Ride the Star Winds

by A Bertram Chandler

  It was an amazingly gentle contact. The catwalk lifted beneath their feet, throwing them together but not violently. From somewhere beneath them there came the sound of a muffled crash. And then there was silence, broken only by the sound of their breathing and the hiss of escaping helium.

  The lights did not go out but their illumination was dimmed by the layers of fabric through which it had to shine.

  They were huddled together, the three of them, in a sort of cave, the walls and ceiling of which were formed by the fabric of collapsed gas cells. Luckily air was getting in from somewhere. At the same time the helium was getting out. Their voices were reverting to normal timbre.

  “Where’s that fancy lighter of yours, Su Lin?” asked Grimes. “We can use it to burn our way out.”

  “Unluckily,” she told him tartly, “I don’t have any pockets in my birthday suit. The lighter’s where I left it when I turned in. On my bunkside table.”

  “And the door to your cabin,” said Sanchez thoughtfully, “should be right behind where you are standing now . . .”

  Wriggling, squirming, they managed to turn around. Su Lin’s body, Grimes realized, was slippery with perspiration. So was Sanchez’s, on the other side of him. They were facing a featureless wall of limp fabric. They tried to lift it up and clear, but it was anchored somehow at its lower edge. They tried to pull it down, then to pull it sideways. Grimes was almost envying the nudity of his companions. His own clothing was becoming soaked. He could feel the sweat puddling in his shoes.

  During their struggles with that impenetrable curtain Su Lin’s hip was pressing heavily against his right side. There was something hard in his pocket of which he became painfully conscious. His pipe, of course. His pipe—and the old-fashioned matches that he preferred to other means of ignition.

  “Raoul,” he asked. “This fabric . . . Is it flammable?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Will it melt, if heat’s applied?”

  “I don’t know. I just fly airships. I don’t build them.”

  “Then there’s only one way to find out. Su Lin, can you shift a bit to your right? A bit more . . .”

  “Normally I should appreciate this,” grumbled Sanchez, against whom the girl was now pushing.

  Grimes got the box of matches, after a struggle, out of his pocket. It felt damp to his touch. Had his perspiration made them useless? He got one of them out of the box, struck it. It fizzled sadly and went out. He dropped it, extracted a second one. He was careful not to touch either its head or the striking surface with his fingers. This one did burn, but unenthusiastically. The oxygen content of the air in their little cave must, thought Grimes, be getting low, depleted by their consumption of it during their exertions.

  Carefully, carefully he brought the feeble flame into light contact with the fabric. It began to smoke and bubble. A vile, acrid stench assailed their nostrils. The match went out. Grimes let it fall, got a third one from the box. By the time that it had burned away there was a small hole with fused edge, just large enough for Su Lin to get her index finger into. She tried to tug downwards but achieved nothing.

  Grimes used seven more matches to enlarge the hole in an upward direction. (There were now only three left; he should have put a full box in his pocket before going on watch.) He could, now, get his right hand into the vertical slit. He pulled, sideways, with all the strength that he was able to exert in this confined space. The fabric was stubborn—but there was room, now, for Sanchez to get his left hand into the hole to join the struggle.

  Suddenly there was a ripping noise. Slowly, slowly the rent was enlarging while the two men panted from their combined effort. Luckily fresh air, in appreciable quantities, was getting in now.

  They paused, to breathe deeply.

  Between them the girl said. “Give me a hand, you two. I think I can squirm through . . .”

  She did that. With her gone there was room for Grimes and Sanchez to move with much greater ease. They could hear her scuffling progress on the other side of the curtain. They heard her grunt with effort. Was something jamming the door to her cabin? They heard, faintly, what they hoped was a sigh of relief.

  At last she was back.

  “Stand clear!” she called. “Stand clear!”

  The jet of flame—not as long as when the lighter had been used as a weapon but still as glaringly incandescent—swept downwards, and then up. It went out.

  She said, “Come in. This is Liberty Hall. You can spit on the mat and call the cat a bastard.”

  The ship—what was left of her—was theirs again.

  They gained access to their cabins.

  Sanchez and Su Lin got dressed, then they and Grimes sat in the little wardroom with stiff drinks. They felt that they deserved them but were careful not to overindulge. Grimes wanted to take a torch to go outside to assess the damage but the others vetoed the suggestion.

  “We’re still alive,” Su Lin told him. “If we go outside the ship, at night, we very soon shan’t be. This is the Unclaimed Territory. Remember?”

  “And as for viewing the wreck,” said Sanchez, “that can wait until daylight. One thing is certain—Fat Susie will never fly again.”

  “Mphm,” grunted Grimes, filling and lighting his pipe. Then, “What time is sun up, Raoul?”

  The pilot looked at his watch, just a timekeeper without any fancy functions.

  “About an hour,” he said. Then, with a wry grin, “Where has the night gone to?”

  “I’ll make some tea,” said Su Lin briskly.

  She got up from the settee, went from the wardroom into the adjoining galley. After a brief absence she returned.

  “Raoul,” she said, “there’s no fresh water . . .”

  Sanchez got up and went back with her into the airship’s kitchen. They returned, eventually, to the wardroom. Their faces were grave.

  “Commodore,” said the pilot, “there’s good news and bad news. The good news is that this was a crash that we shall be able to walk away from. The bad news is that we owe our soft landing to the fact that we lost considerable mass during our descent. Our fresh water tanks must have been holed.”

  “If our luck holds,” said Su Lin, “we might find that we’re not too far from a stream . . .”

  “And that the stream doesn’t harbor any life forms big enough to be a serious menace to us,” Sanchez said.

  “Meanwhile,” the girl went on, “we have beer, and table wines, and lolly water. Even if there’s no water handy it’ll be at least a week before we die of thirst.”

  “You’re a pair of cheerful bastards,” grumbled Grimes.

  “Don’t complain,” the girl told him severely. “We’re alive. There’s no reason at all why we shouldn’t stay that way.”

  “I’m surprised,” said Grimes, “that Major Flattery didn’t stick around to make sure that we were all very dead.”

  “I was myself—but, thinking it over, I can see why he just made us crash, here, and then flew off,” said the girl. “I can see what the official story will be. Steering gear failure and a midair collision, contributed to by the bad airmanship of the vessel sustaining major damage. Flattery’s own ship was damaged too, so much so that he could not make an immediate search for survivors—if any . . . In the fullness of time a proper search will be organized—but everybody will be quite sure either that we were all killed at once by the crash or, shortly afterwards, by the local flora and fauna . . .”

  “Why should Flattery make a report at all,” asked Grimes, “except to his boss, Colonel Bardon? . . . As far as the rest of Liberia is concerned Governor Grimes will be enjoying himself flying hither and yon about his domain. Eventually there will be a public urinal or something to be ceremoniously opened and people will start to ask, ‘Where is the Governor?’ And Lopez Sahib will have been the last person to have seen me, and he will say that Fat Susie was last sighted proceeding east—whereas we were proceeding north. . . .”

  “And years from now,” s
aid the girl, “when the Unclaimed Territory is opened up for exploitation, somebody will find what’s left of Fat Susie and what’s left of us. If anything.”

  “And I shall be blamed, posthumously,” Sanchez said. “Pilot error. That’s what they’ll say.”

  “And what they’ll say about me,” contributed Grimes, “is that my famous luck finally ran out . . .”

  They all laughed, enjoying, briefly, their indulgence in gallows humor.

  Then Grimes asked, “Could we make our way back to civilization by foot?”

  “Not if we’re where I think we are—where I’m reasonably sure that we are—we couldn’t. Not even if we had weapons. Did you bring any private pocket artillery with you, Commodore?”

  “No.”

  “Su Lin?”

  “Only my all-purpose lighter. And there are some quite useful knives in the galley—not that they’d be much use against the local predators. And you, Raoul?”

  “There’s a laser torch in the workshop. Normally it runs off the mains, although it has a power cell. But the power cell has a limited life.”

  “We could recharge—or could we?—from the power cells that are supplying juice for the emergency lights,” said Grimes.

  “And they, too, aren’t exactly everlasting,” Sanchez told him.

  “Even so, once the sun is up they should be recharging themselves.”

  “Yes. Of course. Assuming that things weren’t too badly damaged by the collision and the crash. As soon as it’s light we’ll go outside and see just how well off—or badly off—we are.”

  Chapter 32

  Dawn came, the light of the rising sun striking through but diffused by the tattered fabric that obscured the outside of the wardroom windows. Su Lin led the way into the galley where each of them selected a knife. Grimes did not like knives; he made no secret of his preference for doing his killing from a distance, lobbing missiles and directing assorted lethal rays at some enemy whom he would never meet face to face while, of course, this same enemy would be reciprocating in kind.

  These sharp blades, however, were better than nothing—not as good as Su Lin’s versatile lighter but the charge in that would not last forever.

  The three of them made their way aft, frequently having to hack their way through the tough fabric of the collapsed helium cells. They cut their way into the workshop. They found not only the laser gun—it looked like a weapon, a pistol, but its range would be pitifully short—but also two long-handled spanners, a big screwdriver that might be used as a stiletto, and a hammer.

  Egress would not be possible through the control car; comparatively gentle as their fall had been at the finish, that compartment had taken the brunt of the impact. The thin metal skin forming the envelope must, Grimes knew, have been pierced by the sharp prow of Flattery’s airship and by the fire of the major’s automatic cannon—but none of them could do more than hazard a guess as to where the bigger rents would be. So, even though they were conscious that they were using power which might be badly needed for defense, Sanchez cut through the metallic integument, burning what was, in effect, a large inverted U, a panel that was easily bent out and down.

  Fat Susie had found her last home on top of a low, rounded hillock. No, not a hillock. It was an island in the middle of a river. It would be an easy swim to either bank. Furthermore, that stream would be a valuable source of fresh water.

  Grimes was the first out through the improvised doorway although the others tried to restrain him. He stood there in the warmth of the morning sun, savoring the fresh air, the light breeze that carried the not unpleasant tang of some vegetable growth. He straightened up from his knife-fighter’s crouch, an attitude which he felt must look more than a little foolish. He wished that he had a sheath into which to stick the long, sharp blade.

  Su Lin joined him, her golden lighter, ready for action, gleaming in her right hand. Sanchez—the captain, last to leave his ship—jumped down. Unlike the others he did not stand admiring the scenery. He stared up at Fat Susie, a great, gleaming beached whale that had been run down and almost cut in two by some passing vessel. .

  “The bastards!” he muttered with great feeling. “The bastards!”

  “But not very efficient ones,” commented Grimes. “They should have made sure of us.”

  “But they have, Commodore. They have. This is the Unclaimed Territory.”

  “All that I see,” Grimes told him, “is a quite pleasant little island in the middle of a river, with the eastern and western banks within easy-reach of even such a poor swimmer as myself. The banks are well-wooded—and that looks like fruit on some of the trees. Is it edible, I wonder?”

  Su Lin muttered something about Gutsy Grimes.

  “We have to eat, don’t we?” Grimes said. “Fat Susie wasn’t stocked for a long voyage. We have to live off the land.” He grinned. “Unless we resort to long pig,” he finished.

  “The Governor’s talking sense, Su Lin,” Sanchez admitted. “What do you know, really know, about the Unclaimed Territory? Apart from hearsay, that is. . . .”

  “What do you know, Raoul?” she countered.

  “Not much. Not one quarter as much as I should. It’s a reserve of native lifeforms, some of them nasty. . . .”

  “Like that?” asked Grimes.

  He indicated with his knife something that, moving silently, was almost upon them. It didn’t look like much to worry about. It could have been an almost deflated air mattress, garishly striped in blue, green and orange, flung carelessly down upon the mossy ground. But it was motile, flowing over the irregularities of the surface.

  “Just a glorified amoeba . . .” he said.

  Foolishly—as he was very soon to realize—he squatted, prodding the wetly glistening surface with the point of the blade. He wondered dazedly what had hit him as he was hurled violently backwards. He sprawled there, paralyzed. He was dimly aware that Su Lin had her lighter out, was directing its shaft of intense flame at the . . . thing. There was a strong smell of burning. Grimes was expecting it to be of seared meat but he was surprised. The smoke that irritated his nostrils, that made him sneeze, that made them all sneeze, was one that he would have associated with a grass fire.

  He heard rather than saw the flurry of activity as the creature, flapping madly in its death throes, died.

  Then Su Lin was beside him, kneeling by him, her strong, capable hands stroking him gently.

  “Commodore! Are you all right?”

  “What. . . . What hit me?”

  “It was an electric shock. I should have remembered what these things look like. . . .”

  “What . . . things?”

  “Shockers, they call them . . .”

  He managed to sit up.

  “Then this must be the Shocking River that I saw on the chart. And the shockers themselves . . . Like electric eels and rays back on Earth, and similar animals elsewhere. . . .”

  “Yes. But these aren’t animals. They’re plants. They use their chlorophyll to convert sunlight into electricity. . . .”

  Grimes was recovering now, his interest diverting his attention from the pain that persisted in his cramped muscles.

  “Plants, you say? Motile plants . . . But why motile?”

  “So that they can move from shadow into sunlight to recharge their batteries, crawl back into the shade to avoid an overcharge.” She laughed. “I gave this one an overcharge, all right! Too, very often, their victims are thrown away from them by the shock. Then they have to ooze toward them and over them to envelop and ingest them.”

  Grimes shuddered. He did not fancy being enveloped and ingested.

  “But why,” he persisted, “are their victims such mugs as to touch them in the first place?”

  “Why were you such a mug, Commodore?”

  “Mphm. And, come to that, why did I get a shock? The knife has a wooden handle. It should have been a fairly effective insulator . . .”

  He was still holding the weapon. He dropped it to the g
round, saw the metal studs that secured the hilt to the blade.

  “Yes, Su Lin, I was a mug. But why are the local animals mugs too?”

  “They are attracted by the gaudy coloration—which duplicates, almost exactly, the coloration of other plants, non-motile and without built-in solar power plants, which are very good eating. I hope that we find them so—as we might be here for a very long time.”

  “If you will excuse me from the natural history lesson,” said Raoul, “I’ll carry on with my survey of the ship.”

  “Do that,” said Grimes. “Su Lin and I will explore the island, what there is of it, and see what it has to offer in the way of a balanced menu.”

  “We will keep together,” said the girl firmly. “As far as I can recall, from what I have read, the shockers are the least dangerous of the life forms that we are liable to encounter. So, while one is poking around the wreckage, the other two will be keeping a lookout. I shall have my lighter and the Commodore will have the laser pistol.”

  “I wish it were a real pistol,” said Grimes.

  “We have to make do,” she said, “with what we’ve got.”

  Chapter 33

  There were flying things that sailed through the air with lazy, undulant grace—until they swooped. They were all great, flexible wing, long, sharp beak and huge, bulbous eyes. These creatures, the humans soon discovered, were attracted both by movement and by color. They saw one dive from the air onto a shocker, saw it stunned into immobility and, slowly, slowly enveloped by the crawling plant. They were attacked themselves, three times. On the first two occasions pairs of the creatures were easily driven off by the slashing jet of fire from Su Lin’s lighter, set to maximum intensity. The third attack was by a solitary flyer, hungrier or more aggressive than the others. It came boring in, vicious beak extended, like some nightmare airborne lancer, until Su Lin, standing her ground, succeeded in blinding it. (Her favorite technique, thought Grimes with a shudder. I’d sooner have her on my side than against me. . . .) Whining shrilly the thing veered away, flapping clumsily, and fell into the river. Almost immediately its struggling body was attacked by the denizens of the stream—and very shortly thereafter a covey of aerial predators swooped down, not (of course) to rescue their mate but to prey upon the aquatic carnivores that were ripping its (?) body to shreds. Long, writhing, segmented, many-legged bodies were impaled on the sharp beaks, carried into the sky and then dropped from a great height to fall with armor-shattering impact onto a rocky outcrop on the far side of the water.