Slowly, almost tenderly, he unplugged his suit, laid the phone back down on the little shelf before the dark instrument panel and dropped down on the one of three seats before the control board that was not wrecked. For a little while he simply sat there, with the hobgoblins gibbering at him. His head swam. He found himself talking to Plotch.
“Plotch,” he was saying, quite quietly into his helmet phone. “Plotch, there’s nothing else for it. We’re going to have to wait here until the ship figures there’s something wrong and sends out another flitter to find out what happened to us.”
He waited a few moments.
“You hear me, Plotch?”
Still there was only silence, static, voiceless gibbering in his earphones.
“We can stick it out of course, Plotch,” Clancy muttered, staring at the dead control panel. “Inside of two days they ought to figure we’re overdue. Then they’ll wait a day, maybe, figuring it’s nothing important. Finally they’ll send one of the other teams out, even if it means taking them off one of the other jobs. Oh, they’ll send somebody eventually, Plotch. They’ll have to. Nobody gets abandoned on the Line, Plotch. You know that.”
The five days of bone-grinding manual labor on the Star-Point took effect on him, suddenly. Clancy fell into a light doze, inside his suit, sitting in the wrecked control room of the flitter. In the doze he half-dreamed that the gibbering voices took on their real hobgoblin shape. They were strange, grotesque parodies of the human figure, with bulbous bodies, long skinny arms and legs and turnip-shaped heads with the point upward, possessing wide, grinning, lipless mouths, a couple of holes for a nose, and perfectly round, staring eyes with neither eyebrows nor eyelashes. They gibbered and grinned and danced around him, kicking up their heels and flinging their arms about in joy at the mess he was in. They stretched their faces like rubber masks into all sorts of ugly and leering shapes, while they chanted at him in their wordless gibberish that they had got Plotch—and now they were going to get him, too.
“No!” he said, suddenly aloud in his helmet—and the spoken word woke him.
III
He glanced around the ruined flitter. The hobgoblin shapes of his dream had disappeared, but their gibberish still yammered at him from somewhere unseen.
“No,” he said to them, again. “If you could rain rocks like that all the time, you’d still be doing it. I don’t think you can do that except now and then. Even if it was you who did it. All I've got to do is wait.” He corrected himself. “All we’ve got to do is wait—Plotch and I. And a flitter will come to pick us up.”
Plotch is dead! Plotch is dead! gibbered the hobgoblins triumphantly.
“Maybe,” muttered Clancy. “Maybe not. Maybe the cryogenic unit caught him in time. Maybe it froze him in time to save him. You don’t know. I don’t know.”
A thought struck him. He got wearily up from his seat, clambered out of the wrecked flitter and struggled up the slope to where Plotch’s frozen body in its suit still sat balanced, although by now it had stopped rocking. Clancy stood staring down at it—at the thick coating of white on the inside of the faceplate, ruddied by the red light from the clouds overhead.
“You dead, Plotch?” he asked after a little while. But there was no answer.
“So, maybe you’re alive, then, Plotch, after all,” said Clancy out loud to himself in the helmet. “And if you’re alive, then that cryogenic unit works. So you’re safe. You won’t even have to know about the time we spend waiting for them to send a flitter after us.—Or, maybe . . . ?”
A sudden, new cold doubt had struck Clancy. Something he half-remembered Plotch’s saying about the unit.
“I can’t remember, Plotch,” he muttered fretfully. “Was it supposed to be good for as long as necessary, that cryogenic action? Or was it just supposed to keep you for a few hours, or a few days, until they could freeze you properly, back at the ship? I can’t remember, Plotch. Help me out. You ought to remember. What was it? Permanent or temporary?”
Plotch did not answer.
“Because if it’s temporary, Plotch,” said Clancy, finally, “then even if you’re alive now, maybe you won’t still be alive by the time the rescue flitter gets here. That’s not good, Plotch. It’s a dirty trick; having a cryogenic unit that won’t last for more than a few hours or a few days. . . .” For a moment he was on the verge of emotional reaction; but he got his feelings under control. Anger came to stiffen him.
“Well, how about it, Plotch?” he shouted after a moment into the silence and the gibbering. “How about it—can you last until the flitter gets here or not. Answer me!”
But Plotch still did not answer. And a cold, hollow feeling began to swell like a bubble under Clancy’s breastbone. It was a. realization of the dirtiest trick in the universe—and Plotch just lay there, saying nothing, letting him, Clancy, flounder about with it in him, like a hook in a fish.
“You dirty skull!” burst out Clancy. “You planned it like this! You deliberately got in the way of that rock or whatever it was! I saw you! You deliberately got yourself all frozen up the way you are now! Now you want me to let you just sit here; and maybe sit too long before the ship sends somebody to rescue us? Is that it? Well, you know what, Plotch?”
Clancy paused to give Plotch a chance to answer. But Plotch maintained his unchanging silence. He was finally learning how to outdo Clancy on the not-answering bit; that was it, thought Clancy lightheadedly. But Plotch’s learning that was nothing now, compared to this other, dirtier trick he was pulling.
“Well, I’ll tell you what, Plotch,” said Clancy, more quietly, but venomously. “I’m not going to take you into the ship myself. How do you like that?”
Plotch obstinately said nothing. But the hobgoblin voices chanted their gibber in the back of Clancy’s head.
All that way with a dead man! Plotch’s dead! Plotch’s dead! chanted the hobgoblin voices. But Clancy ignored them. He was busy calculating.
They had come out due east of the ship, Plotch and he. It was now afternoon where they were. All he had to do was to walk into where the clouds were reddest, because that was where the western sunlight was. The days were sixteen hours long right now in this latitude on XN-4010, and the nights were a brief four hours. He had a good six hours to walk now, before darkness came. Then he could rest for four hours before picking up Plotch again, keeping the brightest light at his back this time, and carry on. It would be six days at least before the ship would be likely to come to a certain conclusion that he and Plotch were in trouble—and at least another day, if not two, before another flitter and two-man team could be diverted from their regular job to investigate what had happened out here. Seven days at least—and thirty miles to the ship.
Thirty miles—why, that was only a little over four miles a day. He could do that any time, carrying Plotch. In fact, he ought to be able to do twice as much as that much in a day.
Three times as much. Ten or twelve miles in a sixteen-hour day ought to be nothing. It was less than a mile an hour. Clancy got Plotch up in his arms and started off, his feet in the boots of the suit jarring one after the other against the naked rock beneath them. He walked down, past the damaged flitter, no longer looking at it, and thumped away, carrying his unyielding load in the direction of the brightest red clouds.
Far ahead, as far as he could see to the horizon, the rock plain seemed fairly level. But this was an illusion. As he proceeded, he discovered that there were gentle rises and equally gentle hollows that blended into the general flatness of the area, but which caused him to spend at least a share of his time walking either downhill or uphill. His legs took this effort without complaint; but it was not long before his arms began to ache from holding Plotch’s stiff body in front of him, although he leaned back as much as he could to counterbalance the weight.
Eventually he stopped and once more tried to find some other way of carrying his burden. Several times he tried to find a position in which Plotch could be balanced on one of his should
ers, but without success. Then, just before he was ready to give up completely, he had a stroke of genius, remembering the gimmick collar on his suit that kept the inside of his helmet top from touching the top of his head. Testing, he discovered that it was possible to carry Plotch grotesquely balanced on top of his head, with the top of Clancy’s helmet resting against the frozen man’s unyielding stomach and with a knee and an elbow resting on Clancy’s right and left shoulders, respectively. The helmet pressed down upon the collar and the weight upon it was distributed to the rigid shoulders of Clancy’s suit, with the assistance of Plotch’s frozen knee and elbow—and for the first time Clancy had a balanced load to carry.
“Well, Plotch,” said Clancy, pleased. “You aren’t so bad to take after all.”
The flush of success that spread through Clancy lightened his spirits and all but drove away the unending gibbering of the hobgoblins. For a moment his mind was almost clear; and in that bit of clear-headedness it suddenly occurred to him that he had not set his pedometer. Carefully rotating about, holding Plotch balanced on his head and shoulders, he looked back the way he had come.
The wrecked flitter was just barely visible in the distance, its torn parts reflecting a few ruddy gleams of red light. Gazing at the smashed vehicle, Clancy did his best to estimate the ground he had covered so far. After a few seconds, he decided that he had come approximately a third of a mile. That was very good going indeed, carrying Plotch the way he had, to begin with. Carefully holding Plotch in place now with his left hand, he reached down with his right and set the pedometer, which was inset in the front leg of his suit just above the knee, giving himself credit for that third of a mile he had already covered. Only twenty-nine and some two-thirds of a mile to go to reach the ship, he told himself triumphantly.
“How do you like that, Plotch?” he asked his partner.
He started off with fresh energy. Perched on top of Clancy’s head, Plotch rode with a fine, easy balance, except when Clancy came to one of the hollows and was forced to walk downslope. Then it was necessary to hold hard to Plotch’s knee and elbow, to keep the frozen body from sliding forward off the helmet. For some reason, going upslope, the knee and elbow dug Clancy’s shoulders and helped hold Plotch in place, almost by themselves. All in all, thought Clancy, he was doing very well.
He continued to slog along, facing into the dwindling western light behind the fiery masses of the clouds. Like all Line Team members, he was in Class Prime physical shape, checked every two weeks in the field, and every two months back on Earth to make sure he was maintaining his position in that class. He was five feet eleven inches in height, somewhat large-boned and normally weighed around a hundred and ninety. Here on XN-4010, his weight was reduced by the lesser gravity to about a hundred and fifty pounds. Plotch, who was five-nine, lighter boned and usually weighed around a hundred and sixty on Earth, here weighed probably no more than a hundred and thirty. On Earth, Clancy would have expected himself to be able to put on a hundred and thirty pound pack and equipment load on top of his suit and make at least a mile an hour with it over terrain like this —and for at least as many hours in a row as there were in the ordinary working day. That was, provided he stopped routinely for a rest—something like a ten-minute break every hour.
Here, he should do at least as well as that. Still, the calculation had reminded him that periodic rest was necessary. He sat down, eased Plotch off his shoulders and looked at his watch to measure off a rest period of ten minutes. He looked almost genially at the figure of Plotch with its frosted faceplate, as he sat, elbows on knees, resting.
“How do you like that, Plotch, you bastard?” he asked Plotch. “It’s no trouble for me to carry you. No trouble at all. Maybe you thought you’d get out of something by playing dead on me. But you’re not. I’m going to take you in; and they’re going to thaw you out and fix you up. How do you like that, Plotch?”
Plotch maintained his silence. Clancy’s thoughts wandered off for a while and then came back to the present with a jerk. He glanced down at his watch and stared at what he saw. A good half hour had gone by—not just the ten minutes he had planned on. Had he fallen asleep, or what?
The light filtering redly through clouds was now low on the horizon ahead of him. He looked at the pedometer on his leg and saw that he had only covered a little over a couple of miles. Sudden fear woke in him. There would be no making the ship in a few days if he went along at this pace—no hope of it at all.
Suddenly his throat felt dry. He tongued his drinking tube into position before his mouth and drank several swallows before he realized what he was doing and pushed the tube away again. The recycling equipment in these light-weight survival suits could not be all that perfect. Certain amounts of water were lost in the ejection of solid body wastes and in various other ways which, though minuscule, were important. That loss had to be made up from the emergency tank built into the back shoulder plates of his suit; and with the flitter wrecked, now some miles behind him, there would be no chance of refilling that tank—which at best was only supposed to carry enough supplementary water for two or three days. He would have to watch his liquid intake. Food he could do without . . . but he suddenly remembered, he had plenty of stimulants.
He tongued the stim dispenser lever in his helmet and swallowed the small pill that rolled onto his outstretched tongue, getting it down with "only the saliva that was in his mouth. Then he struggled to his feet. He had stiffened, even in this short period of sitting; and he had to go down on one knee again to get Plotch back up on his shoulders before rising.
Once more burdened, he plodded ahead again toward the horizon and the descending red light behind the unending clouds. Now that he was once more on his feet and moving, the voiceless gibber of the hobgoblins made itself noticeable again. The stim pill was working through him now, sending new energy throughout his body. Up on his shoulders, the frozen body of Plotch felt literally light. But the increase of energy he got from the pill had a bad side effect—for he seemed to hear the hobgoblin voices louder, now.
IV
He had about another two and a quarter hours before the sun started to set along the edge of the horizon; and the wide rocky land began to mix long, eerie black shadows with its furnace-glare of sunset light. He stopped at last for the night, before the last of the light was gone, wanting to take time to pick a spot where he could be comfortable. He found it, at last, in a little hollow half-filled with stones, so small that they could fairly be called gravel. But, when he laid Plotch down and checked with the pedometer at his knee, he found that the day’s walk so far had brought him only a little over seven miles—although the last two hours he had been making as good speed as he could without working himself into breathlessness inside his suit—which could have been dangerous.
He lay down on the gravel. It felt almost soft, through the protection of his suit. He stared up at the darkening cloud-belly overhead. The hobgoblin voices began to increase in volume until they roared in his head, and he began to imagine he saw their faces and bodies as he had in his dream of them, imagined now in the various, scarlet-marked formations of the blackening clouds. He tongued for a tranquilizer; and as it took effect, the light and the forms faded together. The roar sank to a whisper. He slept.
He woke abruptly—to find that the sun was already well above the opposite horizon behind him. The roiling clouds were furnace-bright with a morning redness too fierce to look on, even through his tinted faceplate. He drank a little water, took a stim pill to get himself started and got himself back on his feet with Plotch on his shoulders. Turning his back on the morning light he began a new day’s march.
Even through the clouds, the light was strong enough to throw shadows. He kept his own moving shadow pointing straight ahead of him, to be sure he was headed due west.
Even with the best he could do about maintaining his bearings, the odds were all against his passing within sight of the ship, itself. On the other hand, once the pedometer showed he was
within a three or four mile radius of the ship, he could try to reach them with a constant signal from his suit intercom. And even if the intercom had trouble, the regular scanar watch by the Duty-Lineman then should pick up his moving figure on its screen, if he passed anywhere within horizon distance of the ship.
He took his rest regularly every hour; and he was alert each time to see that he did not exceed the ten minutes he had allowed himself. Together with the exercise and the increasing daylight, he began to warm to his task—even to become expert at it, this business of plodding over an endless rocky desert with the frozen body of Plotch balanced on his shoulders. He grew clever to anticipate little dips, hollows or fissures. The hobgoblins were clamorous; but under the combined effect of the walking and the stim he almost welcomed them.
“Thought you’d helped Plotch to get away from me, didn’t you?” he taunted their gibbering, voiceless voices. “Well, see what I’m doing? I’m hanging on to him, after all. How about that, you hobgoblins? Why don’t you throw some more rocks at us?”
The voices jabbered without meaning. It struck him suddenly, as an almost humorous fact, that they were not entirely voiceless now. They had gained volume. He could actually—if he concentrated—hear them in his earphones; about as loud as a small crowd of buzzing gnats close to his ears.
“I’ll tell you why you don’t throw any more rocks at us,” he told them, after a while. “It’s the way I figured it out back at the flitter. You’ve got to work something like that up; and that takes several days. And you’ve got to work it up for a particular spot—and I’m moving all the time now. You can’t hit a moving target.”
The Star Road Page 6