by Ben Bova
They grinned, they nodded. They returned to their buzzing conversations, but it was brighter now, looser. Alec sat down and strapped in.
"Separation in five minutes," said the pilot's voice over the intercom. "Ignition in seven minutes."
Despite himself, Alec tensed. And if we do get in and out so quickly, what chance do I have of finding my father? But somewhere deep in his guts Alec knew that he and his father were going to meet down there on the surface of Earth. One way or another, they would meet. And one of them would die.
The separation and ignition were so gentle that if the pilot had not told them about it on the intercom Alec would have questioned their occurrence.
There were no windows in the passenger compartment, and he felt only the slightest pressure and vibration of the retrorocket firing.
"We're on our way, on trajectory, and all systems are on the mark," the pilot reported happily.
Alec unstrapped and stood up gingerly. With one hand on the grip set into the bulkhead in front of him, he tapped on the hatch that separated the passenger compartment from the cockpit.
The copilot opened the hatch and Alec squeezed into the cramped world of green-glowing panel lights and data displays, two stripped-down control chairs, and dials and switches that literally surrounded the two pilots, spreading in front of them, to their sides, across the console between their chairs, even overhead. Through the narrow windshield windows Alec could see the vast brilliant bulk of Earth sweeping past them.
" Everything on the mark," the copilot said cheerfully. "We'll be buttoning up for re-entry in about ten minutes."
Nodding, Alec asked, "What about Kobol's ship?"
"Just got a buzz from them; all okay."
"Can we see them?"
"Not visually." The copilot pointed to a circular screen in the panel between the seats. A luminous yellow arm swept around it; a single fat dot hovered in the lower right quadrant. Other dots, smaller and fainter, stood out toward the edge of the screen.
"That's them, right behind us," the copilot said.
"The other blips are the station and smaller satellites passing this area."
I see.
"Sorry we don't have room for you up here," the pilot said, without taking his eyes off his instruments.
Alec got the hint. Commander or not, the pilot was in charge here and Alec was in his way.
Grinning, he answered, "I'll be too busy to say thanks once we land, so I'll say it now. Good flight!"
"Thank you," the copilot replied, with a big smile.
Sitting back in his seat in the passenger section, Alec repeated to himself: Speed. Speed and surprise.
If there is an enemy out there, don't give him time to think. Don't give yourself time to have second thoughts.
But he had his doubts, just the same. What if I freeze up? What if I get to the hatch and I can't step through?
He glanced at Jameson, sitting across the aisle, so relaxed that he seemed almost to be sleeping.
Abruptly, Alec pushed himself out of the seat and unlatched the overhead bin. Guiding his weightless equipment before him he glided down the aisle to the seat nearest the hatch.
"Would you please take the first seat, up forward?" he asked the startled youngster sitting on the aisle seat. "Take your gear with you."
Clearly puzzled, the young man did as he was told. Alec stowed his own gear and strapped in next to an equally-surprised-looking kid. He said nothing.
"Re-entry commencing in one minute. Strap down tight," said the intercom voice.
It got rough enough to drive other fears from his mind. Alec felt the shuttle biting into Earth's heavy, turbulent atmosphere; felt the g forces that made the straps cut into his suddenly-heavy body.
His hands were too massive to lift off the armrests.
His neck and shoulder muscles cramped under the strain of holding his head up. His palms started to sweat. It began to feel stiflingly hot inside the shuttle.
Nonsense! Alec told himself. It's your imagination.
But every man there knew that the outer skin of the shuttle was bathed in fiery air, heated to incandescence by the speed of their re-entry.
Makes a perfect radar target, he thought. Do they have radars working?
The shuttle lurched, staggered. Alec felt himself driven deeply into his seat, then suddenly dropping, his stomach nearly heaving.
"Sorry," the copilot's voice came over the intercom, no longer cheerful. "Kinda bumpy out there. We're through re-entry and flying in the lower portion of the atmosphere. Not too smooth, but nothing to worry about."
Swaying, bouncing, shuddering, they sat in suffering, frightened silence for an eternity of about five minutes.
"There's the airfield! Touchdown in two-three more minutes. Might be rough."
With a terrifying roar the landing wheel hatches opened beneath them. Despite their training, most of the men were clearly startled.
"Get ready for the landing" Alec shouted over the din of the rushing wind. "As soon as the pilot gives the word we pop the hatch and start moving."
The impact of hitting the ground was unmistakable.
The shuttle bounced once, hit again, then rolled onward with a wild screeching of brakes and roar of retrorockets. Alec leaned against his shoulder straps, felt his head pushing forward.
Then abruptly the noise and motion ceased.
"Okay. We're down," the pilot reported tersely.
Behind him, Alec heard the main hatch crack open. He took one fast breath, then grabbed at his harness buckle. Standing up and reaching for his helmet, pack, and machine pistol, he commanded the others, "All right—let's move." The man from the other side of the aisle swung the hatch open. Alec gestured him back as he hefted his light gun over his shoulder.
"The steps are jammed," the man grumbled.
Alec nodded once, then without even thinking about it he jumped from the lip of the hatch. He barely had time to realize how fast he was falling when he hit the ground with a solid thump that buckled his knees. He put his hands out to brace himself and managed to keep from toppling over.
Unslinging his gun, he stepped away from the shuttle quickly. The other men were jumping behind him with a steady succession of thumps and oofs.
"All right, you know your positions," he waved his free arm at them. "Spread out and form a perimeter."
They hustled outward, a few limping noticeably.
The steps finally creaked out of their slot below the hatch and dropped into place. The final ten men scrambled down them and got to work on the equipment bay hatches. Jameson was the last man out, looking as unruffled as if he were coming out of chapel after attending a friend's wedding. Except that his heavy automatic rifle was resting on his right hip, muzzle pointed outward, ready to fire.
Alec strode to the nose of the shuttle to watch the other men swing open the cargo hatches. Abstractedly, he noticed that the ship's nose and underside were charred slightly and streaked from its burning journey through the atmosphere.
And then it hit him. I'm on Earth! I'm standing, moving, breathing on Earth!
He spun around. The sky was gray, not blue, and the Sun was hidden behind the clouds. It was nowhere as bright as Alec had expected, so he kept his glare visor up inside his helmet. It wasn't even particularly hot, about the same temperature as the living quarters at the settlement. But there was something else, something strange: air moving across his body, like standing in front of one of the circulation fans. Except that this was gentler, softer, and nowhere near as steady. It stopped and started again, playfully.
The shuttle had landed not on the cracked concrete runway, Alec saw, but on the green grass alongside the runway. The concrete was broken and pocked with holes while the grass was reasonably flat, though bumpy. The shuttle's many-wheeled bogeys looked undamaged; they could get out again.
The whole area around the airport was open and unobstructed. The land seemed to go on forever; the horizon was much further away than it should b
e. Off in the distance were dark undulating hills, farther away than Alec had ever seen any landscape features before.
"Alec."
It was Jameson, who had come up beside him.
"Perimeter's established, and the heavy stuff's been rolled out of the cargo bay."
"Good." Alec glanced at his wristwatch; five minutes since touchdown. "Very good. Get the laser trucks up along the perimeter. A couple dozen men can't keep this field secure with nothing but hand weapons."
Jameson grinned tightly. "Sound observation."
He turned and started shouting orders.
A shriek split the sky and Alec looked up to see the second shuttle coming in, trailing a plume of vapor behind it. It circled the field once, then came down on the opposite side of the broken runway, screeching and roaring, blowing out tongues of bluish gas from its retrorockets, tossing clumps of sod and chunks of rock and concrete before it.
Alec hurried to the shuttle as soon as it ground to a halt. Before he could reach it, the ladder came down and men were pouring out to take their assigned positions. Last to emerge was the lanky figure of Martin Kobol, his limp much worse in Earth's heavy gravity.
"Welcome to Earth," Alec called to him.
A burst of machine gun fire punctuated his greeting.
Chapter 13
Ferret was checking his traps when the sky seemed to crack open with a terrifying screaming sound. He dropped the dead rabbit he had been holding and instinctively dived into the bushes.
Too frightened even to open his eyes, he clawed as deeply as he could into the brush and then froze.
He held his breath and tried to stop trembling.
Minutes later, the same roaring, screaming sky shook the world. Birds went silent. The whole forest froze with fright. Ferret pushed his face deeper into the damp earth and tried to become totally blank, nonexistent, so that whatever monster was shaking the woods would not find him.
He stayed there for a long, long time. Or so it seemed to him. Gradually the woods returned to normal. Birds took up their songs again. The breeze made the leafy trees sigh. Something slithered past his bare leg. Slowly, very cautiously, Ferret looked up. He saw nothing unusual, nothing to be afraid of. The monster had apparently gone away.
Still, it might not be far off. On his belly, Ferret slithered through the brush toward the edge of the woods, where the old cement buildings and long empty cement paths lay. If a giant monster was thrashing around through the woods, maybe he could spot the thing from there.
He risked getting up on all fours and scampering the few yards from where he was safely hidden by the brush to the bole of a large tree at the edge of the clearing. When he finally worked up the courage to peer out from behind the tree, he was startled by what he saw. Two weird silvery things, huge, shaped something like bullets, were sitting out on the cement runways that had been empty earlier that morning. They didn't look like monsters.
Then his eyes went even wider. There were men standing around the silver things! Men just like himself. They were dressed better and they had strange metal pots on their heads, but they were men, sure enough. And they carried guns. And there were wagons, too, that the men climbed onto and drove around on fat, soft-looking wheels.
An invading band of raiders here in our territory, Ferret thought. Billy-Joe's got to be told about this. But he'll want to know how many men, and what kind of weapons they have.
Every fiber of Ferret's wiry little body wanted to get up and run deep into the woods, away from these fearsome strangers. But he could see the expression on Billy-Joe's face when he reported incompletely.
And when Billy-Joe started heating his knife over the camp fire, all other fears fled from Ferret's mind, even though he had never felt that punishment himself.
Swallowing so hard he nearly choked, Ferret sneaked out from behind the protective tree, crawling slowly, ever so carefully, toward the shelter of one of the big cement buildings, closer to the invaders. It seemed like hours, but the shadows thrown by the Sun had hardly moved at all by the time he reached the corner of the nearest building.
Members of the invading band were spreading out, forming a screen around their strange silvery things. The wagons were trundling here and there.
They had incomprehensibly weird contraptions atop them. The men on foot carried guns, heavy, big-bore, long-barrelled guns. Ferret ached to have one for himself. Maybe Billy-Joe would let him take one as a reward for ambushing these strangers.
Ferret licked his lips and remembered that the only weapon he carried was a hunting knife—with a loose, wobbly handle, at that. He had seen enough. Time to get back and make his report.
As he turned and started creeping away from the building, a burst of gunfire crackled behind him. Concrete chips flew off the corner of the building and Ferret flattened himself against the grassy ground.
Kobol looked just as startled as Alec felt. All the men seemed to freeze in place.
"What was that?" Kobol asked, unconsciously taking a step back toward the shuttle.
Alec swung the microphone down from his helmet. "This is Morgan. Who fired and why?"
In his earphone he heard a tinny reply. "Kurowski. I saw something moving beside the buildings here on the west flank."
"A man? Did you hit him?"
"I don't know. It was something—I can't see it now."
Kobol had one hand up on his helmet, listening to the radio report. "It could have been an animal," he told Alec. "There are all sorts just wandering around loose, you know."
Alec grimaced. "Kurowski, what's your position?"
"As assigned. A hundred meters from the shuttle, on the west flank. Not much cover here, I'm on my belly in some sort of cement-lined rille."
"That's a culvert," Kobol said. "For carrying rainwater."
"All right," Alec commanded. "Hold your position. The others will be out there in a few minutes with heavier equipment. If you see anything else, don't fire unless it looks hostile. Conserve ammunition. But call me immediately."
"Yessir."
"I want those buildings searched," Alec told Kobol.
"It'd take every man we have to search them."
"We can spare half the heavy weapons men, once we have the trucks spotted around the perimeter."
"That's only six men."
"That's all we can spare. I'll lead the search as soon as the weapons are set up on the perimeter."
Alec headed off toward Kurowski's position, leaving Kobol to supervise the weapons set-up. He could see the buildings, .gray and low, with holes in them for windows. A tower surmounted the central building, but its top was broken and charred. Someone could hide a hundred men in there. And a thousand more in those hills, he thought.
Kurowski was lying in the culvert, whiteknuckled hands gripping his gun. Alec crawled down beside him.
"See anything else?"
"I'm not sure. Something was moving out there for a while. But it was heading away from us, and it didn't walk like a man."
Nodding, Alec said, "All right. We're going to get a search party together. Let's both watch the area until then."
It was actually pleasant. Lying there wasn't too uncomfortable, and Alec started to get a feel of this huge world called Earth. The breeze made noises, strange sighings and whisperings.
Memories of old poems from his childhood school days started to make sense to him for the first time. And there were other sounds too. Alec had been told what bird songs and insect buzzings sounded like, but he had never heard them before.
"Look at that!"
Kurowski pointed six centimeters in front of his nose. In the stubby grass an insect was scurrying busily.
"I think that's what you call an ant," Alec said.
"Or maybe a bee."
"Bees can fly, can't they?"
"Only the queens."
The heavy weapons carriers finally trundled into position. They were six balloon-tired armored trucks, driven by smooth-humming electric engines, mounting
high-powered lasers. Some of the men hustled up on foot, laden with heavy rocket launchers and machine guns. They began clicking the sections of their weapons together, quickly surrounding themselves with a bristling arsenal of gunbelts and finned rockets.
Alec led six men on a cursory, fruitless search through the gutted buildings. They found nothing but burned-out walls, crumbling floors, shattered roofs. And a few startled raccoons and other small animals that had claimed parts of the abandoned buildings for themselves. One of the troopers fired a burst from his automatic rifle at a brown furry something that simply blew apart when the bullets hit it.
"Glad it wasn't a skunk," muttered Beardon, who had made a special study of troublesome Earth animals as part of his preparation for the mission.
By mid-afternoon Alec gave the word to extend their perimeter. Most of the rocket launchers and heavy machine guns were repositioned on the roofs of the buildings, together with infrared sensors for night vision. One laser truck was parked in front of the central building. The others prowled the farther limits of the airfield, while troopers patrolled on foot alongside them, cradling their automatic rifles in their arms.
Back inside the first shuttle, Alec reviewed the situation with Kobol. The older man sat heavily in a padded seat, looking tired and wary. Alec leaned against the chair's armrest.
"We've got to assume we've been spotted,"
Kobol said.
"Right. It's the safe assumption to make," Alec agreed, thinking to himself, I never realized the shuttles made so much noise! The entire countryside must know we're here.
"The shuttles would have been a lot easier to hide if we had landed in one of the valleys nearby," Kobol went on.
With a shake of his head, Alec countered, "They're safe enough here. None of the barbarians has weapons that can reach us from the edge of the airfield."
"Really?"
"And there's still no report from the satellite of a large number of barbarians moving our way. So we're safe from a mass attack. For a day or two, at least."