He said, “You know something of the layout of the ship, Maggie. See if you can rustle up some kind of a meal. Sandwiches will do. Shirl and Darleen—you’re army officers . . . .”
They laughed at that.
“But you know something about weapons,” he went on. “You must have received some instruction when you were in the Amazon Guard as well as dishing it out. Go through the ship and collect all the lethal ironmongery you can find and bring it here, to the wardroom. And you, Fenella, make rounds of the officers’ cabins and the storerooms and find clothing, for all of us, suitable for an uphill hike through rough country.
“I shall be going back to Control.” He rolled up the map that he had been studying, took it with him. “You know where to find me if you want me.”
Maggie brought him his sandwiches—rather inferior ham with not enough mustard—and a vacuum flask of coffee that was only a little better than the brew which they had become used to (but never liked) in the Palace. But he did not complain. (As far as Maggie was concerned he had learned, long since, that it was unwise to do so.) He munched stolidly while keeping a watchful eye on the instruments. One drawback of making an orbit around a planet with the ship’s Mannschenn Drive in operation is that there are no identifiable landmarks; the appearance of a world viewed in such conditions has been described as that of a Klein Flask blown by a drunken glassblower.
But the instruments, Grimes hoped, were not lying.
“What time—local time, that is—should we get there?” asked Maggie.
“Midnight,” replied Grimes. “Anyhow, that’s what I’ve programmed the little bitch for. How are the girls getting on with their fossicking?”
“Fenella’s found clothing for all of us—tough coveralls. Boots might be a problem. Shirl and Darleen have rather long feet, as probably you’ve already noticed.”
“On their own planet,” he said, “they’re used to running around barefoot. What about rainwear?”
“Rainwear? Are you expecting rain?”
“Rain has been known to fall,” he said. “Tell Fenella, when you go back down, to find something suitable. And the weapons?”
“So far a stungun, fully charged, with belt and holster, for each of us. Laser pistols likewise. And projectile pistols.”
He said, “We can’t load ourselves down with too much. We’ll take the stunguns and the lasers. We don’t want to do any killing.”
“Lasers kill people. Or hadn’t you noticed?”
“A laser is a tool as well as a weapon, Maggie. It comes in handy for burning through doors, for example. Too, it’s silent. Even more so than a stungun.”
“Shirl and Darleen have their own ideas about silent weapons,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“They found a dozen metal discs—what they’re for the Odd Gods alone know!—in the engineer’s workshop. They say that once they’re given a cutting edge they’ll be very nice throwing weapons.”
Grimes muttered something about bloodthirsty little bitches.
“I thought that you liked them, John,” said Maggie.
“I do. But . . . .”
“Haven’t you ever shed any blood during your career?”
“Yes. But . . . .”
But what he did not tell her was that he strongly suspected that the guards at Miletus, Ellena’s people, would be women. He derided himself for his old-fashioned ideas but still was reluctant to kill a member of the opposite sex.
Chapter 26
Krait made her return to normal Space-Time, began her descent to the surface of New Sparta, to Mount Melitus. Maggie and Fenella were with Grimes in the control room; Maggie was there as a sort of co-pilot—after all, as a Survey Service officer, although not in the Spaceman Branch, she knew something about ship-handling—and Fenella was, as always, just getting into everything. Grimes had succeeded in persuading Shirl and Darleen to busy themselves elsewhere. Much as he liked them both this was an occasion when he could do without their distracting chatter.
As the little ship dropped to the nightside hemisphere, greater and greater detail was displayed in the stern view radar screen, in three-dimensional presentation. There was Mount Melitus, almost directly below Krait. Grimes applied a touch of lateral thrust so that the mountain was now to the south of the line of descent. Its hulking mass, he explained, would shield the village on the southern slopes from the clangor of the inertial drive.
“But our landing place,” objected Fenella, “is on the southern slopes. They’re bound to hear us sooner or later—and soon enough to be ready and waiting for us.”
“Not necessarily,” Grimes told her.
He made adjustments to the radar controls, increasing sensitivity. Clouds were now visible in the screen. The wind, as it should have been at this time of year, as he had hoped that it would be, was from the north, blowing over the relatively warm Aegean Sea on to the land, striking the sheer, northern face of the mountain and being deflected upward into cooler atmospheric levels.
He checked the state of readiness of the missile projector. It was loaded. He had seen to that himself. In the tube was a rocket with a Mark XXV Incendiary warhead. It was one of the viler anti-personnel weapons, one that Grimes, during his Survey Service days, had hoped that he would never have to use. Now he was going to use it—although not directly against personnel.
“Who are you going to shoot at?” asked Fenella interestedly. “I thought that the object of this exercise was to rescue Brasidus, not to blow him to pieces.”
“What, not who,” said Grimes. “I’m looking for a nice, fat cloud. One that’s just skimming the peak of the mountain on its way south.”
“Looking for a cloud? Are you out of your tiny mind?”
“The Commodore knows what he’s doing!” snapped Maggie. Then, “By the way, what are you doing?”
He laughed.
“I’m going to use a technique that was used, some years ago, on Bolodrin. A non-aligned planet, of no great importance, but one which both the Shaara and ourselves would like to draw within our spheres of influence. A humanoid population. An export trade of agricultural products. Well, there had been a quite disastrous planetwide drought. One of our ships—the Zodiac Class cruiser Scorpio—was there showing the flag. The Tronmach—it translates roughly to Hereditary President—appealed to the captain of Scorpio, as the representative of a technologically superior culture, to Do Something about the drought. Captain Samson went into a huddle with his scientific officers. They decided to seed likely cloud formations. With Hell Balls.”
“What’s a Hell Ball?” asked Fenella.
“What my missile projector is loaded with. It’s the pet name for the Mark XXV Incendiary Device, one of the more horrid anti-personnel weapons. Imagine an expanding vortex of plasma, superheated, electrically hyperactive gases. . . .”
“And did this bright idea work?”
“Too well. The drought was broken all right. Rivers burst their banks. Hailstorms flattened orchards. If the Shaara had grabbed the opportunity, sending ships with all manner of aid, Bolodrin would have happily become an Associate Hive Member. But they were slow off the mark and the Federation organized relief expenditures. Nonetheless relations were strained and Captain Samson suffered premature retirement. Mphm. Looks like a suitable target coming up now . . . . Range about fifty kilometers . . . .”
He busied himself at the fire control console, aligning the projector, setting the fuse of the warhead.
He pushed the button.
Only faintly luminous, the exhaust of the rocket was almost invisible.
The slow explosion of the warhead was not. In the center of the towering cumulus bright flame burgeoned and lightnings writhed, wreathing the mountain peak with lambent fire, lashing out to other cloud formations. A clockwise rotation seemed already to have been initiated, a cyclonic vortex. It was the birth of a hurricane.
Grimes could imagine what the conditions would soon be on the southern slopes of Melitus, t
he country normally protected from extremes of weather by the bulk of the mountain. There would be torrential rain and shrieking winds and a continuous cannonade of thunder and lightning, an uproar among which the arrhythmic clangor of a small ship’s inertial drive unit would go unnoticed.
He hoped.
With the controls now on manual he continued his descent. He skimmed the peak with less clearance than he had intended; a vicious downdraft caught Krait and had he not reacted swiftly, slamming on maximum lift, the ship must surely have been wrecked.
Then he was over the mountain top, dropping again but not too fast, maintaining a half-kilometer altitude from the ground. Sudden gusts buffeted the ship, tilting her from the vertical. A fusillade of hail on her skin was audible even through the thick insulation. Nothing, save for the diffused flare of the lightning, could be seen through the viewpoints. Even the radar picture was almost blotted out by storm clutter.
But there was the village . . . .
And the river . . .
Grimes followed its course to the horseshoe bend. It looked as it did on the chart. But even if the ground were level, what about trees? There had been no symbols indicating such growths on the map—but trees have a habit of growing over the years. He had hoped to be able to make a visual inspection before landing but, in these conditions, it was impossible.
He hovered almost directly over the almost-island, dropping slowly, keeping Krait in position by applications of lateral thrust, this way and that.
“Stand by the viewpoint, Maggie,” he ordered. “Yes. That one. If there’s a brief clear spell, if the rain lets up, tell me what you see.”
“What do you want me to see?”
“What I don’t want you to see on our landing place,” he said, “is trees. Bushes don’t worry me but a large, healthy tree can damage even a big ship sitting down on it!”
“Will do.”
And then she was back beside him.
“There was a break, and lightning at the same time. There aren’t any trees.”
“Landing stations!” ordered Grimes.
Krait sat down hard, dropping the final two meters with her drive in neutral. She sat down hard and she complained, creaking and groaning, rocking on her tripedal landing gear, while shock-absorbers hissed and sighed.
Grimes unbuckled himself from his chair, then led the way out of the control room. In the wardroom Shirl and Darleen were waiting. On the table and on the deck were the articles of clothing that Grimes had specified—the coveralls, the raincapes and the heavy boots. Hanging on the backs of chairs were belts and holstered weapons.
Swiftly the five of them got out of their light clothing, pulled on the coveralls and the heavy boots. Luckily the ship’s equipment store had carried a wide range of sizes, so even Shirl and Darleen were shod not too uncomfortably. Grimes packed a rucksack with protective clothing for Brasidus, who would need this for the walk from the village to Krait. (Grimes hoped that Brasidus would be able to make the walk, that he would be rescued unharmed.) They belted on the weapons. Shirl and Darleen attached to their belts pouches with clinking contents. Grimes wondered briefly what was in them, then remembered the discs that the two girls had found in the engineer’s workshop.
They made their way down the spiral staircase to the airlock, the controls of which had been set to be operated manually. Grimes was not at all happy about leaving the ship without a duty officer but he had no option. He was the only real spaceperson in the party but, at the same time, he was the obvious leader of the expedition. And all that any of the women could do, if one of them were left in charge, would be to keep a seat in the control room warm.
He and Fenella were first into the airlock chamber. Grimes pushed the button that would open the outer door and, at the same time, extend the telescopic ramp. He was expecting a violent onslaught of wind and rain but his luck, he realized thankfully, was holding. The door was on the lee side of the ship. He adjusted the hood of his raincape, checked the buckles holding the garment about his body, then walked cautiously down the ramp. Away from the ship he began to feel the wind and, even through his layers of clothing, the impact of the huge raindrops. He could hear the thin, high screaming of the wind as it eddied around the metallic tower that was the ship, was blinded by a bolt of lightning that struck nearby and deafened by the crack! of the thunder. And what if Krait herself should be struck by lightning? Nothing much, he thought (hoped). With her stern vanes well dug into the wet soil she would be well earthed.
He got his eyesight back and turned to look up the ramp. Shirl and Darleen were coming down it and Maggie was silhouetted in the doorway.
“Shut the inner door before you come down!” he yelled.
“What?” he heard her scream.
He repeated the order.
The light behind her diminished as she obeyed him. The airlock chamber itself was only dimly illumined. And then she was following Shirl and Darleen to the ground.
Grimes led the way up the mountainside. There was no possibility of their getting lost; all that they had to do was to keep to the bank of the stream. It was more of a torrent now, swollen by the downpour, roaring and rumbling as displaced boulders, torn from the banks, ground against each other. The wind had almost as much weight as the rushing water, buffeting them as they bent into it, finding its way through the fastenings of their raincapes, ballooning the garments, threatening to lift their wearers from their feet and to send them whirling downhill, airborne flotsam.
The raincapes had to go. Grimes struggled out of his. It was torn from his hands, vanished downwind like a huge, demented bat. The women shed theirs. Maggie, shouting to make herself heard above the wild tumult of wind, water and thunder, made a feeble joke about the willful destruction of Federation property and the necessity thereafter of filling in forms in quintuplicate.
But she could still joke, thought Grimes. Good for her. And the others were bearing up well, even Fenella. No doubt she was thinking in headlines. MY WALK ON THE WILD SIDE.
Bruised and battered by flying debris, deafened by shrieking wind and roaring thunder, blinded by lightning, the party struggled up the mountainside.
And of all the miseries and discomforts the one that Grimes resented most bitterly was the trickle of icy-cold water that found its way through the neckband of his coveralls, meandering down his body to collect in his boots.
Chapter 27
They came at last to the village, such as it was, the huddle of low stone houses, little better than huts most of them, all of them with doors and windows tightly battened against the storm. There was one building, two-storied, larger than the others. From its steeply pitched roof protruded what was obviously a radio communications antenna, a slender mast that whipped as the gusts took hold of it and worried it. It was a wonder that it had survived the storm thus far; not only was there the rain but there was the lightning, stabbing down from the swirling clouds at even the stunted trees that were hardly more than overgrown bushes, exploding them into eruptions of charred splinters.
It had survived thus far; it would be as well, decided Grimes, if it survived for no longer. If Brasidus and his guards were in this house the sooner that means of communication with Sparta City was destroyed the better. He pulled his laser pistol from its holster, tried to take aim at the base of the mast. The wind grabbed his arm and tugged viciously. He tried to use his left hand to steady his right, pressed the firing stud. During a brief, very brief, period of darkness between lightning flashes he saw the beam of intense ruby light, missing the target by meters. He tried again. Maggie tried. Even Fenella tried. The radio mast remained untouched by their fire.
Grimes saw that Shirl was taking one of the metal discs from the pouch at her waist, holding it carefully by the small arc of its circumference that had been left unsharpened. And what good will that do? he asked himself scornfully. A thrown missile, launched in the teeth of a howling gale . . . Metal—tough metal admittedly—against metal at least as tough as itself. (Th
at mast must be tough to have survived the storm.)
Shirl stood there, her body swaying in the gusts that assailed her, making no attempt to hold herself rigid as she took aim, not fighting the forces of nature as Grimes and Maggie and Fenella had been trying to do, accommodating herself to them. Her right arm, the hand holding the gleaming disc, went back and then, aided by a wind eddy, snapped forward. Like Grimes and the others, she had been aiming for the base of the mast. Unlike Grimes and the others she might even have hit it. But the disc itself, generating with its swift passage through the heavily charged air a charge of its own, was itself a target. A writhing filament of dazzling incandescence snaked down from the black sky to enmesh the missile, to follow its trajectory even as it was reduced to a coruscation of molten steel.
The disc, what was left of it, would narrowly have missed the base of the mast—but the lightning struck it. Momentarily it took, Grimes thought, the semblance of a Christmas tree, etching its branches and foliage of flame onto his retinas. Slowly he regained his eyesight. Somebody—Maggie—had him by the upper arm, was shaking it.
“John! John!” she was saying, “They’re coming out!”
He blinked, then raised his hand to clear the rain from his eyes. A door had opened on the lee side of the building, the side on which they were standing. A figure was standing in the rectangle of yellow light, another one behind it, women both of them.
“I’m not going out in this!” Grimes heard faintly.
“Somebody has to. Something has happened to the mast.”
“Blown down. Struck by lightning. In this weather anything could happen.”
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