness to approach the area again. She scanned mentally over the weapons the floatwood offered. There was nothing that could stop a great creature like that quickly enough to do her any good. The Uws beam would only enrage it.

  She had an abrupt sense of defeat. The thing might very well lie there till morning, making it impossible to start the beacon which was to identify the island to Parrol. There must be something she could do to draw it away from its position.

  Almost with the thought, a vast bellowing erupted about her, seeming to come from inches beneath her feet, jarring her tight-drawn nerves again . . . Only a sea-haval from the rookery below.

  Nile’s breath caught.

  Only a sea-haval? From the rookery below—

  She went hurrying on down through the forest.

  Presently she returned, retracing her former route. But now she gave every section of it careful study—glancing ahead and back, planning it out, not as a line of ascent but of a headlong descent to follow. When she came back along it, she would be moving as quickly as she could move, unable to afford a single misstep, a single moment of uncertainty about what to do, or which way to turn. A good part of that descent would be low-weight jumping; and whenever one of the prospective jumps looked at all tricky, she tried it out before climbing farther.

  She reached a point at last where she must be within a minute of sighting the tarm . . . if it had stayed where it was. For it might have been having second thoughts about the upright shape which had been coming towards it and then backed away, and be prowling about for her now. Nile moved as warily and stealthily as she ever had in her life until she knew she was within view of the branch where the tarm had lain. She hadn’t approached it from the previous direction but had climbed up instead along the far side of the great bole which supported most of the floatwood and other growth in the area.

  When she edged around the bole, she saw the tarm immediately where she had judged it would be—flattened out on the branch, the head end of the big worm body turned towards her. A great lidless pale eye disk seemed fixed on the bole. Something thick and lumpy—the mass of retracted tentacles—stirred along the side. There was a deceptively sluggish heavy look about the thing.

  Nile glanced back and down along her immediate line of retreat. Then she took the UW from its holster and stepped out on a branch jutting from the massive trunk. Weaving tips lifted abruptly from the tarm’s clumped tentacles. Otherwise it didn’t move. Nile pointed the gun at the center of the horny eye lens and held down the trigger.

  The tarm’s body rose up. Nile snapped the gun into the holster, slipped back around the bole. Turned and sprang.

  There was a sound of something like tons of wet sand smashing against the far side of the bole as she darted through a thicket thirty feet down. She swung out below the thicket, dropped ten feet, dropped twenty-five feet, dropped again, descending a stairway of air . . .

  A deep howling swept by overhead, more like the voice of the storm than that of an animal. Nile turned, saw the tarm, contracted almost to the shape of a ball, hurtle through smashing growth a hundred feet above, suspended from bunched thick tentacles. She pulled out the UW and held the beam centered on the bulk, shouting at the top of her lungs. The awesome cry cut off and the big body jerked to a stop, hung twisting in midair for an instant, attached by its tentacles to fifty points of the floatwood. Then the tarm had located her and swiftly came down. Nile slipped behind a trunk, resumed her retreat.

  She was in and out of the tarm’s sight from moment to moment, but the next series of zigzagging downward leaps did not draw her away from it again. She heard its crashing descent, above and to this side or that, always following, cutting down distance between them—then stench and noise exploded about. Strain blurred her vision, but there was a wide opening among the branches below and she darted towards it. A horizontal branch came underfoot—a swaying narrow bridge, open space all about and beneath. Sea-haval stink roiled the air. Heavy stirrings below, angry rumble . . .

  A great thump behind her. The branch shook violently. The tarm’s howl swelled at her back, and furious bellowings replied. The branch creaked. Ahead to the right were the waving thickets she remembered—.

  Nile flung herself headlong off the branch into the growth, clutching with arms and legs. An explosively loud crack, not yards away—another. Then, moments later, a great thudding splash below.

  Then many more sounds. Rather ghastly ones . . .

  Nile scrambled farther into the thicket, found solid foothold and stood up, gripping the shrubbery. She fought for breath, heart pounding like an engine. The racket below began to settle into a heavy irregular thumping as the beaks of the sea-havals slammed again and again into the rubbery monster which had dropped into their rookery, gripping a branch of floatwood . . . a branch previously almost cut through at either end by the beam of Nile’s gun. The farm was finished; the giant kesters wouldn’t stop until it had been tugged and ripped apart, tossed in sections about the evil-smelling rookery, mashed to mud under huge webbed feet.

  Nerves and lungs steadying gradually, Nile wiped sweat from her eyes and forehead, then looked over her gear to make sure nothing of importance had been lost in that plunging chase. All items seemed to be on hand.

  And now, unless she ran into further unforeseen obstacles on the way, she should be able to get her oilwood fire started . . .

  There were no further obstacles.

  For the fourth or fifth time Nile suddenly came awake, roused perhaps by nothing more than a change in the note of the wind. She looked about quickly. A dozen feet below her, near the waterline, an otter lifted its oval head, glanced up. It was the wild female, taking her turn to rest while her mate and Sweeting patrolled.

  “Is nothing, Nile . . .” The otter yawned.

  Nile turned her wrist, looked at her watch. Still about two hours till dawn . . . She’d been dozing uneasily for around the same length of time at the sea edge of the forest, waiting for indications of Parrol’s arrival. Current conditions on the island had the appearance of a stalemate of sorts. On the surface, little happened. The Parahuans had withdrawn into their installations. An occasional boat still moved cautiously about the lagoon, but those on board weren’t looking for her. If anything, since the last developments, they’d seemed anxious to avoid renewed encounters with the Tuvela. There was underwater activity which appeared to be centered about the ship beneath the lagoon floor. If she’d had a jet rig, she would have gone down to investigate. But at present the ship was out of her reach; and while the otters could operate comfortably at that depth, their reports remained inconclusive.

  In spite of the apparent lull, this remained an explosive situation. And as she calculated it, the blowup wouldn’t be delayed much longer . . .

  It must seem to the Voice of Action that it had maneuvered itself into an impossible situation. To avoid the defeat of its policies, it had, by its own standards, committed a monstrous crime and dangerously weakened the expeditionary force’s command structure. Porad Anz would condone the slaughter of the opposed Great Palachs and Palachs only if the policies could be successfully implemented.

  And now, by the Voice of Action’s own standards again, the policies already had failed completely to meet the initial test. The basis of their argument had been that Tuvelas could be defeated. Her death was to prove it. With the proof at hand, the fact at last established, the attack on the planet woul
d follow.

  Hours later, she not only was still alive but in effect disputing their control of the upper island areas. They must have armament around which could vaporize not only the island but the entire floatwood drift and her along with it. But while they remained here themselves, they couldn’t employ that kind of armament. They couldn’t use it at all without alerting the planet—in which case they might as well begin the overall attack.

  Their reasoning had become a trap. They hadn’t been able to overcome one Tuvela. They couldn’t expect then that an attack on the Tuvelas of the planet would result in anything but failure. But if they pulled out of Nandy-Cline without fighting, their crime remained unexpiated, unjustified—unforgivable in the eyes of Porad Anz.

  Nile thought the decision eventually must be to attack. Understaffed or not, their confidence shaken or not, the Voice of Action really no longer had a choice. It was simply a question now of when they would come to that conclusion and take action on it.

  There was nothing she could do about that at present. At least she’d kept them stalled through most of the night; and if the Sotira racer had caught her warning, the planet might be growing aware of the peril overhanging it. Nile sighed, shifted position, blinking out through the branches before her at the sea. Starshine gleamed on the surging water, blended with the ghostly light of the luminous weed beds. Cloud banks rolled through the sky again. Fitful flickering on the nearby surface was the reflection of the oilwood . . . If Parrol would only get here—

  She slid back down into sleep. Something very wet was nuzzling her energetically. She shoved at it in irritation. It came back.

  “Nile, wake up! Spiff’s here!” Grogginess vanished instantly. “Huh? Where are—”

  “Coming!” laughed Sweeting. “Coming! Not far!”

  She’d picked up the tiny resonance in the caller receiver which told her Spiff was in the sea, within three miles, homing in on her. And if Spiff was coming, Parrol was with him. Limp with relief, Nile slipped down to the water’s edge with the otter. Almost daybreak, light creeping into the sky behind cloud cover, the ocean black and steel-gray, great swells running before the island.

  “Which way?”

  Sweeting’s nose swung about like a compass needle, held due south. She was shivering with excitement. “Close! Close! We wait?”

  “We wait.” Nile’s voice was shaky. “They’ll be here fast enough . . .” Parrol had done as she thought—read the oilwood message from afar, set his car down to the south, worked it in subsurface towards the floatwood front. He’d be out of it now with Spiff, coming in by jet rig and with equipment.

  “Where are your friends? Has anything been happening?”

  “Heh? Yes. Two ships under lagoon now. Big one.”

  “Two—Has the command ship moved up?”

  “Not that big. Waddle-feet carrying in things.”

  “What kind of things?”

  Sweeting snorted. “Waddle-feet things, heh? Maybe they leave. Ho! Spiff’s here . . .”

  She whistled, went forward into the water. Nile stood watching intently. Against the flank of a great rising wave two hundred yards out, two otters appeared for an instant, were gone again . . .

  “You look something of a mess, Dr. Etland!”

  She’d jerked half around on the first low-pitched word, had the gun out and pointing as his voice registered on her consciousness. She swore huskily. “Thought you were a . . . forget it!”

  On the surface twenty feet to her right, straddling the saddle of a torpedo-shaped carrier, Parrol shoved black jet rig goggles up on his forehead, reached for a spur of floatwood to hold his position. A UW rifle was in his right hand. He grinned briefly. “Dr. Cay?”

  “All right for the moment,” Nile said. She replaced her gun, hand shaking. “Did you run into trouble coming in?”

  “None at all. The immediate area’s clear?”

  “At present.”

  Parrol had left the mainland in response to Nile’s first call for help nine hours previously. Most of the interval he’d spent being batted around in heavy typhoon weather with a static-blocked communicator. He was within two hours of the island when he got a close-contact connection with sledman fleet units and heard for the first time that Dr. Etland meanwhile had got out another message. The Sotira racer had received her chopped-off report about Parahuans, carried it within range of other sleds. It was relayed through and around disturbance areas, eventually had reached the mainland and apparently was reaching sled fleet headquarters all about Nandy-Cline. Parrol’s informants couldn’t tell him what the overall effect of the warning had been; if anything, communication conditions had worsened in the meantime. But there seemed to be no question that by now the planet was thoroughly alerted.

  They speculated briefly on the possibilities. There might or might not be Federation warships close enough to Nandy-Cline to take an immediate hand in the matter. The planet-based Federation forces weren’t large. If they were drawn into defensive positions to cover key sections of the mainland, they wouldn’t hamper the Parahuans much otherwise. The mainland police and the Citizens Alert Cooperative could put up a sizable fleet of patrol cars between them. They should be effective in ground and air encounters but weren’t designed to operate against heavily armed spacecraft. In general, while there were weapons enough around Nandy-Cline, relatively few were above the caliber required to solve personal and business problems.

  “The sleds have unwrapped the old spaceguns again,” said Nile. “They’ll fight, now they know what they’ll be fighting.”

  “No doubt,” Parrol agreed. “But the Navy and Space Scouts are the only outfits around organized for this kind of thing. We don’t know if they’re available at present—or in what strength. If your webfooted acquaintances can knock out communications completely . . .”

  “Evidently they can.”

  Parrol was silent a moment. “Could get very messy!” he remarked. “And in spite of their heavy stuff, you figure they’re already half convinced they’ll lose if they attack?”

  “Going by their own brand of logic, they must be. But I don’t think it will keep them from attacking.”

  Parrol grunted. “Well, let’s talk with the otters again . . .”

  The wild otters had joined the group. They confirmed Sweeting’s report of the arrival of a second ship beneath the lagoon. It was more than twice the size of the first, anchored directly behind it. Parahuans were active about both. Parrol and Nile asked further questions and the picture grew clear. The second ship seemed to be a cargo carrier, and the Parahuans apparently were engaged in dismantling at least part of the equipment of their floatwood installations and storing it in the carrier.

  “So they’re clearing the decks,” Parrol said. “And not yet quite ready to move. Now, if at this stage we could give them the impression that the planet was ready—in fact, was launching an attack on them . . .”

  Nile had thought of it. “How?” she asked. “It would have to be a drastic demonstration now. Not blowing up their blockhouse. Say something like hitting the command ship.”

  “We can’t reach that. But we can reach the two under the lagoon. And we can get rather drastic about them.”

  “With what?”

  “Implosion bombs,” Parrol said. “Your message suggested I should bring the works, so I did. Three Zell-Eleven two-pounders, tactical, adherent.” He nodded at the equipment carrier in the water below them. “In there with the rest of it.”

  “Their ship locks are open,” said Nile, after a moment.

  “Two should do it. One in each lock.”

  “Spaceships. It may not finish them. But—”

  They glanced over at Spiff. He’d been watching them, silently, along with the other three.

  “Like to do a little bomb hauling again, Spiff?” Parrol inquired.

  The big otter’s eyes glistened. He snorted. Parrol got to his feet.

  “Brought your rig,” he told Nile. “Let’s go pick up Dr. Cay an
d get him out to the car. He’ll be safest there. Then we’ll take a look at those ships . . .”

  Trailing Parrol and the carrier out to the aircar, Nile darted along twenty feet below the surface, the twin to his UW rifle clasped against her, luxuriating in the jet rig’s speed and maneuverability. They’d left the otters near the floatwood; fast as they were, Sweeting and her companions Couldn’t have maintained this pace. It was like skimming through air. The rig’s projected field very nearly canceled water friction and pressure; the rig goggles clamped over Nile’s eyes pushed visibility out a good two hundred yards, dissolving murk and gloom into apparent transparency. Near the surface, she was now the equal of any sea creature in its own element. Only the true deeps remained barred to the jet rig swimmer. The Parahuan rigs she’d seen had been relatively primitive contrivances.

  Parrol, riding the carrier with Ticos Cay asleep inside, was manipulating the vehicle with almost equal ease. It, too, had a frictionless field. He slowed down only in passing through the denser weed beds. By the time they reached the aircar, riding at sea anchor in the center of a floating thicket, a blood-red sun rim had edged above the horizon.

  They got Ticos transferred to the car, stowed the carrier away, locked the car again, made it a subsurface race back to the floatwood and gathered up the otters. Spiff and Sweeting knew about tactical bombs by direct experience; their wild cousins knew about human explosives only by otter gossip and were decidedly interested in the operation. Roles were distributed and the party set off. Spiff, nine-foot bundle of supple muscle, speed, and cold nerve, carried two of Parrol’s implosion devices strapped to his chest in their containers. He’d acted as underwater demolition agent before. Parrol retained the third bomb—

  And shortly Nile was floating in a cave of the giant roots which formed the island floor, watching the open locks of the two Parahuan spaceships below. A fog of yellow light spilled from them. Two points of bright electric blue hovered above the smaller ship, lights set in the noses of two midget boats turning restlessly this way and that as if maintaining a continuous scan of the area. There were other indications of general uneasiness. A group of jet-rigged Oganoon, carrying the heavy guns with which she had become familiar, floated between the sentry boats; and in each of the locks a pair of guards held weapons ready for immediate use.