Complete Fiction (Jerry eBooks)

by J. Francis McComas

  Hardin’s uniform was stained in several places with patches of blood. He stared at them, wondering how long it had been since a Terran soldier had seen blood, his own or somebody else’s, on his clothes . . .

  Then he felt the earth shake beneath him under the thudding of thousands of . . . hooves?

  “All right, gentlemen,” he said, “into the ship with you. I’ll take care of our visitors.”

  “Captain Hardin!” snapped Tresco.

  “Yes, Doctor?”

  “You have non-killing weapons?”

  “Of course.”

  “Use them! The gun must be your last resort.” He turned to Gearhardt. “Come, Doctor. Let us watch the progress of the defense from inside the ship.”

  Hardin grinned. God! how they trusted him! And what wondrous, idealistic, incredible fools they were!

  A bolt thocked against the ship above him. He dropped to his hands and knees and crawled to the pit.

  “Compression grenades!” he grunted. “Stun charge only!”

  A rain of bolts sang through the air above him. Then there was the cough of grenade launchers and the men in the pit felt the fringe of the shock-wave as the grenades went off.

  The wild charge skidded to an abrupt halt in a tangle of falling mounts and riders. Then the mass boiled forward again as the rear ranks attempted to ride over their fallen comrades.

  “Another round!” barked Hardin. “Higher this time—get the rear echelons! And give their left flank a heavy load—that’s still plenty lively!”

  That second round of grenades broke the charge. At first the Terrans could see nothing but the bodies of men and mounts tumbling to the ground. Then they heard . . . silence. Drums, horns and voices all broke on a single note as panic swept through the broken ranks.

  Then the horde turned and fled.

  Hardin and Stiegesen, watching, saw a dismounted rider here and there yell frantically. At each call, a luckier comrade slowed, and without stopping, hauled the man afoot up behind him, then rode desperately for safety.

  In a very few moments there was no movement that Hardin or Stiegesen could see. The gray plain stretched out before them, dotted with still heaps of riders and mounts.

  “Well, that’s over,” grunted Stiegesen. He stood up and stretched.

  Hardin followed suit and looked around the gun pit.

  “Well done, men,” he grinned. “Any casualties?”

  The gun crew grinned back and announced that they were all in one piece.

  “Good!” said Hardin. “Take a blow and then we’ll go out and get ourselves some prisoners.” He took out his cigaret case and passed it to Stiegesen.

  “Thanks, Captain. Prisoners, eh?”

  Hardin nodded as he puffed his cigaret alight. “Wonder if we could round up the whole lot. There’s a couple of hundred out there.”

  “Don’t see why not.”

  “Captain Hardin!” Dr. Tresco stood framed in the port.

  “Damn!” muttered Hardin under his breath and saw Stiegesen grin tightly. He shrugged wearily and said aloud, “Yes, Doctor?”

  “Very well done, Captain!”

  “Thank you, Doctor.”

  “I’ve been in constant communication with the Messenger,” Tresco continued, “and the Administrator wishes me to give you his warmest congratulations for a job well done.”

  “That’s very nice indeed, Doctor Tresco. But the job’s not over yet. We’re going out for a few prisoners.”

  “No, no!” Tresco almost fell in his haste to get down the ramp. Hardin politely walked over to him. “The Administrator made a particular point of that! You are to take no prisoners, do no further damage to these people! You are to confine your actions to purely defensive measures!”

  “Taking prisoners is a good defense, Doctor! We’ve got to find out what makes these beings tick—we’ve got to impress them—”

  “We must indeed. But the Administrator feels, as do I, that your recent . . . ah, martial display should have been very impressive. Very impressive. Now we must turn to more peaceful ways. The Administrator is sending down full research and contact teams in the morning.”

  “Peaceful!” grated Hardin. “After what happened to Struthers-Stote—”

  “My dear Captain! If an unstable compound blows up and kills an experimenter, do that experimenter’s friends and co-workers hate that compound and attempt to destroy it?”

  “It isn’t a question of hate,” Hardin began, then he shrugged. “Very well, Doctor. We’ll sit tight until morning.”

  “Good,” Tresco nodded, took a final look around and started up the ramp. “Good night, Captain Hardin. Call me if I’m needed.”

  “Good night, Doctor.”

  Captain John Leslie Hardin stared up at the sky. His gaze soon caught the little moon that was the Messenger, Terran man’s first starship, hanging well above the limit of the atmosphere of Wolf 359 IV, waiting until her spawn of scout ships had found the world below safe enough to risk landing the giant pioneer upon the first habitable planet which she had found in her star-journey.

  “You’ll never come down now!” Hardin growled suddenly.

  “Why not?” asked Stiegesen.

  Hardin turned his head and scowled. “I was not addressing you, Lieutenant.”

  “I’m sorry, sir.” Stiegesen turned stiffly and stepped toward the gun.

  “Wait, Stieg!” Hardin took the younger man’s arm, spun him about to face him. “I’m up to my ears in frustration—sorry!”

  “Certainly, Captain.”

  “And this is no time to pull rank on me, either,” Hardin smiled.

  “Sure, Les.” Stiegesen jerked a thumb at the ship. “They’ve got me pretty touchy, too.”

  “Damn it,” Hardin muttered, “we need prisoners. Badly.”

  “Any special reason? Besides the usual, I mean.”

  Hardin chuckled. “Don’t have to teach you tactics, do I, boy,” he said affectionately. “And you’ve hit it: there is a special reason—over and above every purely military consideration.”

  “So?”

  “Look at it two ways. First, the surviving members of that bunch think the lot out there is dead. If scouts come back in the morning and find them gone, they’ll be sure of it . . . and they’ll all be wondering what we do with enemy dead. That will give them a psychological jolt! On the other hand, if we freighted a batch of POW’s up to the Messenger, that would scare hell out of the captives! We’d establish contact in a hurry—right away we’d have a talk . . . talk that those cowboys would listen to!”

  “It makes sense—but it’s too late now! They’re coming to!”

  The two men watched in grim silence as the stunned aliens recovered their senses. The first few sat up, bewildered, and stared about them. An animal whistled softly, grunted, reared itself up, wobbled on four legs, put down the other two and spread all six wide. A lone native watched the animal, then suddenly scrambled to his own feet and stood for a moment, swaying. Then he staggered over to the animal and mounted with clumsy haste; without looking back he rode off at an awkward trot. The rest of the scene was merely a repeat performance of this one action. Toward the end, they recovered in groups and their retreat was less hasty, a reckless few even waiting a few moments in their saddles, as if daring the Terrans to make another move.

  Then, in the far distance, the drums sounded.

  “The first have caught up with the main body,” Hardin said.

  “Think they’ll come back?”

  “Positive! Their evidence is that we can’t kill!”

  Sure enough, they came back . . . but only to the absolute limit of the ship’s lights. There the horde halted and the two watchers could see the light of countless fires spring up. The horns wailed occasionally, but the drums were silent.

  “Camped for the night.” Hardin’s tone was casual. “We’re in a state of siege, m’boy.”

  “You’d better get some sleep, Les.”

  “Not yet . . . you slee
py?”

  “Not in the least!”

  “Good . . . I’d like to talk to you, Stieg. Come on over here.” He moved off to one side of the ship area, out of earshot of the crews around the gun and flamethrower. “Sit down and have a cigaret.”

  They smoked in comfortable silence for a moment, then Hardin said abruptly, “Stieg, I’ve begun to think that the Committee of 2117 made a mistake. A big mistake!”

  “Hey?”

  “You heard me.”

  “Now look, Les—you’re tired and frustrated—hell! you’re the first CO that’s had a fight on his hand for 200 years! But that’s no excuse for talking what amounts to treason!”

  “It’s not treason,” Hardin said calmly. “Let me put it this way: I think the decisions of ’17 were okay for the Solar System.”

  He paused, and Stiegesen lifted his dark brows. “Now you’re backtracking, Les.”

  “I’m not . . . I’ll try to explain.” His voice was low, musing. “Stieg, life—plus aptitude tests, plus heredity factors, plus conditioning—has made us soldiers. Soldiers . . . the real pariahs of our society.”

  “Don’t tell me you’re feeling sorry for yourself!”

  “Of course I’m not. Particularly since I feel that the soldier—the twenty-fourth century soldier, that is, and not one of those brass-bound idiots of bygone days—is just about to come into his own!”

  “I guess you’re referring to this setup, but I don’t follow you.”

  “All right. You’re a soldier, a member of a society that glorifies the scientist—the educated, reasoning man—and regards the soldier as a necessary evil. You’re a mug, because, by the standards of your culture, you’re not particularly well-educated. But what science have you studied, been forced to study, that the great Doc Tresco can’t even think about?”

  “Too easy,” laughed Stiegesen. “History. Next question.”

  “Yes, history. Considered by the Committee of ’17 to be nothing more than a miserable record of wars, of cultural and economic conflicts, an endless chronicle of man’s petty, vicious outbreaks against the peace of himself and his fellows!”

  Hardin took a final puff of his cigaret and tossed it on the ground and stamped it out with the heel of his boot.

  “Wasn’t it?”

  “Not completely—and you know it!”

  “Well . . . it wasn’t . . . but how does that matter? How did the Committee go wrong?” Stiegesen laughed awkwardly. “Mind you, I’m not agreeing that it did!”

  “Ummm. Stieg, when the world finally exploded in the Twentieth Century and blew itself to bits in the first decade of the Twenty-First, those surviving bits decided to start completely fresh. Which was all right; the results have damn well proved them to be correct. But I think—I’ve always thought—that they went a little too far with their rearrangements in banning the study of the history of modern man. And I’ve a hunch that Gearhardt agrees with me.”

  “What! Treason from a scientist? What are we coming to?”

  Hardin chuckled and puffed at another cigaret.

  “Don’t worry,” he said, “that old gentleman hasn’t committed himself in so many words. I’m just playing a hunch. And I’ve always wondered how an enthusiastic archeologist could break off his researches with the foundation of the Roman city state. What a temptation it must be to go on, dig up the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries!”

  “Look, Les,” Stiegesen was no longer smiling, “you’re doing a sweet job of beating around the bush! What has all this argument and counter-argument got to do with those wild men out there? If they are men . . .”

  “They’re men in the sense that any reasoning life form is a man.” Hardin gazed off at the distant line of campfires. “All right. The law of 2117 decreed that only we soldiers, of all humanity, should know about history because we exist to protect society from its enemies . . . from within and from without. By studying history we’d always know what to expect because, m’boy, within easily predictable variations, history repeats itself . . . or did, on Terra, until we, and other instruments, were set up to check any such repetitive lapses.” Stiegesen whistled softly.

  “Got you!” he exclaimed in a soft whisper. “You’re saying that this wild bunch is a part of our history, repeating itself here!”

  “It had on Mars and Venus.”

  “I’ll agree . . . but what part?”

  Hardin eased himself to his feet and his junior followed suit. As Hardin straightened his tunic he said, “I’m not sure yet. I want you to do some independent thinking about it and let me know what you decide. Also, I want to take a good look at that ruined city tomorrow. I’m guessing it’s just as important a part of the equation I’m looking for as that rampaging herd of men and animals is.”

  He looked earnestly at the younger man. “Think about it, Stieg. Think hard.” Then he straightened and said crisply, “Okay, back to work. Take the first watch and call me at 6!”

  The brief intimacy was ended. Stiegesen saluted and answered, “Right, sir. Sleep well, sir.”

  Hardin said, “Thank you, Lieutenant. Keep an eye out for snipers,” and strode toward the ramp.

  The other scout ship landed in the morning around 10 o’clock, earthtime. Hardin watched as it circled above the camp of the besiegers; at first, there was considerable confusion as the natives ran for their mounts. But order was quickly established; they ranged themselves in a rough square while Hardin nodded a tactician’s approval. If the ship landed among them, or dropped missiles, they could all gallop outward, away from the center of danger.

  As he watched through his binoculars, his mouth tightened. They weren’t particularly afraid, but members of a society as primitive as theirs should have been panicked by flying ships. So, Hardin reasoned, while a cold anger welled up within him, they associated the second ship with the first . . . and they knew the first ship was harmless. No Terran weapon yet demonstrated had filled. So, really, the only thing these natives feared (or respected?) was death—death sudden and irrevocable. Under his breath Hardin cursed the very rational voyagers from earth who had forgotten (or never heard of) the rational irrationality of the primitive.

  The second ship lined up alongside the first and as Hardin’s men enlarged the pit and placed gun and flame-thrower to cover both ships, Administrator Jeltenko made an impressive debarkation and shook hands warmly with his deputy, Tresco. He had a smile for Gearhardt and a friendly nod for Hardin.

  A few riders dashed quite close to the ships, loosed a volley of bolts, then skittered back out of range.

  The Administrator smiled gently (the bolts had fallen far short of the ship area) and murmured something about “rather wild children.” He stopped smiling when Tresco and Hardin showed him the remains of Struthers-Stote. He looked at them a long time and only the pallor of his handsome face showed his upset.

  “We must bury him,” Administrator Jeltenko said and the gun crew did some more digging and the Administrator read the words of the universal burial service, committing the soul of Struthers-Stote to the God who gave it and his body to an alien soil from which it never sprang.

  First casualty, brooded Hardin . . . and what a pitiful, futile casualty it was . . .

  Then, technicians scurried about, unloading equipment from the second scout.

  “Now, my dear Doctor,” the Administrator smiled down at Tresco, “we shall make an all-out effort to communicate. I’ve brought along the cinema projector, with the animations telling our story. Doctor Hadley’s brought along his symbol projector and speaker. If he and they aren’t conversing in rudimentary Basic Solarian ten minutes after he gets going, why”—he chuckled and Hadley tried to look properly modest—“why . . . we’ll use the cinema. If that fails—but I rather doubt it will—we’ve got a tidy lot of gifts.”

  “Excellent,” beamed Tresco. “By this afternoon, Solarian man and Wolfian man will have established a modus vivendi.” I feel it in my bones,” he tapped his big paunch, “here, behind all this fat
.”

  Jeltenko chuckled amiably.

  Hardin looked for Gearhardt, saw him standing a little apart, watching the sorting of machines and parts with obvious boredom.

  Hardin strode over to the old man.

  “Doctor Gearhardt,” he said, “may I have a word with you?” The archeologist smiled a welcome. “A thousand, Captain! I find the activities of these busy little beavers rather dull.”

  “Their work’s a bit too contemporary for you, eh? If they were just digging out a tomb, now—”

  “I should be down in the hole with them,” Gearhardt said candidly.

  “Beavers is a good word for them,” Hardin said slowly. “They’re building a dam, all right—but it will never hold back that flood out there . . . when it gets ready to roll.”

  Gearhardt cocked a shaggy eyebrow. “So. Well, young man, I agree with you. Which is heresy, of course.”

  Hardin smiled with relief. “Well, Doctor, as one heretic to another, I’d like to make a suggestion.”

  “And that is . . .?”

  “If you want to make any further exploration of those ruins, do it now . . . while it’s still safe!”

  “Safe?”

  “I haven’t been in the city, of course. But from what I’ve heard you say, it sounds like a fine setup for a series of ambushes.”

  “Ambushes, Captain?” He turned slowly and stared out at the horde, whose drums and horns were now beating out a wild cacophony, then turned back and gazed thoughtfully at the low bulk of the corpse of the dead city. “Of course. Why should they content themselves with a—a—what is your military term?”

  “Frontal attack.”

  “Yes, frontal attack . . . Our vision is really quite narrow, isn’t it?”

  “Not narrow, sir,” Hardin said boldly. “Untrained.”

  “More heresy,” Gearhardt chuckled. “Ah, well . . . any further suggestions, Captain?”

  “Not a suggestion, sir, but a request. I want very much to see those ruins. Not only because I’m naturally curious—who wouldn’t be! But I want to see, too, if they back up a theory of mine.”

  “The problem of the arbalest bolts?”

  “That’s tied in with it.” Gearhardt grinned. “Since I am more concerned with the past of this planet than its present, I don’t think Doctor Jeltenko will be insulted if I beg off attending his forthcoming . . . ah, demonstrations. And he’ll certainly be sympathetic when I tell him I’m afraid of continuing my researches alone and want the company of the big, bold Captain Hardin.”