by Sam Smith
"Spare me the details," Boss waved his large hand. "Just tell me what's to be done.”
"We'll have no trouble landing tomorrow. But we could lose control when we take off again."
Boss rubbed his chin, "A long job?"
"Twelve hours,” I shrugged noncommittal. "At most."
"Can't you do it tonight?" I explained that the fault was so subtle, so complex, that I wanted all my wits about me. Boss had the exaggerated respect for my judgement that most non-technicians own,
"Can you fix it while we're in gravity?"
"Once I've traced it, yes."
"You'd better stay aboard tomorrow then." And with a yawn he dismissed me.
I reported back to Zapper in the switching room, then we each went to our own rooms for the night. I now had my own key to lock myself in, although in that environment I felt far from secure. That night, however, I took comfort from a reiteration of my escape plans, imagining several outcomes. Finally I slept.
Zapper woke me early, We ate alone in the canteen. I then made my way to the switching room, while Zapper roused the rest of the crew. To wile away the time before landing, and to make the fault appear as extensive as I had led Boss to believe, I unscrewed some more panels and attached leads from the minder to various innocuous terminals.
Eventually I felt the ship land, heard the crew gathering below me in readiness to descend the ramp. Zapper knocked on my door. I unlocked it.
He was wearing a short high-buttoned tunic such as the police wear. His long thin legs looked faintly ridiculous.
"Will you be alright?" he didn't enter, merely glanced to the panel where we had hidden the radio. I nodded.
"Good," he said.
Leaving the door unlocked I again sat before the gravity meter. From below the voices of the crew rose in an undulating grumble, peppered with their occasional loud guffaws. Boss opened the door without knocking. I looked around at him.
Boss too had on a short police tunic, his large legs supporting his bulk like two mottled pink tree trunks. On his shoulders were epaulettes signifying some concocted rank. On his chest again was a voice box. This voice box had a strip of green tape down one side. I had wondered about that the previous day: if he used the same voice box in both hemispheres. But Boss was too cunning for that: a tell-tale colloquialism could have given the game away.
“We'll be here about three hours,” he frowned at the exposed circuits, "Will you have it fixed by then?”
“Should take me about three more hours. No longer."
"Will you need to go to the command room?"
"I might."
“If you do, don't put the lights on. And keep out of sight. So far as they’re concerned there's no-one aboard. Don’t t want them to start thinking I can't be trusted.” He smiled at his own duplicity; and, with one last glance around the room, he took his leave.
I heard the three valets follow Boss down to the ramp, heard the crew becoming silent at his approach. and I launched myself into action. First I adjusted the gravity meter. Boss would not now question my having been aboard alone. Had I failed to complete the job he may well have wondered how I had spent my time.
Next I removed the panel, took down the radio that Zapper had left there; and, switching it on, clipped it to my belt, pressed in the earpiece. That accomplished I quietly opened the door, and listened to the last of the crew descending the ramp. The ship was mine.
Stealthily I made my way through the ship towards the hold earmarked for the ore. My earpiece shouted at me. Startled, I fumbling turned down the volume.
"Where are you?” Zapper's voice demanded. I took a steady breath to quieten my racing heart.
"Canteen," I lied.
"Get to the command room," Zapper said. “And get ready to get us out of here fast. I don't like the look of this one bit.”
The urgency in Zapper's voice would brook no delay. Sighing I realised that I had no choice: the hold would have to wait.
"What's wrong?" I asked Zapper.
"Too many soldiers," he said. "Supposed to be a guard of honour. But they've all got guns.”
When I reached the control room I saw why Boss had told me not to put on any lights: we had come down through thick grey cloud. I told the console that when I gave the command 'now' it was to shut the ramp while proceeding directly up at maximum speed to one hundred kilometres. Keeping low, I then peered out at the surrounding countryside.
We had landed on a paved area gleaming with damp. At some distance from the paved area were orderly lines of black green trees. Between the paved area and the trees was a stretch of white tufted grass. And beyond the trees, so far as I could make out through the haze, was a level plain.
Directly ahead of the ship the white tunics of the crew, with Zapper’s tall figure bringing up the rear of the column, were marching down a long road. The road appeared to slope into a hollow, where a flat-roofed building was just visible through the murk.
Where the road began its descent, there the Carthian soldiers were standing — rank upon grey-uniformed rank upon the banks.
“You in the command room?" Zapper asked me.
''Yes.”
"I had a word with Boss, but he thinks I've just got a bad case of the jitters. Twice as many soldiers this time, he reckons, because we're twice as important."
"What's that building like?”
"Square. Hold on," he said. I could see that the first of the crew had started down the slope. "I'm going to put 'em to the test.”
"Careful," I told him.
"That’s the object of the whole exercise," he said. I detected in his last utterance his grim humour.
Zapper’s tall figure knelt, as if adjusting his slipper.
"They're watching me," he said. "They're nervous." Another pause. "Something’s up. This is a trap. They can fire down on us from both sides without hitting each other." A heartbeat's silence. "And here come their guns."
There was now something akin to satisfaction in Zapper's voice. Not, I hasten to add, at the prospect of killing, but at having been proved right.
The white flash of Zapper's guns cut through the grey atmosphere. Those white flashes were immediately answered by the orange spit of the Carthian guns. Zapper's guns flashed and flashed again. From the front of the column came more flashes, which were, I guessed, from the three valets.
"We're being massacred," Zapper said.
"Come back here," I told him.
The flashes from his guns zigzagged back and forth between the two banks.
"Soon as I get a clear run.”
A movement by the trees caught my attention. Dun-coloured armoured vehicles were emerging from between the black-green trees and starting to race across the white tufted grass towards the ship.
"You’re being cut off from behind Zapper!" I yelled, "Armoured vehicles. Run!"
He needed no further prompting, was on his feet and pounding back towards the ship.
I edged towards the command seat, could hear Zapper's panting breath.
The armoured vehicles were now four hundred meters from the ship. I looked down to Zapper. His long legs had almost carried him out of my sight below the ship. The armoured vehicles spat their orange sparks.
"Hurry Zapper,” I said as I sat down. He grunted.
"Zapper?" I anxiously bent my head to my earpiece.
"I’m hit,” he said, "Go on boy. Take off."
"Not without you," I told him.
"Damn you boy," his breath rasped in his throat, “Take off.”
"Just get to the ramp," I told him.
The armoured vehicles were now two hundred meters from the ship and firing at it.
Zapper, cursing me, reached the ramp.
"I'm there,” he gasped.
"Now!" I told the console.
Immediately the engines roared into life and I felt myself being pressed down into the seat. I gripped the arms. Within seconds we were through the clouds and the sun brightened the command room. I glanced belo
w me — just in time to see a rocket clearing the clouds behind us.
"There's a rocket after us! I told Zapper.
"Told you I’d seen one," Zapper said.
"What do I do?"
"Outrun it." His voice sounded weary. I took hold of the unfamiliar control column.
"Manual," I said; and, pulling the control column to me, we shot at full speed out of Carthi's atmosphere. (My technician's mind noted that the gravity had switched over unnoticeably.)
Telling the ship to hold its course and speed I looked behind me for the rocket. It was still there, but far behind.
I did not, however, feel safe with it following me, no matter how slowly; nor was I happy about leaving such ordnance drifting malignly in space a hazard to other shipping. So, slowing the ship and keeping to our course, I turned the ship around.
"I’m going to shoot it down," I told Zapper.
"Good idea," he said.
Running down to the gun sphere I shut myself in, sat behind the gun, released the brake and aimed. My third attempt hit. A white ball and it was no more.
"Got it,” I told Zapper. He did not reply.
Leaving the gun I apprehensively made my way to the ramp.
Zapper's tunic was drenched in blood, a crimson pool of it spreading out around him. My earpiece had told me that he had stopped breathing; and, as soon as I saw tile position of the holes in his rucked tunic, although now below those holes in his tunic there was unblemished skin, I knew that he was dead. Darker spots on the sodden tunic marked the actual holes in Zapper's back. I knew, I found no difficulty in accepting, that Zapper was dead; what I found hard to believe was that he had lived so long after being hit.
Nevertheless I felt that I ought to ensure that he was indeed dead. Kneeling beside him I felt for a pulse in his neck. There was none.
His eyes were open, staring at the gun in his lifeless hand. I too stared at that gun; for, at that moment, the realisation came to me that I was alone, in space, on the ship. That I had escaped.
Rushing up to the command room, I called up the charts, computed a course, and instructed the ship to proceed at maximum speed to Balant.
Chapter Twenty-Four
The return journey.
Having set the course, I remained in the command room satisfying myself that the ship was secure. Two of the lower forward holds had pressure leaks.
Although the armoured vehicles had been aiming at Zapper, some stray shots must have hit the ship's hull. The whole operation of the Carthian military, I now saw, had been to capture the ship intact.
I fell to wondering if any of the crew had been still alive when the ship had lifted off, and what their thoughts must have been. Space guns had still been flashing from the front of the column. But that would have been the armed valets: it would take the Carthians some time to neutralise them with their low powered weapons.
More particularly I fell to wondering if Boss had been alive and what his thoughts must have been. Had he immediately suspected treachery? A plot by Zapper and I to steal the ship from him? What hopes and vanities had died in him as he had helplessly watched the ship rise above him?
Mentally shaking myself, staving off the shock of what had happened, I told myself that I could have done nothing to save them, that I had no reason to feel guilty. Their deaths they had brought upon themselves. Yet, wretches though they had been, they had been Spacemen like myself. Except that, by their crimes, they had betrayed civilisation and so they had forfeited all claim to grief on my part. They had received but their just desserts.
My emotions were too cluttered for easy analysis. Because, overlaying my horror at that slaughter, was my joy at having so unexpectedly escaped and being on a course now for Balant. Apprehension too. My calculations said that the journey would take me eighteen days. As it had taken us a month's flying time to reach Carthi I checked the charts and my computations. I could find no errors; and, the ship seeming secure, I called up two minders, escorted them to the two leaking holds. Having given them their instructions, I then collected a valet and a domestic and descended to the ramp to attend to Zapper.
He lay as I had left him, save that the puddle of his blood had grown and darkened. I tried to remove the gun from his hand, but his grip upon it would not be broken. So, leaving the domestic to clean up the blood, I took Zapper by the shoulders, the valet took his feet, and we carried him to the nearest airlock.
Having placed the body in the airlock, I expelled almost all the air; then, standing by a port, I opened the outer door. The sudden decrease in pressure shot Zapper's body into space. The vacuum, in contracting him, must have caused Zapper's finger to tighten on his gun’s trigger, for there was a whirling flash of light; and then he was gone.
That whirling flash of light startled me, roused me from my ambulatory insentience. Of Zapper I thought — in death as in life. And so it was that I found myself weeping.
You may wonder that I should have shed tears for one such as Zapper, for a killer, for a man who took his name from his skill in killing. But somewhere deep in that man, obscured by his venomous physique, buried far beneath the cadavers of all those he had killed, had lain love. The selfless love of one civilised being for another, a love that had cried out in his last moments, telling me to save myself rather than wait for him; a love that had been more concerned for my welfare than for his own; a love, which realising that I would not leave without him, had made him, although fatally wounded, although in the agony of death, force himself to reach the ramp so that I could take off.
Thus had Zapper demonstrated, what I had earlier intuitively known, that within him was a love that he had had to deny in order to survive. I too knew what it was to conceal my finer emotions in order to survive; and who, among you, would question anyone's instinct for survival? Zapper's motives had been no different from mine. Except that he had not been a technician: the only talent he had had to sell had been his preparedness to kill. Once his survival had no longer been in question then he had unleashed his love And not only in his dying, but in his previous voluntary protection of me. A killer, he had seen in me his own uncorrupted youth, and he had wanted to spare me his corruption. For that, for the love in him, I wept.
Those tears washed away the confusion of the immediate past, left me knowing exactly what had to be done. Briskly returning to the command room I again checked my course for Balant, verified the time my journey would take. The console still maintained that it was only eighteen days.
In trying to cross-reference my position I came up against the first coded information — a voice response code that I would not be able to break. A ship's log, however, is central to every system, contains always a record of the previous three months travels of the ship. Once I had found it, discovered how to extract its statistics, I was able, using the charts, to retrace our course from Carthi to the mining planet, which was called Onam.
Fixing the point of rendezvous with the freighter, Junua, proved to be more difficult, as I had to rely entirely upon the log. However, when I retraced our course from there, I found myself back at Balant. Our outward journey had formed three sides of a twisted quadrangle, my present course being the second longest side of that diamond-shape.
Although I have stated that simply here, computing the speeds, distances and times took me two whole days. In the meantime I had belatedly scrubbed Zapper’s dried blood from my knees, the minders had repaired the holes in the hull, and I had taken up residence in Boss's quarters below the command room. With my course ascertained, I then began a thorough inspection of the ship, and almost got myself killed.
In fact I would have been killed had I not had difficulty in unlocking the door to Boss’s strongroom. I was squatting beside the minder, having already tried several routes to by-pass the lock, when we unexpectedly tripped the combination and the door slid open.
I looked up to see ingots ready stacked on trolleys with an armed valet standing guard over them. The opened door stimulated the valet to action
and, when it did not receive the code word, it shot through the open door at where my chest would have been had I been standing. Then the door automatically closed, shutting him from my sight.
For once I conceded my share of Dag’s luck; and, sticking a warning on the door, I left the minder to repair the damage the valet had caused.
All of the crew's personal belongings, no matter how apparently innocuous, I stored in one room — in the hope that the police would be able to identify the criminals who had died on Carthi, and, having identified them, be able to trace their associates in crime. In their communal quarters I had the domestics wipe away every last stain and blemish of their occupation
That accomplished, I returned to the command room and acquainted myself thoroughly with the ship’s controls. From my repairs I knew my way around the consoles, was already familiar with most of the ship's functions; and I had been in the command room when Boss had executed most of the basic manoeuvres, so I knew the procedures. Also, for every adaptation that Boss had had made to the ship, such as the guns and the tube, he had received operating and maintenance printouts, to which I had already, of necessity, had access. The only real difficulty I encountered was in working, because of Boss’s idiosyncratic terminology, the monitors in his quarters. However I ultimately discovered that from there he had been able to view, not only every hold, but also the crew's quarters and the canteen. Knowledge, for one such as Boss, is power. Eventually I redesignated all the monitors according to my own less colourful coding.
But my main task, for the remaining days of my journey, was the tracing back of the ship's log before it became overwritten, and making a duplicated record of its previous stopping-off points, especially those in space where it had presumably met with freighters. All the evidence thus garnered I wanted to present to the police so that they might check it against the logs of freighters, and so arrest some of Boss’s many accomplices.