"I'm having my own troubles thinking." The medical officer passed a hand across his temple. It left a streak of grime, despite the furnace air sucking away sweat before that could form drops. "Frequent, blurred vision too? Yes."
"Have you considered a poison in the environment?"
"Certainly. You weren't in the first wave, Major. I was. Intelligence, as well as history, assured us Avalon is acceptably safe. Still, take my word, we'd scarcely established camp when the scientific team was checking."
"How about quizzing Avalonian prisoners?"
"I'm assured this was done. In fact, there've been subsequent commando operations just to collect more for that purpose. But how likely are any except a few specialists to know details about the most forbidding part of a whole continent that nobody inhabits?"
"And of course the Avalonians would have all those experts safely tucked out of reach." The major gusted a weary breath. "So what did your team find?"
The medical officer groped for a stimpill out of the open box on his desk. "There is a, ah, high concentration of heavy metals in local soil. But nothing to worry about. You could breathe the dust for years before you'd require treatment. The shrubs around use those elements in their metabolism, as you'd expect, and we've warned against chewing or burning any part of them. No organic compounds test out as allergens. Look, human and Ythrian biochemistries are so similar the races can eat most of each other's food. If this area held something spectacularly deadly, don't you imagine the average colonist would have heard of it, at least? I'm from Terra—middle west coast of North America—oh, Lord—" For a while his gaze was gone from Scorpeluna. He shook himself. "We lived among oleanders. We cultivated them for their flowers. Oleanders are poisonous. You just need to be sensible about them."
"This has got to have some cause," the major insisted.
"We're investigating," the medic said. "If anyone had foreseen this planet would amount to anything militarily—it'd have been studied before ever we let a war happen, so thoroughly—Too late."
Occasional small boats from the Avalonian remnants slipped among the Terran blockaders at high velocity and maximum variable acceleration. About half were destroyed; the rest got through and returned spaceward. It was known that they exchanged messages with the ground. Given suitable encoding and laser beams, a huge amount of information can be passed in a second or two.
"Obviously they're discussing a move," Cajal snarled at his staff. "Equally obviously, if we try to hunt them, they'll scatter and vanish in sheer distance, sheer numbers of asteroids and moons, same's they did before. And they'll have contingency plans. I do not propose to be diverted, gentlemen. We shall keep our full strength here."
For a growing body of observations indicated that, on land and sea, under sea and in their skies, the colonists were at last making ready to strike back.
Rochefort heard the shrieking for the better part of a minute before it registered on him. Dear Jesus, dragged through his dullness, what ails me? His muscles protested bringing the skimmer around. His fingers were sausages on the control board. Beside him, Nasution slumped mute, as the boy had been these past days (weeks? years?). The soft cheeks had collapsed and were untidily covered by black down.
Still, Rochefort's craft arrived to help those which had been floating above a ground patrol. The trouble was, it could then do no more than they. Energy weapons incinerated at a flash hundreds of the cockroach-like things, twenty centimeters long, whose throngs blackened the ground between shrubs. They could not save the men whom these bugs had already reached and were feasting on. Rochefort carefully refrained from noting which skimmer pilots gave, from above, a coup de grace. He himself hovered low and hauled survivors aboard. After what he had seen, in his present physical shape, Nasution was too sick to be of use.
Having evidently gotten wind of meat in this hungry land, the kakkelaks swarmed toward the main base. They couldn't fly, but they clattered along astonishingly fast. Every effort must go to flaming a cordon against them.
Meanwhile the Avalonians landed throughout Equatoria. They deployed so quickly and widely—being very lightly equipped—that bombardment would have been futile. All who entered Scorpeluna were Ythrian.
* * *
The chief officers of medicine and planetology confronted their commandant. Outside, an equinoctial gale bellowed and rang through starless night; dust scoured over shuddering metal walls. The heat seemed to come in enormous dry blasts.
"Yes, sir," the medical chief said. Being regular navy rather than marine, he held rear admiral's rank. "We've proven it beyond reasonable doubt." He sighed, a sound lost in the noise. "If we'd had better equipment, more staff—Well, I'll save that for the board of inquiry, or the court-martial. The fact is, poor information got us sucked into a death trap."
"Too many worlds." The civilian planetologist shook his gaunt head. "Each too big. Who can know?"
"While you gabble," the commandant said, "men lie in delirium and convulsions. More every day. Talk." His voice was rough with anger and incomplete weeping.
"We suspected heavy-metal poisoning, of course," the medical officer said, "We made repeated tests. The concentration always seemed within allowable limits. Then overnight—"
"Never mind that," the planetologist interrupted. "Here are the results. These bushes growing everywhere around . . . we knew they take up elements like arsenic and mercury. And the literature has described the hell shrub, with pictures, as giving off dangerous vapors. What we did not know is that here is a species of hell shrub. It looks entirely unlike its relatives. Think of roses and apples. Besides, we'd no idea how the toxin of the reported kind works, let alone these. That must have been determined after the original descriptions were published, when a purely organic compound was assumed. The volume of information in every science, swamping—" His words limped to a halt.
The commandant waited.
The medical officer took the tale: "The vapors carry the metals in loose combination with a . . . a set of molecules, unheard of by any authority I've read. Their action is, well, they block certain enzymes. In effect, the body's protections are canceled. No metal atoms whatsoever are excreted. Every microgram goes to the vital organs. Meanwhile the patient is additionally weakened by the fact that parts of his protein chemistry aren't working right. The effects are synergistic and exponential. Suddenly one crosses a threshold."
"I . . . see . . ." the commandant said.
"We top officers aren't in too bad a condition yet," the planetologist told him. "Nor are our staffs. We spend most of our time indoors. The men, though—" He rubbed his eyes. "Not that I'd call myself a well man," he mumbled.
"What do you recommend?" the commandant asked.
"Evacuation," the medical chief said. "And I don't recommend it, I tell you we have no alternative. Our people must get immediate proper care."
The commandant nodded. Himself sick, monstrously tired, he had expected some such answer days ago and started his quiet preparations.
"We can't lift off tomorrow," he said in his dragging tones. "We haven't the bottom; most's gone back to space. Besides, a panicky flight would make us a shooting gallery for the Avalonians. But we'll organize to raise the worst cases, while we recall everybody to the main camp. We'll have more ships brought down, in orderly fashion." He could not control the twitch in his upper lip.
As the Imperials retreated, their enemies struck.
They fired no ground-to-ground missiles. Rather, their human contingents went about the construction of bases which had this capability, at chosen spots throughout the Equatorian continent. It was not difficult. They were only interested in short-range weapons, which needed little more than launch racks, and in aircraft, which needed little more than maintenance shacks for themselves and their crews. The largest undertaking was the assembly of massive energy projectors in the peaks overlooking Scorpeluna.
Meanwhile the Ythrians waged guerrilla warfare on the plateau. They, far less vulnerable to the
toxicant peculiar to it, were in full health and unburdened by the spacesuits, respirators, handkerchiefs which men frantically donned. Already winged, they need not sit in machines which radar, gravar, magnetoscopes could spot across kilometers. Instead they could dart from what cover the ground afforded, spray a trudging column with fire and metal, toss grenades at a vehicle, sleet bullets through any skimmers, and be gone before effective reaction was possible.
Inevitably, they had their losses.
"Hya-a-a-ah!" yelled Draun of Highsky, and swooped from a crag down across the sun-blaze. At the bottom of a dry ravine, a Terran column stumbled toward camp from a half-finished emplacement. Dust turned every man more anonymous than what was left of his uniform. A few armored groundcars trundled among them, a few aircraft above. A gravsled bore rapidly mummifying corpses, stacked.
"Cast them onto hell-wind!" The slugthrower stuttered in Draun's grasp. Recoil kept trying to hurl him off balance, amidst these wild thermals. He gloried that his wings were too strong and deft for that.
The Ythrians swept low, shooting, and onward. Draun saw men fall like emptied sacks. Wheeling beyond range, he saw their comrades form a square, anchored by its cars and artillery, helmeted by its flyers. They're still brave, he thought, and wondered if they hadn't best be left alone. But the idea had been to push them into close formation, then on the second pass drop a tordenite bomb among them. "Follow me!"
The rush, the bullets and energy bolts, the appallingly known wail at his back. Draun braked, came about, saw Nyesslan, his oldest son, the hope of his house, spiral to ground on a wing and a half. The Ythrian squadron rushed by. "I'm coming, lad!" Draun glided down beside him. Nyesslan lay unconscious. His blood purpled the dust. The second attack failed, broke up in confusion before it won near to the square. True to doctrine, that they should hoard their numbers, the Ythrians beat back out of sight. A platoon trotted toward Draun. He stood above Nyesslan and fired as long as he was able.
"Take out everything they have remaining in orbit," Cajal said. "We need freedom to move our transports continuously."
His chief of staff cleared throat. "Hr-r-rm, the admiral knows about the hostile ships?"
"Yes. They're accelerating inward. It's fairly clear that all which can make planetfall hope to do so; the rest are running interference."
"Shouldn't we organize an interception?"
"We can't spare the strength. Clearing away those forts will empty most of our magazines. Our prime duty is to pull our men out of that mess we . . . I . . . sent them into." Cajal stiffened himself. "If any units can reasonably be spared from the orbital work, yes, let them collect what Avalonians they can, provided they conserve munitions to the utmost and rely mainly on energy weapons. I doubt they'll get many. The rest we'll have to let go their ways, perhaps to our sorrow." His chuckle clanked. "As old Professor Wu-Tai was forever saying at the Academy—remember, Jim?—'The best foundation that a decision is ever allowed is our fallible assessment of the probabilities.'"
The tropical storms of Avalon were more furious than one who came from a planet of less irradiation and slower spin could well have imagined. For a day and a night, the embarkation of the sickest men was postponed. Besides the chance of losing a carrier, there was a certainty that those flensing rains would kill some of the patients as they were borne from shacks to gangways.
The more or less hale, recently landed, battled to erect levees. Reports, dim and crackling through radio static, were of flash floods leaping down every arroyo.
Neither of these situations concerned Rochefort. He was in an intermediate class, too ill for work, too well for immediate removal. He huddled on a chair among a hundred of his fellows, in a stinking, steaming bunker, tried to control the chills and nausea that went ebb-and-flow through him, and sometimes thought blurrily of Tabitha Falkayn and sometimes of Ahmed Nasution, who had died three days before.
What Avalonian spacecraft ran the gauntlet descended to Equatoria, where home-guard officers assigned them their places.
The storm raged to its end. The first Imperial vessels lifted from the wrecked base. They were warships, probing a way for the crammed, improvised hospital hulls which were to follow. Sister fighters moved in from orbit to join them.
Avalon's ground and air defenses opened crossfire. Her space force entered battle.
Daniel Holm sat before a scanner. It gave his words and his skull visage to the planet's most powerful linked transmitters, a broadcast which could not fail to be heard:
"—we're interdicting their escape route. You can't blast us in time to save what we estimate as a quarter million men. Even if we didn't resist, maybe half of them would never last till you brought them to adequate care. And I hate to think about the rest—organ, nerve, brain damage beyond the power of regenerative techniques to heal.
"We can save them. We of Avalon. We have the facilities prepared, clear around our planet. Beds, nursing staffs, diagnostic equipment, chelating drugs, supportive treatments. We'd welcome your inspection teams and medical personnel. Our wish is not to play political games with living people. The minute you agree to renew the ceasefire and to draw your fleet far enough back that we can count on early warning, that same minute our rescue groups will take flight for Scorpeluna."
XVIII
The ward was clean and well-run, but forty men must be crowded into it and there was no screen—not that local programs would have interested most of them. Hence they had no entertainment except reading and bitching. A majority preferred the latter. Before long, Rochefort asked for earcups in order that he might be able to use the books lent him. He wore them pretty much around the clock.
Thus he did not hear the lickerish chorus. His first knowledge came from a touch on his shoulder. Huh? he thought. Lunch already? He raised his eyes from The Gaiila Folk and saw Tabitha.
The heart sprang in him and raced. His hands shook so he could barely remove the cups.
She stood athwart the noisy, antiseptic-smelling room as if her only frame were a window behind, open to the blue and blossoms of springtime. A plain coverall disguised the curves and straightness of her. He saw in the countenance that she had lost weight. Bones stood forth still more strongly than erstwhile, under a skin more darkened and hair more whitened by a stronger sun than shone over Gray.
"Tabby," he whispered, and reached.
She took his hands, not pressing them nor smiling much. "Hullo, Phil," said the remembered throaty voice. "You're looking better'n I expected, when they told me you'd three tubes in you."
"You should have seen me at the beginning." He heard his words waver. "How've you been? How's everybody?"
"I'm all right. Most of those you knew are. Draun and Nyesslan bought it."
"I'm sorry," he lied.
Tabitha released him. "I'd have come sooner," she said, "but had to wait for furlough, and then it took time to get a data scan on those long lists of patients and time to get transportation here. We've a lot of shortages and disorganization yet." Her regard was green and grave. "I did feel sure you'd be on Avalon, dead or alive. Good to learn it was alive."
"How could I stay away . . . from you?"
She dropped her lids. "What is your health situation? The staff's too busy to give details."
"Well, when I'm stronger they want to ship me to a regular Imperial navy hospital, take out my liver and grow me a new one. I may need a year, Terran, to recover completely. They promise me I will."
"Splendid." Her tone was dutiful. "You being well treated here?"
"As well as possible, considering. But, uh, my roommates aren't exactly my type and the medics and helpers, both Imperial and Avalonian, can't stop their work for conversation. It's been damned lonesome, Tabby, till you came."
"Ill try to visit you again. You realize I'm on active duty, and most of what leave I'm granted has to be spent at St. Li, keeping the business in shape."
Weakness washed through him. He leaned back into the pillows and let his arms fall on the blanke
t. "Tabby . . . would you consider waiting . . . that year?"
She shook her head, slowly, and again met his stare. "Maybe I ought to pretend till you're more healed, Phil. But I'm no good at pretending, and besides, you rate better."
"After what I did—"
"And what I did." She leaned down and felt past the tubes to lay palms on his shoulders. "No, we've never hated on that account, have we, either of us?"
"Then can't we both forgive?"
"I believe we've already done it. Don't you see, though? When the hurting had died down to where I could think, I saw there wasn't anything left. Oh, friendship, respect, memories to cherish. And that's all."
"It isn't enough . . . to rebuild on?"
Rise of the Terran Empire Page 55