by Brian Daley
Townspeople appeared and clustered around him, just as they had greeted the Falcon’s passengers. But something in this stranger’s blue, unblinking eyes, something penetrating and without mercy, made them wary. He soon obtained from them the story of the Falcon’s arrival and removal by the mining-camp ship. They showed him the spot where the spaceboat had been destroyed by the lighter. Even scavengers had avoided the bits of wreckage, fearing radiation residues.
The stranger told the townspeople to disperse, and seeing the look in his eyes, they obeyed. He carefully removed his jacket and hung it inside his ship. Around his waist an intricately tooled black gunbelt held a blaster high on his right hip.
He brought certain sensitive instruments from his ship, some on a carrying harness, others attached to a long probe, and still others set in a very sophisticated remote-globe. Loosening his scarf, he made a patient examination of the area, working in a careful pattern.
An hour later he returned the equipment to his ship and rubbed the dust from his gleaming shoes with a rag. He was satisfied that no one had died when J’uoch’s spaceboat had been destroyed. He reknotted his scarf while he considered the situation.
Eventually, Gallandro drew on his jacket and locked up his ship, then made his way into the city. He soon heard rumors of bizarre goings-on down at the lake and battles among the natives. He couldn’t verify much about the outside humans involved, though; the only close-range witnesses, the shore gang of the sauropteroid Kasarax, had gone into hiding. Still, he was willing to credit the story. It was in keeping with Han Solo’s wildly unpredictable luck.
No, Gallandro corrected himself. “Luck” was what Solo would have called it. He, Gallandro, had long ago rejected mysticism and superstition. It made it that much more frustrating to see how events seemed to conspire to impel Solo along.
Gallandro intended to prove that Solo was no more than he appeared to be, a small-time smuggler of no great consequence. That the gunman had doubtless given the matter far more thought than Solo himself was a source of ironic amusement to him. Using the vast resources of his employer, the Corporate Sector Authority, he had tracked Solo and the Wookiee this far and would, with only a little more patience, complete the hunt.
XI
“THERE’S something wrong,” Han said, peering intently through his blaster’s scope in the morning light. “I’m not sure, but—Here, you look, Badure.”
“It just looks like a landing field to me,” Hasti commented.
“Just because it’s big and flat and has ships parked on it?” Han asked sarcastically. “Don’t jump to any conclusions; after all, we may’ve stumbled onto the only used-aircraft lot in these mountains.”
A stiff breeze at their backs blew down the narrow valley toward the field. It had been snowing heavily in the region; at the far edge of the flat area below, a snowfield sloped sharply downward toward the lowlands.
“It’s not on any map I ever saw,” declared Badure, squinting through the scope.
“Doesn’t mean a thing,” Han replied. “The Tion Hegemony’s survey-updating program is running something like a hundred and eighty years behind schedule and getting worse. And these mountains are full of turbulence and storm activity. A survey-flyover ship could’ve missed that place altogether. Even an Alpha Team or a full Beta Mission might not have caught it.”
Thinking it over, Han rubbed his jaw, feeling his growth of beard. He, like the others, was drawn and haggard from the march and had lost a good deal of weight. The knife cut across his chin was healing well enough in the absence of a medi-pack.
“Badure’s right,” Hasti said, holding the survey-map reader up close to her face. “There’s nothing on her at all. And what’s it doing out here anyway? Look, they had to have carved away half that cliff to build it.”
Han was concentrating on the field with his remarkably acute vision. There, guidance lights and warning beacons were dark, understandable at a hidden base; but they seemed to be of a very outdated design. He could make out several craft that appeared to be about the size of spaceboats, and five larger ones. It was difficult to see any details because their tails and afterburners were pointed in his direction. Then he knew what was bothering him.
“Badure, they’ve got those ships parked and tied down with their rear ends into the wind.” Since the craft on the field followed common aerodynamic design principles, the sensible way to position them would have been with their noses into the prevailing air currents.
Badure lowered the scope and handed back Han’s blaster. “The wind’s been steady, at least since last night. Either they don’t care what kind of knocking-around their ships will take if a storm kicks up, or the place is deserted.”
“We haven’t seen a soul down there,” Hasti said.
Han turned to Bollux. “Are you still getting those signals?”
“Yes, Captain. They originate from that antenna mast down there by the field, I would say. They’re very weak. I only picked them up because the summit we climbed was close on a direct line of sight.”
Han and Bollux had ascended that summit, a laborious session of trudging and scrambling and occasionally climbing, because of a suspicion of Han’s. In the mining camp, Hasti and Badure had heard rumors that J’uoch and her partners were increasing camp security. Adding to that an apparent interest in the mountains on the part of Lanni, Hasti’s late sister, Han thought it possible the mountains were seeded with antipersonnel sensors that were somehow tied in with the treasure. On the chance that, if there were sensors, they would be active rather than passive and therefore detectable, Han had taken the futilely protesting labor ’droid up to see if, now that they were approaching the lowlands, they could detect any signals. Using his built-in command-signal receiver, Bollux had tried all the standard calibrations and, when those yielded nothing, sampled others. Finally he had picked up a signal of a long-outmoded sort, and Han had taken a rough fix on it. The signal had led the group to this narrow valley, and the morning revealed what was apparently a landing field bracketed in stone.
They had been marching through the mountains for days; songs and high spirits had given way to sore feet, overworked servo-motors, aching muscles, and shoulders chafed by pack straps. The visit to the spa at the University of Rudrig seemed to Han like a dream of another life. According to the map, they were very nearly through the mountains.
That map had turned out to be their most important piece of equipment, allowing them to choose the easiest course. Nonetheless, they had hit a number of places where they had had to climb, where Skynx suddenly became a major asset. The Ruurian could scale or descend sheer rock faces, carrying one end of a climbing rope with him. Without Skynx, Han knew, they would still be somewhere far back in the mountains. As it was, their food was running low. Fortunately they had managed to find water on their route.
But even after they left the mountains they would still have to cross an expanse of open plains before reaching the mining site. A common thought was running through the group’s respective biological and synthetic synapses: acquisition of a ship, even an atmospheric craft, would mark an end to their walking days. In addition, the field might offer supplies as well as transportation.
“Could this be what Lanni was curious about?” Badure wondered aloud.
“We’ll see,” Han decided. They had concealed themselves behind some rocks within a kilometer of the field. “Chewie and I’ll go in first. If we give the all-clear sign, come on down.” He demonstrated a broad waving motion, left to right. “But if we don’t signal you within a half hour, or we give you any other kind of signal, get yourselves out of here. Write us off and try to reach the mining site, or double back to the city if that’s what seems best.”
Han and the Wookiee started shedding their extra gear. “I’m not so sure we shouldn’t have stayed in the city,” said Hasti.
Han tried to reassure her. “You would be if you’d ever done any time swabbing out the plumbing in some local lockup, doll. You ready,
Chewie?”
He was. They moved out, taking turns advancing from cover to cover. Each awaited the other’s hand motion before moving; they had done this sort of thing together before.
They observed no sentries, patrols, watchtowers, or surveillance equipment as they approached; but they felt no less uneasy. When at last they reached the edge of the field, they held a brief but heated debate conducted entirely in hand signals, over who would be first to step into the open. Each insisted that he should be the one. Han cut the dispute short, just before it devolved into an exchange of angry gestures, by rising and stepping out from the cover of the boulder.
Chewbacca, eyes roving the scene, bowcaster raised and ready, immediately shifted to a position from which he could give supporting fire. Han slowly moved across the open area, blaster out, nerves taut.
No shot or outcry came—and no alarm. The field was a simple expanse of flat ground—partly smoothed soil and partly rock that, from the looks of it, had been leveled a long time ago. Han wondered why somebody hadn’t done a complete job and paved it over with formex or some other surfacing material.
He saw no buildings of any kind—only the primitive antenna mast, ground beacons, ground-control light clusters, and area illumination banks. He skirted the edge of the field, darting in among the rocks without warning to make sure no one was waiting in ambush.
He reemerged and continued working his way toward the parked ships. When he was satisfied that nobody had a gun turret or missile tube pointed at him from one of the craft, he approached them. And when he had come close enough to make out detail, he had difficulty speaking for a second.
What the flaming—“Hey, Chewie! Get over here!”
The Wookiee was out in the open instantly, racing toward him, bowcaster held high. His charge slowed to a distracted lope, then immobility as he saw what Han was talking about. He gave a bemused, lowing sound.
“That’s right,” Han agreed, slamming the side of one of the ships with his fist. It gave, leaving a deep indentation. “They’re phonies.”
Chewbacca came up slowly, shouldering his weapon, and took a firm grasp on the hatch of the next ship in line. He tore it off easily: it was merely a mockup constructed of treated extrusion sheeting and light structural alloys. He cast the hatch aside with a brayed Wookiee imprecation and leaned into the open hatchway. Light came through the clear pane used to simulate the cockpit windshield. The dummy ship, ribbed by support members, was gloomy, stale-smelling, and empty.
Han, examining the ships and the general layout of the field, was stumped. Nonetheless, he kept his pistol in his hand. The mockups were crude but had been made with obvious attention to details of landing gear, fuselage, propulsore, and control surfaces. They were copied—at least, he presumed them to have been copied—from models he didn’t recognize and secured in place with lines of some artificial fiber.
His first thought was that this was a decoy base, part of some military campaign or defense system. But there had been no organized conflict on Dellalt or, for that matter, in this sector of space for years and years. Furthermore, this fake landing field must demand a certain amount of upkeep to be in the shape it was. A trick of J’uoch’s? No logic sustained that.
Chewbacca was more instinctive. In his mind the place conjured images of some malign force using the field as a sort of trap, like those of the webweavers on the lower tree levels of his home planet. Nervously glancing around, eager to be away, he set one paw against Han’s shoulder to get him moving.
The pilot shrugged off the paw. “Take it easy, will you? This place might still have some stuff we can use. Take a quick look around while I check out that antenna mast.”
The Wookiee shambled off unenthusiastically. He made a rapid, thorough sweep of the area, discovering no watchers, no tracks, nor any fresh scents.
When Chewbacca returned, Han straightened from his examination of the instrument pods at the mast. “It runs off some kind of sealed power plant, a little one. It might have started broadcasting yesterday or been going for years and years. I gave the others the signal to come ahead.”
Chewbacca whined unhappily, wanting only to depart from this place. Han was losing patience. “Chewie, I’m getting tired of this. There’s receiver gear here that we can use to check for sensors and get a bearing on J’uoch’s mining camp. This thing’s been beaming for a whole day at least; if anybody in this miserable solar system were coming, they’d be here by now.” That made the entire installation much more of a curiosity, he had to admit; but he didn’t mention it, not wanting to make his towering sidekick any more nervous than he already was.
Badure, Hasti, Skynx, and Bollux soon appeared and, when they had looked over the bogus landing field, voiced surprise and mystification.
“This isn’t any part of J’uoch’s operation, I’m sure,” Hasti said. Badure didn’t add anything, but his expression conveyed discomfort. Skynx’s antennae were waving a little erratically, but Han chalked that up to the Ruurian’s timidity.
“All right,” the pilot said briskly. “If we work fast, we’ll be out of here inside of an hour. Bollux, I want to patch you and Max in on some of the equipment; one of Max’s adaptor arms ought to fit. The rest of you fan out and keep your eyes open. Hey, Skynx, you feeling okay?”
The little Ruurian’s antennae were waving even more pronouncedly now. His head wobbled for a moment, then he shook himself. “Yes, I—felt strange for a second, Captain. Strain of the journey, I should imagine.”
“Well, hang in there, old fellow. You’ll make it.” Han started off with the labor ’droid while the others began spreading out.
Then he heard a panicked squeak and whirled to see Skynx collapse in a multilegged heap, antennae vibrating. “Stay away from him!” Han shouted.
Hasti fairly jumped back. “What’s happened to him?”
“I don’t know, but it’s not going to happen to us.” They had too few facts to decide with any accuracy what was wrong with him; it could be a disease, or something natural to his peculiar physiology, perhaps even a part of the Ruurian life cycle. But Han wasn’t going to risk having any other living members of the party contaminated. “Bollux, pick him up; we’re pulling out of here. Everybody else, cover.”
They formed a ring, weapons ready, as the labor ’droid hoisted the small, limp form and held it easily in his gleaming arms. Han barked out instructions. “Chewie, take the lead.” But as they moved out Han found his own vision becoming blurry.
He shook his head violently, which helped, but a surge of alarm made his breathing more rapid, and his heart began pumping furiously. They had only gone a few more paces when Badure, opening his flight jacket’s collar, slurred: “Whatever it is, I’m in it with Skynx.” He collapsed to the ground without another word, but his eyes remained open, his breathing regular.
Hasti rushed to him, but she, too, was already unsteady on her feet. Chewbacca would have put out a paw to support her, but Han snagged a handful of his partner’s pelt and pulled him back. “No, Chewie. We’ve got to get clear before it happens to us.” Han knew that they might be able to come back and help the others later, but if they succumbed now, no one was likely to survive.
Without warning, Han’s legs gave way. The Wookiee, chugging like a steam engine, shifted his bowcaster to one hand and reached for his friend. His prodigious strength seemed to give him additional resistance to whatever was affecting the others. He considered running for it, for Han’s statement that someone must get clear was correct. But the Wookiee code of ethics left no room for desertion. Tugging at his friend, he made a mournful sound.
Chewbacca wrestled his partner’s slack body up onto his shoulder. Han, eyes still open, unable to speak, watched dully as the world spun by. Showing his fangs, the Wookiee put one broad foot in front of the other with determination. After a gallant struggle that brought him almost to the edge of the field, Chewbacca sank to his knees, nearly struggled up again, then pitched forward. Han regretted numbly that he c
ouldn’t tell his friend what a good try it had been.
Bollux now found himself in a crisis of decision—all actions and inactions pointed to members of the group coming to harm or dying. Resolving a course of action nearly burned out his basic logic stacks. Then the ’droid put Skynx down, and the Ruurian curled up into a ball by reflex. Bollux began the task of dragging Han Solo to safety. The pilot was, in the ’droid’s evaluation, the one most likely to aid the others by virtue of his talents, turn of mind, and stubbornness.
As it happened, Chewbacca’s fall had left Han in a position from which he could see Bollux approach. He wanted to tell the ’droid to take Chewbacca instead, but could form no words. Han’s view of the ’droid was suddenly blocked by fantastic figures that leaped, capered, and circled around Bollux, gesturing and gibbering at him. They were dressed in bright costumes that were half-uniform, half-masquerade costume, and wore fantastic headgear, elaborate contrivances that suggested both helmet and mask. Even in his stupor Han registered the fact that they carried firearms of diverse types. Han thought them to be humans.
After a quick conference among themselves, the new arrivals began to push, pull, and shoo the distraught ’droid, forcing him out of Han’s field of vision. The pilot was unable to move his head to follow the action.
A masked head thrust in close to him, examining him, but Han couldn’t move back or even flinch. The globular mask bore a strong resemblance to a high-altitude or spacesuit helmet, but many of the details of instrumentation, pressure valves, hookups, and couplings were painted on. The air hoses and power-supply cords were useless tubes that dangled and swirled as the mask moved. Unintelligible words in a male human voice rang hollowly.