The Harry Harrison Megapack

by Harry Harrison

  “Let’s get into position,” Rhes said.

  Around them the jungle howled with an echo of hatred. The half-sentient plants writhed and the air was thick with small flying things. Naxa sweated and mumbled as he turned back the animals that crashed towards them. By the time they reached the last screen of foliage before the burned-out area, they had lost four men. One had been stung by an insect, Jason got the medikit to him in time, but he was so sick he had to turn back. The other three were bitten or scratched and treatment came too late. Their swollen, twisted bodies were left behind on the trail.

  “Dam’ beasts hurt m’head,” Naxa muttered. “When we go in?”

  “Not yet,” Rhes said. “We wait for the signal.”

  One of the men carried the radio. He sat it down carefully, then threw the aerial over a branch. The set was shielded so no radiation leaked out to give them away. It was turned on, but only a hiss of atmospheric static came from the speaker.

  “We could have timed it—” Rhes said.

  “No we couldn’t,” Jason told him. “Not accurately. We want to hit that wall at the height of the attack, when our chances are best. Even if they hear the message it won’t mean a thing to them inside. And a few minutes later it won’t matter.”

  The sound from the speaker changed. A voice spoke a short sentence, then cut off.

  “Bring me three barrels of flour.”

  “Let’s go,” Rhes urged as he started forward.

  “Wait,” Jason said, taking him by the arm. “I’m timing the flame-thrower. It’s due in…there!” A blast of fire sprayed the ground, then turned off. “We have four minutes to the next one—we hit the long period!”

  * * * *

  They ran, stumbling in the soft ashes, tripping over charred bones and rusted metal. Two men grabbed Jason under the arm and half-carried him across the ground. It hadn’t been planned that way, but it saved precious seconds. They dropped him against the wall and he fumbled out the bombs he had made. The charges from Krannon’s gun, taken when he was killed, had been hooked together with a firing circuit. All the moves had been rehearsed carefully and they went smoothly now.

  Jason had picked the metal wall as being the best spot to break in. It offered the most resistance to the native life, so the chances were it wouldn’t be reinforced with sandbags or fill, the way other parts of the wall were. If he was wrong, they were all dead.

  The first men had slapped their wads of sticky congealed sap against the wall. Jason pressed the charges into them and they stuck, a roughly rectangular pattern as high as a man. While he did this the detonating wire was run out to its length and the raiders pressed back against the base of the wall. Jason stumbled through the ashes to the detonator, fell on it and pressed the switch at the same time.

  Behind him a thundering bang shook the wall and red flame burst out. Rhes was the first one there, pulling at the twisted and smoking metal with his gloved hands. Others grabbed on and bent the jagged pieces aside. The hole was filled with smoke and nothing was visible through it. Jason dived into the opening, rolled on a heap of rubble and smacked into something solid. When he blinked the smoke from his eyes he looked around him.

  He was inside the city.

  The others poured through now, picking him up as they charged in so he wouldn’t be trampled underfoot. Someone spotted the spaceship and they ran that way.

  A man ran around the corner of a building towards them. His Pyrran reflexes sent him springing into the safety of a doorway the same moment he saw the invaders. But they were Pyrrans, too. The man slumped slowly back onto the street, three metal bolts sticking out of his body. They ran on without stopping, running between the low storehouses. The ship stood ahead.

  Someone had reached it ahead of them, they could see the outer hatch slowly grinding shut. A hail of bolts from the bows crashed into it with no effect.

  “Keep going!” Jason shouted. “Get next to the hull before he reaches the guns.”

  This time three men didn’t make it. The rest of them were under the belly of the ship when every gun let go at once. Most of them were aimed away from the ship, still the scream of shells and electric discharges was ear-shattering. The three men still in the open dissolved under the fire. Whoever was inside the ship had hit all the gun trips at once, both to knock out the attackers and summon aid. He would be on the screen now, calling for help. Their time was running out.

  Jason reached up and tried to open the hatch, while the others watched. It was locked from the inside. One of the men brushed him aside and pulled at the inset handle. It broke off in his hand but the hatch remained closed.

  The big guns had stopped now and they could hear again.

  “Did anyone get the gun from that dead man?” he asked. “It would blow this thing open.”

  “No,” Rhes said, “we didn’t stop.”

  Before the words were out of his mouth two men were running back towards the buildings, angling away from each other. The ship’s guns roared again, a string of explosions cut across one man. Before they could change direction and find the other man he had reached the buildings.

  He returned quickly, darting into the open to throw the gun to them. Before he could dive back to safety, the shells caught him.

  * * * *

  Jason grabbed up the gun as it skidded almost to his feet. They heard the sound of wide-open truck turbines screaming towards them as he blasted the lock. The mechanism sighed and the hatch sagged open. They were all through the air lock before the first truck appeared. Naxa stayed behind with the gun, to hold the lock until they could take the control room.

  Everyone climbed faster than Jason, once he had pointed them the way, so the battle was over when he got there. The single city Pyrran looked like a pin-cushion. One of the techs had found the gun controls and was shooting wildly, the sheer quantity of his fire driving the trucks back.

  “Someone get on the radio and tell the talkers to call the attack off,” Jason said. He found the communications screen and snapped it on. Kerk’s wide-eyed face stared at him from the screen.

  “You!” Kerk said, breathing the word like a curse.

  “Yes, it’s me,” Jason answered. He talked without looking up, while his hands were busy at the control board. “Listen to me, Kerk—and don’t doubt anything I say. I may not know how to fly one of these ships, but I do know how to blow them up. Do you hear that sound?” He flipped over a switch and the faraway whine of a pump droned faintly. “That’s the main fuel pump. If I let it run—which I won’t right now—it could quickly fill the drive chamber with raw fuel. Pour in so much that it would run out of the stern tubes. Then what do you think would happen to your one and only spacer if I pressed the firing button? I’m not asking you what would happen to me, since you don’t care—but you need this ship the way you need life itself.”

  There was only silence in the cabin now, the men who had won the ship turned to face him. Kerk’s voice grated loudly through the room.

  “What do you want, Jason—what are you trying to do? Why did you lead those animals in here…” His voice cracked and broke as anger choked him and spilled over.

  “Watch your tongue, Kerk,” Jason said with soft menace. “These men you are talking about are the only ones on Pyrrus who have a spaceship. If you want them to share it with you, you had better learn to talk nicely. Now come over here at once—and bring Brucco and Meta.” Jason looked at the older man’s florid and swollen face and felt a measure of sympathy. “Don’t look so unhappy, it’s not the end of the world. In fact, it might be the beginning of one. And another thing, leave this channel open when you go. Have it hooked into every screen in the city so everyone can see what happens here. Make sure it’s taped too, for replay.”

  Kerk started to say something, but changed his mind before he did. He left the screen, but the set stayed alive. Carrying the scene in the control room to the entire city.

  XXVII

  The fight was over. It had ended so quickly the
fact hadn’t really sunk in yet. Rhes rubbed his hand against the gleaming metal of the control console, letting the reality of touch convince him. The other men milled about, looking out through the viewscreens or soaking in the mechanical strangeness of the room.

  Jason was physically exhausted, but he couldn’t let it show. He opened the pilot’s medbox and dug through it until he found the stimulants. Three of the little gold pills washed the fatigue from his body, and he could think clearly again.

  “Listen to me,” he shouted. “The fight’s not over yet. They’ll try anything to take this ship back and we have to be ready. I want one of the techs to go over these boards until he finds the lock controls. Make sure all the air locks and ports are sealed. Send men to check them if necessary. Turn on all the screens to scan in every direction, so no one can get near the ship. We’ll need a guard in the engine room, my control could be cut if they broke in there. And there had better be a room-by-room search of the ship, in case someone else is locked in with us.”

  The men had something to do now and felt relieved. Rhes split them up into groups and set them to work. Jason stayed at the controls, his hand next to the pump switch. The battle wasn’t over yet.

  “There’s a truck coming,” Rhes called, “going slow.”

  “Should I blast it?” the man at the gun controls asked.

  “Hold your fire,” Jason said, “until we can see who it is. If it’s the people I sent for, let them through.”

  As the truck came on slowly, the gunner tracked it with his sights. There was a driver and three passengers. Jason waited until he was positive who they were.

  “Those are the ones,” he said. “Stop them at the lock, Rhes, make them come in one at a time. Take their guns as they enter, then strip them of all their equipment. There is no way of telling what could be a concealed weapon. Be specially careful of Brucco—he’s the thin one with a face like an ax edge—make sure you strip him clean. He’s a specialist in weapons and survival. And bring the driver too, we don’t want him reporting back about the broken air lock or the state of our guns.”

  Waiting was hard. His hand stayed next to the pump switch, even though he knew he could never use it. Just as long as the others thought he would.

  * * * *

  There were stampings and muttered curses in the corridor; the prisoners were pushed in. Jason had one look at their deadly expressions and clenched fists before he called to Rhes.

  “Keep them against the wall and watch them. Bowmen keep your weapons up.” He looked at the people who had once been his friends and who now swam in hatred for him. Meta, Kerk, Brucco. The driver was Skop, the man Kerk had once appointed to guard him. He looked ready to explode now that the roles had been reversed.

  “Pay close attention,” Jason said, “because your lives depend upon it. Keep your backs to the wall and don’t attempt to come any closer to me than you are now. If you do, you will be shot instantly. If we were alone, any one of you could undoubtedly reach me before I threw this switch. But we’re not. You have Pyrran reflexes and muscles—but so do the bowmen. Don’t gamble. Because it won’t be a gamble. It will be suicide. I’m telling you this for your own protection. So we can talk peacefully without one of you losing his temper and suddenly getting shot. There is no way out of this. You are going to be forced to listen to everything I say. You can’t escape or kill me. The war is over.”

  “And we lost—and all because of you…you traitor!” Meta snarled.

  “Wrong on both counts,” Jason said blandly. “I’m not a traitor because I owe my allegiance to all men on this planet, both inside the perimeter and out. I never pretended differently. As to losing—why you haven’t lost anything. In fact you’ve won. Won your war against this planet, if you will only hear me out.” He turned to Rhes, who was frowning in angry puzzlement. “Of course your people have won also, Rhes. No more war with the city, you’ll get medicine, off-planet contact—everything you want.”

  “Pardon me for being cynical,” Rhes said, “but you’re promising the best of all possible worlds for everyone. That will be a little hard to deliver when our interests are opposed so.”

  “You strike through to the heart of the matter,” Jason said. “Thank you. This mess will be settled by seeing that everyone’s interests are not opposed. Peace between the city and farms, with an end to the useless war you have been fighting. Peace between mankind and the Pyrran life forms—because that particular war is at the bottom of all your troubles.”

  “The man’s mad,” Kerk said.

  “Perhaps. You’ll judge that after you hear me out. I’m going to tell you the history of this planet, because that is where both the trouble and the solution lie.

  “When the settlers landed on Pyrrus three hundred years ago they missed the one important thing about this planet, the factor that makes it different from any other planet in the galaxy. They can’t be blamed for the oversight, they had enough other things to worry about. The gravity was about the only thing familiar to them, the rest of the environment was a shocking change from the climate-controlled industrial world they had left. Storms, vulcanism, floods, earthquakes—it was enough to drive them insane, and I’m sure many of them did go mad. The animal and insect life was a constant annoyance, nothing at all like the few harmless and protected species they had known. I’m sure they never realized that the Pyrran life was telepathic as well—”

  “That again!” Brucco snapped. “True or not, it is of no importance. I was tempted to agree with your theory of psionic-controlled attack on us, but the deadly fiasco you staged proved that theory wrong.”

  “I agree,” Jason answered. “I was completely mistaken when I thought some outside agency directed the attack on the city with psionic control. It seemed a logical theory at the time and the evidence pointed that way. The expedition to the island was a deadly fiasco—only don’t forget that attack was the direct opposite of what I wanted to have done. If I had gone into the cave myself none of the deaths would have been necessary. I think it would have been discovered that the plant creatures were nothing more than an advanced life form with unusual psi ability. They simply resonated strongly to the psionic attack on the city. I had the idea backwards thinking they instigated the battle. We’ll never know the truth, though, because they are destroyed. But their deaths did prove one thing. It allows us to find the real culprits, the creatures who are leading, directing and inspiring the war against the city.”

  “Who?” Kerk breathed the question, rather than spoke it.

  “Why you of course,” Jason told him. “Not you alone, but all of your people in the city. Perhaps you don’t like this war. However you are responsible for it, and keep it going.”

  Jason had to force back a smile as he looked at their dumfounded expressions. He had to prove his point quickly, before even his allies began to think him insane.

  “Here is how it works. I said Pyrran life was telepathic—and I meant all life. Every single insect, plant and animal. At one time in this planet’s violent history these psionic mutations proved to be survival types. They existed when other species died, and in the end I’m sure they co-operated in wiping out the last survivors of the non-psi strains. Co-operation is the key word here. Because while they still competed against each other under normal conditions, they worked together against anything that threatened them as a whole. When a natural upheaval or a tidal wave threatened them, they fled from it in harmony.

  “You can see a milder form of this same behavior on any planet that is subject to forest fires. But here, mutual survival was carried to an extreme because of the violent conditions. Perhaps some of the life forms even developed precognition like the human quakemen. With this advance warning the larger beasts fled. The smaller ones developed seeds, or burrs or eggs, that could be carried to safety by the wind or in the animals’ fur, thus insuring racial survival. I know this is true, because I watched it myself when we were escaping a quake.”

  “Admitted—all your po
ints admitted,” Brucco shouted. “But what does it have to do with us? So all the animals run away together, what does that have to do with the war?”

  “They do more than run away together,” Jason told him. “They work together against any natural disaster that threatens them all. Some day I’m sure, ecologists will go into raptures over the complex adjustments that occur here in the advent of blizzards, floods, fires and other disasters. There is only one reaction we really care about now, though. That’s the one directed towards the city people. Don’t you realize yet—they treat you all as another natural disaster!

  “We’ll never know exactly how it came about, though there is a clue in that diary I found, dating from the first days on this planet. It said that a forest fire seemed to have driven new species towards the settlers. Those weren’t new beasts at all—just old ones with new attitudes. Can’t you just imagine how those protected, over-civilized settlers acted when faced with a forest fire? They panicked of course. If the settlers were in the path of the fire, the animals must have rushed right through their camp. Their reaction would undoubtedly have been to shoot the fleeing creatures down.

  “When they did that they classified themselves as a natural disaster. Disasters take any form. Bipeds with guns could easily be included in the category. The Pyrran animals attacked, were shot, and the war began. The survivors kept attacking and informed all the life forms what the fight was about. The radioactivity of this planet must cause plenty of mutations—and the favorable, survival mutation was now one that was deadly to man. I’ll hazard a guess that the psi function even instigates mutations, some of the deadlier types are just too one-sided to have come about naturally in a brief three hundred years.

  “The settlers, of course, fought back, and kept their status as a natural disaster intact. Through the centuries they improved their killing methods, not that it did the slightest good, as you know. You city people, their descendants, are heirs to this heritage of hatred. You fight and are slowly being defeated. How can you possibly win against the biologic reserves of a planet that can recreate itself each time to meet any new attack?”