Crashlander

by Larry Niven

  I woke in the midst of a flaming maelstrom, gripped in a vise that wouldn’t let me breathe, with agony tearing at my hands. The car was diving out of the sky at four times sonic speed, with its aerodynamic stability smashed to hell. I could feel the terrific deceleration in my inner ear.

  I tried to use the controls. Not that they would have worked; the ship was obviously stone dead. But I tried it anyway, and then the pain came. My hands had been outside the crash field, naturally; how else could I control the car? Half the joints had been dislocated in the crash.

  The ground came up, rotating. I tried to pull my hands back, but deceleration pulled me hard against the crash web, and the crash field held. I was embedded in glass.

  I hit.

  The car was on its nose in high fern grass. All the plastic windows had become flying shards, including the windshield; they littered the car. The windshield frame was crushed and bent. I hung from the crash web, unable to unfasten it with my crippled hands, unable to move even if I were free.

  And I watched the Drunkard’s Walk, its fusion drive off, floating down ahead of me on its gravity drag.

  I didn’t notice the anomaly then. I was dazed, and I saw what I expected to see: a spaceship landing. Bellamy? He didn’t see it, either, but he would have if he’d looked to the side when he came down the landing ladder.

  He came down the ladder with his eyes fixed on mine and Emil’s sonic in his hand. He stepped out into the fern grass, walked over to the car, and peered in through the bent windshield frame.

  “Come on out.”

  “I can’t use my hands.”

  “So much the better.” Bellamy rested the sonic on the rim of the frame and pointed it at my face. With his other hand he reached in to unfasten the crash web and pull me out by the arm. “Walk,” he said. “Or be dragged.”

  I could walk, barely. I could keep walking because he kept prodding the small of my back with the gun.

  “You’ve helped me, you know. You had a car crash,” he said. “You and Jilson. Then some predators found you.”

  It sounded reasonable. I kept walking.

  We were halfway to the ship when I saw it. The anomaly. I said, “Bellamy, what’s holding your ship up?”

  He prodded me. “Walk.”

  “Your gyros. That’s what’s holding the ship up.”

  He prodded me without answering. I walked. Any moment now he’d see…

  “What the—” He’d seen it. He stared in pure amazement, and then he ran. I stuck out a foot to trip him, lost my balance, and fell on my face. Bellamy passed me without a glance.

  One of the landing legs wasn’t down. I’d smashed it into the hull. He hadn’t seen it on the indicators, so I must have smashed the sensors, too. The odd thing was that we’d both missed it, though it was the leg facing us.

  The Drunkard’s Walk stood on two legs, wildly unbalanced, like a ballet dancer halfway through a leap. Only her gyros held her monstrous mass against gravity. Somewhere in her belly they must be spinning faster and faster…I could hear the whine now, high-pitched, rising…

  Bellamy reached the ladder and started up. He’d have to use the steering jets now, and quickly. With steering jets that size, the gyros—which served more or less the same purpose—must be small, little more than an afterthought.

  Now was my chance!

  I struggled to my feet and staggered a few steps. Bellamy looked down, then ignored me. He’d take care of me when he had time. Where could I go? Where could I hide on this flat plain?

  Some chance. I stopped walking.

  Bellamy had almost reached the air lock when the ship screamed like a wounded god.

  The gyros had taken too much punishment. That metal scream must have been the death agony of the mountings. Bellamy stopped. He looked down, and the ground was too far. He looked up, and there was no time. Then he turned and looked at me.

  I read his mind then, though I’m no telepath.

  Bey! What’ll I DO?

  I had no answer for him. The ship screamed, and I hit the dirt. Well, I didn’t hit it; I allowed myself to collapse. I was on the way down when Bellamy looked at me, and in the next instant the Drunkard’s Walk spun end for end, shrieking.

  The nose gouged a narrow furrow in the soil, but the landing legs came down hard, dug deep, and held. Bellamy sailed high over my head, and I lost him in the sky. The ship poised, braced against her landing legs, taking spin from her dying flywheels. Then she jumped.

  The landing legs acted like springs, hurling her somersaulting into the air. She landed and jumped again, screaming, tumbling, like a wounded jackrabbit trying to flee the hunter. I wanted to cry. I’d done it; I was guilty; no ship should be killed like this.

  Somewhere in her belly the gyroscope flywheels were coming to rest in a tangle of torn metal.

  The ship landed and rolled. Bouncing. Rolling. I watched as she receded, and finally the Drunkard’s Walk came to rest, dead, far across the blue-green veldt.

  I stood up and started walking.

  I passed Bellamy on the way. If you’d like to imagine what he looked like, go right ahead.

  It was nearly dark when I reached the ship.

  What I saw was a ship on its side, with one landing leg up. It’s hard to damage hullmetal, especially at the low subsonic speeds the Drunkard’s Walk was making when she did all that jumping. I found the air lock and climbed in.

  The lifesystem was a scrambled mess. Parts of it, the most rugged parts, were almost intact, but thin partitions between sections showed ragged, gaping holes. The flywheel must have passed here.

  The autodoc was near the back. It looked intact, and I needed it badly to take the pain from my hands and put them back together. I’d as soon have stepped into a Bandersnatch’s mouth. You can get the willies thinking about all the things that can go wrong with a ’doc.

  The bouncing flywheel hadn’t reached the control cone.

  Things lighted up when I turned on the communications board. I had to manipulate switches with the heel of my hand. I turned on everything that looked like it had something to do with communications, rolled all the volume knobs to maximum between my palms, and let it go at that, making no attempt to aim a com laser, talk into anything, or tap out code. If anything was working on that board—and something was delivering power, even if the machinery to use it was damaged—then the base would get just the impression I wanted them to have. Someone was trying to communicate with broken equipment.

  So I settled myself in the control cone and smoked. Using my toes was less painful than trying to hold a cigarette in my fingers. I remembered how shocked Sharrol had been the first time she saw me with a cigarette between my toes. Flatlanders are less than limber.

  Eventually someone came.

  I picked up the open bulb of glass that Margo had called a snifter and held it before me, watching the play of light in the red-brown fluid. It was a pleasure to use my hands. Twelve hours ago they had been useless, swollen, and blackening—like things long dead.

  “To the hero’s return,” said Margo. Her green eyes sparkled. She raised the snifter in a toast and drank.

  “I’ve been in a ’doc the past twelve hours,” I said. “Fill me in. Are we going to get Lloobee back?”

  “Lloobee and your friend, too.” Satisfaction was rich in her voice; she was almost purring. “The kidnappers settled for a contract of amnesty and antipublicity, with a penalty of ten thousand stars to the man who causes their names to be published anywhere in known space. Penalty to apply to every man, woman, and child on Gummidgy—you and me included. They insisted we list the names. Did you know there are half a million people on Gummidgy?”

  “That’s a big contract.”

  “But they never made a tenth star. They were lucky to get what they did. With their ship wrecked, they’re trapped here. Lloobee and your friend should be arriving any minute.”

  “And Bellamy’s death should satisfy Kdatlyno honor.”

  “Mm hm.” Sh
e nodded, happy, relaxed. What an actress she could have been! How nice it would have been to play along…

  “I didn’t kill him deliberately,” I said.

  “You told me.”

  “That leaves us only one loose end.”

  She looked up over the snifter. “What’s that?”

  “Persuading Emil to leave you out of it.”

  She dropped the snifter. It hit the indoor grass rug and rolled under the coffee table while Margo stared at me as at a stranger. Finally she said, “You’re hard to read. How long have you known?”

  “Practically since your friends took Lloobee. But we weren’t sure until we knew Bellamy really had him. You’d lied about his ship.”

  “I see.” Her voice was flat, and the sparkle in her eyes was a long forgotten thing. “Emil Horne knows. Who else?”

  “Just me. And Emil owes me one. Two, really.”

  “Well,” she said. “Well.” And she went to pick up the snifter. Right then, the rest of it fell into place.

  “You’re old.”

  “You’re hard to fool, Bey.”

  “I’ve never seen you move like that before. It’s funny; I can tell a man’s age within a few decades, but I can’t tell a woman’s. Why don’t you move like that all the time?”

  She laughed. “And have everyone know I’m a crone? Not likely. So I hesitate when I move, and I knock against things occasionally, and catch my heel on rugs…Every woman learns to do that, usually long after she’s learned not to. Too much poise is a giveaway.” She stood with her feet apart, hands on her hips, challenging. Now her poise was tremendous, a shocking, glowing dignity. Perhaps she had been an actress, so long ago that her most devoted admirers had died or forgotten her. “So I’m old. Well?”

  “Well, now I know why you joined the kidnappers. You and Bellamy and the rest; you all think alike. No persuasion needed.”

  She shook her head in mock sadness. “How you simplify. Do you really think that everyone over two hundred and fifty is identical under the skull?

  “Piet Lindstrom disliked the idea from the beginning, but he needed the money. He’s been off boosterspice for years. Warren’s loved hunting all his life. He hadn’t hunted a civilized animal since the kzinti wars. Tanya was in love with Larch. She’ll probably try to kill you.”

  “And you?”

  “Larch would have gone ahead without me. Anything could have happened. So I saw to it that I was flying Lloobee’s ship, and I declared myself in.”

  She was so damn vivid. I’d thought she was beautiful before, but now, with the little-girl mannerisms gone, she glowed.

  I thought of the brandy.

  “You loved him, too,” I said.

  “I’m his mother.”

  That jolted me to my toes. “The brandy,” I said. “What was in the brandy?”

  “Something I developed long ago. Hormones, hypnotics…a love potion. You’re going to love me. Two years from now I’ll abandon you like an empty beer bulb. You won’t be able to live without me.” Her smile was cruel and cold. “A fitting revenge.”

  “Finagle help me!” I hadn’t drunk the brandy, of course, but what the hell…Then it penetrated. Two years. “You know about Sharrol?”

  “Yes.”

  “I didn’t drink the brandy.”

  “There’s nothing in it but alcohol.”

  We grinned at each other across the length of the couch. Then the ghost was between us, and I said, “What about Bellamy?”

  “Larch took his chances. He knew what he was doing.”

  “I can’t understand that.” I couldn’t understand why she didn’t hate me. Worse, all my questions were sure to be the wrong ones. I picked one that might be right and asked, “What was he doing?”

  “Dying. He’d run out of things to do. He’d have taken greater and greater chances until one of them killed him. One day I’ll reach the same point. Maybe I’ll know it in time.”

  “What will you do then?”

  “Don’t ask me,” she said with finality. I never did again.

  “And what will you do now?”

  “I have an idea,” she said carefully, watching me. “Sharrol Janss is bearing children on Earth for you to raise. I can’t have children myself. My ovaries have long since run out of ova. But is there any reason why we shouldn’t spend two years together?”

  “I can’t think of any. But what would you get out of it?”

  “I’ve never known a crashlander.”

  “And you’re curious.”

  “Yes. Don’t be offended.”

  “I’m not. Your flattery has turned my head.” After all, there were two years to fill, and Margo was lovely.

  I was alone on Jinx two years later, waiting for the next ship to Earth. As it turned out, Lloobee’s latest works were there, too, on loan to the Institute of Knowledge. To the Institute I went, to see what my protégé had produced.

  Seeing them was a shock.

  That was the first shock: that they should make sense when seen. Touch sculpture is to be felt: it has no meaning otherwise. But these were busts and statuettes. Someone had even advised Lloobee on color.

  I looked closer.

  First: a group of human statuettes, some seated, some standing, all staring with great intensity at a flat pane of clear glass.

  Second: a pair of heads. Human, humane, handsome, noble as all hell, but child’s play to recognize nonetheless. I touched them, and they felt like warm human faces. My face and Emil’s.

  Third and last: a group of four, a woman and three men. They showed a definite kinship with the ape and a second admixture of what must have been demon blood. Yet they were quite recognizable. Three felt like human faces, though somehow…repellent. But the fourth felt horribly dead.

  The kidnappers had neglected to include Lloobee in their contract. And Lloobee has been talking to newsmen, telling them all about how his latest works had come to be.

  ✴

  GHOST: FIVE

  “Can I ghost that story for you?” Ander asked. “Might be money in it.”

  “Old news. Everyone’s seen Lloobee’s version,” I said, thinking that my story, even edited, could call too much attention to Margo. Lloobee hadn’t known of Margo’s involvement in the kidnapping, and I hadn’t told Ander. I watched him, wondering if he knew.

  “I’ve never turned on to a…mature woman,” he said. “What’s it like? Why did you break up?”

  I shrugged. “It was supposed to be temporary. It stayed that way…didn’t have to, just did. Ander, it boggles me a little, too, Margo contracting for a two-year date the way I used to angle for a hot weekend. Aliens scare you; do you ever worry about elderly humans?”

  “No.”

  “They’ve learned too much. They don’t like change. If they could stop civilization in its tracks, they would.”

  He didn’t exactly think that over; he disliked the taste, so he spit it out. “I always figure, if you can’t lick ’em, join ’em. So I’ve decided to get older. Beowulf, General Products gave you a number—”

  “I take it as being for my use only.”

  His eyes narrowed, but he let it slide. “But you could use it if we needed to know something.”

  “I might ask a properly phrased question. Ander Smittarasheed, I am out of the aliens business.”

  Again he let it slide. “After Margo, where?”

  “Earth. I had a hell of a time getting back.”

  “Did you go back for Sharrol Janss?”

  I stared. “Of course, for Sharrol and the children.”

  “Carlos Wu’s children!”

  I stood up, knowing it was a mistake, and so what? “I’m leaving. If you want to apologize, my phone is—”

  “Beowulf Shaeffer, I just can’t see you losing your head over a woman.”

  I lost my breath. It was as if he’d punched me in the belly. I sat down, but my vision was still graying. Ander watched in amazement. When my eyes would focus again, he asked, “What was th
at about?”

  “Not now.” I couldn’t breathe.

  He sighed. He tapped at the menu board. A squeezebulb popped up, and he handed it across. I found my hand massaging my throat, removed it, took the bulb, and drank. Brandy and soda. Just right.

  He watched me drink again. “Stet. Sigmund told me how you got back to Sol system.”

  “He might possibly have left something out.”

  “Go ahead.”

  ✴

  THE BORDERLAND OF SOL

  Three months on Jinx, marooned.

  I played tourist for the first couple of months. I never saw the high-pressure regions around the ocean because the only way down would have been with a safari of hunting tanks. But I traveled the habitable lands on either side of the sea, the East Band civilized, the West Band a developing frontier. I wandered the East End in a vacuum suit, toured the distilleries and other vacuum industries, and stared up into the orange vastness of Primary, Jinx’s big twin brother.

  I spent most of the second month between the Institute of Knowledge and the Camelot Hotel. Tourism had palled.

  For me that’s unusual. I’m a born tourist. But—

  Jinx’s one point seven eight gravities put an unreasonable restriction on elegance and ingenuity in architectural design. The buildings in the habitable bands all look alike: squat and massive.

  The East and West Ends, the vacuum regions, aren’t that different from any industrialized moon. I never developed much of an interest in touring factories.

  As for the ocean shorelines, the only vehicles that go there go to hunt Bandersnatchi. The Bandersnatchi are freaks: enormous, intelligent white slugs the size of mountains. They hunt the tanks. There are rigid restrictions to the equipment the tanks can carry, covenants established between men and Bandersnatchi, so that the Bandersnatchi win about forty percent of the duels. I wanted no part of that.

  And all my touring had to be done in three times the gravity of my homeworld.

  I spent the third month in Sirius Mater, and most of that in the Camelot Hotel, which has gravity generators in most of the rooms. When I went out, I rode a floating contour couch. I passed like an invalid among the Jinxians, who were amused. Or was that my imagination?