Considering the weapons which the Doradus carried, this last objection might seem singularly pointless. It was very far from being so. In the ordinary course of business, sidearms and other portable weapons are as much use to a space-cruiser as are cutlasses and crossbows. The Doradus happened, quite by chance – and against regulations at that – to carry one automatic pistol and a hundred rounds of ammunition. Any search party would therefore consist of a group of unarmed men looking for a well-concealed and very desperate individual who could pick them off at his leisure. K.15 was breaking the rules again.
The terminator of Mars was now a perfectly straight line, and at almost the same moment the Sun came up, not so much like thunder as like a salvo of atomic bombs. K.15 adjusted the filters of his visor and decided to move. It was safer to stay out of the sunlight, not only because he was less likely to be detected in the shadow but also because his eyes would be much more sensitive there. He had only a pair of binoculars to help him, whereas the Doradus would carry an electronic telescope of twenty centimetres aperture at least.
It would be best, K.15 decided, to locate the cruiser if he could. It might be a rash thing to do, but he would feel much happier when he knew exactly where she was and could watch her movements. He could then keep just below the horizon, and the glare of the rockets would give him ample warning of any impending move. Cautiously launching himself along an almost horizontal trajectory, he began the circumnavigation of his world.
The narrowing crescent of Mars sank below the horizon until only one vast horn reared itself enigmatically against the stars. K.15 began to feel worried: there was still no sign of the Doradus. But this was hardly surprising, for she was painted black as night and might be a good hundred kilometres away in space. He stopped, wondering if he had done the right thing after all. Then he noticed that something quite large was eclipsing the stars almost vertically overhead, and was moving swiftly even as he watched. His heart stopped for a moment: then he was himself again, analysing the situation and trying to discover how he had made so disastrous a mistake.
It was some time before he realised that the black shadow slipping across the sky was not the cruiser at all, but something almost equally deadly. It was far smaller, and far nearer, than he had at first thought. The Doradus had sent her television-homing guided missiles to look for him.
This was the second danger he had feared, and there was nothing he could do about it except to remain as inconspicuous as possible. The Doradus now had many eyes searching for him, but these auxiliaries had very severe limitations. They had been built to look for sunlit spaceships against a background of stars, not to search for a man hiding in a dark jungle of rock. The definition of their television systems was low, and they could only see in the forward direction.
There were rather more men on the chess-board now, and the game was a little deadlier, but his was still the advantage.
The torpedo vanished in the night sky. As it was travelling on a nearly straight course in this low-gravitational field, it would soon be leaving Phobos behind, and K.15 waited for what he knew must happen. A few minutes later, he saw a brief stabbing of rocket exhausts and guessed that the projectile was swinging slowly back on its course. At almost the same moment he saw another flare away in the opposite quarter of the sky and wondered just how many of these infernal machines were in action. From what he knew of Z-class cruisers – which was a good deal more than he should – there were four missile control channels, and they were probably all in use.
He was suddenly struck by an idea so brilliant that he was quite sure it could not possibly work. The radio on his suit was a tunable one, covering an unusually wide band, and somewhere not far away the Doradus was pumping out power on everything from a thousand megacycles upwards. He switched on the receiver and began to explore.
It came in quickly – the raucous whine of a pulse transmitter not far away. He was probably only picking up a sub-harmonic, but that was quite good enough. It D’F’ed sharply, and for the first time K.15 allowed himself to make long-range plans about the future. The Doradus had betrayed herself as long as she operated her missiles, he would know exactly where she was.
He moved cautiously forward towards the transmitter. To his surprise the signal faded, then increased sharply again. This puzzled him until he realised that he must be moving through a diffraction zone. Its width might have told him something useful if he had been a good enough physicist, but he could not imagine what.
The Doradus was hanging about five kilometres above the surface in full sunlight. Her ‘non-reflecting’ paint was overdue for renewal, and K.15 could see her clearly. As he was still in darkness, and the shadow line was moving away from him, he decided that he was as safe here as anywhere. He settled down comfortably so that he could just see the cruiser and waited, feeling fairly certain that none of the guided projectiles would come so near the ship. By now, he calculated, the Commander of the Doradus must be getting pretty mad. He was perfectly correct.
After an hour, the cruiser began to heave herself round with all the grace of a bogged hippopotamus. K.15 guessed what was happening. Commander Smith was going to have a look at the antipodes, and was preparing for the perilous fifty-kilometre journey. He watched very carefully to see the orientation the ship was adopting, and when she came to rest again was relieved to see that she was almost broadside on to him. Then, with a series of jerks that could not have been very enjoyable aboard, the cruiser began to move down to the horizon. K.15 followed her at a comfortable walking pace – if one could use the phrase – reflecting that this was a feat very few people had ever performed. He was particularly careful not to overtake her on one of his kilometre-long glides, and kept a close watch for any missiles that might be coming up astern.
It took the Doradus nearly an hour to cover the fifty kilometres. This, as K.15 amused himself by calculating, represented considerably less than a thousandth of her normal speed. Once, she found herself going off into space at a tangent, and rather than waste time turning end over end again fired off a salvo of shells to reduce speed. But she made it at last, and K.15 settled down for another vigil, wedged between two rocks where he could just see the cruiser and he was quite sure she could not see him. It occurred to him that by this time Commander Smith might have great doubts as to whether he really was on Phobos at all, and he felt like firing off a signal flare to reassure him. However, he resisted the temptation.
There would be little point in describing the events of the next ten hours, since they differed in no important detail from those that had gone before. The Doradus made three other moves, and K.15 stalked her with the care of the big-game hunter following the spoor of some elephantine beast. Once, when she would have led him out into full sunlight, he let her fall below the horizon until he could only just pick up her signals. But most of the time he kept her just visible, usually low down behind some convenient hill.
Once a torpedo exploded some kilometres away, and K.15 guessed that some exasperated operator had seen a shadow he did not like – or else that a technician had forgotten to switch off a proximity fuse. Otherwise nothing happened to enliven the proceedings: in fact the whole affair was becoming rather boring. He almost welcomed the sight of an occasional guided missile drifting inquisitively overhead, for he did not believe that they could see him if he remained motionless and in reasonable cover. If he could have stayed on the part of Phobos exactly opposite the cruiser he would have been safe even from these, he realised, since the ship would have no control there in the Moon’s radio-shadow. But he could think of no reliable way in which he could be sure of staying in the safety zone if the cruiser moved again.
The end came very abruptly. There was a sudden blast of steering-jets, and the cruiser’s main drive burst forth in all its power and splendour. In seconds the Doradus was shrinking sunwards, free at last, thankful to leave, even in defeat, this miserable lump of rock that had so annoyingly baulked her of her legitimate prey. K.15 knew what had hap
pened, and a great sense of peace and relaxation swept over him. In the radar room of the cruiser, someone had seen an echo of disconcerting amplitude approaching with altogether excessive speed. K.15 now had only to switch on his suit beacon and to wait. He could even afford the luxury of a cigarette.
‘Quite an interesting story,’ I said, ‘and I see now how it ties up with that squirrel. But it does raise one or two queries in my mind.’
‘Indeed?’ said Rupert Kingman politely.
I always like to get to the bottom of things, and I knew that my host had played a part in the Jovian War about which he seldom spoke. I decided to risk a long shot in the dark.
‘May I ask how you happen to know so much about this unorthodox military engagement? It isn’t possible, is it, that you were K.15?’
There was an odd sort of strangling noise from Carson. Then Kingman said, quite calmly: ‘No, I wasn’t.’
He got to his feet and went off towards the gun-room.
‘If you’ll excuse me a moment, I’m going to have another shot at that tree-rat. Maybe I’ll get him this time.’ Then he was gone.
Carson looked at me as if to say: ‘This is another house you’ll never be invited to again.’ When our host was out of earshot he remarked in a coldly clinical voice:
‘You’ve torn it. What did you have to say that for?’
‘Well, it seemed a safe guess. How else could he have known all that?’
‘As a matter of fact, I believe he met K.15 after the War: they must have had an interesting conversation together. But I thought you knew that Rupert was retired from the Service with only the rank of Lieutenant-Commander. The Court of Inquiry could never see his point of view. After all, it just wasn’t reasonable that the Commander of the fastest ship in the Fleet couldn’t catch a man in a spacesuit.’
MASTER RACE
RICHARD ASHBY
★ ★
Even if no human being has yet managed to reach the Moon, let alone the nearest star, it is possible that elsewhere in the universe there are beings who have been traveling through space for so long that they have forgotten the very reasons with which they began. Perhaps they have also forgotten that the only thing swifter than a cruiser in space is the imagination. And human imaginations have been pretty busy with space travel and the marvels of the future for quite a number of years. We don’t often think of imagination as a weapon of defense, but here is an ingenious story about a boy and a tree house and a visitation from space which suggests that the imagination can be more powerful than a hydrogen bomb—if there is no way to distinguish fact from fancy.
Perhaps when the first Terran spacemen go out to the countless worlds which the universe may hold, the shoe will be on the other foot. They will have no way of knowing with certainty whether what they find is harmless or a deadly warning. They may be wholly unable to interpret the things they find. The wisest course will be to take no chances.
★ ★
One moment he was piloting a fast plane over dangerous green jungles … and the next Eddie was wide awake and peering through the gloom. Across the room Rags was whining softly and sniffing the damp night air that rolled in through the open window. The Scottie was excited, Eddie saw, and it must be something out of the ordinary for Rags’ whimpering carried an undercurrent of perplexity and fear … and the dog wasn’t a coward.
The boy called softly to him, but Rags, after tossing back a swift glance of recognition, put his forefeet up on the sill and peered, muttering, out across the pastures.
Eddie slipped from his bed and padded over to the window. As he comfortingly ruffed the fur behind the Scottie’s ears, he listened intently to the night. At first he heard only the ordinary country sounds—roosters crowing over at the next farm, the muffled thumping of stock shifting about in the barn and against the corral fence; the flittering and high chirping of birds in the cottonwoods and pepper trees. He took the dog in his arms and was about to go back to bed with him when he became aware of a sound that was very much out of the ordinary. A sound, Eddie decided, something like what you heard standing outside the Baptist church in Riverside when the organist was playing low, vibrant notes inside.
Eddie wondered how he could have missed the sound at first, so firmly had it now become established. Where could it be coming from? It was, he guessed, about an hour till dawn, and no tractors or other farm machinery should be running. And it wasn’t a radio.
A plane?
Leaning from the window he glanced upwards, then gasped in astonishment. Goose pimples of excitement tingled his skin, for there in the sky, above the oak tree on the ridge, hung a pattern of sharp white lights. They were little lights, as if someone had strung together a fanciful arrangement of Christmas tree bulbs, then sent them dangling aloft beneath a kite.
Rags’ mutterings became deep and angry. Finally he gave vent to a short sharp bark.
Instantly Eddie quieted the dog. Lights or not, his mother had made it plenty clear about Rags’ being in the house.
Crouching on the floor, both arms about Rags, Eddie whispered words of reassurance while he stared up at the strange sparklings. The oak tree— the one with his tree house—was a scant quarter-mile from where he knelt, and he wondered if its being so high on the ridge had caused it to draw some sort of lightning to itself. He’d read of that happening … chain lightning. Or was it called fox-fire? Eddie couldn’t remember. Anyway, it looked something like that, he imagined.
But no lightning, he remembered, made a noise like a machine. Unconsciously, he’d hooked sight and sound together.
Frowning, Eddie let go of the dog. If the lights had been over the barn or garage, he’d have gone to tell his father. Or over the garden, his mother. But the tree house didn’t concern them. It was his, and even if it hadn’t been an hour before dawn he wouldn’t have told his parents. He had things in there he shouldn’t have, and it wouldn’t do for either Mother or Father to go snooping around, even if they couldn’t find his secret ladder and climb it.
He returned to the window.
Something thrashed in the highest branches of the oak. Rags began his whining again.
There was but one thing to do. He found his moccasins by the night table and pulled them on, threw a leather jacket on over his pajamas. From the wall above his desk, Eddie took down his .22, broke it, slipped in a shell, and tiptoed from the house.
The humming was stronger outside. Not louder, exactly, but more easy to feel. He crouched down, the way he’d seen commandos do in pictures, and began to run, holding the rifle at ready before him. And for once, Rags seemed content to stay at his side and not go dashing along ahead up the path. As they took the turn by the big rock a startled nightbird plunged out of the bushes and took wing. The bird’s violent rush brought caution to Eddie and he slowed his run to a walk. Suppose, he thought, that someone in a helicopter or maybe a balloon was hanging over the tree house. Spies, probably. And suppose they wanted the tree house for a headquarters.
He stopped, looked back down at the house dimly outlined in the starlight. Suppose, he continued, that there were too many of them. He’d just better sneak up quiet and see what was going on.
He eased himself around another turn in the path and came again in view of the oak. The lights were still there, but they no longer looked to be mere points of brightness against an empty sky. He stopped, more puzzled than ever … they looked like navigation lights on a ship, and a couple of them like the glow from inside a radio. And all of them were swaying gently in the night wind, twenty feet or so above the tree.
Rags went slowly ahead, two feet, three, four, then stopped … belly almost to the dust. His teeth shone in a soundless snarl, not a muscle of his body moving. Eddie had never seen him act like this, not even when the bear had come down into the valley to raid for chickens. Rags was plainly terrified, and something of the dog’s emotion communicated itself. The boy bit his lip grimly, then strained to listen, heard what the dog was hearing; someone … something was m
oving about up in the oak.
Some of his fear gave way to anger. “Messin’ around in my tree house!”
He gripped the rifle tightly, took two determined steps forward. The third step he never completed. He was unconscious when he pitched into the ground. And when Rags leaped after him, he too crumpled as if dead… .
The Commander left his report-strewn desk and strode heavily over to the forward port. Glumly, he looked down at the frosty pitted surface of the satellite a thousand miles away, and in his imagination saw the planet that swung on the dead orb’s opposite side. It was nonsense to have to hide behind a moon from such a primitive planet, waiting and waiting like a coward for reassuring information. But such prudence had ever been part of holy Law.
He sighed, turned away from the huge wall of window. Sometimes one wondered about Law, he mused darkly. One did not disobey, of course, but one could not help wondering sometimes. And occasionally one even wondered the blackest heresy of all—was it really important to kill all life everywhere for the sake of colonization?
The Commander caught sight of his reflection in a polished door panel. His own hard eyes glowered out from the reflection accusingly, so he pulled up his shoulders and put all suspicion from his mind. Would he not destroy any of his people for such thoughts? Then he must not allow himself to entertain such blasphemy. Naturally, colonization was all-important. That was Law.
Picking up the pictures taken when they had first flashed into this system, the Commander saw again the nature of the beings they were about to exterminate. That they were ignorant savages, quite unworthy of the usual precautions now being taken, was plain to see. Their atmosphere showed heavy traces of carbon combustion, a certain indication that the creatures were inefficient, for who but a savage would burn matter to obtain power? The amount of radioactivity present in their gaseous envelope was so tiny as to prove that they had little or no knowledge of atomic power. There were no frell vibrations apparent; imagine existing without an understanding of simple magnetics!
Space, Space, Space - Stories about the Time when Men will be Adventuring to the Stars Page 8